Growing into the Job, Post 577b: Melissa Returns, p2 (conclusion)

Something in the way she said it - ‘If you still want to hear it’ - brushed against a part of me I didn’t want to examine. A darker corner, the one that should have been screaming at this point, begging me to ask the obvious, necessary questions: ‘What are you?’  ‘How do you even exist??’  ‘What kind of abomination can do this???’

A doctor like myself should have asked. A man of science should have demanded answers. A sane man should have sat up, shoved her hand away, and started frankly interrogating the biological impossibility in tight yellow pants and vanilla lip gloss sitting next to me on the bed.

But instead, as I felt the questions rising like balloons toward the surface, I pushed them back down. Hard. Because whatever lay under the answers wasn’t something I was ready to face. Not tonight. Not with her looking at me this way. Not with the warmth radiating from her thigh, her strong hands still pressed to my ribs and the phantom of her breath still tingling across my skin.

So instead of asking where she came from, I did what I always did when faced with the choice to look down the abyss: I looked away.

Still, though, we needed to work through this. I had serious concerns.

“Melissa…” My voice cracked. “I…I need to understand something.”

Her brows lifted - not warily, not guarded, just patient. That tolerant softness she got when she was trying very hard to be the version of herself she thought I needed.

“Okay,” she murmured. “Ask me.”

I swallowed. My chest tightened under her hand.

“S-so…why is this happening to me?” I began, trying to make some sense of the surreal - though undeniably erotic - horror that had become my life. “If your body adjusts itself, and uses pheromones to adjust the people around you to - like - better serve your purposes, why am I getting smaller? Why does that help?” 

As pretty as she was, even expressions like the consternation that now twisted her brow were enthralling, and I couldn’t believe I was dating such a gorgeous woman. But we all know that pretty doesn’t always equal bright, and she now - sitting here above me - struggled in self-analysis. “I…I wondered that myself for a little while,” she started, after her moment of reflection, “I think it’s because that, well, my original goal when I got here was to be the best office manager I could be. And, I guess, making my boss, the business owner, the doctor in charge - you - totally dependent on me, an employee,  was my body‘s idea of a solution.”

“Holy shit, Melissa…”

She cocked her head, looking down at me with penitent sympathy, and pressed on. “But now…now we’re in love. Now that’s changed and now, I think, it knows what you really want. What you really need. And, maybe too…what the world really wants and needs out of me. How I can get even more important.”

“M-Melissa…” This was suddenly, deeply terrifying. “Wh-what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I think that’s why I’m changing into…this.”

She didn’t move when she said it. She didn’t raise her voice. On my ribs, her hands didn’t even shift.

But something inside her did.

I felt it, and the hair on my arms prickled on end before anything in the room changed - but then a pressure, a tightening, like the air itself drew in a breath between us…

<whump>

A soundless impact rippled outward from her chest, like a heartbeat scaled up to the size of a room. Not loud, not destructive, but definitely physical. The mattress shuddered beneath us, the curtains lifted and snapped once, as if caught in a sudden gust. My pulse spiked as frames on the wall rattled, windows shook, and whatever was on her dressers - perfume bottles, more photo frames, a forgotten glass of water -  lifted a quarter inch off of where it was sitting - hovered - and then dropped with a clatter. Even the old teddy bear on the shelf rose from its seat and fell back again, slumping.

I sucked in a breath. “M-Melissa-!!”

Her eyes widened instantly - watching me react - and something inside them flared.

“You like that?” she asked.

“Oh my god!”

“My body did that this morning, at the labs at Evolution,” she said, not without a hint of pride, “and now I’m just learning to control it.”

Before I could speak again - what had she just done??? - her hands gently released me, but still hovered just a fraction away from my ribcage. The tremor in the air softened, folding inward like ripples returning to the center of a pond.

Then gravity loosened.

Not completely - just enough that my weight seemed to drain out of my limbs like water. My spine unknotted. My shoulders sagged, floating instead of falling. The bed didn’t pull at me anymore - but something in Melissa’s hands did, gently, like she was the only real source of gravity in the room.

“I wasn’t trying to scare you-”

My heartbeat - which had raced when the room shook - began to steady, in spite of itself.

“M-Melissa… what’s happening…?” My fingers curled automatically, but…there was nothing to grab.

