Held Breath Ch. 01

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Author's note:

This story is meant to be a fantasy. As such, many points of reality are put to the side, such as safety and pregnancy, as well as others.

Additionally, this series will cover a wide range of sexual activities. I will try to cover them in the into, but please be aware. All characters are at least 18 years of age.

Following comments that I have gotten previously; Everything here is meant for the purpose of telling a story and titillating the reader and is not meant as a portrait of reality. I love hearing from readers, but if you comment that it wouldn't happen that way in real life, well, that's why it's a fantasy.

Thanks to my amazing editor ResqJack!

Topics: MFF, solo, oral, rimming

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The summer I turned eighteen the entire world changed. It started as rumors, first on the internet and then slowly starting to be covered in the news. Nobody really believed that it was the start of a full-blown pandemic, but soon enough we found out. The first wave was bad, and a lot of people died, but when the variants hit it was a different story.

It once again started as rumors, which the news and the government were quick to deny, but eventually, it got out. One of the variants that were particularly deadly, had an odd side effect on a small percentage of those who survived it. The variant, which everyone started calling X, killed about one in ten people who got it, and left about half with lingering issues. The rest seemed to weather it with no issues.

The really interesting part, which everyone tried to give, was that a small percentage of the survivors, maybe one in ten thousand, not only got better, but it also changed them. These special few became healthier and more resistant to sickness and disease. They also seemed to get fitter and start to look better, as if someone had turned a switch in their bodies, optimizing them, turning them into the best physical version of themselves. And then on top of that, some of them gained what could only be described as powers.

There were debates across the internet as to the truth of these so-called powers. Even among the believers, there was a debate if all the Evolved, which is what the lucky survivors were called, all had powers and some just hadn't discovered them yet or not. As far as I was concerned, it was all meaningless. That was, of course, until X hit my town.

My friends and I had all made big plans for post-graduation. There were parties, trips, and colleges to go to, but most of that died down pretty quickly once everyone realized the scope of the pandemic. There were still those that tried to have parties and travel, but most of them ended up getting sick. We went through a bunch of lockdowns, all going crazy quarantined with our families. They each ended and we were cautious about going out and seeing people, but we also needed to live. It was late into the second year of the pandemic, with no end in sight when X hit us. Nobody knows who brought it in, but it spread quickly through the town.

Within the first week, the local hospital was completely overwhelmed. By the second, people were dying in their homes. My family went into full quarantine as soon as we understood what was happening, but it was too late. My mother was the first to show signs, followed by me and my older sister. It seemed to pass by my father completely, which was a blessing, as he could care for the rest of us. Being sick sucked. I was weak, could barely breathe, and felt like I was going to die, which was made worse by the fact that I knew that it was a real possibility. However, after a couple of hard days, the symptoms started easing. By a week after I first started showing symptoms, I was back to normal. My mother and sister were not so lucky, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. They both seemed to pull through the worst of it, but they were weak and had trouble doing more than just getting out of bed in the morning.

As I recovered, I started reaching out to friends to see how they were doing. The news was depressing. If anything, our town was hit even harder than the statistics claimed. The government had sent help, but everyone was stretched thin at that point. By the time a month had passed, and the virus had burned itself out, a full fifteen percent of the town had died. The survivors were reeling, but there was also a kind of jubilation at the fact that we had survived.

For the next few weeks, we all stayed home at much as possible, venturing out only when absolutely necessary. I split my time between helping to take care of my mother and sister, who were still weak, and spending time playing online games with my friends who survived. It was an odd experience because there were a lot of our group who were missing, and we kept expecting them to join. Eventually, we decided that we needed an IRL meetup to see other actual humans and to mourn our lost friends.

It took another week to arrange a place outdoors where we could all be together but safe, and to arrange for food and drinks. It ended up growing to include a much wider range of people, including most of the survivors from our graduating class as well as the one above and below us. I picked up drinks the night before and had stored them overnight in the fridge before transferring them to coolers before heading out. When I got there, I grabbed one large cooler in each hand from my trunk and headed towards where I saw the tables being set up.

"Yo, Marty!" I called out, seeing my best friend.

"Liam?" he responded, surprised. "What the hell happened to you?"

"What do you mean?" I asked as I set the coolers down on one of the tables.

"Have you looked in a mirror lately?" He paused for a moment. "Wait. Did you Evolve?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.

"Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?"

"I guess? I mean, I don't stare at myself in the mirror, but I do see myself most days. I think that I would notice something like that."

"I don't know what you are seeing, but most people look like me after getting sick, not like they have been working out nonstop for the last year and found and magical skin treatment. I didn't actually recognize you at first."

"Are you crazy? I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Look," he said, pulling out his phone. He took a quick picture and then showed it to me. "This is what you look like today."

"I know, I did shave this morning."

"This is what you looked like the last time we met up," he said, showing me another picture.

