Trellis
IX. Z96.9 Presence of functional implant, unspecified
by Ezra Carmichael
Tags:
#cw:genocide
#D/s
#dom:plant
#Human_Domestication_Guide
#hurt/comfort
#m/m
#scifi
#CW:dubious_consent
#dom:male
#pov:bottom
#pov:top
#sub:male
cw: brief emetophobia
Marigold was presumably a good doctor/veterinarian/whatever-they-called-it, but her bedside manner was as infuriatingly condescending as ever. She began his pre-surgery exam by cooing over how cute he was and she kept saying things like “Don’t worry, we’ll give you some xenodruggies to make you sleepy and you won’t have any owies” and “And then we make a teeny cut at the base of your neck” and “When you wake up I’m sure your owner will give you treats!”
Aprevalii, bless him, had tried to make her stop, but “My floret doesn’t like being called cute or treated like a child” was met with
“Oh, he’ll be over that nonsense soon enough. Such a cutie! You are a cutie, aren’t you? And you’ll learn that being a little cutie is the best thing you can be.”
Simeon had reminded himself that murdering an affini was not only morally wrong but also probably impossible. Aprevalii laid a comforting vine around Simeon’s shoulders and squeezed him lightly. Simeon tried to focus on his owner and on the pleasant touch rather than Marigold’s words. The exam was thorough, but that part was okay; he was having a medical procedure that was not only difficult but also carried a huge cultural weight. Affini had been implanting haustoric implants since before they’d reached for the stars, Aprevalii had told him, and while their species didn’t tend to do much in the way of rituals, to some extent the surgery was a ritual; was the ritual.
“I want to treat this properly, sir,” he’d told Aprevalii. “Wear something special going in, maybe do something with you the night before… keep vigil?”
“A vigil sounds good,” Aprevalii had said. “Sephal would approve.”
Something had been worrying Simeon in the back of his mind, and lately he found it very difficult not to spill his thoughts and feelings to his owner. It was probably something in the xenodrugs Aprevalii had him taking in preparation for the implant. “Do you, do you… sir, do you think Sephal would have approved of me?”
Simeon appreciated that Aprevalii didn’t respond with an immediate assurance that of course Sephal would have loved him. He contemplated the issue and his response was slow and uncertain. “Sephal wanted me to be happy and you make me happy” Simeon blushed “so on that level, yes, they would have approved. Would they like you? That’s harder to say. Sephal was gregarious and liked most sophonts, but just like anyone else sometimes someone rubbed them the wrong way and they coudn’t necessarily even say why. If anything, I think it’s you who might have found them a bit too… theatrically mystical. Sephal very much liked to play up the ‘wise monk’ persona and a lot of the monastery visitors found them annoying.”
The vigil itself had been good, too. Both had spent it mostly in silence, meditating; Simeon firmly wrapped up and encased in Aprevalii’s vines. Simeon had wanted to light a candle or two (or four or twelve), but the hospital, like any affini facility, had very good fire suppression and Aprevalii had decided they didn’t have time to file the paperwork to get it partially lifted. That had been wonderful. Not the decision itself, that had sucked, but the fact that he wasn’t the one who made it. Simeon’s only decisions going forward would be how he treated Aprevalii’s PTSD. Well, probably not his only decisions, since Aprevalii wasn’t up to full-service floret duty and Simeon wanted to brush his own damn teeth, but the point remained. The big decisions? The ones that really mattered? He’d given them over.
The “xenodruggies” to make Simeon fall asleep turned out to be special. “Hrevl ichor does strange things to our biology,” Marigold told Aprevalii. She actually said it Affini because of course she did, but Aprevalii very pointedly responded to her information and questions in English and Simeon generally got at least a sense what she’d said.
