THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

When you're done, you set the pail on the floor and sprawl back across the platform with Erskin atop you like a bony, sweaty blanket. You snuzzle his hair contentedly for a while. Eventually you pry your eyes open again and laugh. "We're covered with glitter. And makeup." You glance down into the bucket, where your blue and his almost-magenta are swirling into the prettiest purple. "Shake your hair over that for maximum fairy tank grubs," you suggest.

 

"Mnffghf," you explain, three-fourths asleep and accelerating.

 

"Understood, Captain," you grin, and let your head fall back to the cushions.

Some time later, you think maybe you should drag some kind of covering over him, but when you decide to grab some of your discarded clothing, your hand doesn't want to move. With a mental shrug, you let go of the idea, and consciousness.

 

You sleep, wake up to voices, sleep again, wake up to someone making you drink a big cup of sweetened saltwater, sleep more, wake up to more voices being way too loud and growl blearily at them, sleep more. You wake up aching in every part of your body and several more parts besides, make more growls, get presented with a thick slice of raw beast meat, devour it, and sink back into the slime. The pattern of sleeping, waking to snacks and water, and sleeping more persists for a significant while before you think to ask what night it is and where Kadros went.

"That was two nights ago," Lainey tells you, amused. "You like, literally fucked yourself into a coma, champ."

"Oh." You consider this. "Hee!"

"Go back to sleep. I'll tell Bel you asked about him."

"Nooo. Tell him. Tell him that. He's dumb. That's what."

"Sure thing, Cupcake."

"'nks."

"I get dibs on your next sex coma."

"'k."

You burrow back into the warm slime and sleep some more.

 

Eventually you wake up for more than two minutes at a stretch. You heave yourself out of the slime, hop-limp to the shower on your cane, and get spiffed up in your formal uniform. You're going to be wearing a lot of layers until you get some meat back, you figure, or you might gut someone with your elbows, but you'll be damned if you're going to swan around in all the filigree of your dress togs.

You check on your lizards— decently cared for in your absence by a nice communer ensign— and your tidepool— which is absurdly overrun with crabsnacks, because you are apparently the only fucking troll on this damn ship that can balance a bloody ecosystem. Nothing seems to be so badly on fire your department heads can't handle it without you, so you text Mr Jethro.

FG: when is Phisical Therupy?
FG: can i bring you Crabs
FG: wait no i can't catch them
FG: can you come here and eat my Crabs here

(respond whenever!)

 

AD: = sweet, i love crabs.
AD: = :D
AD: = gimme about half a hour, i'm helpin sigs out with a thing, then i can head over. ok?

 

TG: perfictly fine

You back out of the doorway to the tidepool block before any snacks can escape, then go have a rummage in your nutrition block, and catch Arguus in the very act of loading raw steaks into your fridge.

"Dumpling!" you say. He looks very pleased to see you, and gives one of your horns a kiss before finishing with the fridge. Then he picks you up and puts you on the counter.

"I can do my own standing now, you know," you tell him. He just grins at you, clearly not listening to a word, and pulls a steak back out. He even unwraps it for you, over your protests that you lost a leg, not your claws.

"Mutiny," you complain. "Sabotage! Also, Jethro's going to be here in a few."

Arguus blanches and makes himself scarce. You grab a plate and start in on the steak. It's something high-fat and nearly indigo, completely delicious, and you try not to fret about pricetags while you wait for Jethro. It's not going to do anyone any good if you stick to ration bars and grubloaf and delay your recovery any further.

 

Sigs has been volunteering his spare time to do pan scans for crew who had the spore plague, and you've been helping him go over the pictures looking for damage. Apparently those spores can chew a hole in your frontal lobe if they get left to their business too long. A couple-three trolls are going to want some laser surgery to remove scar tissue that's blocking regeneration. Or they would want it, anyway, if they knew it was an option -- Sigs is endlessly exasperated with the Empire's tendency to discard perfectly repairable trolls just because they got a little dinged up. You finish going over the latest scan with him, then kiss him goodbye and go get dressed in comfortable workout gear.

You don't have any kind of official equipment. Despite being trained as a physical therapist, you've been working as a writer. Fortunately, the kind of equipment you'll need for Erskin is easy to rig up: elastic bands, squishy balls, a collapsible stepstool. It's not so heavy you have to mess with your attic modus, either, you can just carry it over your shoulder.

Erskin's quarters are a good kilometer away, but that's fine, you could use a warm-up. You take the corridors at an easy jog, having fun dodging carts and soldiers, and knock on Erskin's door thirty-five minutes after he messaged you.

 

You'd forgotten, somehow, that Jethro of course wouldn't be keyed in to your quarters, only your quadrants are, and anyway Arguus goes where he likes. It takes a fair bit of huffing and wriggling to get off the counter, through your mudroom, and to the door to open it, and it's only when you go to thumb the access panel do you realize your hand's still covered in blood from the two steaks you'd managed to put away, and you've probably got more on your face.

