resident big guy

“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.

Simon did not like to talk much about – for lack of a better term – his universe. There were the basics: the Quiet Rapture, the Blood Moon, the submarine, what had happened to his left arm and eye and face. What Grace and Rocky and the Eridians devoted to keeping the two of them alive absolutely needed to know to try and figure out what had happened (they still hadn’t, not really). He mentioned Eden, the Coalition. The One Tree. But only rarely, and even though Grace felt like he was about to explode with curiosity, he found out fast that asking questions was the surest way to get Simon to clam up. He didn’t like feeling like he was only being used for information which, given what little he knew, Grace understood.

But the more time Simon put between himself and the sub, the more he seemed to...unclench. Like a fist. And the information came slowly out of him in drops, like blood from a wound that refused to heal.

Space, like many commodities, had been at a premium on stations and ships, and that’d become massively more true after the Quiet Rapture, when suddenly, all the supplies and materials that existed were now the only ones that would ever be made. Simon had spent his entire life sharing bunks and showers and meals and air, even after being captured and convicted of something he was still vague about; the first and only time he had ever been truly alone had been in the SM-13.

“Seems like an insane amount of space for two people,” he commented quietly, looking out the window at the ocean.

“Well, it’s a planet,” Grace said reasonably, not pointing out it was really three people, given the amount of time Rocky spent in here. “Things are different. You can afford to spread out a little.”

Food was something else that came as a culture shock to Simon. Grace had expected to have to offer up a lot of explanation about what little was available, but Simon took to taumoeba and enriched shakes with zero complaint because, as it turned out, it wasn’t that far off from what he’d always eaten. Tank-grown protein, glucose, and fiber, printed into slabs and slurries, portioned precisely out to each person based on their bare baseline biological needs given age, mass, activity level, and job.

“I was a fighter. They fed us more than anybody else,” Simon said, which answered the question Grace had been struggling not to ask: how the heck had he gotten those muscles if the situation was that dire? “Seems a waste, given they were expecting us to die, but...I guess everything got wasted in the end.”

He wasn’t even bothered by Grace-burgers. The people of Eden ate most of their dead, both processed and holistic.

“‘Feeding the roots’ was a euphemism by the time I was grown up. There were crops when I was a kid, but they kept failing, and we could use the protein better other places. All the other stuff that went into soil and hydroponics, too.” Simon touched the seed hanging from one wrist, resin encasing it half-cracked and shot through with dark blood. “Except for the Tree. That...we kept going as long as we could.”

Food was not a source of pleasure for Simon, culturally or personally. He seemed faintly baffled by Grace’s excitement when the nutrition hive finally began to make breakthroughs – in plants, in flavors, in synthesizing ingredients and compounds. At least until he got him to try what were, in Grace’s opinion, some of the best foods that an Earth Simon had never known had to offer.

“Ancient humans couldn’t just read the labels on things to figure out what the calorie count or nutrition facts were,” Grace explained, recycling a lecture he’d given his students (as he often did), “so they evolved a highly developed and selective sense of taste. ‘Sweeter’ usually means ‘higher in calories,’ which is why sugar tastes so good to us; same for things that are fatty or rich. Salt was hard to come by for most of human history, even if you lived right next to the ocean the way we do now, so we’re highly attuned to that, too.”

“I think,” Simon mumbled around a mouthful of ice cream (milk proteins extracted from a bioengineered strain of fungus, sugar synthesized in an Eridian lab, strawberry flavor derived from citric acid produced by bacteria), “I get it.”

Capsaicin and fermentation were a huge hit, when the Eridians developed them. Grace imagined that Simon’s palate craved stimulation after a lifetime of the blandest diet his sect had to offer, and explained the capsaicin-pain-endorphins link to him. He seemed to find it interesting; he seemed to just like listening to Grace talk. Usually while he was eating. It wasn’t long before Simon seemed more excited for whatever the nutrition team cooked up next than Grace was.

Grace was trying not to treat Simon like a project. He knew that’d be a dynamic too easy to fall into. But he couldn’t help enjoying the fact that Simon had started to...well, enjoy life, and that he’d helped him get there. Instead of sleeping on his side with his remaining limbs tucked in and wrapped around himself, like someone who knew he was bigger than average and was trying to take up as little space as possible, he began to sleep spread all the way out in the bed. (“Could build bigger one,” Rocky commented once, seeing Grace trapped beneath Simon’s outflung right arm and leg. Grace assured, “No, this is perfect, actually.”) He still refused to so much as touch Grace’s ocean, but he at least came out of the house to sit on the porch and, eventually, the beach. And he seemed to finally not only realize that he could eat as much as he could hold, but that he wanted to. They weren’t going to run out, he wasn’t going to get in trouble...and the food was good.

“Overdo it?” Grace asked with a chuckle the first time Simon gorged himself to the point he couldn’t keep his eyes open. It was the day the Eridians had finally cracked deep-frying, after working around the issue of the increased atmospheric pressure. They’d dunked just about everything in there, and most of it seemed to have wound up inside of Simon.

