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the experiment
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When Andi has gotten one of Charlie's friends to give her a ride to the grocery store and the unauthorized residents of the house can come out of hiding, Bella goes looking for Trouble, so to speak, and finds him in the kitchen.

"Hey," she says, "I have some more questions that I'd be asking Aspret if she was here. Charlie didn't have answers; Esclan wasn't the talkative type or the experimental type."
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"All right," he says, leaning against the counter and watching her curiously. "Go for it."

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Bella has a list, in her cipher in her notebook. "We know Yeerks acquire skills their hosts have - Aspret was baking, Esclan could drive, etcetera - and can crib personality cues pretty effectively, but it's not clear how well they can copy strictly creative abilities - could one in Robin write a song if she wasn't cooperating on any level, for example?"

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"...I don't actually know," he says. "Huh. Aspret never tried anything like that."

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"And didn't know anyone who did, and Yeerks occupying novelists or painters or whatever?"

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He thinks about it for a moment.

"...Yeah, I can't think of any Yeerks ever infesting somebody creative like that. I don't know if that means they can't do it or they just aren't bothering."
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"Okay, so I guess that's a 'no idea'... I think your Yeerk-distracting abilities have to be off the charts or they'd behave differently about infestations than they seem to, but did she know how good the baseline is?"

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"Host rebellion is a thing but it's more a physical thing than a mental thing. She hadn't heard of anybody ever doing what I did. Mostly they can just take what they want."

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"A physical thing like...?"

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"Like, if the host is really, really motivated, they can interfere with the Yeerk's control of their body, maybe even take it back for a second. Or parts of it. But distracting them, like I did, keeping them away from something you don't want them to know - nobody's ever done that before."

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"Interesting." (Write, write.) "I wonder if there's any other good strategies for fucking with them. Anything sufficiently generalized could just be thoughtspoken to a large crowd of hosts and create chaos, that could be useful."

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"Yeah, like what? And you'd better test whatever you come up with before you go yelling it to a bunch of people."

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"Yes, the testing part would be the problem."

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"Yeah?"

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"What are you getting at? Have you and Ethan and Robin been having Yeerk-related entertainments and not sharing your scientific results?"

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He snorts. "No. But I would. I bet you'd have a harder time convincing Ethan or Robin to do it for science."

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"What would be their issue with doing science simultaneously?"

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Trouble shrugs. "It's not like they've done it. I just think they'd have other things on their minds if they did. Me, I wouldn't care."

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"Indifferently scientific Yeerking. Huh."

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"Mm?"

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"If Robin and Ethan won't do science and you will, that leaves a gap in the necessary participants that has to be filled with me, Andi, Charlie, or Ax - and realistically that means me. Trying to decide if I even have a sufficiently well-defined test to run."

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"Yeah," he says, "'cause I'd definitely rather it be you."

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"Well, that and I don't think Andi or Charlie would be keen or motivated by science, and Ax has no Yeerk form and probably couldn't be induced to acquire, let alone use, one if his life depended on it, but yes. That."

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"...You know I'm not motivated by science, right?"

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"Had an inkling. What are you motivated by?"

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Trouble considers this question.

"...Y'know, I thought it'd be simple to explain that, but it's actually not at all."
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"This isn't an especially urgent experiment, if you want a while to put your thoughts in order."

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"I'm not sure time will help," he says, smiling crookedly. "I mean, if you want the short answer, it's 'I'd like it'. Or even, 'I'd really like it.' But then it gets... complicated. And very me. I'm not sure I'd know how to explain even if I took a week to think about it."

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Bella is silent for a moment, then says, "Under the circumstances, putting it into words might not be strictly necessary, although I would like to know as much as possible beforehand."

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He drums his fingertips thoughtfully on the countertop.

"I'd let Ethan, knowing he'd probably make me regret it," he says at last. "You wouldn't make me regret it. At least not the same way."
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"I'd certainly try not to, anyway - why would you let him if you'd expect him to make you regret it?"

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"'Cause I'd still want to. 'Cause I love him."

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"Would that survive the regrettable process?"

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He snorts. "Of course it would."

