House Husband

The house, at first glance, is nothing remarkable. It's large, of course, and older than your average house, but from the outside it's shaped more or less the way a house should be shaped. Ivy and moss grow on its bricks and cobblestones, its windows are ordinary arched windows with square panes, its front door is painted red. It's hidden back in the woods, shrouded by trees, and any glimpse the average passerby is likely to catch of it is unlikely to strike them as remarkable.

It's only once the car is parked and Archer steps into the house's shadow that he feels the first murmur of unease. There's something about the angles of the house - the corners where it connects - that feels too smooth. Like the house has grown its extra parapets, its towers and its extra rooms, rather than having them built. It gives the house a sense of movement. It breathes. Only out of the corners of Archer's eyes, of course, but he's learned to trust that sense of liminal wrongness.  

"Okay, yeah, you weren't kidding," he says, as Tyler and Kyle step out of the car. Kyle's got a video camera slung around his neck, holding it up to film Archer's reaction. It makes his skin crawl a little, uncomfortable as always with being perceived. He's not looking forward to the comments from transphobes boasting about clocking him or whatever, but Tyler had promised him a hundred bucks to "do his psychic shit at this weird old house" and that's enough for just, so much pizza.

"Yeah?" Tyler asks, visibly excited. "What do you see?"

"More of a feeling," Archer says, a little sheepishly, and turns his face away from the camera. Makes a conscious effort to drop his voice lower, rougher. "But - it's breathing. Can you see it? Look, out of the corner of your eye."

Tyler turns his head in several different angles, squinting at the house. "Maybe," he says, dubiously. Kyle snorts, and Archer flushes hot with embarrassment.

"Shut up, dude," Tyler tells Kyle, rolling his eyes. "Let's get inside, that's where the weird shit is."

He bounds up toward the door like a puppy, tries the doorknob. There's a grinding click like a negation, and the door doesn't budge. Tyler rattles the knob a couple times.

"We might have to break a window and come in the side. Archer, you're small, want to wiggle through a window?"

"I... don't think that's a good idea," Archer says, wincing at the malignant tensing of the house at the suggestion, at the way the door's red color seems to deepen. "Um. Let me try?"

Kyle rolls his eyes. "Dude. It's locked."

"I know, but," Archer starts, but doesn't finish, uncomfortable.

"Alright, you know what? Sure thing, bro, you're the psychic, you try," Tyler says, and steps back.

Archer approaches the door. The closer he gets, the heavier the house's presence is. It's watching him, feeling the weight of his feet as he walks on the porch's boards. It's measuring him up, assessing and intelligent. Archer's been to plenty of haunted places before and talked to plenty of ghosts, but this is something new. The house itself is alive, and the thought makes him hesitate before he reaches for the doorknob.

Well. He wouldn't want anyone trying to touch him without asking.

"Can we come in?" he asks, and feels stupid as Kyle snickers. "We promise to leave everything exactly how we found it."

"Aw, come on," Tyler begins.

"Exactly how we found it," Archer repeats, more forcefully.

The house considers him, implacable, silent. Archer reaches for the doorknob, closes his hand around it. The brass is warm, which is odd, considering it's forty-three degrees and misty on an autumn morning. It turns easily under his hands, and the door swings open before he can push it, creaking like a sigh. Warm air gusts from the door like breath, clinging to Archer's body, whispering around him. He's never been to a haunting that was warm before. Death is cold, and ghosts are cold too. He can't shake the feeling that the open cavity of the doorframe is an open mouth.

"Holy shit, Kyle, did you get that on camera?"

"Yeah, he opened a door," Kyle says, bored.

"It was locked though, bro."

"That's going to be debunked in seconds once we upload it. We need real evidence. Not just psychic shit."

"We need to be really fucking careful with this," Archer says. He wishes he'd come alone, wants to tell them to call it off and come back later by himself to speak to the house in private, but Tyler is his ride. He can't drive. He's stuck out here with these assholes until they decide to bring him back to campus. In retrospect, that was a mistake so dire that it will definitely get him killed by a haunted house. "Like, I'm not kidding, I've never seen anything like this before."

"It's... a house," Kyle drawls.

Archer shrugs uncomfortably. "I mean. Yeah, but... Never mind."

To escape the eye of the camera, he turns and goes into the house. He's only five steps in before he stops, stunned, and listens hard. There's death here, he thinks, or there has been in the past, but the primary sensation is of vast, overwhelming, thrumming life. It sounds like a massive, thrumming heartbeat, the bellows-creak of lungs, the rush of blood and movement and the murmurs of speech. He can feel the house looking at him, inspecting him.

