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[b][u][center]The Golden Coils Resort

Part 4

for Taiko

by Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

Darren meant to sleep for a half hour, maybe an hour tops, just to make sure that he didn't throw off his sleep schedule entirely. When he woke up to the sound of someone knocking on the penthouse door, however, he knew that he must have taken far more time than he'd meant. He lifted his head from the pillow, fumbled for his phone for the time, and his eyes went wider still as the blurry numbers resolved themselves.

4:30.

He'd gone to bed at 2:30, at latest, perhaps a half hour earlier. His head slumped back to the pillow, and even with all the frustration he had for sleeping in further than he'd meant, he could already feel the draining sense of the bed pulling him back down to sleep. The mattress was beyond comfy, and the soft give that the whole thing had meant that it was pulling him right back towards a deep slumber. He wanted to give in, to just enjoy the soft bed, to feel it pulling him into sleep and -

Knock, knock.

"Nnngh..."

No, he had to get up. At the very least, to see who was knocking. If it was Riche or his dad, then they might have lost their keys. If it was a staff member, then best to make sure that they didn't think that the penthouse was empty and decide to come in.

[i]Clothes? No...no, I'm dressed...[/i]

Which told him how tired he was, considering that he often tended to sleep in the nude, despite the issues that could cause. Waking up on the lawn naked and a little sore had become something of the norm back in Opal City, mostly due to...to...

He swore that there was something there, something involving the shimmering sound of a garage band, but the memory didn't come. Rubbing his forehead, he pushed himself out of bed, adjusting his jeans and pulling his shirt back into place -

Knock, knock.

"Coming!" he called, trying not to sound irritable as he stumbled out of the bedroom. "Coming!"

He was fully awake by the time he reached the door. He pulled it open to find himself face to face with a rather large naga, one that loomed over him by a good three feet with a wide hood. Yet, despite the shade that the serpent cast from the interior of the elevator, he had a concerned expression rather than the smirking one that Darren almost expected from his time in the hotel business.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but some of our other guests were concerned about you," the naga said.

"...Other guests?" Darren blinked. "I don't think that I have..."

"My apologies. I'm sure that this is an oversight, but if you wouldn't mind my double-checking?"

"Double-checking what?"

"Your wellbeing, of course."

"...I think you need to explain that a little bit."

"...Did you not receive the pamphlet at the front desk? I [i]had[/i] asked them to be distributed, I'm sure."

"No. No pamphlet."

Getting more confused by the moment - after all, who could have seen him, since he'd been in the penthouse alone for the last two hours, and hadn't been anywhere else since check-in - Darren did his best to keep projecting a patient, open feeling. He had a great deal of experience at that, considering his previous job, and his current one didn't exactly give him a lack of opportunities for practice. The naga shook his head, reaching down and fumbling with a waistcoat that Darren hadn't even noticed at first.

As a matter of fact, he hadn't noticed a great many things. The naga was definitely someone on the mature end of the spectrum, perhaps in his forties, and had a few scales down his tail that had obviously been polished to remove dull spots or faded, ragged ends to the scales. His shimmering gold and green look was partially enhanced by oils, similar to the method that he'd seen with some car salesmen and the way that they slicked back their hair to give it a greater sheen than it naturally had, often overdoing it. The naga hadn't, but it was right on the cusp, which was how he had noticed it in the first place.

The naga's arms were also much thicker than he had realized, the sleeves of the naga's golden jacket and emerald waistcoat filled to bursting with the raw power contained within. He had the feeling that this naga could flex and the whole thing would come apart in little more than a few seconds.

He almost wanted to see that, he realized.

Finally, his impromptu guest pulled one of the pamphlets that he'd mentioned from an inner pocket, offering it over. Darren took it, flipped it over, and finally had a name to put to the picture.

Dr. Allen Tuomos. Medical Doctor, Bio-Chemistry Ph.D., and -

"Therapist?" Darren asked, cocking his head to the side.

"It's a side business," Allen admitted.

"Interesting choice. But...why are you here, exactly?"

"May I come in? It would be more convenient, and we can allow the elevator to be put back to its original use."

