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He was woken, as he had been every morning for the last five – six – days, by the weight of another body atop his, and a hand slapping, over and over, at his face.
“Wake up,” a voice was saying. “Doc. Wake up. I’m hungry. Wake up –”
He groaned. “I’m awake.”
The hand went on smacking his cheek. “Wake up, wake up – I’m hungry –”
“I said I’m awake!” Opening his eyes he batted Marty’s over-eager hand away. “Give me a second, kid.”
He gazed up at the ceiling, breathing out, re-processing as he did every morning the bizarre nature of his situation. Marty, obediently, gave him more or less exactly one second before saying, “Doc, I’m hungry.”
“Yes, you said.” He put his hands over his face and took a deep breath, in, and out. Just breathe, he told himself. Breathe through the madness.
Marty’s weight settled more fully on his legs. “I am hungry.”
“I’m – painfully aware –” He struggled up into a sitting position. As usual it took Marty an uncomfortable few seconds to realise that he needed to get out of Emmett’s lap if he wanted him to be able to get up.
Swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress he reached for his robe and slippers and said, “Alright. Shower and clothes first – then breakfast.”
“Aw, what?” Marty was kneeling on the bed in his makeshift pyjamas. “But I’m hungry now.”
“You need to shower,” said Emmett, pulling on his slippers.
“Can’t we – tomorrow –”
“No, no, you won’t get me that way.” Emmett shrugged on his robe and got up off the bed. “We said tomorrow yesterday.” He wagged a finger at Marty. “I’m holding you to it. C’mon.”
Marty gave him one of those beseeching looks he’d always been so good at. “I promise I’ll do the shower tomorrow.”
“You’ll start to stink,” Emmett reminded him.
“I don’t care!” Marty protested. “You’re the only one who cares!”
“No breakfast till you take a shower,” Emmett reminded him firmly.
Flopping face down amidst the sheets, Marty groaned aloud. “Mmmno.”
In his tiny bathroom it was, as ever, a struggle to get Marty’s pyjamas off and a struggle to get his elderly plumbing to behave whilst also keeping Marty from fleeing nude out into the garage. Not for the first time, he had to resort to physically lifting the kid up into the bathtub where he sat, sullenly refusing to co-operate, as he was sluiced down
“Ow,” he said as Emmett laboriously shampooed his hair. “Ow – ow –”
“It would not,” said Emmett through gritted teeth, “hurt if you would shut your eyes like I told you –”
“It smells bad,” Marty said, his hands over his face. “Ow – oww –”
“Please close your eyes,” Emmett begged him.
Twisting around in the tub Marty flung a handful of stray suds into his face. Not a lot of it reached its mark but enough to make him yelp and let go. He wiped at his face furiously with a towel and found Marty sitting hunched in the bathtub, glowering as if he was the wounded party.
He breathed in, and out, feeling his blood pressure rising. Patience, he told himself. He had to give the poor creature some grace. He had about as good an excuse as anyone had ever had to not know how to behave.
“The sooner you play along,” he said. “The sooner this will all be over. Alright?”
Still huddled in the tub, the dropped showerhead spraying fitfully around him, Marty fixed him with a look of utter reproach as if Emmett was subjecting him to some kind of medieval torture.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Emmett reached for the shower head. “Close your eyes.”
He managed to get Marty more or less clean, mostly dry, and about half dressed before running into any more significant difficulties. About forty-five minutes after being rudely awakened – they were making decent time – Marty lay on his back on the couch, one ankle gripped firmly in Emmett’s hand, the other leg flailing about as he resisted with all his might Emmett’s attempts to put his jeans on.
“Quit it,” he was saying, tugging over and over against Emmett’s grip. “Quit it – I don’t wanna –”
“Stop wriggling,” Emmett said, making another vain attempt at getting the jeans onto Marty’s free leg. “Will you – stop that –”
“Quit it!” Marty said. “Stop – touching me like that –”
“They’re just pants.” Emmett was starting to get a little out of breath. Goodness, but the kid could be a work out. “What do you think they’re gonna do, bite you?”
