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[b][u][center]Human Addiction

Chapter 11: Biology Lessons

Sponsored by DuskCypher

By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

It was an oddly normal evening cooking with Louise and Lisa. The pair of them were obviously comfortable in the kitchen with each other, working the different ingredients and stations with a clear idea of who was supposed to do what. They didn’t let Roger do much besides getting the buns and drinks read, but because he was new, he didn’t mind. He was more curious to watch the pair of them.

He rubbed the back of his head as he continued to see Lisa take charge, the leopard gecko obviously the one that called the shots. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she was the one on top in the bedroom, as well, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask about that. After almost getting his head bitten off a number of times, he wasn’t going to start putting himself in the firing line on purpose.

When they all sat down to eat, though, he couldn’t help but feel just a little awkward, particularly as Lisa got on one chair to give her wife a kiss before sitting down and getting comfortable. He rubbed the back of his head, looking down at the burger and fries on his plate.

“It’s completely fine with your digestive system,” Louise grumped, pulling the burger to her snout. “Probably better than what your other hosts were feeding you.”

“Um…yeah, probably…”

“What’s the matter?”

“Just, um, trying to figure out what to do besides eat and go back to my room, I guess,” Roger said, picking up the burger.

“Louise has been a terror again, hasn’t she?” Lisa asked.

“Hey! He’s completely new, he could end up –”

“Be nice, dear. He’s only here for a few days, and it’s not his fault that your eggs are making you miserable again.”

“…”

The crocodile looked down and away without a word, and he wondered if there was any way that he could try and learn how to do that without getting his head snapped off. Better not to try, as far as he was concerned.

Lisa looked up from her own meal, her lips already stained with a bit of ketchup.

“Don’t worry about her. She’s annoyed is all.”

“Hmmph. You would be, too, if you had a lump of dead weight in your guts that was never going to come out…”

“Yes, yes, Louise, I know,” the gecko said, gently patting the larger crocodile on the arm. “But that doesn’t mean that you have to lash out about it all the time.”

“Is it…um…without trying to sound insensitive, is it that bad?” Roger asked.

“Four times a fucking year, I get dozens of eggs in my guts, waiting for some crocodile male to come around and get them fertilized. I gotta carry that dead weight in there for the entire month – a month! – and when it’s all done, I gotta feel them breaking down, releasing a fuck-ton of hormones that piss me off and make me depressed as shit – oh, fuck. Lisa, did you –”

The leopard gecko held up a bottle of pills, and the crocodile visibly sagged in relief. Roger, on the other hand, could only shake his head in shock.

[i]That sounds…so much worse than a period,[/i] he thought, shivering at the mere idea of carrying that many eggs in his middle for over a month. The fact that it ended with Louise’s body punishing her for not getting pregnant, as if her own biology disagreed with her choice, was just as bad. No wonder she was in a fit state.

At least they had pills for it. That was something, even if it was along the lines of too-little, too-late.

He looked down at his burger, taking his time to just eat it and enjoy. The fake meat was pretty good, he had to admit, better than what the horses had been giving him. Not that there had been anything wrong with Jolene’s cooking. He supposed that it had been a preferred brand of theirs, and this was more the preferred brand of actual meat-eaters.

He’d finished half his burger and had just gotten started on the fries that were served with it when Lisa cleared her throat. Roger looked up.

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t have time to say hello when I got here. As you heard, I’m Lisa, and you’re…Roger, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” he said, offering his hand. She shook it. “I hope that all the, um, bother of having me here isn’t as bad as I think it is.”

“You mean the fact that André had to lean on Louise to make it happen?” Lisa chuckled. “I’ll forgive you for the shouting that happened over the phone if you make sure that you give me and Louise some space from time to time.”

“Um…how am I…”

“I’ll tell you the name of a hotel around here that doesn’t ask too many questions, and rents by the hour.”

“…Is that, um, the same sort of hotel here as it would be on my side of the Wall?” he asked.

“For prostitutes and stuff? Yep,” the gecko said, finishing off her burger with a loud gulp. “Mmm. I love it when I get that right. The restaurants never quite get the seasoning on point the way I like it.”

“Lisa.”

Both the human and the gecko turned to the big crocodile. Louise shook her head.

“It’d be better if we went to the hotel instead of him. The whole point of this damn thing was to keep him out of the public.”

“Yeah. That would be ideal. There’s just one problem.”

Lisa poked the collar that the crocodile was wearing, and the bigger woman blushed, rubbing her hand along the band.

“Almost forgot this fucking thing…”

“I know. But I didn’t. You can’t leave the house, and if we’re going to have any intimate times…”

“…I, um, I am very good at ignoring what’s going on around me, if that’s any help,” Roger offered.

