"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."
"...Slightly uncomfortable," he says, "but not any worse than just feeling really dry and icky until you're all snuggled up."
"Enough that I should get another casserole dish to fill with water and stand in when I morph, or not?"
"Well, I don't know how you feel about being uncomfortable," he says. "I wouldn't bother, but that's me."
Bella looks at him, then she looks for a casserole dish, can't find one, and settles for a cake pan, which she fills with water. "Where to?" she inquires.
He looks at the cake pan, looks at Bella, and says, "...Some room with a door that closes, that we can kick everybody out of until we're done?"
"Okay. My and Andi's was empty when I was upstairs telling her and Dad." She grabs her notebook and pen with her free hand.
Bella sets the cake pan on the floor and the notebook on the desk and toes off her shoes and stands in the water. "Say when."
(He is other things instead.)
<This is the liquid equivalent of being at an uncomfortably high altitude,> comments Bella.
He picks her up and lifts her out and puts her by his ear.
(The anaesthetic is either too instinctual or not instinctual enough to reach her. It is not included.)
Right now existing seems a lot like hitting on her. Trouble gives up trying not to. He is who he is, and he feels how he feels, and right now that's scared and vulnerable and in pain and incredibly turned on.
<Damn, I thought the anaesthesia was going to be automatic, I didn't realize - apologizing would apparently be pointless - hi?>
<Hi.> Yeah, that. She's so cute, he loves her so much—for a moment it's all he thinks about, if 'thinks' is even the word for this flood of affection.
Bella gets up from the floor, pulls out a chair, and - sits down, makes him sit down, whatever the grammar is. <I'm going to wind up being high on that and not take any notes,> she says with the lightest possible reproof.
And he gets another rush when she moves him. It's so different from hosting Aspret it almost doesn't remind him of her at all; for one thing, hosting Aspret never got him off like this. Hosting Bella is like - like freefall, like orbit, like falling falling falling and never hitting the ground. The metaphor flashes through his mind in immersive detail—falling isn't something you do, it's something that happens to you, something out of your control, tumbling through icy winds with your eyes closed, scared and hurting, but you're safe, because in this metaphor there will never be anything to hit. There is only the fall.
And he really likes it.
<Your brain works so, so - I already knew it worked differently from mine but this is something else again seeing it up close,> Bella says. She picks up her pen, twirls it around his fingers a little. Turns pages to a blank one and titles it in symbols he doesn't know.
He warned her that he could theoretically guess what she might write down, but in fact when it comes to it he doesn't even try. He is far too caught up in the physical feeling of her writing with his hands. It is very, very nice.
She writes, and writes, and writes. Occasionally she stretches out his non-dominant arm, thoughtfully, then writes more.
Not completely thoroughly; there are some physical reactions missing from this equation. But pretty thoroughly all the same. Being cut off from even involuntarily affecting his body doesn't interfere at all with being in love, and it doesn't dampen the rest all that much, either.
<I would definitely not be getting any note-taking done if I were letting you pilot the autonomics,> Bella remarks.
<Pffffffffffff,> says Trouble. He loves her some more. (He has never really stopped, but the amount of attention paid waxes and wanes.)