“I hate them.” Marty scrabbled at the couch, making an effort to squirm away. “I hate you – stop it –”
“Remember – what we said –” Emmett tucked the jeans under his arm and made a vain grab for Marty’s other leg. “Pants first – then breakfast –”
“Quit it,” Marty said again. “Quit it – let go –”
“You are – making a scene,” Emmett managed. “Will you please just –”
Marty’s free foot connected very hard with his nose and red-hot pain stabbed through his skull. He reeled back, hands flying to his face. “Mother of God!” he cried out. “Oh –”
He stood for a moment, eyes squeezed shut, face throbbing, certain that his nose was broken. At length, he eased his hands away from his face and looked at the blood dribbling on his palms.
Marty had retreated to the far end of the couch, sitting curled up against its arm, shoulders heaving and eyes furious. He was holding the jeans clutched very tightly to his chest. It wasn’t till seeing his face that Emmett fully registered that he had undoubtedly kicked him on purpose.
“What the hell did you do that for?” he said.
“I said quit touching me!” Marty shot back.
He forced himself to take another deep breath. He wiped his hands on his robe and held one out for the jeans. “Alright – gimme the pants.”
Marty shook his head.
“Give me the damn pants –”
“No!” Marty said. “You’re just gonna put them on me!”
“Yes!” Emmett gesticulated at him furiously, blood pressure rising still higher. “Yes, I am! People wear pants!”
Marty sat forward, grip on the pants loosening just slightly, and said, “I don’t wanna be people!”
“Marty –”
“You made me be people, I don’t wanna be people!”
And at that, the pressure blew. “You know damn well I didn’t do it on purpose!” Emmett snapped. “Do you think I want this? Huh? Do you think I wanted any of this? Will you quit being such a brat and put your goddamn pants on, before –”
He stumbled to a halt, mouth working, floundering, as Marty’s face crumpled.
“Oh, no,” he said, holding up his hands, hastening to the kid’s side. “No, no, please don’t start crying –”
Marty was clutching the pants still tighter, his eyes brimming. He shook his head.
“Shh –” He sank down heavily on the couch. “Hush – please don’t cry – why don’t you give me those –”
Snatching the jeans out of his reach Marty said, “You’re gonna make me wear them.”
“I won’t –”
“You’re lying!” Marty snapped. “You just – say stuff – and then you – and you wouldn’t stop touching me, and you put shampoo in my eyes –”
“Now, if you’d just shut them –” Emmett protested.
“I told you I don’t wanna!” said Marty. “And you said this wasn’t gonna be forever but it’s been so many days –”
“It’s been six days,” Emmett reminded him, realising as he spoke how profoundly unhelpful a statement that was.
“I don’t know how many that is!” Marty’s grip on the pants slackened as he raked a hand through a hair in agitation. Emmett eyed them. “It just keeps going and you keep saying stuff and I don’t understand you and you won’t stop making me do stuff and it’s just – I don’t – I can’t –” He trailed off hopelessly into a series of the vague and inarticulate sounds Emmett was growing used to hearing when the kid reached the end of his rudimentary vocabulary. He’d learned a lot of new words in the last few days; self-evidently, nowhere near enough to encapsulate the complex miseries of his newfound sapience.
For a long moment, Marty sat at the other end of the couch, a hand pressed over his mouth and his face creased as he began in earnest to cry. And Emmett sat, wavering, uselessly trying to work out what he was supposed to do next.
“It’s – alright.” He set a hand tentatively on Marty’s knee. “Just take a few deep breaths, okay?” Marty obligingly sucked in a breath. It didn’t seem to help. “I – shouldn’t have snapped at you like that,” he confessed.
