Sundry and Assorted Fanfictions

“Simon bad at cooking, statement.”

“How the hell would you know that?” Simon muttered, watching the brick of noodles unfold in the boiling water. Instant ramen: one of at least a few things his timeline and this one had in common. But it had been a long time since he cooked it like this. Back home (as he’d come to think of it, despite the fact it was really no home at all), water was strictly rationed. They needed it to make air, after all. Scrubbers could only do so much. “Ryland’s worse than I am, he just eats this stuff hard. And your people don’t really cook, do they?” He glanced at Rocky, raising an eyebrow.

“Grace show Rocky Top Chef.”

Simon did not actually know what that was, but it was easy enough to figure out from the title. “Course he did.”

He cut the heat, added the flavor packet, stirred. Once it seemed properly mixed, he poured it into an appropriately-sized beaker. Crazy that they had sent instant noodles along, both in cups and the other kind, but no bowls. None that Simon had found so far, at least.

“Okay, we’ve got, uh…” He stepped back, pointing. “Four kinds of ramen, a whole bunch of candy, peanut butter and crackers, vegetables…” Fresh, actually, harvested from the small rack of plants on board the ship, which Simon had taken immediate charge of once he’d settled enough to want to be in charge of anything. “Think this’ll be enough to bring him over here?”

“If not, Simon pick up, carry. Two times Grace size.”

This whole thing had been Rocky’s idea. He was no stranger to Grace’s pushing himself past his limits in pursuit of answers and solutions; there had been multiple occasions when he’d quite literally had to force him to sleep in the past. Simon readily believed it. The guy seemed like a hell of a scientist; if the COI had had him, maybe the SM-13 wouldn’t have been a kludged-together piece of -

Don’t think about that.

Of course, the other side of that particular blade was that he got bored pretty easily without something to work on. When this particular problem was solved (and Simon had no reason to doubt it would be, things seemed to just sort of work out for Grace), that could become an issue, but they’d deal with one thing at a time. And right now, the thing was that Grace had been in his lab for going on twenty hours with no food, no sleep, and no breaks.

Simon did not know where he was pissing. It’d better be either in the recycler or a container that could be poured into it, or else he was going to lose his shit. “Plentiful water” did not mean “limitless,” especially on a fucking spaceship.

At least he didn’t have to go pick Grace up (which he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do anyway, given his weaselly vibe; he seemed like he’d be a squirmer). He had come through the doorway into the habitation pod, blinking at the food laid out in front of him. He looked frazzled, hair greasy, bags under his eyes, glasses askew – not that that last one was anything new. Simon wondered if he even had been pissing. He seemed dehydrated.

“What’s all this?”

“Rocky Simon make ♪♫♫♪♪.”

“Ooh! New word.” Grace pointed at Rocky.

“Means ‘feast,’” Simon said. “Or something like it, I think.” He didn’t know how to add words to system Grace had rigged up and didn’t care to learn. He wasn’t good with computer stuff.

“I’ll do it in a second.” Grace adjusted his glasses (they were still off-center) and squinted at Rocky. “What’s the occasion?”

“You haven’t eaten in almost two days,” Simon stated. “You need the calories. Sit down.” He led by example, balancing himself with his xenonite prosthetic as he sank to the floor. As he always did when he saw him using it effectively, Rocky made a little chirp the system didn’t translate. Simon figured it was the rock alien version of a smile.

“Y’know, we don’t have unlimited food…” Grace sat, thankfully.

“Sure we do. You already said the taumoeba would work for both of us. And this is almost exactly what you would’ve eaten if you’d had regular meals.” Simon fixed Grace with a steady look as he reached for the peas. “I’m not going to let you starve yourself if you don’t need to.”

“You could’ve brought it to me in the lab,” Grace pointed out, reaching for a beaker of ramen, then changing his mind and going for the candy instead. The glass must be too hot.

“I don’t think it’s good for you to eat in there.”

Grace made some noise early on about not even being that hungry, but that was belied almost immediately by how fast he began to eat. Simon watched him. On Eden, eating was a communal activity, but at least in part so you could make sure no one was getting or taking more than the share allotted to them. This felt...kind of like the opposite, honestly, despite the fact food was technically limited here, too. Even Rocky was eating with them, which Simon made an effort to appreciate. He’d had it explained to him how big of a deal that was for his people. He understood, having had to make his own adjustments.