“No, think I did it just about perfect.” Simon groaned contentedly where he had stretched out the floor. Grace’s shirt, always a little small on him, put the visible bloat of his belly on proud display. “Wanted to find out how much I could eat.”

“And?” Grace sat down next to him, reached out, put a hand on him to feel the warmth and movement of digestion. Simon did not flinch from the touch.

“More’n I thought.” But he kept testing his capacity. As a good scientist, Grace could appreciate that. Especially because it was clearly increasing.

“Simon okay?” the head food scientist asked anxiously from within their xenonite suit the first time they saw Simon doze off at the table, so full he slumped comfortably against Grace, chin on his shoulder. “Understand biology different from Grace, but didn’t think would poison - ”

“No, no, no, he’s fine,” Grace was quick to assure them. They’d been so proud about finally mastering baking they’d come into the dome to deliver the preliminary results in person; he didn’t want them to think they’d done anything wrong. “He just ate too much. It means he likes it. He sleeps after eating.”

“Like Eridian.” The scientist perked up considerably.

“Yeah! Like Eridian.”

That information quickly disseminated to the rest of the hive, who clearly took it as a compliment and began to almost aggressively cater to Simon’s tastes. Sour, spicy, salty, rich. Grace suspected Simon wouldn’t have needed the encouragement to eat, but he certainly wasn’t complaining about it.

Erid’s gravity was much higher than anything Simon would have ever been accustomed to. Both of them had much higher caloric needs than they would have on Earth (and Grace suspected Simon’s were higher than they had been before he’d encountered whatever mutagen the blood contained – he was aching to run tests, but knew better than to ask). But the fact remained Simon was doing very little besides eating and sleeping. Portions of the muscle he no longer needed to maintain melted off him, and fat gathered at his waist in a growing belly and love handles. Grace straddled his thickening thighs and rubbed the salve that they both used for the scars on their arms into the solid flesh of him, warding off stretch marks.

Grace still needed a coat or cardigan to ward off the PNW chill of the biodome, finally perfect after much temperature tinkering from the environment hive, but Simon could now make do outside in nothing more than a T-shirt. They sat together on the sand after the nutrition hive’s latest triumph, Simon nearly asleep, leaning heavily against Grace as Grace almost absentmindedly kneaded at his gut. There was something soothing about the weight of him, about the softness.

“You fall asleep, you’re gonna miss dinner,” he murmured to Simon.

Adrian did have to admit that, now that they had properly worked out its nutritional needs, Grace seemed much more comfortable.

When it was first brought down to the planet’s surface, it had been unclear whether or not it would even survive in its frail state, or if its starvation was too advanced. They had all been desperate to save it...and none more desperate than Adrian. Grace had returned its mate to it, and it was plain to it that said mate would likely not survive without Grace.

It was only too easy to love Grace as Rocky did. For Rocky’s sake, and for Grace’s own.

Even if Rocky’s love was a little...strange.

Watching Grace eat for the first time had been shocking. Of course Adrian had seen it eat while it was still in recovery; that was different. There was no shame in needing assistance with various needs while unwell, and Grace had been deeply unwell. Sickness had a way of negating privacy. But this was once it was strong enough to feed itself in privacy and had been for some time, even if it remained weak and spent much of its time in its bed.

Adrian had been brought by Rocky. It had been unaware until they arrived what the purpose of this visit was, but it remained. It was a biologist. It should observe this. Rocky said eating was a social activity for humans, which was fantastically, intriguingly bizarre.

Rocky had brought food. It spent most of the meal crouched on Grace’s bed, encouraging it to eat more of this, of that, it had worked with the nutritionists on this specifically, Grace needed it…

Grace spoke. Adrian was not yet fluent then, so its voice was filtered through the computer program it and Rocky had apparently used to communicate in the beginning, pops and cracks and hisses coalescing near-magically into broken speech. “Not look disgust when Grace eat anymore, question?”

“It is different now,” Rocky said in that stubborn tone Adrian had thought it used only for it, and reached out to put a claw on Grace’s abdomen, something the new, better-articulated suit allowed. “Keep eating.”

Once Rocky was finally satisfied, Grace settled back into the soft bedding its fragile body required with a huffing groan, and Adrian listened to it critically as it dozed, hearing around where Rocky’s claw remained on it.

“I think you overfed it,” it told Rocky. “Its abdomen is swollen. We should call a doctor.”

“Humans need to eat more than Eridians,” Rocky explained. “The stomach expands for a reason.” And that did actually make sense. Grace seemed more than happy to eat.

Rocky took the feeding of its alien very seriously, and Adrian followed its example. It had, after all, had years to become an expert. Grace did not ask for food or express hunger often, but according to Rocky, this was ordinary; when it had just been the two of them, Grace had often forgotten to eat and sleep. Seeing the zealousness with which it threw itself into its projects (which so mirrored its own), Adrian could believe it...and understand what, beyond mere loneliness, had so drawn Rocky to it in the first place. Adrian, too, felt a great desire to care for Grace, and was pleased that their efforts were bearing fruit.

