Signed Without Reading

"There comes a point when fighting becomes more exhausting than whatever you're fighting against—and that's when you discover what surrender actually costs."

The journey away from the Portal felt interminable.

Each step was a battle fought under a sun that seemed determined to amplify every churning emotion I couldn't escape. The heat pressed down on my shoulders like hands trying to force me to my knees, and I resisted with the stubborn refusal that had become my primary mode of existence in this place. My chest ached—the burn between my pecs throbbing with its own insistent rhythm, but also something deeper. Something that had nothing to do with hot coals and everything to do with the man I'd just left standing by that impossible Portal.

Luke's lips had been warm. Dry from the Clivilius air, but warm. I could still feel the ghost of them against my own cracked mouth.

That wasn't quite what I had expected.

The understatement of the fucking century. I'd braced myself for rage. For accusations. For the cold silence that had become Luke's weapon of choice over the past months whenever something threatened to crack open the façade we'd both been maintaining. Instead, he'd pulled me close. He'd kissed me like I was something worth keeping rather than something he'd already mentally discarded.

Maybe he'll forgive me after all.

The thought offered fleeting comfort—a possible light at the end of the tunnel I'd been stumbling through since that afternoon in the bathroom with Ben. Since before that, really. Since the first time I'd noticed how Luke's eyes slid away from mine during conversation, how his body angled away in bed, how the space between us had grown from inches to miles whilst we pretended nothing was wrong.

But almost immediately, a more sobering realisation surfaced. The kind of gut-punch truth that arrives whether you want it or not.

More likely, Luke just wasn't surprised.

I let out a heavy sigh, the sound swallowed by the vast emptiness stretching in every direction. The landscape offered nothing—no trees, no shade, no distraction from the thoughts circling like vultures over carrion.

The truth was, the thing with Ben hadn't erupted from nowhere. It had been a slow burn building over months, fed by the oxygen that Luke's emotional absence had provided. Despite his occasional attempts to fan the dying embers of our intimacy—the random touches, the half-hearted suggestions of date nights that never materialised—our relationship had been teetering on the brink of collapse long before I'd let Ben bend me over that bathroom counter.

Let him.

That was the part I kept circling back to. I hadn't been coerced. Hadn't been drunk enough to claim impaired judgment. I'd made a choice, fully conscious of what it meant, because in that moment Ben's hands on my body had felt more alive than anything Luke had offered me in months. The guilt that followed wasn't about betraying Luke—not really. It was about finally admitting to myself that what we'd built together had already crumbled. The bathroom had just been the earthquake that revealed the structural damage.

Luke had to know. He had to have sensed the same thing I had: that our decade-long partnership, once strong and vibrant, had been reduced to ashes we'd both been too afraid to acknowledge. We'd been going through the motions—sharing a house but not a life, sleeping in separate beds (my idea, initially justified by insomnia but really just escape from the pressure of pretending), having conversations that never touched anything real. We'd been roommates at best, strangers at worst, for the better part of a year.

The realisation was bitter medicine, but I'd been choking it down in small doses for months.

It was only fear of confronting that truth—that our relationship had perhaps run its natural course, that we'd grown in different directions, that the Jamie and Luke who'd fallen in love ten years ago no longer existed—that had allowed me to resist Ben's advances for as long as I did. Not loyalty. Not love. Fear.

Fear of being alone. Fear of starting over. Fear of admitting that I'd wasted a decade on something that was never going to work.

And now here I was. Trapped in an alien dimension with the brother of the man I'd betrayed. Unable to leave. Unable to escape the consequences of choices I hadn't fully understood until I'd already made them.

Fucking cosmic joke, really.

I could see the lagoon in the distance—that strange, clear pool where Paul had first taken me yesterday. The memory of it pulled at something in my gut. The water had done something to me then. Something I didn't understand and hadn't wanted to examine too closely.

My feet carried me toward it without conscious decision, dust puffing up around my ankles with each step. The burn on my chest throbbed in counterpoint to my heartbeat, a constant reminder of the storm, of Paul's nightmare, of the darkness I'd run through without thinking. I reached up to touch it through my shirt, fingers finding the raised edges of damaged skin, and winced at the tenderness.

I should probably look at it properly.

But that would mean acknowledging its severity. Would mean accepting that I was injured in a place with no doctors, no medicine, no help coming. So I didn't. I just kept walking, one foot in front of the other, until the lagoon's shore spread before me like an invitation.