The warmth inside is tangible, languid, a relief after the damp chill of the outdoors. Slowly, his eyes adjust to the dimness of the house's interior hall, and that's when he sees the monolith.

It takes him a long moment to recognize what he's seeing. The monolith is so black that it seems like a glitch in the world, a slice of reality taken cleanly out of the physical realm of the house to reveal the nothingness beyond. It's a tall, featureless black column that seems to rise up through the ceiling. And it's moving, he thinks. No, not just moving. Writhing. It's got a feeling to it like the movement of a snake in the water, and Archer approaches, raising his hand. It looks like there might be a texture to it, slight irregularities in its columnar silhouette, and he wants to feel it. Wants to try and make out what is carved into the monolith that makes it so alive.

"Yo, what the fuck is that?" Tyler asks, from behind him, and Archer snaps out of his fascination, pausing just before the monolith, hand still raised.

"It's a pillar," Kyle says, snidely, following them in, and then flicks on a harsh, bright light to illuminate the house's darkened interior. "Do you guys see any light switches - Huh." Kyle shines his flashlight at the pillar, and the light disappears. Nothing is reflected back from its dark surface. "Wow. That's some Vantablack shit. Okay, that's a little weird."

Tyler makes an excited, wordless sound and pumps his fists. Archer, self-conscious but still curious, reaches out to touch the pillar's surface. It's ridged, sure enough, warm as the rest of the house and rigid as stone. The texture is oddly smooth, though, almost slick. It's carved with curving lines that suggest shapes, and he concentrates, tracing them, trying to figure out what the monolith is depicting. The image forms slowly behind his eyes as though the house is putting it there.

It's a series of semi-human figures tangled up together, and Archer's face abruptly floods with heat as he realizes they're all fucking.

One carved woman with devil horns is being penetrated by someone behind her as she wraps her arms around the thighs of another person whose legs dissolve into tendrils, her face buried ecstatically between them. The person behind the woman is being penetrated by someone else with the antlered head of a deer who is yanking their hair back to kiss their mouth, someone else is kneeling in the knot of them with their mouth on the woman's clit as a long, spindly person lifts their tail and bends over them to finger them - it's an orgy of tangled, mostly-human figures, monstrous and ecstatic and alive. The carvings seem to move, fucking each other, tipping their heads back, opening their mouths with pleasure.

Archer produces a deeply embarrassing whimper and jerks his hand back, his whole body feeling hot and on-edge. To his mortification, he's turned on, clit aching, getting wet inside his boxers. He absolutely can't look over at the other boys and their camera. He'll give something away on his face if he does.

"Dude, you good?" Tyler asks.

"There's, uh," Archer clears his throat. "There's something carved on the monolith, I think."

Tyler, curious, comes over to touch it, and Archer braces himself for Tyler to see what he'd seen. Tyler just frowns, tracing a carved outline of a man with his finger. Archer stifles a hysterical laugh, consciously aware that Tyler is tracing over the lines where a man's arm leads down to his fingers, knuckle-deep in the slit of a mermaid's undulating tail. "Huh, yeah. There's some lines carved on it. I wonder what they say! Wish we could get a better look at it. Man, it's fucking cold in here. Do you think it's the ghosts?"

"Cold?" Archer asks, honestly bewildered. "It's like, seventy-five in here. I'm sweating."

There's a pause. Kyle makes a little scoffing noise under his breath, and Archer shoves his hands in his hoodie pockets, embarrassed. He's not lying, though. Heat curls under his clothes, warm, humid air tickling his ears and neck like a gust of hot breath. Sweat prickles on his skin, and he wants to take his hoodie off, take his shirt and his binder off, kick off his shoes and jeans and stretch out warm and languid and lazy and naked in front of the monolith and fuck himself on his fingers-

Archer shakes his head, sharply. That thought wasn't his. Well. It wasn't just his. Now that he concentrates, he can feel the wordless, suggestive whisper carried on the house's breath. His gaze is drawn irresistibly back towards the monolith, the obscene motion of it, and he's so wet he feels slick when he moves. Okay. Well. That's... interesting. He silently and firmly vows to never let Tyler and Kyle know about this.

"We should go check the other rooms," he says, anxious to get away from the monolith and try to calm down.

"Hell yeah!" Tyler enthuses, and trots off to try the doors. There are a lot of doors, Archer notices, especially considering it's not that large of an entry hall. Whatever the opposite of an open floor-plan is, this house has it. Little distinct cells of rooms, barred from each other by locked doors, like a honeycomb. It's a strange floorplan, the kind that makes each room feel dark and secretive. Before Tyler even tries the first door, Archer knows they'll all be locked to him. And sure enough, each doorknob rattles, unmoving, as he tries it.

