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Stanley’s finger hovers over the button labeled On. He’s pressed this button before—the first time out of curiosity, a desire to know more about this facility, about his missing coworkers (that had quickly turned to fear and horror as the seconds ticked down to detonation)—and the second time he had come straight back, sure that, despite the Narrator’s monologuing, he had only missed something; that despite his taunts, there was some secret combination of buttons that would stop the clock, the bomb beneath his feet, the speech that droned on all around him, though he hardly paid attention to the Narrator’s words. The desperate searching had gotten old fast, though, and after a few more tries, he had determined the Narrator was telling the truth—that there was simply nothing he could do once he pressed that on switch.
So, no, it isn’t curiosity or determination that draws him back again, this time. It’s simply boredom. He knows how the Parable works, by now; knows there is no escaping it, has found every ending the Narrator has laid before him (he thinks). And it has been a while since he’s been blown up.
Call him masochistic, but there’s only so much to do in the Parable.
“Oh, Stanley,” says the Narrator, as he presses that big button labeled On. “You didn’t just activate the controls, did you?”
And Stanley grins.
Leisurely, he walks across the platform and into the next room with all its buttons and monitors and locked doors, where he knows there is no way to prevent what comes next, and the voice—his constant companion—goes on and on above him, around him.
“How long until detonation, then? Hmm… let’s say, um… two minutes.”
The big red countdown clock blinks to life on the screen, and Stanley makes a halfhearted effort to look around the room, to press a few buttons.
The last time he was here, he was still half-sure there was something he could do; some way to a happy ending, still. He had hardly even listened to the Narrator’s voice, his words: he had been too angry about his inevitable demise. But things had changed since then, hadn’t they?
He knocks on one of the sealed doors perfunctorily.
“I have to say this, though, this version of events has been rather amusing. Watching you try to make sense of everything and take back the control wrested away from you… it’s quite rich.”
Stanley chuckles to himself. He’s really done nothing of the sort, this time.
“I almost hate to see it go!” The Narrator adds time to the clock, and with a sudden thought, Stanley stops.
Has there always been such a dark relish in the Narrator’s voice, in this ending? He didn’t notice before. There are many times, in many endings, when it sounds like he’s having a good time, of course, but this…
“I mean look at you, running from button to button, screen to screen, clicking on every little thing in this room—”
Stanley pokes at a button and settles against the table it’s on. He’s not quite sure why, but he’s smiling now. Maybe it’s simply because it sounds like the Narrator is having fun.
“These—these numbered buttons… No, these colored ones…” the Narrator clears his throat, and Stanley’s eyebrows shoot up.
The Narrator hardly ever messes up his lines.
Could it be that Stanley has caught him off guard?
But he recovers quickly, no trace of that slight hesitance as he continues—
“Everything! Anything! Something here will save me!”
There Stanley leans, head cocked to the side, a slight smile on his face, listening to the monologue that leads to his fiery death.
“Do you have any idea what your purpose in this game is?”
And then, something very strange happens.
The Narrator laughs darkly, and Stanley feels… warm. Warm in his cheeks, warm in his gut… warm between his thighs.
Oh, he thinks.
“You’re in for quite a… a… disa…ppointment…” another clearing of his throat.
Oh, but now that it’s started—now that Stanley has realized—he can’t exactly stop the feeling from growing, stop the heat from coloring his cheeks, the tips of his ears. He likes this.
“B-but! Here’s a spoiler for—for you—”
The Narrator is flustered, Stanley realizes, and—
“I am not!”
Stanley’s eyebrows raise further. Flustered enough to break script, it seems, as the countdown clock slows.
“That isn’t—Stanley that’s ridiculous! You’re—you’re interrupting my scene!”
Stanley thinks he did nothing of the sort.
“You’re supposed to be looking for a way out! Not… not…”
And Stanley is embarrassed, sure, but it’s so rare to catch the Narrator so off-guard like this. So rare to throw him off, to make him address Stanley’s thoughts so openly.
Has he really never realized how much he likes that voice?
“Not whatever it is that just… came over you!”
Stanley shrugs, and gestures with his hand in a way that means, then get on with it.
The Narrator clears his throat with a loud “ahem,” and Stanley can hear him take a deep breath, the countdown clock speeding up to real time once more.