Looking at it, I saw myself. Slightly overweight, mainly from eating too much junk and sitting at my computer all day during quarantine. I did have a bit of acne and my face was not one that anyone would call handsome, but not ugly either. We had taken the picture of the two of us and Jason, the last of our trio, who hadn't made it through. He then flipped back to the picture he had just taken. Looking back at me was the face that I had seen in the mirror earlier in the day, but now I saw it in an entirely different light. There was not a trace of fat on my face at all. My jaw was chiseled, my eyes were piercing, and my skin was perfect. Beyond all of that, there was something else that had changed that somehow combined the entire effect together to make me look like a movie star version of myself.

"Now, do you see it? Also, there is no way that the old you would have been able to carry both of those coolers single-handedly, let alone both at the same time, and look like it was nothing. Congrats on winning the lottery!" He said with a smile, that I could tell was genuine, but also held a tinge of jealousy.

I sat down on a bench in shock. How did I miss this? Looking back, I realized that I had been tightening my belt more. And that I had more energy. But I hadn't seen anyone except my family, and with my mother and sister still recovering, and my father always having been oblivious, there was nobody to point out the changes.

"I guess that if you didn't know that you evolved that means that you didn't get any cool powers either," Marty said with a laugh, breaking me out of my trance.

I laughed.

"Nope. No powers for me."

It took a bit before we were able to fall back into our easy companionship, especially with our missing third, but we did get there eventually, bantering back and forth as we helped set up. The rest of the party trickled in slowly over the next half hour, each bringing something. The missing faces were hard, but in some ways, those who were still recovering were harder. They were weak and had a hard time moving about.

The biggest shock of the party was that in addition to having a higher-than-normal death rate, we also had a higher rate of Evolved. There were two others of our class that had Evolved as well, both girls. Lily had been popular beforehand, pretty, well off, and a cheerleader, she was now easily one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen, and she knew it. She walked into the party and made a point of showing off the fact that she had Evolved.

The other person was a bigger surprise. Alex had been shy and overweight, and her face had been constantly covered in acne. When we were younger, one of the assholes in our class had tricked her into taking her top off and then told the entire class that her boobs were so flat that even being fat couldn't make them bigger than a guy's. It was horrible and mean, but also true. All of that was why, when she walked in, nobody noticed her. She had gone from being fat to having washboard abs, which were clearly on display, something she would have never done before. Her skin was perfect to the point that she was glowing, and to top it off, she had amazing, gravity-defying tits. Everyone was in shock when word spread around about who the bombshell was. Alex seemed to take it in stride, smiling and saying hi to people.

"Well, if it isn't two of my favorite people," Alex said with a smile as she approached us.

She gave Marty a quick kiss on the cheek, which left him flustered and speechless. She gave me one as well and followed it up with a hug that pressed her prominent chest against mine. I could feel myself reacting involuntarily and didn't really know what to do. I had always tried to be nice to Alex since nobody deserved what she had gone through, and she had even hung out with us a couple of times, but she had never been this tactile. I was trying to figure out how to disengage before she noticed my erection, but then she pressed her crotch against it in what could only have been a deliberate move.

My breath caught and for a moment it felt like the world held its breath at the same time. Then as I continued to breathe, everything went back to normal. I didn't even have time to process what had just happened before Alex leaned closer to whisper in my ear, which had the effect of pressing her tits even harder against me.

"You have always been so nice to me," she whispered in a throaty voice, her perfect lips grazing my ear, making a shiver run through me at the inherent sexuality of what she was doing.

I caught Marty's eyes and he shrugged, smiled, and shook his head as if saying that some people get all the luck. After a minute, Alex seemed to notice that people were staring and detached herself from me, blushing slightly.

"I see congratulations on your Evolution are for you as well," Marty said, trying to break the ice.

She laughed and grabbed a drink.

"You could say that."

"Did you end up with a power?" he asked hopefully. "Maybe something cool like flight or telekinesis?"

She choked on her drink.

"Nothing like that, I promise," she said when she cleared her throat.

"But you do have one, so what is it?" Marty pressed, excited.

Alex blushed, clearly embarrassed.

"Leave off Marty. If she doesn't want to tell us, that's ok," I responded, telling him to leave it.

Alex looked over at me thankfully and mouthed "Thank you."

We quickly found another topic of conversation and Alex seemed much more confident and outgoing than she had before Evolving and took a much more active role in the discussion. Throughout the party, people kept wandering over to talk to us, which picked up even more as word of the fact that I had Evolved as well ran through the crowd. We held court in one area, but it was clear that other groups were reforming, just as they had in high school. The biggest difference between then and now was that people kept missing between the groups, and none of us really cared that we weren't in the popular group. It was only a while later that we realized that the group we didn't care was that we had become the popular group.

As the party started to wind down, Lily showed up at our small group. Everyone seemed surprised to see her there, but nobody commented on it.

Looking at Alex and myself, clearly ignoring everyone else, Lily asked, "Would you two mind coming over to my place later? There is something that I want to take with you about."

My initial instinct was to brush her off, as, over the years, there had been plenty of times when she and her friends had caused me and others no end of pain, but there was something in her face that made me stop. I glanced at Alex, who shrugged.

"Sure," I said, shrugging. "We can swing by after we clean up here if that works for you?"

Lily looked like a weight was taken off her shoulders and she smiled.

"Great. I'll see you then."