"Oh...good point. Sorry, I'm still -"

"Waking up. I know, don't worry."

Backing up to give the naga room to slither out of the elevator, Darren looked down at the pamphlet again. A quick skim gave him little more information, save for the fact that it was about the Golden Coil resort, as well as the fact that the name came from another group that -

Oh. Another group of the same name...that Allen Tuomos was part of. That might have some reason why the pamphlet was important.

"You own the hotel?" Darren asked.

"In an indirect way, yes," the naga said, slowly slithering over the back of the leather couch and getting his upper, human-ish half comfortable. "A group of my associates own it, and I'm part of the group, so, technically, yes."

"...And you're visiting a random guest?"

"I did say that some of our other guests reported you being a little bit out of sorts. I wanted to assure myself that you were fine."

"Do you do that for all your guests?"

"Some of them. The ones that are first-timers and aren't so used to the way that the hotel works."

Darren could almost believe that, considering the way that the hotel was set up. From his phone call with his boss, he remembered that the hotel was run on the idea that there was a great deal that could be solved through hypnosis, and considering that he hadn't fallen 'victim' to any of the methods just yet, that might have caught their attention. If they were more sinister than Mr. Lee believed them to be, then this might be their way of making sure that he actually was hypnotized and didn't see anything that he wasn't supposed to. If not...

If not, then perhaps they were vaguely more ethical and actually cared about their guests. It [i]would[/i] be something of a first, he had to admit.

Making his way to the couch, he sat down. Shifting back and forth, he felt he had to ask another question.

"What other guests have seen me?"

"Oh. Page two in the pamphlet, please?"

"..."

"Humor me," Allen said, gesturing at the paper. "It's in there. Why don't they pass these things out? I got them specifically so people could be informed..."

Figuring that he might as well, Darren unfolded the pamphlet properly. The front page was all about the hotel with some small print about the Golden Coil group, as well, and the second page seemed to go into further detail about the variety of guests that the hotel catered to. There were a few pictures of humans, but they were really pushing the idea that their hotel staff were mostly reptiles - of various species, of course - and that their guests ranged from the scaly to the furred, from the fleshed to the rubbery sort, and -

Ah, there it was. From the anthro and humans to the feral serpents of the intelligence to actually be checked in and pay for the sort of stuff that they were getting. A quick scan showed that the less bipedal of the guests had access to smaller tunnels and passages once they left the lobby, allowing them to stay out of the main walkways and the inherent dangers there. One of them must have been passing through to the equivalent sort of suite for their sort and seen him.

But seen him sleeping? Was there that much of an issue just sleeping off the trip? He folded the pamphlet together again, cocking his head at the naga.

"So...your pamphlet..."

"It's quite good, isn't it?" Allen asked with a smile. "I put it together myself. It explains the resort so well."

"It also leaves you open to a great deal of liability."

"What? How?"

"Allowing guests to spy on other guests?"

"...That's not in there...is it?"

"Allowing one class of guests access to transportation that is not allowed for other guests isn't inherently a problem, no," Darren said, remembering quite a few laws that he'd needed to brush up on when he'd been in the hotel business. Certainly, management had been hopeless about it, and he'd needed to keep several different inspectors from shutting them down in the past. "But when one is allowed to spy on someone's expectedly private quarters, particularly bedrooms when someone could have a strong expectation - and desire - of privacy -"

"Privacy? That's...rather against everything that we stand for here, I'd have to say." Allen shook his head. "Goodness...I think that's the first time that anyone's actually asked for some."

"...Nevertheless, you might want to consider that. After all, you don't want someone suing you for intrusion on it, or for encouraging and allowing Peeping Toms."

Never had someone looking for privacy? That seemed to go hand in hand with the sort of hypnosis that Mr. Lee had warned him about. Every guest was probably at least lightly tranced at all times, not really aware of the differences between the resort and their own private spaces. They were probably more open about what they wanted, less guarded, and that meant that anything that might have been embarrassing became much more public knowledge. Which, in a place filled with tranced-out people where [i]everyone[/i] was tranced, wasn't necessarily a bad thing. However, if anyone wasn't tranced and could take advantage of it...