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"Why?"

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"I know what he'd do, and I love him now. So why would I stop if he does it?"

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"Well, I don't know why you'd let him in the first place," Bella points out.

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He shrugs.

"I don't know. I mean, I know, I just - don't know how to tell you. It wouldn't make sense."
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"Yeah, I'm getting that."

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He laughs. "What tipped you off?"

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"My ongoing confusion, what else?"

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"There's something... nice," he says, "for lack of a better word, about giving somebody I love the chance to hurt me when I can't stop them. Even if I know they're gonna do it. But it's a better kind of nice, if I don't think they are."

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"Vulnerability is appealing, even when it's not going to go well but especially when it's not?"

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"...Yeah. Maybe. I mean - it's not that it's more appealing if I think it probably won't go to hell. I just feel better about it. Like... the difference between ice cream, and ice cream somebody's poisoned. All the good parts of ice cream aren't any different, but you still want the second one less."

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"I don't want the second one at all, so this has very limited explanatory power."

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"Well, yeah, you wouldn't. The point is - imagine for a second that you wanted ice cream really, really badly, and it wasn't fatally poisoned, just the kind where you'd be throwing up for a week. The first one's still better. But it's not better because it's better ice cream, it's better because there's something wrong with the second one. The second one might even look tastier, poison and all. But the first one's what you'd rather pick."

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"Leaving aside the fact that becoming nauseous right after eating something is a pretty good way to hate that food forever, yes."

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"So, it's like that," he says. "Mostly. It's more complicated when you're talking people instead of ice cream."

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"We have a few more ingredients and aren't nearly so freezer-stable, yes."

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Trouble cracks up.

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"Is it possible to be comfortable in your head, or am I more likely than not to run into unpleasantness whether you're trying to distract me or not?"

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"Sure it's possible," he says. "There's always a chance you'll run into something nasty, and nothing's gonna stop you if you go looking, but most of the time I'm just fine."

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Bella nods.

"This is really weird," she mutters, scribbling in her notebook.
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"Which parts?"

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"The part where I am contemplating turning into an alien slug to wrap around your brain to determine the scope of alien slug brain-wrapping abilities and you're on board with the plan for unclear Trouble reasons."

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"Was 'I'd really like it' not clear, or just not clear enough?"

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"I have guesses about the details."

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"I bet you do."

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"Do you bet they are correct?"

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"Oh, probably."

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"And you are, regardless, okay with me being pretty much just scientifically motivated."

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"Well, yeah."

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"You keep saying things like that as though they should be obvious."

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"They're obvious to me. Doesn't mean they're obvious to everybody, but it does mean that's how I talk about 'em."

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"Mm." She sighs. "For the creativity part, have you got anything suitable that I haven't happened to hear about?"

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"Try cooking, actually," he says. "It's not always a creative thing, but it can be. Tell you the truth, I'm not sure there's anything I don't do creatively."

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"Okay." She sighs. "And we're going to have to tell everybody this experiment is going on so no one attempts to brain you with the tire iron if they catch me acting funny."

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He grins. "Yep."

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"Grand."

Scribble. Scribble. "If I write things down with your hands you still won't know what it means, right?"
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"...well, there's no saying I couldn't guess," he says. "And I'll be watching from closer by than usual. But no, I won't just automatically know it."

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"Or anything else? What kind of leakage from me to you do I have to worry about, you kept talking about knowing Aspret really well after being in such close quarters."

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"You won't just randomly drip thoughts," he says. "Aspret and I went through some stuff together. You're not gonna end up crying on my bedroom floor at three in the morning."

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"That is unlikely, yes." She sighs. "Renée could show up as early as tomorrow, depending on various factors, so this evening is probably best if I want to get it done this month at all and given that I haven't decided to bring Renée in on the conspiracy yet, given that you're usually a pigeon or whatever."

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Trouble nods.

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"I might be able to answer all my questions in a half hour, or maybe it'll take longer, depending on how hard it is to get used to the morph and your brain."

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He smiles and shrugs. "Okay."

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"How repellently immature is Ethan going to be when he learns this information, do you suppose?"