“A-ahh…” Simon and Rocky had both finished eating by the time Grace finally sat back, leaning his weight on one hand planted behind him. He put the other on top of his belly, which had noticeably inflated beneath his stupid T-shirt. Simon eyed him. It’d been a long time since he’d seen anybody that full.

“When I said this was what you would’ve eaten if you hadn’t spent so much time in the lab,” he stated neutrally, “I didn’t actually think you’d eat it all at once.”

“Well, uh, you’re the one who put it out. And ramen doesn’t exactly keep.” Grace swallowed a belch, but didn’t look at all embarrassed. More sleepy, content. At least until a twinge of pain crossed his face. “Oh, jeez. Nope. Nope, that was too much. I’m feeling it.”

With his hands and then his elbows, he walked himself backwards until he could lay down. It pulled his shirt up out of the makeshift waistband of the knotted arms of his jumpsuit, and Simon saw a slice of taut, space-pale flesh and the honey-dark hair that ran in a wispy row up and down Grace’s stomach. It heaved with his strained breathing, and he reached down, digging his fingers into it and hiking his shirt up.

They had not had sex. How exactly did you bring that up to the guy who was probably going to be the only other human you saw for the rest of your life and gave exactly zero hints about his sexuality? Especially knowing that the fucking rock would definitely ask to watch and Grace would enthusiastically agree for the both of them. But Simon had never thought harder about fucking Grace than in that moment.

“Here, let me.” Simon stretched out alongside Grace, propping his head up on his right hand. He went to put his left on Grace’s middle, but remembered it wasn’t real. He went to switch sides, but Rocky stopped him, rolling over.

“Hand work,” he assured. “Not hurt Grace if Simon is gentle.”

“I’m more worried about...huh.” The arm was fairly new, and Simon hadn’t had much cause to practice fine motor control with it. He was, lucky for him, right-handed. But with only a little foreign feeling, he spread his fingers, crooked them, and placed the tips on Grace’s stomach. He pressed gently, and Grace sucked in a breath of something halfway between pleasure and pain. Raising an eyebrow, Simon looked at Rocky. “You’re a really good engineer.”

“Rocky know.”

Simon rubbed, and Grace slowly melted. He took off his glasses and tossed one arm over his eyes. He was loud about his enjoyment, grunts, moans; it was shameless. Simon almost felt embarrassed for him.

He thought about Grace well-fed. Bigger, solid. According to him, he’d already lost a lot of the muscle he’d had when he first woke up from the coma they’d stuck his lucky ass in, a combination of low gravity, low protein, and lack of any real exercise. He was lean, almost stringy. Simon imagined him softer, heavy curves of fat on chest and thighs and arms and belly.

Of course it wouldn’t happen. They had so little food, and taumoeba were about as close to empty calories as anything could be. They’d guarantee temporary survival and nothing else. But it was nice to think about.

“Probably oughta finish the licorice or it’ll get hard, huh?” Grace mumbled.

“Obviously I understand your discomfort, Jon; and I would like to make it quite clear to you that this is the very last resort for me.”  Elias’s fingers trail from one of Jon’s shoulders to the other as he walks around him.  Jon wonders if the touch actually meant to be possessive or if it’s just his imagination, but he isn’t exactly inclined to be generous in his interpretation of Elias’s actions right now.

“Oh,” Jon spits out.  “Is it.”

Elias sighs disappointedly.  “You know, you could at least try to see things from my perspective.  You’ve become…difficult, in recent months.  From a management standpoint.”  Jon scoffs incredulously, but Elias does not allow him to break in.  “The paranoia, the rank insubordination.  Stalking your coworkers, entering the tunnels after being expressly forbidden to do so…”

“You gave me a key!”

“With the extraction of a promise from you that you would not explore them alone, due to the danger.  A promise you almost immediately broke.”  Elias has made his way around to Jon’s front, where he now stands with his hands behind his back.  “I’m afraid you’ve forced my hand, Jon; I’ve exhausted all my other options.”