(Author’s note: the translations provided here are courtesy of Mats Syringa, Twenty-Third Floret who listened to a recording of the conversation. Footnotes and appendices have been eliminated, but don’t think they weren’t there. Apparently Marigold conjugates some of her verbs differently from most other Affini speaking the Terran dialect which suggests…)
“So the xenodrugs we give him have to be made specially. His hausteric implant can’t administer them automatically like a normal one could; you’ll have to monitor him constantly, just like you are now.” This last said with approval as she pointed to the blood monitor that Aprevalii always had at least one anxious eye on. “Interfacing with it will hurt, not much, but there will be a bit of burn and I can’t give you anything to make it hurt less, and you’ll have to neurally instruct the implant on what to release and when. It won’t automatically stabilize him; can’t automatically stabilize him.
“Remember, you’ll have to compile the ichor regularly, and remember that it has to be used fairly quickly: you can’t save up a supply.”
“We’ll have to compile the ichor and use it fairly quickly, so I’m guessing that means expeditions outside of Affini space aren’t going to be an option?” Aprevalii asked.
“I’d advise against it,” said Marigold. “For most other xenodrugs, you’ll need to be careful, but there are equivalents of most of the common ones he can use. No Class J’s though.”
“Simeon will be working,” said Aprevalii. “I wasn’t planning on putting him on anything that would keep him from his work.” A vine in Simeon’s hand squeezed it, and he squeezed the vine back.
“A shame,” said Marigold. “My Ella is absolutely adorable on Class J’s. Record everything you give him so that if there’s an unexpected reaction you’ll know what it was to.
“Anyway dear,” this last said in English to Simeon. “We’re ready.”
The surgery itself was a non-event for Simeon. He’d inhaled from a glass bottle, lost track of time, and woke up feeling… sick. He was lying on his stomach with his face conveniently on a pillow with an open center, so he let himself vomit.
“What’s wrong with him?” Aprevalii asked.
“Nothing, you’re fine, petal,” said Marigold, more to Simeon than to his owner. “One of the xenodrugs we had you on often makes sophonts throw up.”
“I’ve never seen a terran throw up after an implant,” Aprevalii said.
“Most of them have an implant that doesn’t interface with hrevl ichor,” she reminded his owner.
“I’m fine, sir, really,” Simeon assured Aprevalii.
“He’ll need to stay overnight for observation to make sure the implant takes properly and he may have vertigo” she turned to Simeon, “that’s being all dizzy,” Simeon glared at her, “for a week or two.”
She offered Simeon a drink of water – probably laced with something – and he sipped before sitting up. “And on my end? You said it would provide feedback to me too.”
“Yes, petal. Now, I really don’t know why you and your owner wanted this, but yes, the implant will let you know Aprevalii’s feelings,” Simeon was sure that this was a gross oversimplification, “but that won’t start until you’re a bit more settled in.”
Aprevalii reached out a vine and touched it to the back of Simeon’s neck.
The pain – apparently there had been pain? – stopped immediately. By now, Simeon was used to being wrapped up in Aprevalii, but now… Aprevalii was inside him. More inside him than any human lover had ever been.
“Try to stop breathing,” Marigold said.
Simeon tried, and couldn’t. Aprevalii was able to override his own brain’s instructions. Fuck, that was hot. “Just like you can take over his voluntary actions, you have control of his involuntary ones too. I don’t recommend using it too often for things other than the hrevl ichor monitoring. That degree of control can be more than a little addictive and we don’t want this little flower going on Class O’s now, do we?”
The vine pulled back. “Is that a risk?” Aprevalii asked. “I would never have agreed if…”
“No, not really,” Marigold said. “But if you take over too many of his functions the effect will be similar, albeit more reversible.”
Simeon started to panic and then… stopped panicking. His endocrine system was up for control, too.
“Stop that… um, sir,” he said.
“Sorry, sorry,” said Aprevalii.
Simeon knew about intrusive thoughts, but what happened next was more like an intrusive emotion. A sudden, overwhelming sense of mortification that was clearly not his. “It’s okay, sir,” he said. “Watch and monitor just like we practiced. You don’t have to engage with what you see.”
Simeon made a mental note that this might actually be a good form of meditation for his owner; logically it sounded like an extension of the external body monitoring they’d already been using to ground Aprevalii.