“I’m…I’m fixing it,” she whispered, almost to herself, as I felt my body - holy shit holy shit holy shit - levitate, start to float an inch or two above the mattress. “You looked scared. I don’t want you scared.”

Her palm - hovering spread over my sternum - came down gently to rest on me. She pressed down on me, gently, pushing me back closer to the mattress.

Heat bloomed there - soft, golden, a delicate burn, like the sun filtering through warm water. It seeped into my ribs, down my arms, up my neck. A tingling pressure rose under the bruises and deep aches from the day, then released all at once. Pain dissolved like sugar. My breath came easier. My pulse found a new rhythm - steady, calm, impossibly soothed.

Her eyes softened as she watched it work.

“That’s better,” she murmured, with a soft pride in her voice, “That’s how it’s supposed to feel.”

My voice came out small. I knew I had been bruised, maybe even cracked a rib. I knew, from the day, I had been battered. She’d done this to that old man, my patient just yesterday. “You… healed me.”

“Yeah, I can make the room shake,” she said quietly, ”or I can do this.”

The weightlessness faded gradually and I settled fully back onto the mattress, leaving me grounded but changed - like the world took me back reluctantly. She kept her hand over my chest until she felt the last tremor in me fade.

“You see?” she whispered, with something like pride hiding under the earnestness, “I’m changing, I’m getting better. For you. For…for everything.”

And god help me, I believed her.

For a long moment, neither of us said anything. Her hand still rested over my chest, warm and steady and impossibly gentle for a woman who could shake a room with a heartbeat. The echo of that shockwave seemed to linger in the mattress, the bed itself remembering what she was capable of. Her thumb traced a tiny, slow circle over my sternum.

“Jay…” she whispered.

My breath caught. Because the way she said my name wasn’t commanding. Or teasing. Or demanding. It was… hopeful. Bare and hopeful. And then, carefully - like it was something she had to build up to - she asked:

“...Can I hold you?”

It was almost shy. As if she truly didn’t know what my answer would be. As if asking was an act of courage for her.

I swallowed hard.

The question hung between us, trembling with tenderness, longing, and the fierce instinct she was fighting tooth and nail to contain.

My heart stuttered painfully.

Jesus, I lamented, Does she understand what she’s doing to me?

I looked at her arms, those huge, gentle, terrifyingly strong arms. I could already imagine them around me, pulling me into her chest, tucking me beneath that warm, soft weight, swallowing me in scent and heat and the quiet, effortless maternal dominance of her body…

...and the worst part? The part that made panic crawl under the ribs she’d just healed? Some deep, ancient part of me wanted that. Wanted it like a starving man wanted bread.

“Melissa…” My voice broke. “I - I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She froze. 

Not dramatically. Not offended. More like someone who'd reached for a familiar step in the dark and didn’t find it there.

“Oh…” she breathed, almost silent, “…okay.” For the first time, truly the first time since I’d met her, Melissa looked like someone had pressed a hand to her chest and taken her breath away.

She didn’t pull her hand away immediately. In fact I could feel the conflict in her - muscle and instinct wanting to just take me, lift me, hold me, tuck me under her chin…or somewhere else. Wanting to follow the script her biology had written for her.

But she didn’t. As much as I craved it, too - this was good. I continued to tell myself that. Saying no to her, though, had felt like refusing some law of nature itself and I needed to justify it, for both of us.

“All these things you’ve been doing to me - and I know you don’t mean it, or do it on purpose, I guess - changing my size, my appetite, my sleep…my thoughts, now, even. I don’t know what parts of me are me anymore.”

She didn’t interrupt. Didn’t rush. She let the silence hold us both, heavy but not suffocating.

I continued, quieter. “I’m scared I’m losing myself.”

Above me her breath hitched - a small, pained sound she didn’t try to hide. “Jay, sweetie…” She leaned slightly closer, but stopped herself. I saw it again - the instinct firing in her muscles, the urge to take me into her arms and fix everything the only way she knew how, with her body. “I never wanted you to feel that way.”

“I know,” I whispered. “But it’s happening anyway.”

She nodded once, slow and almost solemn, like she was accepting a responsibility she’d been refusing to name until now. “That’s just how I work,” she said softly, apologetically. “How my body works. I don’t think about it - I feel it. You get scared, I get  protective. You get hurt, I get stronger. You need more…”

She swallowed, cheeks flushing faintly.