"Ugh," Tyler says, finally. "Archer, come do your psychic door-opening again."

Archer looks around at the doors, waiting to see where the house wants him to go. One of the doors pulses, deep and dark like a beckoning, and he walks toward it, resigned. Sure enough, once he gets within arm's length the door unlocks with a click, swings open before he can even touch it.

"Bro," Tyler says, awed. Kyle says nothing, just reaches up to adjust the camera, focusing it in on the door.

Archer steps through and finds himself in a kitchen. Above, a light flicks on, illuminating it in warm, bright light. It's a nice kitchen, spacious, elegant. Smooth, dark wood for the cabinets, a refrigerator, a gas stove and two stacked ovens, a deep sink. It's the kind of place where you could cook a feast with ease. The countertops are smooth black, not quite as dark as the monolith, and there's a massive glass-front cupboard taking up the majority of one wall. Archer approaches it, curious, and eases one of the cupboard doors open.

Inside is an array of fine dishes, china and tableware and glassware, pristine and shining, along with a full dinner set that looks like it's been coated with gold. Delicately, Archer picks up one of the teacups to inspect the pattern on the china. It's a pattern he's never seen before, a complex sigil like something you would use to summon demons. Not that he knows anything about that.   The primary central shape of the sigil, interestingly, appears to be a stylized house. Its lines extend outward, overlap on themselves, make the shape difficult to pick out, but it's unmistakably a house. Huh.

"Jackpot, holy shit," Tyler says, too close to Archer, and Archer startles, fumbling the cup. His stomach lurches as it falls out of his hands, but then the cup is back on the cupboard shelf as though Archer had never picked it up, neatly in its place. "Oh my fucking - Kyle, did you see that?"

Tyler starts pulling out dishes, lining them up on the counter, and Archer feels the house's attention focus, the brewing weight of irritation.

"We said we wouldn't move anything, Tyler!" Archer hisses, trying to take the plates from him. Tyler fends him off, easily, laughing.

"I'll put them back," Tyler says. "I just want to get better lighting for the camera." He picks up one of the gold dishes, and almost drops it immediately. "Bro, what the fuck, this is so heavy. Are these solid gold?"

"Holy shit," Kyle says, and looks more interested than he has been all day. "If so then that's like. I don't know. Got to be at least a couple thousand dollars worth of gold in there. And I bet you this china is valuable as hell, it's clearly old."

"It doesn't matter how much they're worth, because we're leaving them here," Archer says, annoyed on the house's behalf. It's radiating offense, dark and dangerous, intent on the moving of the dishes. The room seems to contract around them, the walls bending in to look at them, the shadows growing darker and crisper, and neither Tyler nor Kyle are reacting.

Kyle shrugs noncommittally, picking up one of the gold saucers that Tyler is piling on the counters, weighing it thoughtfully in his hands. He's set the camera down, focused its lens on the rows of dishes. Archer snatches the saucer out of Kyle's hands, setting it back down on the counter.

"Stop it, Tyler," he says. "You're making it angry."

"How do you know it's angry? Look, it's letting us move them. It wouldn't do that if we weren't allowed to! It moved that cup you almost broke!"

That's a fair point, and Archer hesitates, but it's still stressful, watching them carelessly manhandle these precious items. And he can tell the house is annoyed, feel it in the way it creaks and groans and mutters to itself. Tyler even goes around and looks in all of the cabinets and drawers. He tries to open the fridge but it's stuck tight.

"I don't think it's working," Archer says, arms folded tightly in disapproval. "I don't hear anything from it."

In the distance, a door creaks open, and all of them freeze, listening. The house is eerily silent, and Archer notes, suddenly, there's no electrical sounds at all. Which makes sense, if the house is truly abandoned, but that doesn't explain the light that's on in the kitchen. When he looks up, there's no light fixture. Just an orb like an eye, perched on the ceiling. Watching them.

"Oh my god, it's the cops," Tyler whispers.

Kyle peers through the open kitchen door and says, "No it's fucking not, don't be stupid. It's the door on the other side of that main room. It's open now."

"Oh shit! We gotta go check it out!" Tyler picks up the camera before Kyle can and bolts through the main room, over to the open door, just... leaving all of the dishes scattered on the counter, like an asshole. Kyle swears, mutters something about his camera, and follows.

