Chapter Text
Just like most horrible things start, Dr. Grace’s last night as an solitary Little began with a dark and roiling storm.
The Vat was no stranger to storms and could withstand up to 15 meter waves, but this didn’t matter a single bit to Grace. The world was ending, the world was actually ending and shaking and there was water in his room and in his bed and his pants were wet and he had wetted. The world was ending now.
Everybody on board sensed that he was … not exactly always Big. But nobody outside of a few nosy people in HR had actual, tangible proof of this. Not Stratt, because there was nothing at his classroom or lab that would suggest it. Not even Carl, because he kept his apartment so violently messy that anything could be explained away, even a sippy cup hidden under a dozen dirty dishes. Nobody had proof.
Of course, this night would prove their hunches right.
Grace had unbolted the door to his cabin, swung it open to step inside and froze.
Everything was gone.
Ruined.
The wind had blown open the little porthole he admittedly left open that morning and had forgotten about. The sea breeze had been so nice and the sky was such a beautiful shade of red in the rising dawn that he had to pop it open to take it all in. But now, water had sloshed up ankle-high in his room from the rain and everything inside was slowly turning to mush.
His favorite student’s drawings, the few pictures he had of his birth parents and the small bundle of snacks he had stolen away from the dining hall had all been reduced down to a watery mess.
Shaking, he approached his corkboard and gently tried to touch the edge of a golden sticker he gave himself when he first got his teaching job. It dissolved at his touch and he could feel his mind shutting down, down, down until he felt two inches tall.
His eyes tracked to the open porthole, and he felt an ice-cold chill settle in his stomach like a rock.
Oh. This was all my fault.
He gasped for air, and the ship rumbled and jolted as the storm picked up.
He felt a keening wail claw its way up his throat, and he couldn’t stop the sound in time before he was sobbing with everything he had.
Which was, of course, now absolutely nothing.
Carl had been good about bringing over most of his belongings to the ship. Too good. Everything he owned was now crammed into his quarters or jammed into his lab. He couldn’t think of anything he had left in San Francisco now that he lived full time on the Vat. This was good for days when he needed a break from the end of the world, which couldn’t get him if he hid under his blanket. It couldn’t hurt him if he was small enough, just Little enough.
After all, nobody would hurt a baby.
He felt his knees give out and he collapsed into the wet carpet, his cries building up into a wordless shriek as he continued to survey the damage. His door was still open. A wave crashed against the ship and sprayed him in the face, and he screamed and covered his face with his arms. The water had begun to seep out into the hallway, and faintly, he could hear someone running down the hallway. Something loud, loud, loud was hurting his ears.
He was wet and cold all over and the ship was rattling itself into little pieces. He could just feel it in the same way he felt his life slipping away from him after his last conference, after his last relationship, after the last time he saw his mama —
She had been cold. And wet.
Someone was shaking him, pulling him up and out of the room. He howled and moved to push whoever it was away, but they grabbed his hand and squeezed just enough to make him sob instead of scream.
He couldn’t see anything, just relying on the feeling of his hand in someone else’s pulling him up and out of the water, tugging him down the hall as he kept crying. He was hiccuping, coughing and heaving with the strength of his sobs, feeling all of his body shudder and clench.
Whoever was holding his hand let go, and he collapsed again, but now there was hands all around him, moving him around and tugging at his clothes.
He keened and curled in on himself, slowly beginning to hear people’s voices again. An alarm was blaring and there was a quiet voice by his ear humming gently and a towel being rubbed over his clothes. He whimpered and the hands pulled back.
“Hi, little guy. We had to go to the middle of the ship so we don’t get wet. Did we have an accident?” The voice crooned and Grace broke back into sobs.
He did make a little tinkle but he was wet from the flood in his room. He just didn’t have enough words to say that, and he wailed and gripped at his hair, trying to pull the nasty feelings out.
The voice gasped and the towel wrapped firmly around his middle, trapping his arms at his side. Tired of screaming, Grace moaned and let himself fall limp. He fell back to the ground with a thump, feeling himself get smaller and smaller as he lost control of his bladder again.
He whined as the hands pulled off his clothes, leaving him naked except for his diaper. His wet diaper, which was chafing at his bottom and awfully full.
Grace opened his eyes again and squinted weakly at whoever was moving him around. They had stopped, for now.
Oh no. His best lab assistant was staring up at him from between his legs, rubbing them gently as she attempted to seem soothing. Matronly. Nurturing.
Grace thought back to his own mama. She wasn’t any of those things. She was real tough and made sure Rylie didn’t take anybody’s shit. He grunted and pulled back from Anna, frowning and wriggling away as best as he could.
“Hi, baby. Let’s find your caregiver, okay?” Anna said brightly, ignoring how Grace moaned deep in his throat at the word caregiver. It made him feel icky, the thought of someone constantly being there watching him make a fool of himself. He rolled over, throwing an arm over his face and trying to hide the hot tears that had begun to run down his cheeks.
A quick rustle of papers from somewhere in the sickbay and the room went silent save for the alarm.
“Oh. Um. Right, well. There’s certainly … someone on board with emergency training. Don’t worry!”
She grabbed at his leg, probably to keep rubbing it soothingly, but Grace aimed a kick right at her hand and screamed.
