Page 13 of Garbage

“Oh, uh, no problem.” Evan still wasn’t looking at him. “It’s a great day for me, too. I’ll just, uh, go finish dinner. Oh! Can you eat?”

Quincy shook his head. “I can taste with my tongue. And I can put food in my mouth and it will collect in my small materials container, but then I would have to empty it before it fermented.”

“Ah, right.”

Feeling daring, Quincy added, “Would you mind if I smelled your food, though?”

Evan finally looked at him, smiling again. “Of course you can. What’s your favorite food to smell?”

“Hot chocolate? Sometimes Mo would get a hot chocolate in the afternoons when it was cold outside.”

Evan nodded. “One hot chocolate coming up.”

Quincy pulled on the clothes, which took a lot of maneuvering, but eventually he figured it out. The trick was that he had to pull the shirt over his head using his claw arms, but put his humanoid arms through the sleeves before pulling it down too far, and then the claw arms had to slink back in underneath. He didn’t like how his claw arms and steam hoses felt trapped, but he wasn’t going to be taking them out anyway. The soft fabric wrapping around his chest made it all worth it.

The pants were just as tricky, and he nearly fell over a few times before he realized he needed to sit down on the bed. When he looked in the mirror, he was feeling… proud of himself? Yes, he was pretty sure he was proud. He’d had all these words for emotions before, but he hadn’t trusted that he actually felt them.

But there he was, looking back at himself, with pajamas. Sloth pajamas.

He wrapped his arms around himself and squeezed because he was just so happy.

But he would be even happier if he was in the other room with Evan. His friend.

He was going to treasure today for the rest of his life.

He walked out to find Evan spooning something delicious-smelling onto a plate. “What’s that?”

“Just eggs with broccoli and some hash browns. Most of it’s from the freezer because I wanted to make something quick.”

“It smells good,” Quincy agreed. Then he bent forward and smelled it from even closer. Mmmm…. All day, he smelled things that were rotten or acrid, dusty or mildewed. But this smelled salty and thick with something that called to parts of his airborne molecular identification processors that he couldn’t even recognize beyond the knowledge that it wasn’t hazardous. He could smell this all day.

Evan laughed. “Go sit down and I’ll make you a plate, Q.”

Q? Was that him? Somehow, being called Q was totally different from CNS. They were both letters, but one was… a nickname. He had a nickname!

Quincy sat at the table. The day kept getting better and better.

Evan came out a moment later with a smaller plate still heaped with the same foods and a white mug with steam curling above it.

Quincy grabbed the mug and buried his nose in the top. “Hot chocolate!”

“Just for you,” Evan agreed. “Do you want to taste it?”

Quincy stuck his tongue into the hot liquid. It was good… kind of like a thick layer of the smell. At first, he savored it in his mouth, but now his tongue was dirty. He’d need to wash it later in the bathroom. “I think I like smelling better.”

“Alright.” Evan gave him a small smile, then went back to the kitchen. He returned a moment later with the larger plate and a glass. “And if you look down, I found a cord that I think you can use to charge up.”

Quincy picked it up, and the connector looked just like the one at the depot. “I think so.” He plugged it in to his side, waiting for the input to come in. “Lower voltage. It will work slowly.”

He returned to smelling his dinner and hot chocolate, nose pressed close to each one to savor each of their individual flavors. Evan sat down beside him and took a bite.

The hot chocolate was even better when he could hold it in his hands, so he could feel it, too. He turned the mug around and was delighted to find another picture. “Another sloth!” he exclaimed. “And it says sloffee because it’s a sloth in a coffee cup, and it’s so sleepy because it’s tired!” The little sloth had fallen asleep, and coffee was pouring out of the tilted mug in its hand.

Evan paused mid-bite and gave him an odd look. He had so many different expressions, and Quincy didn’t know how to understand half of them. Mo was pretty much always happy, with some occasional worry or anger. Evan was confusing. And he was still staring.

“Did I say something wrong?” Quincy asked. “I know you’re not supposed to explain a joke. I just thought it was cute.”

Evan slowly put his fork down, even though there was still food on it. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. You just brought up a memory. My ex-boyfriend hated all of my goofy t-shirts and mugs. He thought they were immature. So… it’s kind of nice to have someone appreciate them.”