“It’s a kind thought, but this one, for all her bravado, doesn’t really do well if there’s someone else in the house for that sort of thing,” Lisa said, getting her dishes together. “Me, I couldn’t care less, but she gets all private.”

“LISA!”

“You do!”

It was almost amusing to see the crocodile almost crumble down under the embarrassing statement, covering her face and rubbing her hands over her eyes. Roger had just enough empathy to not laugh, though. He’d been embarrassed more than once since the start of his whole ‘resettlement’ thing, and he knew exactly how hard this was to deal with.

So, he reached out and patted Louise’s arm. It was an awkward pat, to be sure, but it was still a soft, gentle touch.

As Lisa started gathering all the other plates, he remembered something else that he still needed to do.

“So, um, are there any banks around here?”

“Why do you ask?” the gecko called from the kitchen.

“I still have to exchange the rest of my regular money for Anthro Dollars.”

“Oh, no problem. There’s one at the top of the hill.”

“The hill?”

“Look behind you.”

Roger turned in his chair, blinking as he looked out the dining room window. It opened out on a different street, and as he followed it up the hill, he became increasingly aware of how steep that hill actually was. It ran all the way up to the top of a rise that had to be at least three hundred feet up, and it was done at a rate that made him wonder if there were any cars that could actually climb that thing.

“Um…Is there another route?” he asked.

“There’s a roundabout way, but that’ll take you at least an hour to walk. That one should only take you about ten minutes, if you’re fit.”

[i]Fit? I think you’d take ten minutes to die on that thing if you were fit,[/i] he thought, shaking his head as he turned back around.

“I’ll take the roundabout way.”

“Tomorrow,” Louise said. “We’ve got other things to cover tonight.”

He nodded. Not that he didn’t think that he could make it that night, but it was probably better left for the morning. He still had quite a bit to get deposited, since he had been rather careful about walking it to the bank the first time. Only about half of it had gone in, since he didn’t want to risk having more of it taken from him.

[i]Though, taking that much more…[/i]

Maybe he’d better take just half of the remaining half. Better to have useless dollars in the house that he could eventually convert than to have all of that stolen and taken somewhere else. Not that he expected to be robbed, but…well, he was still in a place that he didn’t know all that well. A lot of stuff could happen.

He shifted in his seat as Louise looked him in the eye. The crocodile was still blushing, but the red in her cheeks was slowly fading. She still didn’t look happy, though.

“You said you don’t know anything about Anthro biology. How the hell did you get picked to go over here?”

“Um…I still don’t actually know that,” Roger admitted. “We kinda got a volunteer program on the other side of the Wall, seeing if people were willing, and then we went from there. They didn’t exactly give us an education.”

“Damn. And here I thought that you humans thought knowledge mattered.”

“Well, we might have built the libraries over here. That doesn’t mean that we really used them.”

“Apparently.”

“It doesn’t help that we’ve never seen people like you before,” Roger pointed out. “Just because this is all obvious to you doesn’t mean that it’s all obvious to us.”

Louise blinked, and Roger continued.

“Keep in mind, before last week, I hadn’t even seen an Anthro before. The most that most humans have seen is the news reports that say that you exist. Nobody besides me and the others in the resettlement program have seen any Anthros in person. We don’t know how you work. Why do you think that this whole pheromone thing is a problem?”

“That’s…a good point,” Louise said.

“Oh, hark at that. Did I hear my wife admitting that she might be wrong about something?” Lisa called from just out of sight.

“You heard nothing!”

As the leopard gecko laughed, Louise cocked her head towards the hall that led back to the bedrooms. Half-reluctantly, he got to his feet and followed her. He didn’t know what was going on, but he figured that the less commentary from Lisa right now, the better.

They went to his bedroom, which wasn’t too surprising. He sat down on the bed, she pulled up a chair to sit by him, and silence fell again. It went on for nearly a minute before Louise shook her head.

“Look. You’re not bullshitting me, right? You…really don’t know a damn thing?”

“How many times do I have to say no?”

“I guess just that last one.”

“Why does it matter so much?”

“Just…doesn’t make sense, I guess,” she said, crossing her arms, only to wince and adjust her position. “Fucking eggs…”

“Would it be more comfortable –”

“Don’t.”

She held up her hand, shaking her head a few times. After taking a few shallow breaths, Louise seemed to feel a bit better, and she sat up a bit straighter in her chair. With some adjustments of position, she didn’t seem to be in agony anymore, but she certainly didn’t look happy.

Still, she managed to keep talking.