“Oh, so then we’ve arrived at - tying me to a bloody chair in your office.”  Because that is indeed where they are, Jon’s wrists and ankles bound to a solid oaken construction, only the banker’s lamp on Elias’s desk on.  It’s after hours and the cleaners don’t come on this day of the week, so screaming will do no good.  “Your management style could use some work, Elias.”

Elias rolls his eyes, which does not improve Jon’s mood.  The motion catches the light of the lamp; briefly, his pale irises glow emerald.  “Don’t be so dramatic, Jon.  The restraints are nothing more than a temporary necessity.”  He bends at the waist to make level eye contact.  “You want to know everything.  Fine - that’s a trait I would very much like to encourage.  But the way you’re going about it, you’re going to get yourself killed, and you’re going to disrupt the mission of this Institute.”  Something about the eye contact is making Jon more uncomfortable than usual, more uncomfortable even than the current situation demands, but he can’t put a finger on exactly what it is.  “So I’m going to give you what you want.  And in the process, render you that much easier to keep an eye on.”

Jon stares at him.  Slowly, fear is beginning to eat through the anger that has, up to this point, cloaked it fully.  “And just how are you going to do that?”

Elias’s smile is faint, and yet still somehow smug.  “You’ll see.”

It’s not until he straightens and turns away to busy himself at his desk that Jon realizes what was bothering him about the eye contact: Elias hadn’t blinked once.  And Jon hadn’t actually felt the need to, either.

Before he can even begin to parse the implications there, Elias has returned.  In one hand, he holds a tape player, and in the other, plugged into it, a pair of over-the-ear headphones.

“You’ve been neglecting yourself in so many ways,” Elias tells Jon as he sets the player in his lap, not without sympathy.  “I honestly think you might enjoy this.”

Before Jon can demand to know just what it is he could possibly mean by that, Elias has slipped the cups of the headphones over his ears, and set the tape to playing.

The headphones are old, had probably been quite expensive new.  They’re heavy, bulky, the cups padded thick and soft.  Once they’re on, what little ambient noise had been present is gone, and Jon is sealed in with nothing but the soft rush of his own body.  Until Elias presses play, and the vaguely-familiar voice of Gertrude Robinson fills Jon’s ears.

Jon sits there, staring at nothing at all.  Just listening.  An awful lot of what she’s saying, he has no immediate context for, so he takes it, files it, connects what he can, and waits for the rest.  And slowly, the picture - so much larger and more terrible than he’d ever thought it might be - takes shape.

He barely notices when the tape ends and Elias swaps it out for one that has his voice on it, or when that ends and another Gertrude tape replaces it.  In fact, the first thing to bring Jon out of his stupor of revelation is the growing discomfort in his stomach.

For a while now, he’s noticed that there’s a certain…satiation that comes with reading a statement.  He’s assumed it was the glow of a job completed, although it seems a bit baffling, outsize satisfaction for a task so relatively small.  He’s also noticed, on the days he records, that he doesn’t much feel like having dinner when he gets home.

He’s never connected the two until now, looking down to see his belly visibly bloated against his jumper and trousers, waistband cutting into his middle.  Feeling himself filling further and further, every word a sip.

He can taste the knowledge he’s being fed, Jon realizes.  Clear and cool and sweet and rich.

Waistband growing tighter and tighter, the squeeze of it increasingly painful, Jon looked sharply up at Elias, who was standing there and watching him.  Elias smiles; he knows he’s realized.  Jon holds his gaze a moment, then breaks eye contact as he tries viciously to shake off the headphones.

Immediately Elias is there, both hands keeping the cups clamped firmly to his ears, forehead pressed to Jon’s.  Jon’s vision is nothing but Elias’s eyes, nacreous, bright in the dimness.  Jon strains, but Elias is strong, stronger than he would have thought to look at him, and he has leverage.

You’re going to hurt yourself, Jon.  He doesn’t know how he knows Elias says it.  He certainly can’t hear him.  But he does, and Elias needn’t have worried, it’s really not all that much longer he has to hold him before Jon slips back below the surface of the torrent of discovery.  He relaxes, and is only distantly aware of Elias releasing him.  When the tape ends, Elias is ready with another.