“But here’s a spoiler for you: that timer isn’t a catalyst to keep the action moving along. It’s just seconds ticking away to your death. You’re only still playing instead of watching a cutscene because I want to watch you for every moment that you’re powerless,”
Stanley’s stomach flips.
“To see you made humble.”
And Stanley could damn near double over with the heat that sweeps through him at those words, the heat that curls and pools in his gut and knocks the breath from his lungs.
He can’t stop the thought from crossing his mind that he would really like to be made humble.
The Narrator makes a strange, muffled sound.
It sounds a bit like Stanley feels.
The heat grows stronger still.
“Stanley,” the Narrator demands, in a tone that was clearly meant to be admonishing, but came out somewhere closer to needy.
Great, Stanley thinks, now I’m going to die with a hard-on.
“If you would please get your mind out of the gutter,” his attempt at an authoritative tone is weak, and the way he says please sends Stanley reeling.
Stanley’s response is a possibly ill-thought, but resounding, sign of: make me.
“You…” the Narrator stutters, “I—why…?”
And Stanley doesn’t know why, except for the way that damn laugh made him feel, so he runs his hand through his hair and impatiently signs, does it matter?
Does any of it matter, between the two of them? He’s long since resigned himself to the Narrator being his only company, forever; and after that acceptance, a sort of friendship had come strangely easily. So, so what if this… this thing he’s feeling makes things a little weird for a while? So what if he realizes that this maybe isn’t the first time he’s thought it, in the back of his mind; that the Narrator’s dumb, evil taunts have made him horny?
“Dumb?” The Narrator asks, sounding wounded, and of course that’s what he took from Stanley’s train of thought.
Stanley signs to emphasize: horny.
The countdown clock has stopped entirely now, and the Narrator splutters unintelligibly. Stanley is sure that—if he had a face or blood—he would be blushing brightly, and that’s a nice thought too: the Narrator flushed and incoherent.
“S-Stanley—”
A shiver races its way up Stanley’s spine. Well, if he wants Stanley to stop thinking about it, then he should stop feeding the fire by moaning his name.
“I didn’t—that wasn’t—”
It was, though, Stanley signs, biting his lip in either arousal or amusement—or both. He’s never really teased the Narrator before, not like this, and he doesn’t know what it’s going to accomplish—if it even accomplishes anything—but he’s only human, and this feels good. He knows the Narrator could withdraw himself from his thoughts if he wanted to; he often does, busying himself with other aspects of the Parable when Stanley wants him to, letting sign language be their only communication for a while. So the question remains: why is he so deeply in Stanley’s mind right now that he could feel the shudder that ran through him when he laughed?
“Y-you weren’t following the script!” The Narrator practically cries out. “You weren’t pressing buttons to find a way out! I-I wanted to know why!”
Mhm, Stanley thinks, raising an eyebrow and trying very hard not to shift his thighs together. Is he really half-hard right now because of the Narrator’s voice?
And why are you still in here? He thinks.
“Because I... I...” He trails off, and Stanley levels a hard look at the ceiling.
“Because it feels good, alright Stanley? Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Stanley grins wide. That is very much what he wanted to hear.
Now he doesn’t resist the impulse to shift his hips a bit, letting the slightest friction of his too-tight slacks send a jolt of pleasure through his system, grinning as the Narrator lets out a quiet sound that only compounds the feeling, a million electric pinpricks jumping from nerve to nerve.
Does that feel good? He thinks.
“You—you are incorrigible,” comes the Narrator’s breathy reply.
Stanley shrugs, pretending that he’s unaffected by all this, that he feels casual, that his heart hasn’t begun to beat a mile a minute. Do you want me to stop?
“No.”
And now Stanley really grins.
There’s a chair beside him, at the monitor that’s frozen on an “incorrect” message, and Stanley sinks down into it without any further hesitation. His slacks are far too tight, now; the Narrator’s voice far too needy. He tries to ignore the heat in his face, the anticipation driving him wild, the way he can hear the Narrator’s breaths growing heavier with every small jolt he feels, but there’s no stopping the arousal that tears through him when he shifts his thighs again and the Narrator groans.
He leans his head back to smile dopily at the ceiling, and what a sight this must be—how debauched he must already look with his flushed cheeks and heaving chest and tented slacks, awaiting his unseen paramour’s next words with bated breath. He spreads his legs.
“O-oh,” stumbles the Narrator. “You want me to, um, right!”