“It doesn’t make sense. They’re basically throwing you to the wolves – literally, depending on where you got dropped – and then hoping you learn as you go?”

Roger shrugged.

“Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, either. Maybe this is just one big research project, and that’s why they needed volunteers.”

“Yeah, but…Fuck.”

“The pheromone stuff wasn’t planned, I can tell you that much.”

“Well obvious[/i]ly[/i]. It’s not like you could do that without it basically being a war action. Chemical weaponry and all that.”

“…I don’t think my smell’s bad enough to be called that.”

“No, but – mmmph.”

She rubbed her hand down her snout, grumbling to herself in the process. He blinked, realizing that there’d been a change. He looked at the bed, then back at her.

“It’s stronger, isn’t it? I’ve been here for a few hours, and that means the smell’s settled in.”

“Mm-hmm,” she muttered, shaking her head a few times.

“Sorry.”

“Should have thought of it; would have, if it wasn’t for the – Nnngh. Damn eggs.”

“Do you want me to open a window?”

“Please. You’re starting to look like a – god fucking – ugh!”

As she yanked her shirt up, covering her nose and breathing in the scent that clung to it, he ran to the window and pulled it open. The fresh air coming in was more than nice to him, but he hoped that it would be enough for her.

The crocodile took several deep breaths through her shirt – exposing a belly that, he supposed, did look like it had a few bumps beneath the scales – before finally bringing her hands back down. She took one more deep breath, then let it out slowly. Shakily, yes, but slowly and regularly.

“Okay…okay, that’s better.”

“I didn’t think it would hit you that hard.”

“Yeah, me neither, but apparently concentration is a thing.” She thunked her forehead a few times with her knuckles. “Concentration. Is. A. Thing. Get it through your noggin, egg-brain.”

“Does, um, this happen regularly?”

“Like I said, four times a year. Four [i]months[/i] a year, more accurately.”

“So, you get…”

“Angry, in pain, and a bit stupid for a third of the year. Yes.”

“…And you held a professor position, how?”

“I’m really fucking smart the other eight months.”

He nodded, rubbing his arm. It was hard to figure out how to just be with this woman after he had had the experience of the Watfords. Admittedly, it was kind of refreshing to not have to worry about all the sexual stuff, to be able to be himself in a different way, but this felt almost dangerous, like a minefield that he was working his way through.

[i]I mean, what do you do with a crocodile that’s going through the world’s worst period?[/i]

At least she wasn’t getting all horned up from the pheromones. Angry, yes, and…

“You said that I was starting to look like something. Um…what, if I might ask?”

“You were looking like an intruder.”

“So, um, guessing you’re not descended from…”

Roger nodded his head in the rough direction of the zoo, and Louise shook her head.

“Got the bloodline from there, but from everything I tracked down, it was the nastiest crocodile in the place. Nearly got itself put down three times. Zoo kept saving its life, for some reason.” She chuckled. “Guess I got humans to thank for something. Wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that asshole living long enough to breed.”

“I…guess,” he said. “Is it a bad thing?”

“Eh, for some of us. André and his cheetahs are kinda the exception. You call a wild species a ‘zoo’ species, you’re asking for a fight. They like the idea of being wilder, better, able to survive on their own. Not that it worked out that way after the whole Mutations thing, but they like to think it did.”

“Let me guess. When all the animals turned Anthro, they stopped being able to hunt so easily. Wolf packs would have had to be gangs, anything that was big and strong suddenly didn’t have the massive advantage that they had before, and the prey started to come together to make it harder to hunt them.”

“Something like that. It wasn’t quite that cut and dried, but it went somewhere along those lines. ‘Wild’ species ended up having less of an advantage than they thought, and when they started to lose that strength, they had to come to the rest of us ‘civilized’ Anthros to stay afloat.”

“I’m betting they didn’t like that,” Roger said.

“Not a fucking bit. They wanted to be on top like before, but things had changed. And we’re not changing back.”

He nodded. That fit with what he had been guessing, but he was glad that he had been off by a few points. The wild species were still there, not happy, perhaps, but still there, still able to be part of society. They just had to act civilized.

[i]I wonder how much of an act it is for some of them?[/i]

That wasn’t a question that he imagined that he was going to get answered anytime soon. Louise shifted on the chair again, obviously trying to adjust for the discomfort. He waited as patiently as he could, though he looked forward to whatever she was going to say next. He wanted to know more about this world, more about how he could survive and thrive out here with the Anthros.

“Anyway. Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “You’re a blank slate. That’s perfect for me.”

He blinked, brought back to the moment rather suddenly.

“Sorry?”

“I’ve gotta put together this textbook for next semester, and that means I need to make sure that it reads clearly. You smart?”