"Er," you say, when the door comes open. "Hallo! I'd shake your hand but you'll have to give me a moment to wash up."

 

You shrug and follow him in. "Not a problem, bro. Whose blood is that?"

 

You grin. "Never met the fellow personally, I'm afraid, and it's too late for formal introductions!" You wobble off to the kitchen to go give your hand and face a quick rinse.

"There's plenty of extra steak in the fridge, if you'd like any—" you call back over your shoulder, and then the sensation of water running over your mouth makes your gills puff out on automatic reflex. It takes a few moments to scrub your chin and then get your breath back. "—it's excellent, even raw."

 

"Oh my god, I ain't had steak since Ascension. Can I use your cookblock? I'll do us a fry-up." Your mouth is watering at the thought of bloody meat with a nice seared crust. You're vaguely aware that letting him feed you omg steak might be taking advantage of the therapist/patient relationship, but you are an outdoor troll who's been caged up in space for far too long, and there are limits.

 

His unabashed eagerness makes you laugh. "I've already had two, I'm at my limit for a few hours if you don't want me to curl right back up and sleep for another night. But you go right ahead, I keep some pans for guests. Go look in the hull, Lainey's probably dropped off some of whatever veggies Bel likes. He's in and out all the time for the office off the mudroom, you know. Don't know why we haven't shifted the whole mess to his quarters..."

You're meanwhile having a rummage in your cabinets, coming up with a (somewhat dusty) pan, oil, and your salt. You order the kind of salt that comes in ten pound feedbags for livestock, because it's exactly the same NaCl that comes in expensively branded pink cartons for admirals, except with less lowblood piss. Your arms decide to completely crap out on you, though, and you drop the bag on your head.

"Whup!" it didn't particularly hurt, but it's embarrassing, and it's snagged on a horn. "Help?"

 

"Got it!" You lift it free, trying not to spill too much salt in his hair. "Idea: how bout we do therapy, and then I'll fry up steaks for afters? You'll be hungry again by then, I guarantee."

 

"Brilliant," you agree, and scrub your hands through your hair to shake the salt out. "Wait, what about the crabs? Could you take some home? It'd be doing me a favor, I'm bloody well overrun, and Lainey won't go near my tidepool for love or money. Doesn't like sand."

 

"Sure, I can't say as I'd mind having some fresh crab," you say happily. "It's just I got such a hankering for that steak..." You shoot the implements of steak-preparation a wistful glance, but gather yourself and pat him briskly on the shoulder. "Aright, let's get to work. You might wanna change into something you can sweat in."

 

You grimace, but then again, Jethro's seen you about as naked as possible. You shuffle off to the nearest bathroom to change into a greenhive set of shirt and shorts, all rumpled and loose around the seams, and shuffle back out, trying not to be overtly embarrassed at the way they hang on you. Also, belatedly, at how absurdly glittery your prosthetic still is.

"Right, how're we doing this?" you ask determinedly. "What are we doing, also."

 

"What I wanna do first is assess your mobility. Especially with a prosthetic, it's real easy to be walking just a lil' bit crooked and not know it, and over the sweeps even a few millimeters can add up and give you a bone spur in your hip or something. So I'm gonna sort of put you through your paces, and you tell me when anything hurts or feels weird, okay? Don't tough it out, I need that information." You move around behind him, a steadying hand on his shoulder. "Kay, first, just stand real straight for me and lemme feel how your spine hangs."

It's been a while since you did this, but it comes back quick -- anatomy lessons in your mind's eye overlaid with the body before you, feeling the bones under your hands, the pull of too-tight muscle, the stiffness of an overburdened joint. He's not just undernourished, he's lost nearly all his muscle mass. You've got your work cut out for you.

 

Your fins pin back at the scrutiny. You don't at all enjoy being studied like this, especially not by someone with an eye for cataloguing your every weakness and deficiency, even if that is his exact job.

"If you feel faint with admiration, we can get you a chair," you say, and smile nervously back over your shoulder. Then, forcing yourself to honesty, you admit to the few places that do happen to twinge a bit.

 

You hum thoughtfully, and have him bend side to side, stand on one leg and then the other. You come around in front of him, go down on your knees, and study his legs judgingly. "Yep," you say at last, "the prosthetic's a teeny bit too short. That'd give you a hell of a backache in a perigee or two if we let it be." You dig into your gym bag and come out with a set of adhesive rubber nubbins. Settling his artificial foot in your lap, you carefully place a few of them to correct the balance of his stance. This time, when he stands square, and you put your hands on his hips, you can feel that both hipbones are under the same amount of compression.

"There," you say proudly, "all evened out. And non-skid, too!"