There’s a sound of shuffling papers, and Stanley huffs a tiny laugh. If the Narrator has a script for this, he’ll eat his hat. If he had a hat.
The Narrator clears his throat, but it does nothing to stop his voice from shaking as he tries, “Stanely, um... Stanley swiftly undid the fly of his pants.”
Stanley cocks his eyebrow, still looking at the ceiling as he signs, going right for it, then?
He can picture the Narrator turning an even brighter red as he splutters, “oh, forgive me for not quite knowing the protocol for these things!”
Stanley only laughs. Regardless of how desperately he wants to get his cock out and fuck himself silly, he thinks that a slower approach might be a little more fun. So, as usual, he doesn’t follow directions; instead, all he does is loosen his tie, undo the first couple of buttons on his shirt, and grind his palm against the bulge in his pants, letting his mouth fall open and his eyes fall shut.
“Ngh,” the Narrator groans, and the sound goes straight to Stanley’s cock—but the Narrator still manages to inject a good amount of sarcasm into his tone when he says, “incredible. Even now, you won’t listen to m–ah, mmfffh...”
Stanley has, after all this time, finally found a way to shut him up.
“Shut me up?” The Narrator demands, too breathily to be taken seriously. “Well, I n–ah, Stanley!”
Stanley grins wide as he palms at himself again, harder this time.
But the Narrator is still only feeling what Stanley is feeling, and although he’s clearly new to the idea of sensation, he isn’t exactly much more worked up than Stanley himself is.
Which is to say, very worked up.
But not as worked up as they could be.
In the reddish light of the frozen countdown clock, Stanley undoes the rest of the buttons of his shirt as quickly as he can, the Narrator’s heavy breathing loud in his mind. He wants more, wants touch, wants hands on his skin and a tongue in his mouth, and he lets those ideas take form in his mind, lets the Narrator see his desire, feel it.
The Narrator whimpers, and Stanley shivers with it.
“I—” he tries. “Stanley, I...”
But Stanley only has his own hands, right now, regardless of the voice in his head doing wonderful things to him, making his pulse race and his skin prickle with warmth, making his cock throb with the beating of his heart. It’s too much, it’s not enough; Stanley wants to drown in it. He runs his fingers over his chest, eyes fluttering as he continues to look up at the ceiling, hoping that whatever the Narrator is, he has eyes to watch this, to see Stanley tremble with excitement.
“I see you,” the Narrator affirms, voice somehow sounding even more desperate than Stanley feels. “Oh, Stanley, I see you.”
And Stanley can’t resist any longer, can’t stop himself from undoing the button of his slacks, the zipper, from shoving down the band of his underwear and taking himself in hand, blessed friction against his superheated skin. He drinks in the Narrator’s sharp breath, his shaky exhale of “aahh,” his little hum, his “yes, Stanley” that curls so hot and insistent in his gut.
And yes, yes, yes is all that Stanley can think as he strokes himself and imagines a hand that doesn’t belong to him, a hand connected to the Narrator, his Narrator, who responds to this idea with a moan that makes Stanley’s stomach flip and his hand speed up. He burns.
Talk to me, he thinks, his eyes squeezed shut. For fuck’s sake, don’t shut up now—
“Stanley,” he struggles, voice straining with pleasure. “Stanley, I didn’t know, I didn’t kn–ah, didn’t know it feels like this, oh lord—”
And it’s so much, even as Stanley grins again, swirling his thumb over the tip of his cock in a way that makes him buck his hips and makes the Narrator let out a strangled little cry, incoherent, delicious. Stanley is slick with precome now, every word the Narrator manages only making him wetter, making his thighs twitch as a choked groan slips past his lips, a strange noise that the Narrator clearly enjoys.
The Narrator’s voice is breathy as he begs, “please do that again,” and Stanley is at least still present enough to arch his brows at the novelty of that plea.
Begging already? He thinks with a laugh that turns into a moan as he obliges, shuddering at the sweep of his thumb again.
“I-I wasn’t begging!” He tries, but he undermines his own words with an “ah, please!” the second Stanley does it again.
And Stanley won’t pretend he isn’t getting desperate, his hand moving faster, gripping himself harder as the Narrator keeps trying to talk to him, keeps stuttering fragments of his name, keeps saying please.