Archer hesitates, looking between his rapidly retreating haunted house backup and the clutter on the counter. Someone's got to put the dishes away. As quickly as he can while still being careful, he puts the dishes back in the cupboard. It's easier than he would have thought, his hands guided to specific places, as though the dishes want to go back to where they belong. As he's lining up the teacups, he can feel the house's attention heavy on him. The tenor of it has changed, more interested than annoyed.

Something brushes over his back like a touch, like someone running their finger down his spine, and he jumps, whipping around. No one there, of course, but the house seems close around him, intent, and heat crawls over his cheeks. He's so warm, and he fidgets with the edge of his hoodie, wanting it off. Okay. Fine.

He pauses between dishes to shrug the hoodie off. As he does, his shirt rides up, baring a sliver of his abdomen, his back. He feels the touch on his bare skin immediately, a pulsing, warm contact on his hipbones and the small of his back like barely-there hands. More touches skate over his thighs, stroking the insides of them through his jeans, and he braces his hands on the counter for a moment, reeling with a wave of dizzying arousal. The house is touching him. Groping him, kind of. He's not sure how he feels about that, but god, for a long minute all he wants is for it not to stop.

"Hey," he says, weakly, as the touch gets firmer, more daring, ghosting over the central seam of his jeans, stroking over his chest. In response the touch disappears, as though it had never been there to begin with. He takes a deep, shuddery breath, and finishes putting the dishes away, shuts the cabinet at last. His hands seem to stick to the cabinet door when he closes it, the house holding onto him like a lover reluctant to let him get out of bed. A black sigil draws itself on the back of his hand, and he knows what it's going to be as soon as the first line is complete. Yes. It's the house sigil, written on him like he's its property. Heh. Property.

"Christ. At least buy me dinner first," he says, half-joking, half-alarmed. The sigil sinks into his skin, fading into invisibility. Behind him, the fridge swings open, and when he turns, the only thing inside is a bowl of pomegranates. Pristine, shining, a slice already taken out of one, arils shining like gems, beguiling. Archer takes a deep, careful breath. He knows this story. He deliberately turns his back on the pomegranates, and hears the fridge slowly close behind him.

He takes another breath, lets it out, trying hard to distract himself from the helpless need to shove his hand down his pants and grind into his fingertips to relieve some of the coiled, hot tension of his arousal. What's something unsexy? Kyle's stupid snide asshole face, if he caught Archer doing anything like that. Okay, no, unhelpful, Archer's apparently more of an exhibitionist  than he'd thought, and the idea of Tyler and Kyle walking in on him jerking off in a haunted house - being debauched by a haunted house - makes him suck in a sharp breath, hips rocking. He fists a hand in the denim of his jeans to avoid grinding into it. The house purrs at him, self-satisfied. Another touch follows, this time delicately tracing the shell of his ear with a wet heat like breath, and he shudders.

"I have to find my friends," he says, voice thready. The house creaks like a sigh. Sound drifts abruptly back into the kitchen through the open door, and he hadn't even recognized the silence until it was broken. Tyler and Kyle are talking loudly in the other room, Tyler's voice booming with excitement, punctuated by Kyle's quieter, surlier voice. Archer shakes himself like a dog and goes to find them, trying to walk normally and not like he's excruciatingly conscious of his junk.

The room he finds them in looks something like a living room. It's ringed with long couches and armchairs, and there's an enormous fireplace set into one wall, cold and clean like there's never been a fire. This is one of the rooms with windows, and they look out onto the cold gray afternoon, the trees rustling outside. It would be almost normal, compared to the rest of the house, if not for the slab of dark material like the monolith hovering horizontally at approximately waist-height. There's no supports, but it's rock-steady, immobile in the center of the room.

Tyler is standing on it. More accurately, he's jumping on it, chortling with delight at its complete lack of give under his pounds of All-American sports-raised beef. Kyle is circling the slab, waving his hands frantically over and under and around it, clearly trying to figure out the trick. His face is furious, as though this is somehow the last straw.

"Oh! Archer! Bro, check this out, this is some freaky shit," Tyler says. "Kyle's getting it all on camera, it's sick."

"This," Kyle says, to no one in particular. "Is impossible."

"He keeps saying that," Tyler says, cheerfully, and sits down on the slab, legs dangling off. He seems in very good spirits.

"You guys left me to put away the dishes," Archer says, trying to hold on to his exasperation. It's very difficult to stay mad at Tyler for long. It's like getting angry at a puppy for chewing up all of your socks - by the time you're trying to scold him for stuff, he's already moved on. It would be very easy to hate him if not for the fact that hatred would slide off him without sticking, which makes it utterly pointless. It's exactly the kind of thing that's going to get Tyler killed someday.