Jon’s trousers soon give up, button popping off, engorged belly surging free as they unzip themselves.  He belches.  As his jumper inches up, he spreads his legs as much as he can with bound ankles to accommodate the taut, swollen shape his middle has become.  The tape player falls, but Elias catches it before it can strike the floor, holds it securely.  The better to switch the tapes out.

Jon is fuller than he ever has been in his entire life.  His back arches; he feels his novel evert, a soft pop.  Surely, he thinks, some small, distant part of himself that is not enthralled by Elias-on-tape’s calm classification of Smirke’s Fourteen, he will burst.

But he doesn’t burst.  This is not food; its unique (read: impossible) properties enable Jon’s natural physical processes, too, to behave uniquely.  Though they really only deviate in speed.  Otherwise, his body does what it normally does when provided with an excess: it stores it.  All of it.

Jon has lost weight over the past year and change, much of it in the wake of the Jane Prentiss incident.  His clothes have come loose, nearly to the point of requiring replacement.  As a result, it takes some time for him to notice exactly what’s happening.  It’s only when his clothes begin to tighten in areas other than his belly.

It starts first in hips and thighs and ass, trousers squeezing, and when Jon looks down, there is an unfamiliar softness beneath his jaw that the motion comprises.  The very beginning of a second chin.  His belly has begun to sag, soft fat burying the shape even though he has not grown any less absurdly full, navel deepening.  His legs look like sausages in the casings, and even as he watches, a seam on the inside of his right thigh bursts.  A diamond of flesh swells through like rising dough, growing larger and larger as stitches stutter-pop on either side of it.  The same thing is happening on his other thigh, and over his hips, and he’s sure his trousers have torn in the seat, too.

His jumper has also grown tight, but the yarn is made of sterner stuff.  His arms strain against it and he hears it squeak and whine.  The size of his belly has forced it all the way up his chest, nearly bra-like, the effect only enhanced by the small, round, rapidly-growing tits he now has.

Jon’s trousers are all but gone.  He feels himself rise an inch, another, as his ass grows unrestricted; he spreads, until the sides of the chair pinch at his sides, his hips.  His love handles mound against his arms.

Elias swaps in another tape.  This one is just an ordinary statement.  The chair creaks.

Jon pants, whimpers, pained both with fullness and the grip of his jumper.  Elias strokes his hair tenderly, just past the band of the headphones.  Finally, first one arm of the jumper pops open, then the other.  And as even Jon’s wrists and ankles fatten, the cords holding him to the chair snap one by one, and he is unbound.

He makes no move to stand, even as the chair’s creaking grows more alarming.  He likely wouldn’t make it even if he felt any urge at all to try.  He is, by this point, wedged quite firmly between the arms of the chair.  At least until it finally gives, dumping him straight to the floor, and the impact knocks the headphones off him and a belch out of him.

Jon is on all fours.  His belly drags his back into a bow, nearly touches the floor.  Beneath the blubber, it is still crammed full, and the position puts uncomfortable pressure on it.  He is huge, and docile, and fat as he looks up at Eliast, dazzlingly haloed by the lamp behind him.

No, not Elias.  Jonah Magnus, in the stolen body of Elias Bouchard.  Who has now, in many ways, stolen Jon’s body.

Jonah sinks to one knee and puts a finger beneath Jon’s first chin, tilting his face up, once again locking eyes.  And it does feel like a lock, one Jon does not have the key for, and cannot hope to break.

“Do you want,” Jonah murmurs, near-tender, “to know more?”

“So, it starts with mastication. We can fit much bigger whole objects in our mouths than you guys seem to – be able to.” Pausing only briefly for a hiccup and a wince, Grace pointed at his mouth. “We break it up mechanically, with our teeth and our tongue. See?”

“Rocky see.”

Grace had forced himself up into a sitting position, leaning back against the padded wall with his quilt around his shoulders. He hadn’t wanted to move, had felt the contents of his bloated stomach shift and slosh with every motion, but he’d known he would feel better once he was upright. The human digestive system had evolved to work in tandem with gravity, as he’d explained to Rocky when he asked why he was moving around when it obviously hurt him, based on the whimpering.