“…I tested okay in school.”

“Any college?”

“Um…half a year?”

“Good enough.”

“You’re literally gonna throw the book at me, then?”

“Ha! Well, [i]a[/i] book, but probably the book of my academic career.”

He whistled, and not just at the fact that she was trusting him to help her with that. There was a definite shift in her, almost like this topic was distracting her from the anger and discomfort that she was feeling. It was a nice change; made her a great deal more pleasant, for sure.

Roger nodded.

“I’ll do what I can. I mean, it’d be better for me to learn how all this works, right?”

“Considering that you’re probably going to end up fucking people all the time? Yeah. Better figure out who might be a bit toxic to you.”

“…That’s a thing?”

“Poison dart frogs, for one,” Louise said, flicking up one scaly finger. “You can tell by color and whether they have certain smells if they’re on the poison diet, and you can nail that down further with a few other tricks, but if it’s one of the big poison things? Condom’s not gonna save you from that. If you’re not a reptile or one of the long-haired mammals, you’re fucked.”

“…Um, how fucked?”

“Me, I’d get a bit sick, but not even as bad as the flu. One of André guys? They’d be in the hospital for a week.”

His eyes went wide.

“Probably would get you off hard, but you’d be seeing some weird shit for a week, and need some serious life support if you wanted to get through it.”

“And they’re [i]allowed[/i] to go around like that?!”

“Not ‘allowed’, exactly. The poison diet’s kinda off the market, but some of ‘em know where to get it. That’s why you gotta pay attention. It’s not gonna hurt you unless you get intimate, but some of them are just bad about that. Doesn’t hurt them, after all, and some of the frogs see it as self-defense if someone decides to get with them without their consent.”

He nodded slowly, rubbing his face as he imagined what it would be like to be…doing that…with a frog. The idea of having his dick buried up to the hilt in slick flesh like that was not a bad one, but imagining the poisoning effects afterward…He shivered from head to toe and shook his head.

“Nope, nope.”

“Heh, not a fan?”

“Nooooo way.”

“Good. That’s just one of a hundred different things that you’re going to want to learn, I bet.”

“Yeah. Oh, um…there’s no long-term side-effects of a horse, um, or a stallion, I guess, fucking you?”

“…”

“…”

“You fit a stallion back there?”

“For a bit…”

“And he…finished?”

Roger nodded.

“…Wow.”

“It wasn’t the best time.”

“I bet. God fucking – those things are like fire hoses. How the hell did you not go pop?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, um…Never studied human biology, but there’s nothing in their genetic material that’d fuck with your body, as far as I know. Provided that you’re not some other life form that would react markedly different to all of us, I guess…Well, you might have some solids left behind after all the liquids were drained, but you haven’t had that issue, right?”

“You mean the, erm, plug?”

“Ah, you dealt with that?”

He nodded. That had been more than slightly weird, thought not particularly unpleasant. Just really, really, [i]really[/i] weird to feel coming out. Louise nodded.

“Well, then you should be fine. Anyway. Book. I’ll get that, then –”

“Louise!” Lisa called from down the hall.

“Yeah?”

“If you’re done hawking your book, tell him the address for the hotel. I’m done cleaning up, and now I want to [i]be[/i] cleaned up.”

Roger and Louise both blushed, though he imagined that hers was less from the mental image that popped into her head and more the fact that he had heard that in the first place. Covering his eyes to try not to think about it further, he heard Louise getting to her feet, rushing out of the room.

[i]Probably going for her book,[/i] he thought, slowly bringing his hand back down. He didn’t expect this sort of relationship between his hosts, but then again, he had no idea why he should have expected anything at all. He had to remember that all the Anthros out here were different, not just as different as different humans, but that different within each species group. He wouldn’t know what his hosts were like until he met up with them in person, and he imagined he still wouldn’t know everything about them by the time that he was cycled off to someone else.

He was still sorting himself out when Louise came back, holding out a binder. It was big, thicker than he expected, and had to have something like eight hundred pages in it.

“That’s the rough draft. Think you can read some of that tonight?”

“Yeah, um, I think I can get through a couple dozen pages…maybe fifty…”

“Good. That’ll give us something to talk about tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“By the time you get back, Lisa’s gonna be awake, but I’m going to be [i]out.[/i]”

“…”

“Not gonna ask?”

“You always say ‘don’t’.”

“Heh. Humans can learn. Good to know.”

“Louiiiiiise.”

“Coming!” The crocodile pulled something from her pocket, passing it to him. “That’s the card for the hotel. Just follow the road south for about three blocks, and you’ll find it.”

“That close?”

“Cheap part of town.”