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Trouble laughs. "I'm sure it'll give him the giggles."

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"Right. Do you want to inform everybody or shall I?"

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"If you don't want Ethan having his giggles in front of you, I can tell him."

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"I would appreciate that."

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"All right. But can you tell your family? ...And Ax? I don't feel like being there when you tell Ax."

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"Yeah, I don't feel like you being there when I tell Ax either. I got it."

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He snorts.

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"Okay." Bella gets up and heads for the garage.

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And Trouble looks for Ethan and Robin.

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As predicted, there is a certain amount of snickering.

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Trouble is untroubled.

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Bella takes a while about telling Ax, but emerges without any blood on her clothes or other troubling signs, and then tells her father and sister, and then finds Trouble again.

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"How'd they take it? Anything I should worry about?"

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"Andi is grossed out but has no substantive objections, Charlie apologized for not having more to tell me and then got all quiet, Ax I walked through my reasoning really slowly and carefully and I think he's okay."

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He shrugs. "All right. Ethan had his giggle; Robin just wanted to know I'd be okay."

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"I'll abort if you want me to, at any time," Bella adds, "in case that wasn't clear."

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"I thought so. But yeah, it's still nice to hear it."

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"Okay. Where do you want to do this? How uncomfortable am I going to be if I go straight from air to ear with no liquid in between?"

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"...Slightly uncomfortable," he says, "but not any worse than just feeling really dry and icky until you're all snuggled up."

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"Enough that I should get another casserole dish to fill with water and stand in when I morph, or not?"

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"Well, I don't know how you feel about being uncomfortable," he says. "I wouldn't bother, but that's me."

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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.

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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?"

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"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.

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Up they go, then.

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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."

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"Go for it," says Trouble, plonking himself down on the floor next to the cake pan.

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Bella takes a deep breath, indulges a prolonged shudder, and starts morphing.

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Trouble waits patiently. Watching her morph is kind of gross, but it's not like that's a surprise, and he's not really bothered.

(He is other things instead.)
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And then there is a Yeerk, who looks just like Aspret, in a cake pan.

<This is the liquid equivalent of being at an uncomfortably high altitude,> comments Bella.
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"Yeah," says Trouble, even though he knows from experience that Yeerks don't hear the right frequencies to understand human speech.

He picks her up and lifts her out and puts her by his ear.
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It takes her longer than it maybe should to figure out how to squeeze in. The instincts are farther away for her than they would be for anyone else in the shape. But eventually she narrows and wriggles in the correct way.

(The anaesthetic is either too instinctual or not instinctual enough to reach her. It is not included.)
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He wasn't even going to ask her to forget that part when she burrowed in - it would seem too much like hitting on her.

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.
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The rearranging of the ear is over before she figures out how to sink in around his brain. The two-hemisphere setup takes a moment to work out, and then -

<Damn, I thought the anaesthesia was going to be automatic, I didn't realize - apologizing would apparently be pointless - hi?>
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<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.

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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.

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Trouble is so entirely not sorry.

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.
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<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.

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In his own little corner of his mind, Trouble giggles. Of course she couldn't have known until she saw it for herself. Bella is very, very good at being Bella and not remotely good at being Trouble. The only person who is good at being Trouble is Trouble.

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.
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She writes, and writes, and writes. Occasionally she stretches out his non-dominant arm, thoughtfully, then writes more.

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Trouble sits in the back of his mind and enjoys himself thoroughly.

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.
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<I would definitely not be getting any note-taking done if I were letting you pilot the autonomics,> Bella remarks.

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<Pffffffffffff,> says Trouble. He loves her some more. (He has never really stopped, but the amount of attention paid waxes and wanes.)