Rocky was between Grace’s legs in his xenonite ball, three legs folded beneath him like a loafing cat, two held out in front, claws spread against the panel currently pressed against the firm mound of Grace’s belly. He’d tugged his jumpsuit down and his T-shirt up in order to expose it, pale skin and dark golden hair, and it wasn’t the most comfortable position, but Rocky was curious...and warm, even through the xenonite.

It actually felt really good. Grace was kind of wishing he could sleep on his chest, but even in low-g, he’d probably break his ribs. Too bad.

“Rocky not have ‘mouth.’ Thought was wound, when first saw Grace.”

“Yeah, you guys are a sealed system most of the time; it’s cool. Anyway.” Arms draped over the top of the ball, Grace held back a belch. “Inside the mouth, there are glands that constantly secrete a thin mucus. We call it saliva. It keeps the tissue soft and wet – it doesn’t have many other protections, it’s epithelial tissue – and it also helps break down food further. There’s the moisture aspect, but it also contains enzymes. Chemical digestion starts in the mouth. That always…” Grace smiled wanly. “Surprised my students.”

“Grace sad,” Rocky observed. “Eat more now, question?”

“I think I’ve had more than enough, buddy.”

“Understand.” Grace had probably spent too much time with Rocky; he was starting to read emotions into the text-to-speech program he knew weren’t there. For example, disappointment.

“And from there, once it’s become a soft bolus, we swallow…”

Grace went on, past the epiglottis, down through the esophagus, to the stomach. Rocky listened, only commenting once to lament the sheer inconvenience of the digestive and respiratory systems sharing an opening. Grace agreed with him before continuing. Gastric acid (Rocky was terribly intrigued by the mechanism of hydrochloric acid contained in something as fragile as a human body), peristalsis, gallbladder, pancreas, small and large intestine, colon…

“And you - ” Once again, Grace stifled a burp, which he’d been doing all through the explanation. He’d really overdone it. “Know what happens after that.” It’d just seemed rude not to return the favor after what Rocky had let Grace watch him do.

“Why Grace do that, question?”

“Do what, question?”

“Hold air in.”

“Oh, right. So, that’s, uh…” Grace took his glasses off and rested his forehead against a pane of xenonite, closing his eyes. Warm. “Either air that’s swallowed while eating, or gas that’s produced by digestion. Causes discomfort, but it’s rude to let it out in front of other people.”

“Not rude for Rocky. Only disgust when Grace eat.”

“Thanks for that,” Grace mumbled.

“Grace not discomfort enough, question?” Rocky asked, and somehow, the TTS voice sounded dry to Grace.

“Okay, yeah, fine. Good point.” Grace forced himself to let out a belch, blushing slightly.Ugh, there were the sour Skittles.Of course Rocky didn’t care.

“Rocky see lot of air in digestive tract,” Rocky observed. That was one of many interesting things about Eridians: their echolocation was more like that of cetaceans than bats. They could see inside objects, especially objects as soft and penetrable as a human body. Like an X-ray. Grace sometimes wondered what Rocky knew about him he didn’t know about himself. Not this; he’d already been able to feel how gassy he was.

“Yep, that happens to me,” he mumbled.

“Grace do this before, question?”

“I’ve always been a stress eater. Surprised it took this long, honestly. With – everything.”

Grace knew that Rocky knew by now that he didn’t really like talking about Earth except in the most general sociological terms. That seemed to be fine with Rocky, who also didn’t seem to like talking about Erid, especially his mate or the dead members of his crew. Rocky changed the subject.

“Rocky not believe human stomach ♪♫♫.”

“Okay, that’s a new word.”

“Soft, shape change. Stretch.”

“Ahhhh, elasticity. Elastic.” Grace reached out with one hand, entered the new words into the database. “Yeah, it’s probably one of our more elastic organs. It was feast or famine for our distant ancestors, so we’ve still got the ability for it to stretch pretty far out.”

“Rocky tell,” Rocky said, and he didn’t have eyes, but Grace could feel him looking at his stomach. He might’ve said something snarky, but he burped again before he could. “Eridians not change shape like this. Carapace rigid. Grace round, soft. Fascinate.”