“Louiiiiiiiiiiiiise, you better have your tongue ready, because I’m ready to be licked clean.”

“I swear…”

“I’ll clear out,” Roger whispered.

“Thank you.”

#

The hotel was, to put it bluntly, a hole in the wall at the very best. There were no roaches in it, and it wasn’t a dump to the point where it was stained and there were horrible things in it, but Roger had to admit that he was glad that he wouldn’t be spending more than a few hours here. At twenty Anthro Dollars an hour, it seemed like the sort of place that you’d just bring a one-night stand for the first few minutes, then clear out as soon as you’d both got your fun.

He was surprised, though, to find a binder by the bed that had the business cards and numbers for different whores in the area. He cocked his head to the side as he looked through them, seeing that the ones in this binder were different. Rather than the more up-scale cards that Jolene had left for him, these ones were…

Well, they looked like they celebrated the ‘wild’ side of things. He blushed as he saw the Anthros with exaggerated claws and teeth, with their clothes gone and replaced with more primitive attire, as if the Anthros would have been in the hunting phase like that for long before coming into the whole civilized phase of society.

They even had kind of offensive tribal names, like looking at First Nation names after colonials had come around and started naming them before giving them ‘proper’ names. The fact that they were doing something like this…

[i]Jesus fuck…[/i]

If he had been hornier, maybe he would have felt a bit tempted, but the fact that they had emulated this part of human culture honestly made him a bit sick. He closed the binder and put it back where it was, sitting on the bed. After a few quick taps to make sure that there were no bugs waiting for him in the sheets, he leaned back and laid down, pulling Louise’s binder along with him to take a look.

She had been quite organized, that was for sure. The first page in the binder was a table of contents, going from a historical evolution of the Anthros as a group, followed by a division for each overall family, subdivided when the family split from what it had been like in the Feral Times, as the book called it. He flicked through the table of contents, looking at the other information that she’d gathered.

[i]Traits: Feral to Anthro? Does that mean between feral to human, or…[/i]

It would be interesting. He knew that there were different types of Anthros out there, what with those that called themselves ‘wild’ and those that were more civilized, but did that mean that the Mutations had hit some Anthros differently than others? Did that mean that some were pushed further towards ‘human’ traits while others kept more of their more feral traits?

It would explain why Louise and Lisa had womanly hips but had no curves in the chest, and why, with the Watfords, he’d noticed that one of them had hooves and the other did not. There was a [i]lot[/i] to be learned from this book, he realized, particularly if it was definitive and not merely theoretical.

He turned the page, bringing it to the first real page –

[i]Let’s start by admitting that we’re all fucking morons that need to be educated. I’ll start. ‘I’m a fucking moron that needs to be educated.’ There. I did it, now you swallow your fucking pride and do it, too.[/i]

Roger sputtered slightly, covering his mouth as he felt the urge to laugh bubbling up. He almost spat across the page from the immediate giggle fit that he had to shove back down.

“Okay, no way in Hell is that getting into the final copy, but god, I wish it would…”

Shaking his head, he set to reading.

He got through about twenty pages before he had to stop, pushing it off to the side as he rubbed his temples. Despite the cursing that was going on, to the point where he wondered if she’d been using dictation, Louise was a good writer. She rambled, she went off on tangents, and her work was anything but organized, but he was honestly surprised at the level of detail that she had for just her introduction.

And what an introduction that was.

[i]That history just told me more about everyone out here than anything that they had on the other side of the Wall…[/i]

It had covered the time from the first sentience after the Mutations – something that took about a year to arrive, and another half-year before people were able to write it down with numbers that were understandable – and it was a perfect example of how a young society could still work with an oral tradition. But it was more than that.

[i]They managed to figure out writing because they could remember people pointing out the words. People at the zoo, cats at home that watched their owners reading to their children…they knew what symbols meant, and they were able to pass reading on so that the next generation could get the writing started…[/i]

That in and of itself was beyond insane. The idea of even one species managing that would have set entire schools of academics on their heads on the other side of the Wall, but the fact that it had been able to spread through many different species, through hundreds of them, and that they had come together to build a society out of that…

[i]My god…[/i]

They were exceptional creatures. No, exceptional people. And they were merely trying to survive, back then. What would they be like now, if they were given the same tech, the same connections, the same opportunities as humans had on the other side of the Wall?

Something amazing, he was sure.

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: Roger enjoys dinner with his new hosts, then starts learning more about the world around him, and starts figuring out why it’s so…awkward…around Louise.

Tags: no sex, embarrassment, humiliation, size difference, human, crocodile, gecko, history, learning, science, biology, worldbuilding, series, human addiction, pheromones,