Or if anyone remembered what happened when they left...

He nudged the pamphlet back to the naga, who took it and read through it a few times. Allen still seemed a little bit clueless, almost like the times that he'd had to instruct some of the older guests at the hotel how to use the internet connection that they offered...and that time with Mr. Lee when he'd needed to bring one of the other office assistants up to speed and they didn't understand why it had to be done a certain way.

Before he could slide all the way into assistant mode, Allen shook his head and put the pamphlet away.

"I think I understand, Mr. Huff. There's certain concerns that not all of our guests share, but must be acknowledged. I should be more sensitive to that."

"And not open up your resort to lawsuits for those that leave and remember anything."

"Ah. You think that might be why they aren't distributing these?"

"I imagine that might be a reason, yes."

"Hissy always has been a great aid to this hotel, heh..." Shaking his head, Allen brought the rest of his tail around, idly wrapping it around Darren's middle before he could get a word in. "But the point still stands. Our other guests were concerned."

"About me getting a nap?"

"About how heavily you were sleeping...and how much you were sleep-talking."

"...I imagine [i]that[/i] crosses the line into invasion of privacy," Darren said, shaking his head and putting his hands on the coils around his waist. They were firm, and thick, and while they weren't quite squeezing him yet, they were coming very, very close. "Could you let me go?"

"I will, after a quick exam."

"Mmmph...I think - I think you can do that without the coils."

"Darren. Please. Trust me. I [i]am[/i] a doctor."

Darren wasn't sure how many times that he had heard that phrase in the past, but he imagined that it was rather up there. He pushed against the coils again, feeling them pulling in against his stomach, pressing just under his ribs so that he would stay put. They weren't being [i]that[/i] forceful - they weren't as tight as the restraints Mr. Lee had used that one night when he'd pushed the snow leopard to try a different sort of roleplay - but they were strong enough to ensure that he stayed put. Allen could [i]easily[/i] make them tighter, he knew. Those muscles weren't at full extension or full tightness, just yet.

He sighed. He supposed it wouldn't hurt to be examined, and if there was something wrong with him, better to know. Still...

"What was I saying?" he asked.

"Hmm?"

"When I was sleep-talking. What was I saying?"

"Now, that is the odd thing, and why I decided to come in personally," Allen said, the naga using his tail to lift Darren right off the couch. "They said that it sounded almost like a conversation."

"..."

"Just your voice, but back and forth, talking to yourself."

"...What about?" [i]Not about work, not about work, please, not about work.[/i]

Allen smiled, patting his shoulder.

"It wasn't anything serious. They didn't hear you plotting to kill anyone or anything -"

"I hope not!" Darren shivered. "God, I didn't even think of that."

"That's good. But they did hear you sounding very...depressed. Very tired. And there was an argument about that."

"So...what now?"

"I'm going to examine you." Allen tapped him on the forehead. "Right in here. A little bit of hypnosis. Proper hypnosis, rather than the other scattershot methods that we have spread around the resort."

"You admit that?"

"Darren, most of our guests know about it after their first visit. It's hard to miss it, and...well, we snakes do have a reputation. It's not like we can completely shed that, no matter how many years go by. So...we do what we can. Now...do I have your permission?"

The fact that he was even asked for it was a step in the right direction. Darren slowly breathed in, breathed out, and repeated the process three more times before he was relaxed enough to consider it. He reminded himself that this was something that Mr. Lee did all the time, that he had been hypnotized outside of work - according to Kasey - and it had happened on other occasions, too. It was almost an inevitability, somehow, with his life, that he would be hypnotized again. Mr. Lee had deprogrammers waiting on standby if things got out of hand, and he knew that the snow leopard would examine him after this.

[i]It will be okay...it will be okay...[/i]

"Okay...okay, I'm ready," Darren said.

"Good. This won't take long. Now, please try not to laugh...and look into my eyes..."