“Well, I’m glad one of us is enjoying this.” Eyes still closed, Grace rested his chin on the ball, feeling the warm points of Rocky’s claws against his belly. It made him feel a little better.

Being with Melanie, Georgie often thought, felt like nothing so much as slowly taming a wild beast, one that had come in from the cold half-lame to lie warily beside her fire.

On the one hand, she resented that that was the pattern her relationships seemed to fall into, that - domestication.  Jon had not been an awful partner by any stretch of the imagination (no matter what he seemed to have taken it upon himself to believe about their time together after she told him she thought they might be better as friends), but she did feel as though she’d spent a lot of time especially in university getting him to eat well, take breaks, and talk to other people halfway civilly…only for him to descend into an even more feral state after they broke up.  (Granted, he seemed to have had help getting there, but still.)  And now here she was with Melanie, back in the same boat, even though she’d never set out to be a caretaker.

On the other hand, the circumstances really could not have been more different.  Melanie was not Jon, similar as she may be (probably why they didn’t get along, though Georgie would never say so out loud).  Georgie did not resent her, did not see her as a burden, could not imagine ever doing so, with Melanie’s core of sheer bitter strength.  And if she’d said she did not enjoy any part of taking care of Melanie as she gentled, as she healed, as she relaxed into the life she and Georgie were building together…well.  Georgie would have been a liar, and a huge one at that.

It’d begun when Melanie had first started therapy.  Georgie had taken her for dinner after - no romantic intentions at the time, just a bit of a reward.  She knew how much therapy could take out of you, the first few sessions especially.  But she found herself shocked by how Melanie practically attacked the plate in front of her.

“God, when’s the last time you had a proper meal?”

“Dunno,” Melanie answered, then glanced up at Georgie.  “The, uh…the bullet…”  She spoke about it gingerly, less like she didn’t want to talk about it and more like she didn’t think Georgie wanted to hear.  “It didn’t.  I didn’t really feel hungry while it was in me.  Just angry.”  She swallowed.  “It was almost kinda nice, in some ways.  Saved money, at least.”

Georgie hadn’t exactly seen Melanie regularly, though of course they’d been in each other’s orbit for years, being part of the independent UK ghost-hunting community.  She hadn’t even seen her videos since she’d stopped uploading regularly.  But now Georgie looked at Melanie from across the table, what she’d taken for knife-edge hardness from whatever she’d been through and whatever it was that’d touched her…well, that was there, too, but she’d also lost weight.  Quite a bit of it.  Melanie had always favored looser clothes, but they hung off her now, and her face was nearly gaunt.

Georgie felt a surge of - something.  Not unlike whatever she’d felt when Jon had showed up at her flat needing a place to stay, but warmer, more straightforward.  Less complicated.

“Do you want dessert?” she asked.  “Let’s order dessert.”

She could not save Jon, wasn’t even sure he wanted to be saved from what had happened to him.  What was still happening.  Melanie was hardly a replacement, and Georgie didn’t want one anyway.  But she was here, she was in front of her, she was trying, and Georgie could not let her walk alone.  That feeling only intensified when she was called to pick Melanie up from hospital with bandages wound round her eyes, a referral to a plastic surgeon, and a mandate for a psychiatric evaluation.

Melanie had a fierce independence that sudden, violent blindness had not dimmed.  She had no patience for being coddled, did not want to be treated as helpless; Georgie wasn’t sure she would have had her move permanently into her flat if she had, although it was endlessly infuriating to get her to accept any help at all during that initial period.  But Georgie could be just as stubborn as she could, so eventually Melanie submitted (granted, grudgingly) to what care she needed.  Georgie cleared wider, straighter pathways in the flat, put rubber pads on the sharper furniture corners.  She helped Melanie change her bandages, and apply silicone gel when the time came, to minimize her scarring.  She accompanied her to pick out a cane, to mentally map her usual routes, to occupational therapy, to the endless doctor’s appointments.

And she fed her.

