the experiment

[instar]

When Andi has gotten one of Charlie's friends to give her a ride to the grocery store and the unauthorized residents of the house can come out of hiding, Bella goes looking for Trouble, so to speak, and finds him in the kitchen.

"Hey," she says, "I have some more questions that I'd be asking Aspret if she was here. Charlie didn't have answers; Esclan wasn't the talkative type or the experimental type."

Comments

[instar]

"Okay. My and Andi's was empty when I was upstairs telling her and Dad." She grabs her notebook and pen with her free hand.

[aeskhyne]

Up they go, then.

[instar]

Bella sets the cake pan on the floor and the notebook on the desk and toes off her shoes and stands in the water. "Say when."

[aeskhyne]

"Go for it," says Trouble, plonking himself down on the floor next to the cake pan.

[instar]

Bella takes a deep breath, indulges a prolonged shudder, and starts morphing.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble waits patiently. Watching her morph is kind of gross, but it's not like that's a surprise, and he's not really bothered.

(He is other things instead.)

[instar]

And then there is a Yeerk, who looks just like Aspret, in a cake pan.

<This is the liquid equivalent of being at an uncomfortably high altitude,> comments Bella.

[aeskhyne]

"Yeah," says Trouble, even though he knows from experience that Yeerks don't hear the right frequencies to understand human speech.

He picks her up and lifts her out and puts her by his ear.

[instar]

It takes her longer than it maybe should to figure out how to squeeze in. The instincts are farther away for her than they would be for anyone else in the shape. But eventually she narrows and wriggles in the correct way.

(The anaesthetic is either too instinctual or not instinctual enough to reach her. It is not included.)

[aeskhyne]

He wasn't even going to ask her to forget that part when she burrowed in - it would seem too much like hitting on her.

Right now existing seems a lot like hitting on her. Trouble gives up trying not to. He is who he is, and he feels how he feels, and right now that's scared and vulnerable and in pain and incredibly turned on.

[instar]

The rearranging of the ear is over before she figures out how to sink in around his brain. The two-hemisphere setup takes a moment to work out, and then -

<Damn, I thought the anaesthesia was going to be automatic, I didn't realize - apologizing would apparently be pointless - hi?>

[aeskhyne]

<Hi.> Yeah, that. She's so cute, he loves her so much—for a moment it's all he thinks about, if 'thinks' is even the word for this flood of affection.

[instar]

Bella gets up from the floor, pulls out a chair, and - sits down, makes him sit down, whatever the grammar is. <I'm going to wind up being high on that and not take any notes,> she says with the lightest possible reproof.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble is so entirely not sorry.

And he gets another rush when she moves him. It's so different from hosting Aspret it almost doesn't remind him of her at all; for one thing, hosting Aspret never got him off like this. Hosting Bella is like - like freefall, like orbit, like falling falling falling and never hitting the ground. The metaphor flashes through his mind in immersive detail—falling isn't something you do, it's something that happens to you, something out of your control, tumbling through icy winds with your eyes closed, scared and hurting, but you're safe, because in this metaphor there will never be anything to hit. There is only the fall.

And he really likes it.

[instar]

<Your brain works so, so - I already knew it worked differently from mine but this is something else again seeing it up close,> Bella says. She picks up her pen, twirls it around his fingers a little. Turns pages to a blank one and titles it in symbols he doesn't know.

[aeskhyne]

In his own little corner of his mind, Trouble giggles. Of course she couldn't have known until she saw it for herself. Bella is very, very good at being Bella and not remotely good at being Trouble. The only person who is good at being Trouble is Trouble.

He warned her that he could theoretically guess what she might write down, but in fact when it comes to it he doesn't even try. He is far too caught up in the physical feeling of her writing with his hands. It is very, very nice.

[instar]

She writes, and writes, and writes. Occasionally she stretches out his non-dominant arm, thoughtfully, then writes more.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble sits in the back of his mind and enjoys himself thoroughly.

Not completely thoroughly; there are some physical reactions missing from this equation. But pretty thoroughly all the same. Being cut off from even involuntarily affecting his body doesn't interfere at all with being in love, and it doesn't dampen the rest all that much, either.

[instar]

<I would definitely not be getting any note-taking done if I were letting you pilot the autonomics,> Bella remarks.

[aeskhyne]

<Pffffffffffff,> says Trouble. He loves her some more. (He has never really stopped, but the amount of attention paid waxes and wanes.)

[instar]

<I think I have separate control of whether I let you bleed through in that respect or not, but it is not part of the scope of the current tests.>

[aeskhyne]

<Yeah, you do.>

This is a thing he learned from Aspret. And now he's thinking about it. They are nice thoughts.

[instar]

Bella taps her pen on her notebook, distracted. <Paying attention to two entire brains at once is a trip. The morph is equipped for it, but I'm not sunk that deep into it so I can still notice how very weird it is.>

[aeskhyne]

<And here I am being distractingly into you. Or would it be just as distracting if I started thinking about cake?>

[instar]

<I think concentrating on me is more distracting, though possibly not by much.> She resumes ciphering. She crosses his ankles.