It was such a cliche line that it was hard not to laugh, but Darren kept the little nervous giggles down in his throat as he lifted his head to Allen's wide, hooded face. A different sort of glow looked out of those eyes, a soft blue that was almost like the ocean just off to the side of the town. He looked into those eyes, felt the glow spreading through his head, and was all too aware of the grip that it was already trying to get on his mind. He stiffened up -

"Relax...relax...I'm not going to do anything you don't want...I promise," Allen said, slowly bringing his tail a bit higher and covering Darren's arms to keep them at his sides. "Just let me in...you can trust me. I am a doctor."

"..."

"Just relax..."

The pressure from those eyes was soft, lapping at the edges of his mind rather than crushing it. He felt that there was a massive power behind them, something that could reach through his skull and seize hold if it really wanted to, but it was held back. Restrained. Kept in order so that it could only do the sort of thing that Allen had said it would. Darren breathed in and out, slowly, carefully, and tried to relax.

The more that he tried, the more that the gentle blue light helped him. It seeped through the gaze that they shared with one another, slowly pushing in through his eye sockets and through his mind. He could feel it creeping through his thoughts, not quite tangling them up, but rather, coiling around this bunch and that bunch and slowly dragging them apart. It almost felt like a receptionist going through old paper files to sort them out for better filing in the future, and it almost immediately started doing wonders for his mind. He sighed deeply, feeling his shoulders going limp as the tail carried him a bit closer to the naga. Allen reached out, pressing his hands to Darren's temples, massaging gently.

"That's good...just keep it like that...let me see..."

"What...do you..."

"I'll answer in a minute. For now...relax...relax...relax..."

Each time that the naga doctor asked him to relax, his hood shimmered, the emerald lines along the golden scales making him feel that much more relaxed, indeed. It was a surprisingly conscious trance, one that he didn't have to fight against, one that was light and surface level. Wondering whether this was a way of keeping him trusting the naga, or whether he had changed due to the past, Darren just went with it.

The feeling of 'untangling' continued as the naga's blue eye-lights stretched through his mind, pushing his thoughts in this direction and that direction. Some of the more focused, restricted thoughts were dragged off to one side, and he would have collapsed right then and there if it wasn't for the coils around his middle. Without those, he felt [i]exhausted.[/i] He felt utterly drained, his eyes rolling back in their sockets, his energy levels plummeting.

Then it came back - or at least a portion of them. Not all of them, but enough to keep him awake. Enough to have him gasping again.

"[i]That[/i] is something that we'll have to talk about, young man," Allen muttered, but didn't take it further, instead continuing the untangling.

And so it went, minute by minute. Darren was increasingly aware of the different 'camps' of thoughts in his head, all of which surrounded a central collection of his own. He hadn't realized that so much had been put in him, and some of it he could recognize, now that it wasn't so deeply integrated with himself. There was that part over there that was all clinical, numbers-based and statistics-based, the part that had come from Mr. Lee. There was that part over there, something warm, dream-like, and oddly sensual, with a bedroom musk to it. There was a horse-like image attached to it, but he didn't understand that, not fully. There was another, a dog-like image that echoed with the thunder of a bass guitar. Another, with jingling images of green and gems and bells that hung from braids.

Others, too, but those were the main ones, the ones that held his attention and told him just how many people had been involved in messing with his mind. He wobbled as he kept staring straight ahead, hearing something from Allen, but that voice seemed so far away now.

"...Barely awake...kept working...couldn't stop...irresponsible..."

"..."

"Hmmph...can't untangle...have to...integrate..."

Darren was tired. Very tired. As a matter of fact, he didn't know when he had been this tired last. It felt like a lifetime of exhaustion pulled out of him at once.

"Sleep."

And Darren slept.

#

When he woke, he was on his bed, and Allen was coiled up at his side, making notes. Darren sat up with a low groan, and the naga immediately whipped his head up.

"Steady, now. You had a lot to unpick there."

"Mmmph...that was...unpleasant."

"How much do you remember, if I might ask?"

"Most of it. Not so much whatever you were saying, but I could feel what you were doing in here." He tapped the side of his head, paused, then the back of his head. "Back here, too."

"You could feel a difference? Astonishing."

"I have odd friends."