The water was impossibly clear. I could see every pebble on the bottom, every grain of sand, as though the lagoon itself were made of liquid glass. No fish. No insects. No life at all—just that unnatural stillness that should have felt wrong but instead felt... peaceful. Waiting.

I removed my shirt slowly, the fabric peeling away from sweat-slicked skin with the sucking sound of adhesion released. The movement pulled at the burn, sending fresh pain lancing across my chest, but the relief of air against overheated skin was worth the cost. I let the shirt fall to the dusty shore, not caring where it landed.

For a long moment, I just stood there. Half-naked, staring at water that seemed to stare back at me. The sun beat down on my bare shoulders. The burn pulsed between my pecs—a dark, angry welt that I could see now in the periphery of my downcast gaze. Ugly. Raw. The kind of wound that should be cleaned and bandaged and monitored for infection.

Fuck it.

I approached the lagoon's edge with the resignation of someone who'd run out of other options. Each step into the refreshing embrace served as a reminder of my new reality. This was my life now. This water, this dust, this endless sky that held no stars at night. Luke's kiss hadn't changed anything. My confession hadn't changed anything. I was still trapped, still exiled, still utterly fucked in ways I couldn't begin to process.

With my exile from Earth apparently permanent, the complexities of my past relationships seemed simultaneously distant and painfully immediate. I wouldn't have to navigate the turbulent waters between Ben and me again—that much was certain. The bathroom, the cubicle, the way his hands had felt on my hips as he thrust into me: all of it belonged to a world I could no longer reach. And Luke... Luke would undoubtedly find ways to occupy himself with his projects and his plans and his civilisation-building. Our paths would intersect when necessary and diverge whenever possible. It was how we'd been living for months anyway. Clivilius had just made it official.

"But that kiss."

I whispered the words to the stillness, watching them float away on the gentle breeze that skimmed the lagoon's surface.

"Why?"

The water reached my thighs, and that's when I felt it begin.

A tingling. Subtle at first—easy to dismiss as the sensation of cold water against sun-warmed skin. But it didn't fade the way normal sensation should. Instead, it intensified, spreading upward from where the water lapped against my legs, climbing with what felt like deliberate intent.

Not this again.

The same thing had happened yesterday. That strange arousal that seemed to emanate from the lagoon itself rather than any conscious desire. I'd tried to ignore it then, had written it off as some weird physiological response to the temperature change. But now, waist-deep in the crystal-clear water, I couldn't pretend anymore.

My cock was hardening. Stiffening against the fabric of my shorts with an urgency that had nothing to do with my mental state. My mind was a wreckage of guilt and confusion and exhaustion—arousal should have been the furthest thing from possibility. But my body had other ideas. My body was responding to something in this water, something that touched more than skin.

The sensation was like being stroked by invisible hands. Gentle but insistent pressure that seemed to know exactly where to touch, exactly how much pressure to apply. It moved along my inner thighs, teased at the sensitive skin behind my balls, traced patterns up my abdomen that made my breath catch.

"This fucking lagoon."

My voice came out rougher than intended, frustrated and aroused in equal measure. The forehead-furrow of irritation didn't diminish what was happening below the surface. If anything, my resistance seemed to intensify the lagoon's attention.

I should have left. Should have waded back to shore and escaped whatever bizarre magic this water possessed. That would have been the sensible choice—the choice of a man who still believed he had control over his circumstances.

But I was so fucking tired of fighting.

Tired of resisting the inevitable. Tired of pretending I had any say in what happened to me. Tired of the constant vigilance that survival in this place demanded. The lagoon offered something I hadn't experienced in months: surrender without consequence. Physical pleasure without emotional complication. A release that asked nothing of me except letting go.

My hand slipped beneath the waistband of my shorts.

The first touch of my own fingers against my cock sent electricity crackling through my nervous system—amplified somehow by whatever the lagoon was doing. The water stirred around me as I wrapped my fist around my shaft, creating ripples that spread outward in concentric circles like evidence of a crime in progress.

Fuck it. Fuck it all.

I began to stroke, slowly at first, testing the waters both literally and figuratively. The sensation was unlike anything I'd experienced—not just the physical pleasure of my own touch, but something layered beneath it. The lagoon seemed to pulse in rhythm with my movements, the tingling intensifying where the water met my skin, pleasure building in ways that shouldn't have been possible.

