Sundry and Assorted Fanfictions

Every department head got an Institute credit card; it was standard practice.  Rather than going through Elias for every little thing their department needed, they could pay for supplies, equipment, repairs on their own.  Communal snacks for their break room, the occasional catered lunch or meal out for their team.  So long as the receipts were kept, they had an awful lot of discretion.

When Elias explained all of that to Jon during the (intentionally inadequate) onboarding for his new position), Jon stared down at the card he’d been passed, and asked almost suspiciously, “Just the receipts?”

“Turned in quarterly, yes.  So they can be filed when the balance is paid, and so we can be certain the card hasn’t been stolen.”  It was a near-vestigial system, Elias was fully aware.  Especially lacking for a research institution, and he did occasionally mourn the forms and systems he could have set up.  But of course he had plenty of methods of monitoring the purchases of his management level, and it served him in countless ways to appear detached and mildly incompetent.

“I see.”  After a moment, Jon brought his wallet out to put the card away.  Extremely poor practice, but Elias said nothing.  “What’s the limit on it, then?”

“You won’t meet it.”

“Just so I know.”

“I don’t recall it off the top of my head, but I’d say roughly…the yearly salary of one of your assistants?  Give or take five or ten thousand pounds.”  When Jon choked, Elias explained patiently, “The intention was so heads could make large equipment or labor purchases without the inconvenience of contacting someone to raise the limit.  A relic from the paranormal boom of the 60s and 70s, when I’m told we had much more funding.”  He turned to his checklist and crossed off GIVE CARD.  “You won’t max it out unless you try to repair the archives’ climate control system - which, as I’m sure goes without saying, you do not have permission to do.”  He glanced back up at Jon.  “But if you manage to make satisfactory progress on filing, organization, documentation, the like, I’ll see if I can’t bring it up to the donors next year.”

“Right,” Jon said after a beat, and they moved on.  It was a bit embarrassing, but that was more or less the moment Elias forgot completely about the card.  It was the factor he was very least concerned with, in Jon’s new role as Archivist.

When offered the job, Jon had been excited, trepidatious, had adopted a persona even sterner and more arrogant than his usual one to hide his insecurity.  As the weeks passed and Jon began to fully understand the scope of the state things were in, his mood soured.  Anxiety, frustration, resentment - aimed at his predecessor Gertrude, at Eliast for letting things get this bad, at poor Martin Blackwood who, while certainly unqualified, seemed to have become something of a scapegoat since Jon couldn’t actually do anything to the former two objects of his ire.  Elias Watched him carefully, which was how he came to discover Jon was a stress-eater.

It started small enough.  Eating an entire bag of crisps as soon as he got home in addition to dinner, waking up at midnight for an ice cream binge, killing an entire bottle of wine when he ordinarily only drank on weekends.  He began stopping for fast food on the way to and from work, then going out for lunch.  He snacked at his desk, biscuits and chocolates.  At least he was careful not to eat while recording, and not to get crumbs or stains on archival materials.

Jon had put on a little weight, Elias noted one way, watching him bend over to, sweating and cursing, wrestle with a box of statements in his office; his ass, pressed against the seat of his trousers, looked decidedly rounder.  And then he put on a bit more.  And a bit more.

Surely Jon had begun using the card by then, or shortly after.  Elias wasn’t actually sure.  Oh, he could check, certainly, but that wasn’t the point.  The fact he hadn’t noticed was.

It was, he knew, a combination: of petty revenge against him and the Institute as a whole, because Jon was growing even more disgruntled with the apparent futility of the task he’d been handed and didn’t quite understand how to do, and of simple practicality.  Jon’s grocery bill and his appetite were increasing every week, after all, and the way things were going, he’d soon have to buy new clothes.  How could he resist a readily-available card whose use he’d been told he didn’t have to justify?

Elias Watched the quality of Jon’s weekly shop slowly improve with nothing but faint pleasure that he finally seemed to be using the substantial raise his position had brought.  As he got bolder, Jon was treating himself in other ways, too.  While he still indulged in fast food, he’d begun going to nicer restaurants as well, steadily working his way up the chain in terms of both quality and expense.