She took her out to dinner, lunch, occasionally breakfast, because Melanie desperately needed to get out of the flat and likely wouldn’t be doing it for work anytime soon.  Georgie hadn’t baked or cooked regularly for a while, living alone except for Jon’s brief paranoid residence, but she started back up, leaving pans of brownies and buns temptingly on the counter, serving up enormous, dense portions when they didn’t go out.  She found out what snacks and treats Melanie liked, and stocked the kitchen near-religiously with plenty of them.

Melanie had been gaining a bit of the weight back, in large part thanks to Georgie’s efforts, even before she’d gone at her own eyes, but now it predictably accelerated.  Her hips widened, her thighs, her arms; her belly grew steadily heavier in shape and weight both.  Her breasts filled back in.  Before they went and got her new clothes (because, while cute, her borrowing Georgie’s all the time just wasn’t practical), they overflowed the cups of her non-sports bras in plump, doughy swells, and her love handles muffined over her waistband.  Her face rounded, felt soft when Georgie cupped it in both hands to kiss her, and sometimes just to look at her.

“D’you think you’re gonna get prosthetics?”

“Urgh, fake eyes.  Think I’ve had more than enough of those…I much prefer the sunglasses, sockets, and scars look, don’t you?”

Of course they’d long since begun having sex.  In some deep-seated, barely-conscious animal way, Georgie enjoyed the feeling of Melanie’s thighs on either side of her head while she ate her out, the fluid sway of flesh when she fucked her from behind, eventually the touch of Melanie’s belly when she fucked her - after they’d gotten a new harness for Georgie’s strap that didn’t dig furrows into her.  She liked the way Melanie’s tits filled and spilled out of her hands, how large and sensitive her dark nipples had gotten, the solid shape of her ass and hips.

Georgie had always liked larger bodies, and would have liked Melanie’s no matter what, but she didn’t clock it as anything but basic preference until one day some months after Melanie had moved in.  She’d gone looking for her to ask if she wanted pasta or soup for dinner the following night, and found her lying on their shared bed, headphones on, one arm wrapped around the Admiral where he lay snuggled up against her, and eating crisps.

The sight of her - belly spread out due to the position, on full display because the shirt she had on had been too small four sizes ago, crisp crumbs in her cleavage as she shoveled them mindlessly into her mouth - had Georgie wet so fast it nearly stung.  She didn’t even tell her off for eating in bed, just turned around and left.  And when Melanie, somehow having heard her, pulled her headphones off (What the Ghost spilling audibly out, because she liked it loud and apparently didn’t get enough of Georgie’s voice as it was) and sat up to call, “Georgie?  Did you need something?” it was a fair few seconds before Georgie could reply.  In part because Melanie had burped a bit while she was talking.

Georgie knew she probably ought to feel guilty.  Making someone gain weight because it turned you on without telling them, whether you realized it yourself or not…she might not have been all that well-versed in this area, but she was reasonably confident that was a no-no.  Especially when someone was kind of-sort of dependent on you, in some areas, even if they didn’t often feel like admitting it.

The problem was she didn’t feel guilty.  She wondered in an almost academic way if that made her a bad person; probably, but she’d stopped being afraid of that when she’d stopped being afraid of everything else, so it was sort of incredible something like this hadn’t already happened.  She wondered what Melanie would think when she found out.

Thankfully, she didn’t have long to wait.  And mercifully, it was anticlimactic.  As if they were being cut a break after everything.  A break Georgie may not strictly deserve, but, well: she would take it.

The next night, after the soup (because that was what Melanie had chosen), she groaned loudly beside Georgie on the couch, took her hand, and dropped it on her round, bloated belly before declaring, “Just feel how well you’ve fattened me up, why don’t you?”

She had lifted her other hand to Georgie’s face, so obviously she felt it when she flushed.  Melanie laughed delightedly.

“I knew you liked it, I knew it!”

“You knew?” Georgie echoed incredulously.

“What, did you think I was eating like a pig just because I liked it?”  Melanie asked, lifting an eyebrow.  “Well, I mean, partly, but…”

“And you didn’t say anything!” Georgie accused.

“Neither did you!”  And she had her there, so they sat in silence a few moments, before Melanie said, “If you want to have sex with me tonight, you’ll have to do all the work.”

“Oh, did I overfeed you, then?”

“Nah.”  Melanie patted her own stomach with both hands.  “Just enough.”