“Don’t touch me! Stop, stop, stop!” He sobbed and kicked again, feeling suddenly cold as the hands around him pulled back.
He wanted a lot of things, just not a caretaker. He wanted his blanket, his binky and his stuffies, and he wanted them now. He wanted his pictures from his students and the photos of his parents and friends from grad school. He wanted the random trinkets around his room and his favorite pen with the clicky noise. He wanted to be dry and warm and fed, and most importantly he wanted his mama, who never baby-talked him and always made sure he could take care of himself.
Whimpering, Grace stuck his thumb into his mouth, rocking back and forth. The room was suddenly quiet, save for a hushed whisper. The alarm fell silent, and slowly, Grace felt a something soft drape over him. He opened his eyes. He didn’t even know he closed them.
It was just the standard issue Vat blanket, fresh from the warmer, but someone had sewn in a little star shaped patch on the corner. Grace latched onto it with both hands, tugging it over and around him.
“Baby, I know you’re scared. But we need to get you dry, right? If we give you a clean pull-up, can you put it on yourself?”
It was Anna again, and Grace shrunk under the blanket, shaking his head.
“No? Okay, then we need to get some help here. Is it okay if our friend Nurse Eric touches you?” Anna asked, and Grace whined.
He needed a diaper, not a pull-up. But he also needed help to change because he was so shaky and so Little right now. And he needed words, big words to tell them this.
“Hi, little guy. My name is Eric and I’m a nurse here. Time for a change!” Someone chirped near his ear, and he sobbed. Before he could scream out another series of denials, gloved hands were on him, helping him wobble to the exam table. The cold metal exam table.
Grace flinched and the hands were on his sides, soothing him down and keeping him from leaping off the table. Someone positioned him on his elbows and knees, butt up in the air, and he screwed his eyes shut, bracing for the pain.
The nurse must’ve draped the blanket over him, because the world went dark and finally quiet. He sighed and relaxed slightly.
Nurse Eric must’ve taken it as a sign to go ahead, because then he was tugging at the diaper and Grace was crying out in pain as it came off. There was another gasp around the room, and Grace held back a long-suffering sigh. Everyone was seeing his poor, chapped bottom today. He aimed another kick back at the nurse and felt something connect with a satisfying thud and she shrieked.
He knew that he looked gross. He could feel his rash getting worse by the day. It felt gross, and he had been trying to change himself more often to make it better, but it simply wasn’t helping. He winced every time he sat and nearly started crying when Stratt pulled him along for an impromptu sprint across the ship.
He spared a glance back at Nurse Eric, who had backed away with his hands up, seemingly in fear. Grace scrunched up his nose. He wasn’t that stinky.
“Okay, call the doctor on call. Maybe also get a curbside consult …”
He ignored whatever was happening behind him, grunting and wiggling into the blanket as he tried to get comfy. The room was too bright and the people were moving too much. He wanted to scream, just a little bit.
The nurse touched him again and he felt his thumb get tugged out of his mouth and he really did scream this time, just a wordless shrill shriek that seemed to come from somewhere under his ribs. Grace kept going and going and going until it felt like he was going to pass out, and even then he managed a pitiful little howl.
“That’s enough!” Someone yelled and banged on the table, and Grace curled in on himself.
He stopped screaming.
Whoever yelled was getting scolded, but he could still feel people near him, hovering and just getting ready to grab onto him. Suddenly, he was scared, so scared, and he felt himself lock up, quivering in fear.
Grace wanted to run, to cry or to curl up and vanish. But for now he was stuck in the little room, stinking it up with the smell of despair and pain. He heard someone sigh in frustration behind him, and he sobbed, just a little bit.
Grace felt himself slump into the table, feeling the blanket above him getting heavier and heavier. He was so cold and nobody would care if he just closed his eyes for a second. He tucked the blanket around his face and buried himself in it, lowering his bottom and letting his feet hang off the edge of the table. Then someone was turning his face to the side and pressing a mask to his nose and mouth. It smelled like plastic and chemicals.
He blinked slowly and it felt like the whole room was spinning. He shuddered and sighed and slipped into a bleary twilight sleep, twitching and moaning.
Nurse Eric sighed.
“There. He’s finally stopped fussing. You know, I really hate putting the babies under, but the law is clear that when he refuses, we have to allow him to deny care. That is, until he’s unconscious.”
He clapped his hands, stood up straight.
“If anyone asks, he went vasovagal and we had to — out of an abundance of caution — begin emergency care. Is that clear?” He said firmly.
The room was quiet. Then, a quick round of nodding and movement and avoiding eye contact. If anyone asked, nobody had closed Dr. Grace’s softly trusting eyes and nobody pressed back his soft beard so they could fit the mask better. Nobody taped in the IV and nobody wiped the tears gently leaking from his eyes. Nobody rubbed over his pale tummy and made sure the blanket was snug around his shoulders.
Anna brushed her hand over Grace’s forehead, pushing back his unruly hair. Another nurse was scrubbing his behind with a betadine solution, frowning. Nobody wanted to be the one to call the only person on the ship who outranked the little guy snoring away on their exam table.
But it was too late. It was time to call Stratt.