Elias would have been lying if he’d said he didn’t enjoy Watching Jon grow steadily more confident in an environment where he obviously didn’t have much prior experience.  Going from nearly shy, ordering only dessert and a glass of the least-expensive wine, to almost imperious, luxuriating in multiple courses and a truly excellent vintage, leaving the restaurant with his trousers discreetly unbuttoned…yes, Elias liked that quite a bit.

There was a lot he was enjoying Watching.  Jon becoming greedier and more gluttonous, buying more, ordering more, eating more, every meal - and a great number of the increasingly-frequent in-between snacks - leaving his belly heavily, visibly bloated, straining against buttons, belts, and zippers.  Jon growing round and plump and, honestly, rather quite spoiled on a steady diet of rich food and delicacies.  Jon upgrading his wardrobe - to very nice clothes, Elias noted; they looked excellent on his new, much more rubenesque frame.

Ordinarily, Elias would have been keeping much better track of all the expenses charged to the department cards, Archives very much included.  But he’d been slacking off in that area lately.  In every area, really.  It seemed he’d finally found something he liked looking (and Looking) at more than spreadsheets.

And of course Knowing still took effort.  It was not an entirely automatic, unconscious process, as Elias hoped it one day would be for Jon.  So he had no inkling that one of the cards was approaching its limit for the first time in decades until the bank called him.

Downstairs, Elias exchanged brief pleasantries with the assistants, smiled politely at Tim’s joke about there not being any cake.  He went into Jon’s office, closed the door behind himself, and then drew the shade for good measure.

Jon looked up, but didn’t rise.  He’d gotten lazy.

“You little pig,” Elias said calmly, and only the way he bit out the last word betrayed how he was really feeling.

Jon’s expression flashed from shocked to offended to stricken to sullenly, petulantly consternated as he quickly puzzled out exactly why Elias had come.

“I have the receipts - ”

“Oh, the receipts.”  Elias crossed the office.  “For over twenty thousand pounds’ worth of food, clothing, and restaurant bills?”

The stricken look was momentarily back, laced with shock.  “I-I didn’t realize - ”

“You didn’t realize.  No, of course you didn’t; couldn’t take a moment to track or tally your spending.  You were far too busy stuffing your face.”  Jon might’ve grown fat on Institute funds (just over five stone gained, Elias Knew), but Elias was still larger than him.  Taller.  He used that height now to loom as he stood on the other side of the desk.  “Do you have any idea the financial hardship you have placed on this institution?  On our donors?  Honestly, Jon - it probably would’ve cost less if you’d just repaired the damn climate control!”

Jon had been eating when Elias came in, because of course he had.  When Elias planted his hands on the desk and leaned forward, he could see the curve of his gut behind his vest, swollen from the day’s overindulgence.  Breakfast, something that could be called brunch, the snack Elias had interrupted, half-empty soda and third sleeve of biscuits sitting on the edge of the desk…  Jon smothered a belch as Elias watched.

“You said it was up to my discretion - ”

“What discretion, Jon?  Look at the state of you.  Look at the size.”

“That’s uncalled - ”

“What was truly uncalled for was the bill you racked up at Sanguine last week.  Surprised you didn’t burst.”

“I used it for - ”

“It was to be used for the department, not to make an utter hog of yourself.”

“Other heads - ”

“Twenty thousand pounds, Jon!  On a credit card!”

“Maybe you ought to consider it appropriate compensation for the bloody mess you foisted off on me!”  Spite glinted in Jon’s eyes, behind his glasses.  “I rather did, I’ll admit, but if you would listen - ”

“No, you listen to me, you overfed brat.”  And Elias reached forward, and grabbed hold of Jon’s face with one hand, fingers and thumb digging in on either side of his mouth.  His cheeks had gotten chubby.  Jon’s eyes went wide and he planted his own hands on the desk, but he did not try to pull away, although out of shock, fear, or something else Elias didn’t know.  “You want to eat: fine.  You want to gorge yourself to your heart’s content: fine.  I’ll feed you.”

“What?” Jon mumbled, voice somewhat muffled by Elias’s hand.

“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.