" Nick ." He swiveled. He knew that voice. Nora looked different, cleaner. It was a good look, how she should have looked. The institute issued clothes were the only neat thing in the room. "Sigma Upsilon 10-27-49." The last thing he noticed before he blacked out was the look on her face. She looked guilty, expression giving away her true feelings no matter how she tried to hide it.
"Subject has been neutralized." Nora looked to the courser that had come up behind her. "Ready him for transport."
He woke up, groggy and aching, but otherwise none the worse for wear. He felt as if he had been hit by a shovel, splayed across the dingy mattress he used as a bed. It was a little while before the searing ache between his legs that radiated upward to his stomach caught his attention. Nick clenched his eyes closed, horror struck, before covering his face with his hands. No. No. This was not happening. He had hated the body Nora had put him in before but this, this was so much worse. A sob managed managed to escape him before he pushed all of those thoughts out of his mind. A dull pang of sick recognition hit him hard, and he felt a wave of nausea at the prospect. She had somehow put him into the old body Nick had once had, before the bombs, before Jenny, before sweet oblivion had wiped it all away and replaced it with with a sexless cuntless robot body. It had been plain enough but it had granted him a body he could have passed in, he had passed in. She had given him a taste of it - passing, and being wholeheartedly and decidedly male, and ripped it from him as easily as tearing off a bandage. Of course there the mercenary was, right beside him. Kellogg had slept through it all, somehow managing to remain sleeping even after Nick had cried out. He didn't know whether that was reassuring or not.
"What kind of synth technology is this that I can get sick?" He closed his eyes. The room was spinning, and he could taste the acid of vomit rising in his mouth.
"How long has it been then since you've been sick like this then?" Kellogg asked, half asleep still.
"A long long time."
He remembered - the old Nick threw up after Jenny's funeral but that was centuries ago. He remembered being horribly sick. He remembered being pregnant .
He covered his stomach with his hand, body clenching when he noticed the ongoing pressure that had grown uncomfortable somewhere low in his belly. It ached, and he lifted his shirt to peer below the striped shirttails, half expecting a bruise, or blood pooling, something that would explain the feeling. Instead, a square patch of skin roughly a few inches across stood out red and raw where he had been cut open and the wound had been cauterized. He didn't remember where he had gotten it. That wasn't good.
He traced the stinging lines, feeling how beneath his skin something swelled, pressing outward. Nick's eyes squeezed closed and his palm pressed into the swell. He groaned under his breath, the uncomfortable feeling building to a painful cramping sensation.
Nick turned to look back, letting his shirttail drop, still clutched in one hand, a sliver of skin visible along the slight curve of his stomach. "Did you know about this? Any of this?"
"Any of what?" Kellogg stepped forward, pulling the edge of his shirt up. A finger trailed up the edge of the slight bulge through the dusting of dark hair that led a line bisecting the swell. He made a sound of recognizable confusion.
Nick shoved him back hard enough to make him stumble when he realized he was touching him like that, in such a tender way, his shirt tearing when Kellogg fell back. "What did they put inside me?"
"I don't know. A prototype probably. But for what, I don't know." Kellogg had his body against the wall, arms outstretched to catch his fall. "Never seen anything like this before."
"Do all the cybernetic implants hurt like this?" His belly throbbed, the cramping coiling like red hot tendrils around to his lower back.
"They itch more'n anything." Kellogg's eyes never left his frame. "That's the skin healing over them where the grafts took, though. Never had a real problem like that." He found his footing, and crossed his arms. "Got migraines the first week I had them drill into my skull, but that went away too."
"This... this isn't anything like a migraine!" Nick sounded hysterical, his hand curled around the abnormal bump like a claw. The throbbing subsided in his belly, the ache starting to travel to his lower back.
"You're not going to solve anything by panicking."
"Easy for you to say, you're not the one who woke up like this." Nick dropped into an armchair, head in his hands. The very idea of being opened up by the Institute and experimented on again without any memory of it made bile rise in his gorge, and he swallowed it, the taste lingering in his mouth. He retched, shoulders shaking. "I don't even know what sort of use this thing is supposed to have."
Kellogg wasn't any good at consoling anyone, but he leaned his hip against the edge of the armchair. "Probably was Nora's idea. If it were, she wouldn't want you dead."
Nick swallowed, hard. He wasn't sure if Kellogg was right. It made sense if he was, but that wasn't something he wanted to chance.
"Relax."
"You're one to talk. You're used to experiments." Nick stood up, and Kellogg took gentle hold of his wrists.
"She wouldn't try to hurt you."
Nick wasn't too sure about that. But Kellogg was reassuring somehow, his hands dropping Nick's wrists after a moment. He had a palm on the side of Nick's cheek and the detective leaned in, pressing their mouths together. "I'm choosing to trust you on this. Don't make me regret that."
"Mm, poor decision on your part." He smirked and pulled Nick in closer, arms twining around his waist.
Nick backed him to the bed and let Kellogg fall on top of him. He was insatiable for some reason, and Kellogg was all he needed at that point.
"Aren't all of my decisions poor ones after all?" Nick asked, letting Kellogg get a hand into the front of his trousers and swipe his fingers across Nick's wet slit. It sent a shiver down his spine and a breathless sound escaped him.
"That good?" Kellogg raised an eyebrow, grinning at him.
"I don't want you to stop." Nick responded, breathless and shaking. He hated it, he hated the way Kellogg didn't even bat an eye at the change, he hated the heat that was coiling in the pit of his stomach at the lightest touch.
"Want me to fuck you instead?"
It was just a nod and a whine that Nick managed to convey just how much he needed the merc right then and there.
Kellogg rolled his hips, sinking into him with very little resistance. It sent waves of pain through Nick's waist, radiating all the way around. He bowed his head, letting out a cry of agony as he rammed into some sensitive engorged part of him head on. There was a jerk of his hips and the agony tore through Nick, the obstruction giving way and he could feel as if the swell of his stomach was jutting at an angle that was intensely painful. His cock thrust in deeper than before and stars exploded behind Nick's eyelids, his body taking one long clench before he came messily all over them both with a cut off gasp.
Kellogg let out a lasting groan, the corners of his mouth turned up as he came, spilling inside him. The ache lessened as he pulled out, and Nick felt fuller than ever before. The slight swell had changed shape, looking much more round than last time, as if it had started expanding. He rolled over onto his side, hands on his stomach. It still stung, as if something inside had been stretched beyond its limit.
Hours later, he was still unsure how many, stuck in that moment between sleep and truly being awake, Nick sat up with some difficulty. His stomach had swelled in the night. Where originally there had been one small lump like a tumor beneath his navel, the swelling had spread to the very edge of his pelvis and extended to his rib cage. It didn't stick out quite as noticeably when he leaned forward, and the pain had lessened. His fingers probed the swell, expecting it to be soft but instead it felt as if his muscles were tensed, flexed. The distended part of his stomach was hard, body taut beneath his skin. He covered his belly with his hand, pressing down against it again. It was uncomfortable, but no longer the agonizing cramping pain it had been in earlier.
For that he was grateful. It was easily something he could hide with clothing. Nick pulled his shirt closer around himself.
Kellogg still slept beside him, blissfully oblivious. Nick was unsure whether waking him was wise or not. He decided against it, curling up into himself, feeling colder than ever before.