"Oh, we were going to take care of 'em later," Tyler dismisses, immediately. "Come get on this, I want to see how much weight it can hold."

Archer obeys despite himself. As soon as he puts his hands flat on the slab's surface to push himself up, the image of its carved surface flashes into his mind, and he knows it's a mistake. The primary carving is a subtle, shallow indentation in the silhouette of a person spread out over the slab, with little markings at where the wrists would be. The carvings continue down the side of the slab, with markings for knees, mid-thighs, both splayed wide apart.

It's clear that this slab is intended for someone to be pinned down to and fucked, and all of the secondary carvings confirm it, with the house's sigil blazoned on it, and graphically explanatory carvings of people with their heads thrown back in ecstasy and their holes on display or mid-fuck filling the empty space. The word comes to his mind, as he pulls himself up onto the slab at last. It's an altar.

Archer feels another intense pulse of arousal at the thought, and god, this much sustained need is going to kill him quicker than any ghosts. Is it the house, somehow, that would fuck him if he laid himself down on this altar, spread out as an offering? Would the slab come to life and tie him down, pinned to be used? Is it meant for another person to participate as the house's proxy? Archer shivers, pressing his thighs together. He squeezes his eyes shut for just a moment as he sits on the slab's edge next to oblivious, chattering Tyler, and tries to calm down.

When he opens his eyes, Kyle's looking at him, eyes narrowed. Archer feels a lurch of illogical shame, convinced that Kyle's somehow read his mind, seen what's happening to him.

"Archer, something you want to tell us?" Kyle asks, and points the camera directly at him. Archer flushes, putting his hand up to block the camera's view, and Tyler turns to Archer, eagerly.

"Do you sense something?"

"Uhhh," Archer says, scrambling. "There's, uh. When I touched the slab I got a mental image of the carvings, like I did with the monolith. I think it might be an altar?"

"Oh shit," Tyler whispers, and lapses into uncharacteristic silence. It doesn't last very long. "Like the kind of altar that you sacrifice virgins on? Are you a virgin? Bro, are you in danger?" His voice drops low with the last word, like he doesn't want the house to overhear.

"Yeah, Archer, are you a virgin? The fans want to know," Kyle says, apparently just to be a dick.

Archer's caught between melting into the floor out of mortification and laughing hysterically. He doesn't want to just admit he's a virgin on camera, but he's a bad liar. He fumbles for words. "I don't- uh, I don't think that that's what the altar is for? The carving's just of the outline of a person lying on the slab and some, um. Some other stuff. If you touch it, you can feel the indentations are a person's silhouette."

Tyler immediately starts feeling the slab's surface, tracing the outlines of the shape with his hands.

"Huh," he says, eventually. "Yeah, you're right! There's the head, there, and the chest and the arms. Carving is kinda small for me though, I've got biceps and shit. It's more you-shaped! Maybe we should put you in it and see if the house does anything."

"What," Archer says, weakly. "Uh, I don't know-"

"Don't worry, we won't actually sacrifice you," Tyler assures him. "It's just to see if it unlocks a secret door or something."

Archer mentally plays through the next several minutes of probable argument, and feels exhausted just thinking about it. He's too distracted and horny to protest properly as Tyler hops off the altar and starts trying to push him down onto it.

"Hey, I don't know about this," he tries, half-hearted, but both Tyler and Kyle start talking at once, assuring him it'll be fine. Kyle's busy setting the camera up as Tyler argues with him. He resists being pushed, at first, but finally lies down. God. Anything to get this endless visit over with. Next time he's coming back by himself.

As soon as he's fully lying down, he realizes the indentation isn't just vaguely him-shaped. It fits him perfectly, cradling every curve. Despite himself, his body relaxes into it, astonishingly comfortable supported by that warm, smooth monolith-stone.

For a few seconds, nothing happens, which is just long enough to lull him into a false sense of security and make Tyler start to look vaguely disappointed.

Then loops of void-black stone slide out of the markings in the altar, fastening themselves into place around Archer's wrists and knees and thighs with a click before he can even think to move. He's tied down. Instinctively, he arches, pulling on the restraints, but there's no give, and the house is purring at him, a low, subsonic rumble that starts as a quiet thing within the altar itself and then reverberates out, until the whole house is trembling with a low roar.

"Oh, fuck," Tyler says, in a high voice, as the room starts to shake.