My eyes drifted closed. My head fell back. The sun painted the inside of my eyelids red while the water cradled my body with unnatural warmth.

I thought about Luke's kiss. The unexpected press of his lips, the way his hands had gripped my arms, the firmness of his body against mine. For a moment—just a moment—I'd felt something I'd thought was dead. Hope, maybe. Or just the memory of hope. The ghost of what we'd once been, summoned by physical contact after months of careful distance.

My grip tightened. My pace increased.

I thought about Ben. The raw hunger in his eyes when he'd pushed me against that bathroom wall. The way he'd whispered my name like it was something precious, something he'd been wanting to say for longer than either of us admitted. The fullness of him inside me, filling spaces I'd forgotten were empty.

A moan escaped my lips—low and desperate and utterly uncensored by the usual constraints of propriety. There was no one to hear. No one to judge. Just me and this impossible water and the building pressure in my balls that promised oblivion.

My free hand braced against my thigh as my strokes grew more urgent. The lagoon's strange effect seemed to concentrate now, focusing on the most sensitive parts of my body with an attention that felt almost sentient. My cock throbbed in my grip, harder than I could remember being in months, the head swelling with each pump of my fist.

The mental and emotional strain of everything—the confession, the kiss, the uncertainty about what any of it meant, the burn on my chest, the Portal's rejection, the fucking exhaustion of simply existing in this place—demanded release. And if this strange lagoon wanted to amplify that need, who was I to resist?

Almost there. Almost—

Surrender yourself, Jamie Greyson.

The whisper filled my mind with the intimacy of a lover's breath against my ear. My eyes snapped open, hand freezing mid-stroke, breath catching at the unexpected intrusion.

What the hell was that?

I stood motionless in the chest-deep water, heart hammering against my ribs, cock still achingly hard in my grip. The lagoon's surface had gone perfectly still—not a ripple, not a disturbance, as though the water itself were holding its breath.

Give yourself to me and I will grant you new life.

The words wove through my consciousness like smoke through fabric, finding every gap in my defences, settling into spaces I hadn't known were vulnerable. The voice was neither male nor female—or perhaps both at once. Ancient. Vast. Carrying the weight of something that had existed long before human categories had meaning.

Clivilius.

The same voice that had spoken at the Portal. The same entity that had told me I could never leave, that had rejected me with absolute authority, that had thrown me backward with force that left bruises.

Now it was... seducing me?

A shiver cascaded down my spine despite the water's warmth. The promise was both terrifying and tempting—new life, in a place where my current life had been stripped away piece by piece. The offer hung in the air like fruit dangling just within reach, beautiful and possibly poisonous.

But my body didn't care about the philosophical implications. My body was still thrumming with need, still hard and aching, still demanding completion regardless of the cosmic significance of what was happening. The physical sensation building in my groin wouldn't be denied by mere existential uncertainty.

Fuck it. Fuck everything.

With deliberate defiance, I resumed stroking. If Clivilius wanted my surrender, it could have it. I'd been fighting since the moment I arrived in this place—fighting the imprisonment, fighting the circumstances, fighting my own feelings—and I was done. The lagoon could do whatever it wanted to me. Clivilius could whisper whatever promises it liked. I was going to come in this water, and whatever happened after that was someone else's problem.

My pace became brutal, almost punishing. The water churned around me, disturbed by my movements, no longer still. The tingling sensation intensified until it bordered on pain—that exquisite edge where pleasure becomes overwhelming, where the body can't distinguish between ecstasy and agony.

I thought about everything. I thought about nothing. My mind fragmented into sensation, into the slick slide of my palm over my shaft, into the tightening coil at the base of my spine, into the pressure building behind my balls. My hips began to thrust forward involuntarily, fucking into my own fist, chasing something I couldn't name.

Yes, Jamie Greyson. Surrender.

The voice seemed to wrap around me now, no longer just in my head but everywhere—in the water, in the air, in the vibration of my own bones. It was inside me in ways that should have been impossible, touching parts of myself that had no physical form.

And then I was coming.

Not just coming—exploding. Erupting with a force that tore a raw shout from my throat, my entire body convulsing with release. My cock pulsed in my grip, seed spilling into the crystal-clear water in rhythmic bursts that seemed to go on longer than any orgasm I'd ever experienced. My vision whited out. My knees buckled. The lagoon caught me as I slumped forward, holding me in its strange embrace while pleasure ripped through me in wave after devastating wave.

Surrender.