“So good,” he babbles, “feels so good, Stanley—”
It does, it really does; Stanley is going to lose it if the Narrator keeps using that tone, keeps sounding like this is the best he’s ever felt—
A short, near-hysterical laugh cuts through that thought, the Narrator’s voice laced with gravel as he says, “it is, Stanley, I had no idea—no idea it felt like this, no idea this was p–ah, possible! Stanley!”
The Narrator has never felt before, let alone felt human pleasure, so of course he can barely hold himself together—and considering he’s too far gone to even respond to that thought, Stanley knows he’s correct. But the tension inside him is building rapidly, narrowing his thoughts to chase that blissful heat, nothing but his hand and the Narrator’s voice in his mind and the Narrator, Narrator, Narrator—!
Though it does cross his mind that the Narrator will feel it when he comes, and oh god, he wants to hear that, wants to hear him falling apart, wants to know that he did that himself—
The Narrator whimpers, high and unrestrained, and the heat is building, coiling, tightening—
“Oh, Stanley, yes, yes, yes,” the Narrator is whining, moaning, his voice so broken in Stanley’s mind.
Stanley has a wicked thought, and: you’re doing so well, he thinks, making the Narrator make a noise so desperate that Stanley almost comes, getting closer, closer, closer—
And all the Narrator can do now is make those noises, those fragments of words, of praise, of Stanley’s name that are driving him higher, higher, higher—
It feels so good, so right, the pumping of his hand, the hammering of his pulse, the insuppressible bucking of his hips; if this is the best the Narrator’s ever felt, then fuck it, this is the best Stanley’s ever felt, too. He’s so close, it’s so good, he’s going to—going to—
Oh! With a terrific crashing of the wave, Stanley comes—and thus the Narrator comes too with a loud cry—Stanley seizing as he paints his hand, the bottom of his shirt, in white, and—with an electric pop, all the lights go out at once, leaving Stanley panting in the darkness, echoing in the giant room around him.
The Narrator’s voice is gone.
Stanley feels boneless, shapeless, his head falling against the back of the chair, and it isn’t until his heartbeat finally begins to slow that he starts to worry.
Narrator? He thinks.
No answer.
Narrator? More worried this time.
And he gives a great sigh of relief as a staticky crackle sounds all around him, and then the unmistakable sound of the Narrator clearing his throat.
“Erm. Well. Stanley,” he says, voice still breathy, and Stanley once again cracks a grin as the lights come back on, one by one, followed by the huge countdown clock, frozen with five seconds to spare.
“That was…” he clears his throat again.
Good, Stanley signs, smiling.
“Ah, yes,” his tone is nervous, embarrassed. “Very good. I, um. Had no idea this was… a possibility.”
Me neither, Stanley replies. But doesn’t this open a whole slew of possibilities? So long as… this was… okay, right?
“Y-yes!” The Narrator rushes to affirm. “I daresay it was… s-so long as it was… okay with you?”
The insecurity in his voice sends a pang through Stanley’s heart, so he gives an emphatic nod, an emphatic sign of yes.
Palpable relief floods the Narrator’s voice as he says, “oh, um, good, then.”
Stanley can’t feel him in his mind anymore, so he isn’t sure if the Narrator feels the same boneless exhaustion that he feels, weighing him down to the chair, still entirely disheveled and debauched and sticky with his own come.
“Well, ah…” Stanley can practically hear the way the Narrator would be wringing his hands, if he had any. “There is the small matter of…” the countdown clock flashes on and off.
Stanley deadpans. Seriously?
“Well, I can’t exactly stop it forever!”
Can’t you?
“Oh, I’m only holding it at bay, Stanley. I can’t very well stop it once it’s started!”
And Stanley is trying hard to keep his expression serious, but he can’t stop a bit of a laugh from slipping past his lips as he signs, you’re seriously going to blow me up after I gave you your very first orgasm?
And the Narrator splutters. “Stanley, it isn’t like that and you know it!”
Stanley laughs again, wheezing as he tucks himself back into his slacks. He starts to button his shirt, too, but it’s… sticky.
“Well, if you’re going to take a nap after… all this, wouldn’t you rather do it in your office than here?”
And Stanley concedes that he has a point, there, so he gives a rather fond shake of his head. Fine, he signs with a sigh. Blow me up.
The clock unfreezes.
“I’ll… see you soon, Stanley,” the Narrator says, more tenderly than Stanley thinks he’s ever heard him.
And the clock reaches zero.