 “…I become more.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. The mattress dipped slightly more as she repositioned her weight; the air smelled faintly like her - warm, sweet, alive. A scent that now had meaning to me beyond attraction or comfort. A scent that I now knew was rewriting me at the molecular level.

“I need to know,” I whispered, opening my eyes again, “what’s mine. Who I am. I need my own space.”

Melissa’s breath trembled. Then she did something unexpected: she withdrew her hands from my ribs.

Not far - just a few inches. But that tiny loss of contact made my whole body jolt with a sudden, stupid ache.

“Does that help?” she asked softly, watching my face, “Is that what you need?”

God. It hurt her -  I could see it. Her fingers flexed once, like she had to fight the instinct to reclaim the touch she’d surrendered. But she was doing it, for me.

“No,” I said quietly, and pulled her right hand back to my chest,“That’s not…the kind of space I meant.”

Her lips parted - confusion, worry, hesitation all blending into one fragile expression.

“What kind do you mean, then?” she asked. The reach of her fingers once again spanned my chest. 

My throat worked. I had to force the next words out.

“Well…for one thing…” I began, “Can you stop being in my head?”

The question hit her like a physical blow - her eyes widened, her whole posture went very still, like some deep instinct went silent all at once. Then, a whisper: “You want me out?” Not hurt, but bewildered.

“I mean…I like thinking about you. I, uh, like it a lot.”

My cock, which had not been getting the attention it wanted, wagged itself over my belly. Even through all this, there it was, a totem. To her.

“I…I just need to know what thoughts are mine, that the inside of my head is mine,” I said, gentler now, “I need to know I exist separate from you. That I’m not just…something you’re, like, shaping.”

She blinked. Once. Again. Slow. There was a hint of the curtains moving with an unseen wind, but they quickly quieted.

“Why?” Not defensive. Not angry. Utterly, heartbreakingly sincere. “Why do you need a head that doesn’t have me in it?”

I inhaled sharply - because the way she said it was so innocent, so earnest, so fundamentally her that it cut straight through my nerves.

“Because I’m still me,” I said softly, “And I need to know that.”

She looked at me for a long second, eyes shimmering with the weight of something she didn’t have words for yet. She inhaled, slow and shaky, and gently lifted her hand off my chest, placing it in her lap. Her fingers curled into her yellow slacks as if she needed something to grip.

“I’m not saying I don’t want you to, ever, like, be in my dreams,” I rushed, before the hurt in her eyes could deepen, “Or never touch me again, ever. It’s not that. It’s just-”

I swallowed.

“It’s just really hard, right now, to know where I end and your…influence begins.”

Her brows knit. Confused. Worried. Listening.

“I mean…everything I feel around you…” My throat tightened, and the words scraped out. “Is that me? Or is that something you’re doing to me? Am I in love because I am, naturally, or because your pheromones want me to be? That they’re making me love you? What’s real and what’s…chemical, or magic, or…whatever you are?” I paused. “And if I let you hold me now, I’m afraid I won’t know the difference.”

A silence wrapped around the room.

Melissa didn’t move. She didn’t try to shush me or touch me or tell me I was being silly. She just sat there, hands clenched in her lap, her enormous frame trying to make itself small - something she’d never been good at, and wasn’t succeeding at now, but god did I see her trying.

Finally, she whispered, “Okay.”

Another breath.

“Thank you for telling me.”

And then - gently, carefully, as if any sudden movement might violate the boundary I’d just drawn - she pulled her knees up slightly and leaned back, giving me actual physical space. Not a lot. But for Melissa, it was monumental.

The air around me, by degrees, chilled gently.

“I don’t want you to lose yourself,” she said softly. “I don’t want that at all.” Her voice trembled at the edges - not with sadness, but with restraint. Real restraint, like something she was trying out for the first time.

“I want you,” she murmured, “not a version of you that’s just…made by me.” She looked at her hands, flexed them once, then folded them neatly. “You tell me what you need,” she said, eyes lifting back to mine with heartbreaking sincerity, “and I’ll try. I’ll really try.”

Her restraint was the most intimate thing she’d shown me yet.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s figure this out…”

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