Archer can appreciate the sentiment, but probably not for the reasons Tyler thinks. The altar's vibrating with the force of the house's rumbling, and the sensation's going right to his clit, god. He bites his tongue to stop himself from making any unfortunate sounds as he feels the buttons of his shirt come loose, one by one. Tyler and Kyle are looking at him with wide, horrified eyes, but he can't bring himself to care. Thankfully, the house stops before the top of his binder can be revealed, but there's still a stretch of collarbone and chest revealed, and that's what Tyler and Kyle are staring at.

He cranes his neck down to look, and makes out part of an enormous, black rendition of the house sigil emblazoned on his chest, the edges of the lines disappearing under his shirt collar, the top of it rising up his throat where he can't see it. The lines pulse and throb, hot on his skin, and he tips his head back into the indentation made for his head, mortified, because, yeah, the sigil definitely extends over his tits, and the pulsing feels ridiculously good on his nipples. It extends up to his mouth, as well, one of the points of the line resting on his bottom lip, throbbing like a kiss.

He can still see Tyler and Kyle, both recoiling in terror, but it seems very distant in comparison to the images that the House is murmuring to him about, the powerful sense-memory of being relentlessly fucked over the altar by those seeking to feed on the House's power through the conduit of someone like him. Phantom echos of the sensations flush him, make him shift and rock his hips as much as his bindings will allow, as though it's happening in a dream.

Archer's mouth opens without his control, and it speaks without his permission, and he is not afraid. He's spoken for ghosts, before, why not let the House use his throat and his lips as its own?

"Trespassers," says the House through Archer's lips, and its voice growls a sound lower than Archer was aware his throat could produce. It's an ancient sound of grinding stone, loud as an earthquake. "Thieves. You come into My House and you bring Me no sacrifice, no gift. You disturb My rooms, and you disrespect My Guest. You do not even ask permission to enter. Merely sneak inside on the heels of My Guest."

The capitals are audible, enunciated. The House's speech is broken up by Archer's deep, gasping breaths, his desperate whimpers, as he feels the slow pulse of a sigil being drawn up the insides of his thighs. Other lines extend down over his pelvis, the sigil filling in stroke by stroke until the last line draws a line directly down over his clit, over his opening, to join with those rising up from his inner thighs in a nexus centered just a little inside of him. The throbbing ache of the sigil forces a cry out of him. He's been worked up for so long that he comes, right then and there, body stiffening and arching and slamming back down on the altar, body clenching around nothing.

Tyler and Kyle are still watching him, pale and horrified.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," Tyler chants, quietly, under his breath, and sounds like he's crying.

"I am not your god," the House says, as Archer sags back into the altar, gasping. "I do not want you in My House. Leave Me, and do not return."

The front door slams open with a bang. Kyle grabs his camera, turns, and bolts for the door, but his feet sink into the rug as it seems to swallow his feet.

"Return My possessions, Thief," the House warns, and Kyle scrabbles in his pockets, tossing golden tableware onto the floor as each fork and spoon writhe in his hands, until finally the rug spits him back out and he flees without looking back, stumbling over himself. Tyler hesitates. His nose is red like he's trying not to cry.

"Let Archer go," Tyler says. He's shaking like a leaf, but his open face is stubborn. Through the haze of power and arousal and images of sex, so vivid he can smell them, Archer feels a brief twinge of exasperated fondness. "You're hurting him!"

Oh, poor, earnest, stupid Tyler.

"You need have no concern for My Guest," the House says, indifferent. "Leave now."

Tyler swallows hard, but takes a few steps backward, and then finally turns and runs out as well. As soon as the front door slams behind him, Archer's moaning, begging.

"Please fuck me."

And the House, through Archer's own throat, replies to him, "Yes."

The House closes his eyes. Archer opens them, and now he's in the main hall, still bound to the altar. He's naked, pressed right up against the monolith, spread thighs hugging the warm stone, his folds almost brushing its surface, and the shock of lust drives him from the aftershocks of coming right back into desperation.

He tries to move his hips, squirming, but isn't able to grind up against the monolith enough to make a difference. The hall seems a lot larger, now. The windows are gone. It's dark, lit only by a single glowing orb floating over his head. The light plays across his sigil-marked skin, makes him look beautiful. Makes him look carved from stone himself.

He can see the patterns on the monolith clearly in the strange orb-light. He can see the carvings moving in their constant, ecstatic orgy, and he moans, helpless and desperate. The monolith ascends far higher than the roof of even the largest house could contain, and the carvings on the monolith have grown to life-size. The carving closest to him is of a man, slightly apart from the orgy of the others, stroking his cock with languid motions just inches from where Archer's thighs are spread for him. The man has no face, no carved expression of ecstasy. The only feature on his smooth head is the same House sigil currently decorating Archer's body.