“We still have the blood monitor if you get worried, sir,” he reminded Aprevalii. “Or if you just want some mental privacy.”
Marigold frowned. “The blood monitor really is a stopgap measure,” she told Aprevalii. “It works, but it’s much less precise than you can be using the haustoric implant.” She turned to Simeon, “You won’t need that nasty machine again!”
Simeon reminded himself again that murdering an affini was not only morally wrong but also probably impossible.
“Observation” was, thankfully, not literal. Simeon and Aprevalii had a room to themselves with a few devices monitoring Simeon. “Sir, you can’t put it off any longer, where are we going to live?”
Aprevalii sighed. “I’d like to go back to New Melbourne, but I don’t think it would be appropriate. Most of the terrans there would not approve of my having a floret and in any case my living quarters aren’t suitable for you.”
“Sir? I spent a few weeks in them, they were fine.”
“They were fine when you weren’t my floret. Now that you are, you need to be kept in an environment that’s as close to perfect as I can get it,” Aprevalii said. “Your wellbeing is my responsibility and I will not have it said that I shirked my duty.”
“So then, where?”
“I had two thoughts. We could go to your old community at Parsqueq, or we could live on the Micras. I prefer the Micras,” said Aprevalii.
“It’d be nice to live on the same ship as Nerys, sir,” Simeon admitted. “And Liliac would probably like it too.”
“And I’d feel safer about you with full access to the Compact’s technology in case something happened,” said Aprevalii.
The night in observation passed uneventfully and in the morning Aprevalii and Simeon took a shuttle to the Micras.
“It’s you!” shrieked Nerys when they stepped onboard the ship. She ran up to Simeon and hugged him.
Aprevalii was in mild distress, Simeon realized, as the implant gave his emotions a nudge. “Sir, is everything okay?”
“I almost had a flashback of when… I almost had a flashback,” he told Simeon.
“Remember, sir, focus on me. You have full access to my biology, feel my heart beat, listen to me breathe, sir.”
Aprevalii calmed down.
“We’re throwing you a party!” Nerys announced. “Oh, sorry Mistress,” she turned briefly to Liliac before telling Simeon and his owner “It was supposed to be a surprise.”
Aprevalii was not happy at the prospect of a party. Time for Simeon to earn his keep. “I’m afraid we won’t be able to come,” he said firmly. “The last few weeks have been hectic and scary and Aprevalii needs some time alone.”
He felt Aprevalii’s gratitude.
“We’ll postpone it then,” said Liliac, equally firm.
He wasn’t going to win that argument, so he took the win he could get. Simeon bowed to Liliac and said “Of course, ma’am.” A slight twitch to his emotions told him Aprevalii appreciated that, too.
The Micras had a network of trains (or the affini equivalent) spanning its vast interior. Aprevalii’s hab was near the medical bay (because of course it was), so they took a different train than Liliac and Nerys. The train ran so smoothly that Simeon barely even noticed when it started and stopped, which gave him the opportunity to look around.
The crowd on the trains was about evenly mixed between affini and non-affini sophonts. Most of the latter were clearly florets, as indicated by one or more of a) the dopey look in their eyes, b) the collar, or c) being literally carried by an affini. Another twinge to his emotions told him Aprevalii was getting anxious, so he wrapped the vine connected to him around himself and said “Focus on me, sir. Look at me, not the crowd.” This calmed his owner down, but he made a note that large groups of affini might not be ideal. He knew Aprevalii had had a bad experience in the core systems, where he’d been surrounded by affini, after leaving Astasheth, but they hadn’t had a good opportunity to discuss it; that conversation would need to be handled carefully.
Simeon hummed and Aprevalii joined in, humming in harmony to both Simeon and himself (it wasn’t fair that the affini had multiple vocal sets). Music was good for his owner; he should look into that further. He pulled out his notebook and began jotting down ideas.