We watched as she turned and walked out of the park, not bothering to help with the cleanup. The only thing that I could say in her defense was that it was a spectacular view as she walked away. Shaking my head, I turned back to the others.

"What was that all about?" Marty asked.

"No idea. But I'm intrigued."

"By her ass, by the way you were watching her walk away," retorted Alex with a laugh.

"It is a really nice ass, which I noticed you watching as well."

She blushed.

"I didn't know you swung that way, Alex."

"I'm more of an equal opportunist," she replied, blushing again. "In theory at least. Not that I have much experience either way."

Cleaning up took another hour. By the time we were done, I realized that based on how much I had drunk, I should have been feeling it a bit, but I felt completely clearheaded. As we got into my car, as Alex didn't have one, I debated if it was a good thing or not. On the one hand, it meant that I could drink a lot more without feeling any ill effects. On the other, it meant that getting drunk was going to be much more expensive and harder, and taking liquid courage was no longer possible. On the ride over, we continued to talk about inconsequential things, but after we pulled out of the parking lot, Alex rested hey hand on my thigh. I was wondering if she was going to say anything about it, but she kept talking about the pros and cons of some builds in a game we had posted together, even as she gently stroked my thigh.

When we got to Lily's house, we stopped outside to study it. It was easily three times the size of my own. It had been a bunch of years since I had been there, and if my memory served me, the inside was decorated more gaudy than nice. When I went to open my door, Alex stopped me.

"I know what I want," she said looking at me in the eyes intensely, "and there is nothing that she is going to say that will change the fact that I'm going to get it."

"What do you want?" I asked quietly.

"You, Liam. I want you. And I'll do whatever I need to to make it happen."

Not knowing what else to do, I leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips.

"Understood. Now let's go see what Lily wants."

My first thought when Lily opened the door and saw us was that she was relieved, but it was quickly covered up by a happy smile as she invited us in. She ushered us to a downstairs room which was, because it was clearly designed for comfort and fun as opposed to the rest of the house, where the younger generation hung out. After an offer of drinks, Lily opened a fridge that was built into the side of the giant entertainment system and handed us each a beer. She sat nervously watching us, obviously trying to build up the nerve to say something.

"What's up Lily?" I asked. "You said that you had something you wanted to talk to us about?"

"Right. Sorry. I don't actually know how to say this." She rambled nervously. "I have never been the best at anything. I'm not smart, or the prettiest, or the best cheerleader, you get the point. And for my entire life, I have known what was coming next. After graduation, I was going to go to a fancy college, not because my grades really deserve it, but because my family wants me to meet the right kind of people. I would be a middling cheerleader there also until I met someone and got married. But then the virus hit, and everyone's plans changed, but that was fine, because we were all kind of still stuck post-high school, with our same groups of friends, and everyone knew what was what. But after X hit, things changed. And then I Evolved, and everything changed even more. After I realized what had happened to me, I started looking into it. Into what it means to Evolve."

She took a deep breath and a long drink before continuing.

"What I found is that it makes you the best version of yourself. Which I thought meant for me that it made me the best. Until now, I had always been a follower. I never really knew what to do in the spotlight. Even when it was my birthday, there was always Brenna there who led our group, you know. And so, I was excited to go to the party today and step up. Be the center of attention and the queen bee. But you know what happened? I got what I wanted. I was the center of everything. And I didn't know what to do with it. I was out of place. But things couldn't go back. It was clear to everything there that I had moved beyond them. And I panicked. Until I realized that there were others like me."

Both Alex and I just looked at Lily silently, taking in the torrent of words that just poured out of her. After a minute of silence, by the end of which Lily looked like she was about to be in tears, I spoke up.

"There is a lot to process there, but bottom line, what is it that you want?" I asked.

"I want to be part of your group," Lily responded, almost, but not quite, begging.

"What group?" I asked, clearly not understanding.

"You and Alex. And I guess whatever other friends you have. I want in. I need people in my life who can, I don't know, be the head of my pack. Because I can't be, and there is nobody else besides the two of you that can do it anymore."

At this point, Alex spoke up. "Are you asking to be our friend?"

"Maybe? I don't know."

"Ok," I said, my mind reaching, trying to figure out what was going on. "If you want to be our friend, it takes more than just asking for permission."

"That's fine. I get it," she responded quickly before I could continue. "We had the same sort of thing for the cheerleading squad."

"Was that rumor actually true?" Alex asked. "Are all the cheerleaders actually lesbian?"

Lily blushed. "Not exactly. I mean Brenna did make each of the senior girls lick her once they were old enough. It is apparently a long-standing tradition, but I think that she liked the power of it more than anything else. She used it as a punishment sometimes and to humiliate some of the girls. Some of the girls really liked doing it, some didn't. But there were other initiations for the younger girls."

"That's not what I'm talking about," I said, although I was intrigued and turned on by what she was saying. "I mean that friends, at least ours, are great because we have things in common and like hanging out together. We are also nice to each other and other people."

"I can be nice," She protested.

"When you came to talk to us earlier, you ignored all the rest of the people who were sitting with us," Alex responded.