He could still feel the sort of detachment that had come from everything that Allen had done. There wasn't so much a wall between him and the various other thoughts that had been instilled in him, but he could make out a distance between them. They were more than capable of coming back, but he could tell that Allen had distanced them from him a bit, giving him the choice of whether to give in to them for the moment. It would take many more sessions to actually cut those cords, and that would depend on if he even wanted to.

Admittedly, the only one that he realized was [i]bad[/i] for him came from the horse-faced sort of thing in the back-corner of his mind, one that pushed him to keep working, to keep the peace, to make sure that everything was running smoothly. That one was the most recent of the bunch, and it was rather heavy-handed...

And it explained why he had been working so hard on Riche and his father of late, ensuring that they were as happy as possible and organized as possible. Whoever had put that in had wanted to keep the Huff household in order, and had trusted Darren to be the one to do it. That didn't fit with Mr. Lee, but...

Well, it was hard to actually unpick that right now. He would have to pick that up later.

"How are you feeling?" Allen asked, pocketing his notebook.

"...Better," Darren admitted. "More relaxed, I think. Less...pushed."

"I imagine. You've been under quite a few trances in your time, I noticed. Not nearly all of which were your choice."

"You can tell the difference?"

"We of the Golden Coil have made a long study of how the mind responds to hypnosis. We know how it works, and what it does, as well as most of the different methods. I believe yours were mostly of the ocular variety, though there was one that implied aural, and another that seemed more on the mystical end of things, which I admit is not my specialty," the naga said, shrugging. "I would have liked to invite a friend of mine in for that, but you only gave me permission to root around in there, and I didn't want to break that trust."

"...Thank you."

"That said, I believe I've sorted it for the duration of your stay. Anything that you brought with you should be secondary to anything that you choose to indulge in here...though you do have a surprisingly resilient sense of awareness that refused to go away. I think someone likes you; whatever instilled that did a [i]very[/i] good job."

Kasey.

He didn't know why he kept thinking of his old friend, or what Kasey could have done for that, but that was the only answer that he had. Darren rubbed his forehead, surprised at the weight that had lifted from his shoulders after having so many different commands detached from his thought process. He felt...well, if anything, he felt rather floaty after having that many metaphorical anchors weighing down his thought processes for so long. It made him feel like he was a little high, compared to what he had been feeling.

It should pass, he imagined. He doubted that the various conditionings were gone for good. He'd thought that they were before, that things had reset every time that he had walked away from the hypnotist that had put it into his head, but apparently, some parts of them had stuck around, getting snarled and added to the list of different things that he could be made to do.

[i]Well...this will be an interesting day...[/i]

He sat up, swinging his legs over the side. It felt light, easy, something that didn't use nearly the same amount of energy as it used to. He stretched, and he felt good. As he brought his arms back down, Allen pointed at his chest.

"I meant to ask, and I don't mean to pry about it, but I wanted to ask. The mark on your chest -"

"It was something I was willing enough about, even if my boss put the idea in my head," Darren said.

"Thank you for clarifying. I wanted to make sure, since your memories were a little conflicted about it."

"...It's...embarrassing, but in a good way," he said, rubbing his chest for a moment. "I don't know why, but it's something that I wish I could show off a bit more without everyone getting so...upset about it."

"Is that what you'd like, then?"

Darren almost shook his head, then paused. There was something to that question that sounded far more serious than just an idle question of taste. He cocked his head to the side.

"Why are you asking me like that?"

"The whole point of the Golden Coil is to be and do what you want. The rest of the world will not aid you in this, and we cannot reach out past our property to ensure that it's even possible, but we [i]can[/i] make this resort as welcoming, as open, and as problem-free as we can." Allen gestured around him. "Every room is meant to be a space of utter freedom to do what you like, as you like. You can show off. You can go and [i]be[/i] someone else than the rest of the world ever knows. And the other occupants here will never remember that it was you, or care if they do. This place is a place of utter freedom to be who you want to be, do what you want to do, without shame, embarrassment, or fear.

"So, that's why we ask. What do you want to do? Otherwise, how can we make sure that you can do it?"

It was a startlingly frank admission, and the very idea was something that sent shivers down his spine from the sheer naivete of it. They were offering something lovely, but if the wrong sort of people ever came here on vacation, the hypnotic effects of the Coil could easily be turned to a nightmare.