The carved, faceless man looks at him, lines his cock up with Archer's slick, desperate hole, moving with the same undulating grace as the rest of the figures. Archer feels the press of warm, supple stone like the altar against his entrance as the carved man's cock pushes out of the stone in three dimensions. Feels it sliding through his wetness, catching at his opening.

Does this please you? asks the House, in a voice which is not a voice, but is instead the creaking of floorboards and the grumble and groan of settling stone, underlaid with the distant thunder and boom of something larger than a house. It slides its stone cock against him, its carved face blank but somehow still intent. The orbs of light around Archer watch him, unblinking.  

"God, yes," Archer says, and his voice cracks. The House rumbles its pleasure at him. "Please."

And so the House thrusts into him, its carved lines shifting as it fills him with unyielding stone. The cock slides easily into him, its way eased by how wet he is, absolutely dripping with want, punching a moan out of him. His hands flex within his wrist restraints. It's perfect, god, fills him up so full he almost can't breathe.

He's never had anything but his own fingers inside him before - never had the opportunity to own a toy, never slept with anyone before - and he's almost incoherent with how good it feels as the House fucks him. The drag of its stone cock against his walls, the pressure as he clenches down on it, the heavy weight of it inside him - every time it pushes back into him he can't help but moan so hard it comes out like a sob. And all the while, the sigils pulse inside him and on his clit, a rolling pressure like a rubbing thumb.

Beautiful, the House croons. An excellent Guest in My House. You take me so fully, in my truest of forms.

Archer... decides to parse out what that means at a later date, preoccupied with the unfaltering, regular rhythm of the thrusts inside him, the pulses of the sigils that cover his body. The room smells like old stone and sex.

"Please, more?" he asks. "Faster. Please."

A well-mannered Guest, the House purrs, and its purr vibrates through the whole of Archer's body, makes him moan uncontrollably. The carved man of the monolith speeds up his thrusting, the House fucking into Archer quicker now, still with the same measured force. Archer almost screams from the feeling, doubled as the pulses strengthen in power, speeding up to match the thrusts. I am going to keep you, I think.

Archer has the dim thought that that should be alarming, but right now it seems like the best idea anyone has suggested in quite some time. He wants to stay here forever, being fucked to oblivion, existing as nothing more than a warm, wet place for the House to fill with stone, nothing more than a little pet that produces pleasure and lust and sound for the House to drink into itself.

His body tenses, and he finds himself coming, hard.   The House does not so much as slow its pace, just continues to fuck him so relentlessly that he feels a spark of apprehension before it's subsumed in a scrambled confusion of over-stimulation and need. He doesn't know how long it is before he comes again, but it doesn't seem like a very long time. Archer's raw, undone, ruined.

"Wait, wait," he pants, and tries to strain against the bonds. The House stills, cock fully buried inside him, and he shudders around it a little, unable to suppress a moan, though he's beginning to ache, sore and fucked-out.

Little guest, the House rumbles at him, and he swallows, hard. He's trembling. Are you satisfied?

"Yeah," he says, and the House hums satisfaction like an electrical buzz.

The altar vanishes from under him, and he falls, with a lurch in his stomach that makes him stifle a shriek. He lands on the soft surface of an enormous bed, in a dim, warm bedroom.

His first response is to stretch, rubbing his thighs together to feel the ache and boggle at it. Really just lost his virginity to a magic house, huh? Fuck. He relaxes into the bed for a long few moments, letting the strain work his way out of his muscles. He's tired, wants to sleep for the next sixteen hours, but he still has to get home. He doesn't even know if Tyler and Kyle are still here.

Archer yawns, rolling his neck, and gets out of bed. He's still naked, but the sigils are gone. Just him and his own skin, tender and warm.

"Where did you put my clothes?" he asks the House. "I kinda need those, if you don't mind."

A drawer in the bedside table slides open, revealing a neatly folded pile of clothes. He picks it up, shaking it out, and his eyebrows shoot up. None of it appears to be his - it's a loose shirt and high-waisted, buttoned pants, some boxers. All appear to be black silk, trimmed with intricate gold embroidery, the kind of material people make expensive lingerie out of. It's made in an old-fashioned style, like the kind of thing a twinky prince would wear, but he's not enough of a fashionista to place it.

"I mean, the clothes I was wearing when I came in," he clarifies, and can't help but laugh.