That got him a truly venomous look. “No, you shouldn’t’ve.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I truly am – I –” He floundered, suddenly and humiliatingly aware that there was no excuse for it. For a few awful moments, faced with a total lack of co-operation, it was as if he’d been possessed by the spectre of his own father. “I just get – frustrated, sometimes.”
Marty’s bitter look didn’t abate and Emmett guessed at what he might be thinking.
“I know this is hard for you,” he said. “I, I can’t claim to know how hard – in all honesty I don’t know that I can even conceptualise what you must have been going through these past days. You’re – experiencing something unprecedented in the history of science – I can’t say I blame you for being a brat about it.”
Sniffing, Marty clutched the pants still more tightly against his chest. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” said Emmett softly, squeezing his knee.
Marty looked down at his lap. “Sorry for kicking you in the face.”
“It’s alright,” said Emmett.
“Did it hurt?”
Emmett touched his still bleeding nose. “No,” he said. “Well – yes. Don’t worry about it.” Now that his blood pressure had gone back to normal he could see how stupid it was to get angry. After all, you wouldn’t get mad at a puppy for biting in response to being manhandled.
Marty sniffed again. “I’m sorry I said I hated you,” he said. “I don’t hate you.”
“I know –”
“I really do hate wearing pants.”
Emmett laughed a little. “I know.” He motioned at the jeans in Marty’s arms. “You wanna give me those?”
Marty shook his head. “You’re gonna put them on me.”
“I won’t,” Emmett protested. “I won’t!” he added at Marty’s incredulous look. He held up his hands. “No pants today, alright? I promise.”
Marty wiped the back of his hand across his face. “I don’t believe you.”
“Alright – look.” Hauling himself up from the couch Emmett unfastened his robe. “Look!” he said, and tugging on the waistband of his pyjama pants he yanked them down to his ankles and in a swift motion kicked them off and tossed them across the garage. “There!” He threw up his hands in triumph. “No pants today! That better?”
Marty eyed him, looking dubiously at his long and hairy legs. He said, “I think I liked you better with those on.”
“Well.” Emmett put his hands on his hips. “Now you know how I feel, don’t you?”
Looking down at his own bare knees, Marty said, “I guess.” He squinted up at Emmett. “I’m still not wearing them.”
“Naturally.” Emmett sank back down beside him and reached again for the jeans. “Hm?”
At last – reluctantly – Marty relinquished them. “Ha,” said Emmett, tossing them vaguely in the direction of his pyjama pants. “There. All gone.”
That got him a laugh, almost. Marty wiped again at his face.
“Feeling better?” Reaching across the couch, Emmett ran a hand over the kid’s hair. “huh?”
“A bit.” Marty scrunched his naked toes against the faded couch cushion.
More than once, that past week, Emmett had spotted him on the couch or the floor or the bed, inspecting some part of his new anatomy. His fingers, usually. His toes. The bends of his elbows. In those moments sometimes Emmett would find himself seeing the human form through fresh eyes. Hairless and lanky and bipedal and miraculous. A bizarre shape to find oneself inhabiting.
“What would help?” he said, stroking Marty’s hair again. “Breakfast? You want breakfast?”
“I guess,” said Marty, and sniffed.
Unsettled but undeterred by his lack of enthusiasm, Emmett said, “Bacon? You want bacon?”
“You said we ate all the bacon,” Marty reminded him.
“Well, I – I can go buy more,” said Emmett.
Marty nodded. His eyes tracked again over Emmett’s half-naked form. “You might have to put pants on for that.”
Emmett snorted a startled laugh. “Yes – probably,” he said. “Is that okay?”
“I guess,” Marty conceded.
The promise of bacon seemed to be perking him up. Emmett shuffled along the couch. “It really will be okay,” he said, stroking Marty’s hair. “Hm? You’ll be okay, won’t you. My brave boy.” He ran a hand down Marty’s cheek and chucked him lightly under the chin, the way his grandfather used to. “Buck up,” he said. “Let’s get you your bacon.”