[i]Mr. Lee will want to know about this, for sure. They need help. A lot of help.[/i]

For all that he was worried inside, he wasn't letting it show on his face. So far, they were genuinely good people, and Allen, in particular, had done a great deal to help him sort himself out. That was far more than he could have asked of anyone on his own, and the fact that the naga had come to him rather than having to be sought out - for all the other issues that the hotel had - was definitely worth commending.

For now, though...

"What time is it?" Darren asked.

"Hmm? Oh, nearly six."

"...We were doing hypnosis for over an hour?"

"Well, there was a [i]lot[/i] to do, in fairness."

"..."

"Did you have something planned?"

"Well, me and my family were going to see a show -"

"Ah, yes. There's several." Allen pulled a phone from his waistcoat, flicking the screen open with a swipe of his thumb. "Consider this a way for me to make up for the intrusion on your privacy."

#

Darren stood, barefoot as before, at the entrance to one of the resort clubs. There were apparently a good dozen of them scattered around Ciolu, each one owned by someone or other within the Golden Coil network, but most of them featured different sorts of shows, the kinds of things that would be awkward to bring his father and brother to. Most of the time. Most of the time.

He rubbed the back of his head as he had an odd, half-remembered, half-imagined image of his father astride some sort of sort of equine, his cock hanging down and getting stiffer by the second. He could remember Riche beside him, the pair of them...sucking toes?

Shaking his head and banishing the half-memory before it could get stronger and stranger, he scanned the hall again. No sign of Riche or their dad, but he imagined that they would be here before long. Allen had promised that he'd get them reminded of their plans, and that they'd be there on time. In the meantime, Darren thought about that question again.

[i]Is that what you want?[/i]

For the first time, it really came down on him what that could mean. Here, away from the rest of the world, surrounded by patrons that were as entranced as he was, surrounded by staff that were keen on making this an enjoyable experience for everyone, he could [i]literally[/i] want anything. It didn't matter how unacceptable it might have been. It didn't matter how taboo or wrong it might be to indulge. He could do it, his shame taken away, judgment on the part of all others removed.

All he had to do was want it, and, according to Allen, the Golden Coil Resort would try and make it happen. He didn't know how, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to know how, but it would.

But...what did he want?

That was the far harder question to answer, and one that he had to admit that he’d never had to entirely think about. He had followed his father’s directions for most of his childhood, and when he got out of that, he knew that he needed - not always wanted, but needed - something different. He’d gone to Novus Ager, gotten a number of different jobs, but had never entirely settled down with something that he wanted there, either. Whenever something happened that he could look back on as something that he liked, he had to admit that it was something that happened to him rather than something that he’d known that he’d wanted, gone for, or anything like that.

That was something of a sobering realization. Even his sex life, such as it was, was mostly down to what he had been ordered to do by others, or pushed into. Not that he didn’t like it, or found it oppressive, but…

Well, it made him wonder just what he actually wanted out of life, and what he could do to get it.

[i]What do you do when you’ve always been done, instead?[/i]

That was an awkward way of putting it, and he immediately regretted his decision.

“Hey, Darren!”

He looked up and immediately went red. Riche was crossing the hallway, and he was completely naked. His brother’s hair had been braided back, pulled back into a long strand that looked almost like a snake tail hanging off the back of his head.

But that was nothing compared to the sight of Lloyd stepping out of the elevator, oiled up as a stripper and just as bare. Darren’s eyes all but popped out of their sockets as the other two men of the family walked up, dicks swaying, all their muscles on display.

“Uh…”

“Come on, we’re gonna be late for the show,” Riche said.

“Hope you slept well, son,” Lloyd said.

And before Darren could get a word in edgewise, the pair of them pulled him along into the deep, throbbing bass of the club behind them, an announcer already calling out the name of tonight’s performer.

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: Darren has a small issue with his sleeping habits, and is visited by a local doctor.

Tags: M/solo, Exhibitionism, Coils, Hypnosis, Treatment, Resort, Naga, Human, Untangling Things, Aware, Sober Hypnosis, Nudity, Family, Father, Brother, Explanation,