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<I think I have separate control of whether I let you bleed through in that respect or not, but it is not part of the scope of the current tests.>

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<Yeah, you do.>

This is a thing he learned from Aspret. And now he's thinking about it. They are nice thoughts.
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Bella taps her pen on her notebook, distracted. <Paying attention to two entire brains at once is a trip. The morph is equipped for it, but I'm not sunk that deep into it so I can still notice how very weird it is.>

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<And here I am being distractingly into you. Or would it be just as distracting if I started thinking about cake?>

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<I think concentrating on me is more distracting, though possibly not by much.> She resumes ciphering. She crosses his ankles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She is Bella, and she is being herself, and she is wrapped around his brain controlling his every move while he helplessly watches. Of course he's going to be turned on. He couldn't not. It's too perfect. And now he is thinking about the feeling of her wriggling into his ear again, mmm.
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<Shall I also omit the anaesthetic on my way out, now I know it's not automatic?>

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

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

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

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

Writing. Writing. <Okay, I think I'm out of preliminary notes. Now to think of something creative you can decline to help me with...>
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The first thing that flashes into his mind is that there is probably no way in hell she could accurately mimic how he talks. Oh, the bulk of his casual everyday conversation, maybe, but when he plays with sound and emphasis and vocabulary the way he did in their very first conversation - no. It's too him. She could produce an imitation, but it would not be the real thing.

For that matter, he's not sure she could move like he does, either. Muscle memory is on her side there, though, and it'd be harder to judge.
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She tries moving, first, sets down the pen, sprawls in the chair. Smiles his smile.

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

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

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

<I am actually one hundred percent certain you couldn't fool Ethan, but mostly because I'm pretty sure you'd deck him in under five minutes if you tried to talk to him by ourselves.>
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Bella inspects memories for sample violence-inducing conversational openers.

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

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

She doesn't comment on whether she'd deck Ethan.
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Trouble is terribly curious. He doesn't think she would necessarily specifically deck him, but he is extremely confident that she wouldn't be able to laugh it off as casually as he does. The art of telling Ethan to go fuck a log if he's that hard up is its own kind of creativity. (Now does she see what he meant about so many things being like that?)

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<I'd be tempted to reuse a previous quip if he started acting like that to me under the impression that you were alone in here. I don't think my brand of snark is similar to yours and I don't seem to be coming up with anything you-style whatever I try.> She sits back down, all Trouble-sprawled.

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<Guess that's an answer to the creativity thing, huh?>

He likes it when she Trouble-sprawls. He likes it a lot. She's better at it than he expected. She's not him, but she's picking it up fast. He wouldn't swear to anyone else being able to tell, if she didn't slip up and do something Bellifluous.
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<Partially. I mean, I'd still have your voice, and if I didn't already know English I could get a handle on it just by inhabiting you and by the same token I think I could talk through your understanding of the language and with your accent instead of mine, which would go a long way - I wouldn't make any vocabulary mistakes or anything that way. It's the fine details of making things up de novo that'd be the problem. I bet Yeerks probably use previously rejected ideas for things to say or just reuse lines a lot...>

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<Yeah. And I mean, if your host didn't have a really distinctive way of talking, you could probably get by. I'm just inconvenient like that.>

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<Yep.> She writes some more, abandons sprawling in favor of a position more finely optimized for writing.

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Trouble goes back to just being in the moment. It is a good moment to be in.

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She looks at the clock with his eyes, scribbles a last note with his hand, sits him on the floor again and puts his hand near his ear.

<Out I go.>

She doesn't anaesthetize on her way out, although her path has already been paved by her trip in.
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He loves her all the way.

And then he puts her back in the cake pan and hugs his knees. His ear hurts. And feels faintly slimy.
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She demorphs. It's pretty gross.

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Trouble is nothing but delighted.

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"You good?" she inquires, stepping out of of the cake pan and shaking water off of her feet.

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"I'm good," he says sunnily. "I love you."

And now she knows what that feels like.
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She does. She blushes.

She steps back into her shoes once her feet are dried off on the rug.

And says, "If Ethan ever overdoes it - I don't know where you would actually draw the line, but if he ever stumbles over it - I will help you if I find out."
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"Thanks," he says, more surprised than he should be but an entirely appropriate amount of touched.
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Bella puts her hand on his shoulder briefly, then picks up the cake pan in one hand and the notebook in the other and lets herself out.

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Trouble just sits with it for a while. He doesn't know if this is ever going to happen again; every part of the experience is worth savouring.