There's a pause. A second drawer opens, with an air of reluctance, revealing the clothes he came in with. Including his hoodie, which he abruptly remembers leaving in the kitchen. How thoughtful. These clothes are also crisply folded, and he grabs for his binder, pulling it on over his head and wriggling to smooth out the inevitable creases. He pauses, looking at the clothes the House has clearly picked out for him. No use wasting a perfectly good gift.

Archer pulls them on, buttoning them up until he's decked out in fancy clothing. He feels kind of like a sugar baby, but the clothes are really nice. They fit perfectly, unbelievably soft and comfortable. He's never worn anything this nice in his life, particularly not something made for him.

The House rumbles pleasure at him, and when he turns around, there's a full-length mirror hanging on the wall. The lights brighten so he can look at himself. He looks gorgeous, elegant and masculine. Shadowy hands in the mirror fashion a necklace around his reflection's neck, and when he raises a hand to his own throat, he feels the heavy weight of it - black and gold to match his clothes, a smooth circlet of thin black stone that is definitely a collar, with the House's sigil etched in gold. He reaches up to feel the carved lines.

"Can I... keep these?" he asks, bizarrely shy. In response, the House places a crown of gold wire and suspended black stones on his head, bracelets and rings sliding onto his hands and arms with a sensual grace, and he sees his reflection blush at the impression he gives. He looks... expensive. Luxurious. Like a kept man. "Oh. Thank you."

The shadowy hands in the reflection stroke down his throat and chest, and he feels the touch as they do, casually groping. He squeaks, and the House laughs without laughing, a sound like shutters clattering. "God," he says, and picks up the folded stack of his other clothes. "Do I still have a ride home, or did Tyler and Kyle leave without me?"

He opens the bedroom door, finds himself in the main hall again. He carefully avoids looking at the monolith, feeling his clit throb even at the brief glimpse he catches of it, its carvings pulsing, languid and self-satisfied.

A door swings open near the front door. It appears to be a coat closet, with one coat hanging in it - clearly one meant to match his outfit, long and heavy and black, with a flashy, shimmering gold lining. It's very ostentatious, almost embarrassingly so. But it's also gorgeous, and he can't resist.

"You're pushing it," he lies, but takes the coat and puts it on with a guilty little thrill at how sexy it is. It's warm, comfortable, and fits him as perfectly as everything else. Shadow hands ghost through his hair, smoothing it, and he shivers.

He puts his hands into his coat pockets and finds cold metal in the pocket. When he pulls the thing out to look at it, there's an old-fashioned gold key between his fingers.

"Inviting me back, huh?" he says, and the House creaks and sighs around him. He puts the key back in his pocket. "Don't worry, I'll definitely be back," he tells it, and the House croons behind him as he walks out at last.

Tyler is sitting in the driveway, face puffy like he's been crying, and his eyes go wide the moment he sees Archer. He scrambles gracelessly to his feet.

"Oh my god, dude, you're alive," he says. "I'm so sorry - what are you wearing?"

"The house gave me some gifts," Archer says, breezily. The hysterical urge to laugh is rising in his chest, and he tries hard to suppress it, not wanting to hurt Tyler's feelings. There's just absolutely no way to explain this, is there? Tyler's face is an absolute study in bewilderment. "Where's Kyle?"

Tyler scowls. "He's in the car. He's wanted to drive away and leave you like an asshole so I'm hiding the car key from him. Bros don't leave bros behind to get eaten by haunted houses, and anyway, you didn't have a ride home."

That's... weirdly sweet. Especially coming from Tyler.

"Thanks, Tyler, I appreciate it," Archer says, and pats him on the shoulder. It makes a clinking sound as two of his rings clack together.

Kyle is sulking in shotgun when they get into the car, and he does a double take as he sees Archer in the rearview mirror, whipping around.

"Hey, what the fuck, why didn't you get your ass kicked for stealing?" he asks, accusingly. "I thought you were fucking dead, how'd you get out?"

"Because I have good manners, Kyle, these are gifts."

Kyle scowls, and Tyler gets into the front seat, fishing the car keys out of the front of his shorts, which is both confusing and distressing.

"Why-" Archer starts, and Kyle emits a sound like the auditory equivalent of a disgusted eyeroll. Tyler seems vaguely sheepish.

"Told you I was hiding em," he mumbles, and starts the car.

As they drive down the driveway in deeply awkward, simmering silence, Archer reaches into the pocket with the key to hold it, turn it over in his hands. There's a small, crisp piece of paper in the pocket now with the key, and he takes it out, curious.

Turn in any lock to come home to me, the note reads, and it is signed with the House's sigil. Archer puts the note back into his pocket and leans back in his chair, smiling to himself. Yeah. He'll be back.