The voice was everywhere and nowhere, triumphant and tender, accepting what I offered with the gravity of ritual.

Welcome, Jamie Greyson. You are mine now.

"What the fuck..."

The words came out breathless, barely audible, as I stared into the water with dawning incredulity.

The lagoon was doing something to my release. Separating it somehow, breaking it apart into component particles that began to glow with soft, pulsing light. Bright motes drifted through the crystal-clear water in every direction—luminescent points that seemed to breathe with their own inner radiance, spreading outward from my body like bioluminescent stars scattered through an underwater sky.

Surely my eyes are deceiving me?

But no. The glow persisted, the particles continuing their slow migration through the lagoon's depths. They pulsed in rhythm—slow, steady, like a heartbeat I could see rather than hear. Some drifted toward the surface, catching the sunlight and scattering it in prismatic fragments. Others sank toward the pebbled bottom, disappearing into shadows that hadn't existed before my climax.

I should have been horrified. Should have been scrambling for shore, desperate to escape whatever impossible magic had just been worked on my body. Instead, I felt... calm. Emptied in a way that went beyond physical release. The tension I'd been carrying for months—the guilt, the anger, the fear, the grief for a relationship that had died long before I'd admitted it—seemed to have been drawn out of me along with everything else.

The burn on my chest still throbbed, but distantly now. As if it belonged to someone else. As if the pain were a memory rather than a present sensation.

I accept your offer, Clivilius.

The thought formed without conscious decision, rising from somewhere deeper than reason.

Whatever you want from me. Whatever this new life means. I accept.

As if in response, the remaining glow in the water intensified briefly before beginning to fade. The particles drifted further, dispersing into the lagoon's mysterious expanse, carrying with them whatever I had surrendered. Evidence of a transaction I didn't understand. Payment for a promise I couldn't verify.

Slowly, I straightened. My legs felt weak, trembling with the aftermath of an orgasm that had been unlike anything in my experience. My cock hung soft and spent now, the urgent need replaced by a bone-deep satisfaction that bordered on lethargy. My arms hung at my sides, heavy and useless.

But something else had taken root in my chest. Something that felt almost like... hope? Or if not hope exactly, then at least the possibility of hope. The sense that maybe—just maybe—this strange new world held more than imprisonment and suffering.

I stood and stretched my arms wide, the gesture feeling instinctive. A physical expression of something I couldn't articulate in words. Liberation. Acceptance. Surrender reframed as choice rather than defeat.

"I feel so alive!"

The declaration burst from me, bold and unashamed—a testimony to the moment's raw intensity. For the first time since arriving in Clivilius, I meant it. Not ironically. Not bitterly. Actually, genuinely, viscerally alive in a way I'd forgotten was possible.

But the proclamation was short-lived.

My balance, already precarious in the chest-deep water, failed entirely. My arms windmilled uselessly as my feet lost purchase on the slippery pebbles below. The world tilted—sky and water trading places—and then my back met the lagoon's surface with a resounding splash that drove the air from my lungs.

Water closed over my head.

For a moment, I simply floated there. Suspended in the lagoon's embrace, watching the last of the glowing particles drift past my vision. The light filtering down from above painted everything in shades of gold and amber. My hair drifted around my face like seaweed. My body was weightless, untethered, held by water that had claimed something fundamental from me.

The fall—unexpected yet oddly invigorating—felt like a metaphor for everything this place had become.

A constant oscillation between fighting for control and yielding to forces I couldn't understand. Between resistance and surrender. Between the person I'd been and whoever I was becoming. The line between prisoner and participant had blurred until I could no longer tell which side I stood on.

Eventually, my lungs demanded air. I kicked toward the surface, broke through into the Clivilius sunlight, and gulped oxygen with the grateful desperation of the nearly drowned. Water streamed down my face, my chest, my arms. The burn between my pecs protested the movement but distantly, as if the pain itself had been transformed along with everything else.

I waded toward shore with the slow, heavy movements of profound exhaustion. Whatever the lagoon had taken, whatever Clivilius had claimed in exchange for its promise, I felt it in my bones. A fundamental shift. A bargain sealed in ways I couldn't undo.

New life.

The words echoed in my memory as I collapsed onto the dusty shore, letting the sun begin its work of drying my skin. I didn't know what they meant. Didn't know what I'd agreed to. Didn't know if the promise was genuine or just another form of imprisonment dressed in prettier clothing.