Eridians did not grow once they reached maturity, or change shape outside of catastrophic injury. Humans, having an endoskeleton and being from a much lower-pressure environment, were not the same. Starvation was outwardly obvious in their shape. When Adrian first met it, Grace had been so weak and in such pain it could barely remain awake, let alone walk or speak; its tissue had been wasted tight against its bone, its soft, velvety carapace pitted with weeping sores, the light organs and oral cavity in its skull swollen. Even its organs had sounded diseased inside it, soft slushy noises to cardiac and pulmonary systems, silence from its digestive tract – which became extremely frightening when Rocky explained how noisy it was supposed to be.

But now the sores were healed, its digestive system had recovered, and its shape had become, as Rocky said it was meant to be, full and broad. And its recovery obviously continued, as it continued to grow. Rocky was insistent that the much-lauded but ever-suffering hive in charge of Grace’s food continue to increase the caloric content even as they varied flavor, texture, and variety.

Adrian rested in the sand of Grace’s beach or the floor of the house Rocky had designed for it, and arranged its limbs to hold Grace as it ate. As Rocky fed it. The perversity of the act was shocking, dulled by its repetition. With frequent admonitions that it wasn’t eating enough, Rocky touched Grace’s abdomen, its belly, and so did Adrian, feeling its stomach swell to capacity beneath its claws. It found it enjoyed the many noises it made, not unlike Eridian emotional declarations, although they were not actual words. Grunts, groans, sighs, moans, whimpers...something very like a purr, once it was properly fed. When Rocky or, eventually, Adrian rubbed its inflated belly, or stroked its hair. Very gently, of course. It was fragile.

Grace grew soft and round, exactly the opposite of an Eridian. There was something thrilling about its sheer alienness. Its clothing fit it properly again, tight to its carapace. It often seemed sleepy, content in its perpetual fullness; it had nothing to fear, watched over by Rocky and Adrian. Its gait changed as its lower limbs thickened, becoming wider, rolling; it reminded Adrian of how hatchlings walked, even steadied by the cane Rocky made for it as the gravity wreaked havoc on its joints, and perhaps that contributed to its protectiveness of it.

“It eats like it’s preparing for eggs,” Adrian overheard one of the lab assistants muttering to another once. They both jumped upon realizing, when Adrian moved from behind a counter with an angry burst of sound, that it had heard them.

“Don’t be vulgar,” it scolded. “If you believe Grace deserves none of your respect, you should not be caring for it.” It was, of course, very aware of the fact that caring for and communicating with their first and only alien was the most coveted position on the planet. “Its species doesn’t even lay eggs.”

Much to Rocky’s dismay, it added silently and wryly to itself, thinking of Rocky cooing and chirping over Grace. It surprised it sometimes it felt no jealousy, but...the situation was so very unique. And so was Grace.

Adrian often visited it alone now, always with food. As it approached one day, Grace’s heartrate rose and its posture changed when it saw it, and it met it in the sand, sinking down immediately with a grunt to settle against Adrian. It felt cool through the panels of its suit, its flesh folding forgivingly against and around its limbs.

“Hello, Grace.” Adrian wrapped a limb over the near-liquid spread of its belly, feeling the wonderful give of it. Definitely not full anymore.

“Time to eat again already, huh?”

“Yes, dear one.” Adrian began removing items, carefully wrapped, from the bags slung around its suit. “I brought more this time; Rocky says you need it.”

“Yeah, I just bet he does.” Grace stretched luxuriantly, then grimaced. Adrian heard it tug its shirt, ridden up with the movement, back down. “I might have to talk to the food science team one of these days about what they’re feeding me. The stuff they’re making now tastes great. Don’t get me wrong. And don’t tell them I said anything yet, but. I’m really getting kinda -/--./.”

Voiceless labiodental fricative, short cardinal vowel sound, linguolabial plosive (Adrian had been spending too much time with the linguists lately). A new word. Those were rare these days. “What are you becoming?”

“Oh, I tried to explain it to Rocky...it’s really not a concept you guys have. Can’t happen to you. Lucky.”

“Grace…” Its name meant something not unlike “soft” or “gentle,” which was quite fitting. Adrian admitted, “Your people are obviously very accomplished, but I do not understand how you get anything done, with how much you need to eat.” Six or seven meals over the course of its day-night cycle, and it often ate in between, too. “And how much time you spend digesting. Do you exist in a perpetual state of starvation? Do you cycle out who is allowed to eat properly by group or caste?” Are we the first ones to take care of you properly?

“Oh, yeah, no, that’s...that’s really not how it works.” Grace made its gesture for an emphatic no, head turning side to side. Adrian heard the blood flow to its face increase: embarrassment, self-consciousness. “We, uh...we don’t actually eat this much, usually. I’ve kind of been making a -//.- of myself lately.”