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]

<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.

[aeskhyne]

The way she moves Trouble's body is not the way Trouble would move his body. It's the way Bella would. He notices that for the first time, and appreciates it very, very much; it's an amazingly intimate thing, to not just see the way she moves but experience it directly. He loves it and he loves her.

[instar]

Bella squirms, when she observes this thought going by. (Probably unintentionally, it is an awfully Bella squirm.)

[aeskhyne]

...If Trouble was piloting the autonomics, that could have gotten embarrassing. At least for Bella. Trouble does not really embarrass.

(He loves her so much.)

[instar]

Now she is wiggling his toes, experimentally, and taking notes, which are probably on that but could be on anything. There are more than twenty-six symbols in her personal cipher, for one thing, and at least eight of them seem to be allowed to form single-character words.

[aeskhyne]

He wonders, more or less idly, what she's writing about. More importantly, he wonders if she accurately predicted what effect wiggling his toes would have on him. (It's the obvious one.) (Science!)

[instar]

<Is there anything I could be doing in here that would not turn you on?> inquires Bella archly.

[aeskhyne]

There probably is, but he's not going to think about it, because that would be depressing and potentially traumatic. (And most of the depressing and potentially traumatic things would probably still turn him on.)

She is Bella, and she is being herself, and she is wrapped around his brain controlling his every move while he helplessly watches. Of course he's going to be turned on. He couldn't not. It's too perfect. And now he is thinking about the feeling of her wriggling into his ear again, mmm.

[instar]

<Shall I also omit the anaesthetic on my way out, now I know it's not automatic?>

[aeskhyne]

Well, if she wants to deliberately do something that's going to turn him on more, then yes. Absolutely. Also, he loves her.

[instar]

<Is it going to be awkward if I skip anaesthetizing you and then you're all worked up with your own autonomics while I demorph?>

[aeskhyne]

<I dunno, probably not? And it's not like I won't be even if you don't.>

He will definitely be all worked up as soon as he has his autonomics back. He might go to the bathroom, or go find Ethan or Robin, or he might just sit with it, but the being worked up part is going to happen.

[instar]

<Fair enough.>

Writing. Writing. <Okay, I think I'm out of preliminary notes. Now to think of something creative you can decline to help me with...>

[aeskhyne]

The first thing that flashes into his mind is that there is probably no way in hell she could accurately mimic how he talks. Oh, the bulk of his casual everyday conversation, maybe, but when he plays with sound and emphasis and vocabulary the way he did in their very first conversation - no. It's too him. She could produce an imitation, but it would not be the real thing.

For that matter, he's not sure she could move like he does, either. Muscle memory is on her side there, though, and it'd be harder to judge.

[instar]

She tries moving, first, sets down the pen, sprawls in the chair. Smiles his smile.

[aeskhyne]

It is a very Troublesome smile. And, confounding the results, in the back of his mind he is smiling along.

[instar]

She gets up, walks around the room, reaches out to touch a dangling bit of sheet from the top bunk and enjoy the texture in a way she would not normally do. <I don't know if I could fool Ethan, but he'd know the possibility.>

[aeskhyne]

Oh, she's pretty good. Trouble loves her. It's a whole different kind of lovely, to have her move him how he might move.

<I am actually one hundred percent certain you couldn't fool Ethan, but mostly because I'm pretty sure you'd deck him in under five minutes if you tried to talk to him by ourselves.>

[instar]

Bella inspects memories for sample violence-inducing conversational openers.

[aeskhyne]

When there is no one else around to care how they talk to each other, Ethan has been known to make some pretty vile sexual advances—in explicit and often degrading terms, with hints or more than hints that 'no' will not be considered an acceptable answer. Trouble thinks it's hilarious and doesn't mind at all. He suspects Bella would have a different reaction.

[instar]

<It's really very interesting how I can access your memories with as little delay as if they were mine - I don't have to know exactly what I'm looking for or how it's sorted, it's just there.>

She doesn't comment on whether she'd deck Ethan.