Most of the non-affini sophonts were human, but Simeon saw some Rinans and a few others he couldn’t identify. Aprevalii probably thought they were all adorable. A large group of florets with only a few affini to mind them got into the car. They were chatting, hugging, and… okay, he’d have to get used to some seriously affectionate public displays of affection. Aprevalii was calmer, he felt; cute sophonts were easier for him to manage than affini who, not being pets or pet-candidates, were presumably incapable of being cute.
Out of the train car, down a garden path (would Aprevalii be allowed to garden there? That would be good for him) and into an elevator that went up, and up, and… “Sir, how high does this go?”
“I think the Micras is about half a kilometer tall, but we didn’t start on the lowest deck. Maybe eighty stories? I wanted to give you a good view,” his owner said. “Don’t worry about falling, the Micras is watching and can suspend gravity around you. That said, it’s a fair bit of strain on the ship’s cognitive capacity so don’t like, deliberately jump. The AI will get annoyed with you.” He thought for a moment. “Well, don’t deliberately jump without asking the ship for permission.”
“Have you ever…” Simeon began, but stopped when a surge of emotion told him this was Not a Topic for Casual Conversation. Which also meant it was important and something he would eventually have to talk to Aprevalii about. “Remember, sir, focus on me. Listen to me breathe.”
The outside of Aprevalii’s hab was decorated with a mural of a large building made of red stone surrounded by purple… something or other. “Sir?”
“The monastery on Astasheth,” said Aprevalii. He was sad, but Simeon knew that sad wasn’t always a bad emotion to feel. His owner touched the mural and the outline of a door appeared and opened.
“Hello Aprevalii! Hello cutie!” chirped the hab AI.
“Sir, this was explicitly addressed in my contract,” Simeon pointed out. “Hab AIs aren’t supposed to be in floret mode for me.”
Chagrin. “Whoever set it up must have just assumed,” said Aprevalii. “Sorry, but it shouldn’t be hard to change. Do you want me to do it now?”
“Yes, sir, please,” Simeon said.
“Come on in then,” said Aprevalii.
The inside of Aprevalii’s hab was made of more red stone. Circular rugs with geometric patterns were placed seemingly at random on the floor and the walls were hung with tapestries depicting strange creatures in various poses and action. There was no furniture that Simeon could recognize beyond plump cushions on the floor and a stack of small boards that he supposed might have any number of uses. “The monastery again? Sir?” Simeon asked.
Aprevalii nodded.
“And so those creatures are hrevl?”
“Stylized depictions, but yes. You can see they looked kind of like affini, but much smaller: a central body with dozens to hundreds of tendrils growing out in all directions. They grew more as they aged; the babies didn’t even have one. Stars, but they were adorable.”
Aprevalii pulled a tapestry aside to reveal a monitor and dashboard. “Here, let’s get the AI mode fixed,” he said.
This proved to be surprisingly difficult. There wasn’t a Disable option for floret mode (“What if someone else’s floret visits you? I need to speak to them like they’re used to!”) and Aprevalii’s attempts to get Simeon recognized as a non-floret baffled the AI (“But he is a floret. Why would you want to misclassify him?”). Then Aprevalii had the idea of showing the AI Simeon’s contract, which clearly specified that hab AIs were not to use floret mode with him. The fact that Aprevalii’s request was bureaucratically justified turned out to be what the AI needed to quietly, and a bit sullenly, not use floret mode with Aprevalii’s new floret. (“He is a floret, though. All the other florets like floret mode.”)
Simeon’s own room was made with the same red stone as the rest of Aprevalii’s hab, but had an actual desk, chair, and bed. The bed, as specified in his contract, wasn’t circular but was opulent, as was the other furniture in the room; “I have to spoil you at least a little,” said Aprevalii; he lifted his pet up and placed him on the bed.
The bed moved and adjusted underneath Simeon until it was the most comfortable thing he’d ever lied on. He smiled up at his owner. “Thank you.”
Thanks as always to my beta readers. Now that we've had a nice cute chapter (don't tell Simeon) we can get back to the trauma.