Page 81 of Under His Heel

“Look. My debt is stupid high. Nobody else was willing to pay it. If that debt doesn’t get paid, I’m getting sent right back to Peter fucking Nilsen, who, by the way, is about twenty million times worse Tracht.”

Parsons shook his head. “You could work for the station. They allow for work contracts…”

“So you want me to do manual labor for the next twenty years?” Alex pushed Parsons against the closest wall. “No. And anyway, you forget how we met? I knocked you out running away. The station’s not gonna want me after that.”

“But if you tell them that you ran because Tracht is a monster—”

“I ran because I wasn’t planning on staying, you stupid fuck!” Alex’s voice echoed down the alley. “Me and Nick planned it from the start! We were gonna play Tracht for a shmuck, have him take my debt and we’d both fuck off to another solar system.”

Oh shit. He saw the surprise in Parsons’ face, and he could already see the disgust building.

Alex ran.

===

Lying on the couch in Tracht’s cabin wasn’t really much better, but by the time Tracht returned, Alex decided he didn’t give a shit what Parsons thought and that if he never talked to Parsons again, that would be fucking fine.

“Did you have a good time?” Tracht asked while Alex was helping remove his shoes.

“Yep. Watched a movie with that Nadia chick. She’s pretty cool.” Alex pressed his forehead against Tracht’s thigh. “I’m hungry.”

Tracht petted Alex. “I brought you a treat. Look in that bag.” He motioned towards the small cloth bag he’d set down on the table.

Inside were two round, bright orange fruit and a handful of small red ones with little stems coming out of the center. Alex took hold of the larger one and pressed down into the leathery skin. “What is it?”

“Our conversation about cherry oranges got me curious. The expense was just as high as I remembered—apparently it is incredibly hard to grow these on Pylos—but oh well. That’s an orange and the others are cherries.”

Earth fruit. Some people thought fruit from Earth was superior to the stuff elsewhere in the solar system, but Alex didn’t get it. Fruit was fruit. “How do I eat it?”

Tracht took the orange from Alex’s hand and pushed a nail into its skin. A smell not unlike the cherry oranges from the other day wafted out. Alex watched was Tracht peeled the entire outer shell away with his fingers. When he was done with that, he set the peel on the table and then separated the slices of orange out from each other.

Alex held out his hand for a piece. Tracht gave him an amused look.

“It was worth a try,” Alex muttered. He leaned closer and opened his mouth.

That first slice was sour. Acidic too, in a way the cherry orange hadn’t been. Alex was almost tempted to spit it back out, except—well, he was hungry. He chewed and swallowed, his nose curling the entire time.

“Hm. Is it not good?” Tracht popped a piece into his own mouth. After one bite, he spit the orange back out. “Why in the world did people eat this?” He looked at the orange in disgust. “I paid premium for this?”

Alex started laughing. “The look on your face!”

“Yes, the look on my face.” Tracht took hold of Alex’s nose and brought his half-chewed piece of orange up to Alex’s mouth. “Open up.”

Gross, but—Alex took the orange, and for good measure licked the orange juices from Tracht’s fingers. He saw that he’d surprised Tracht and counted it as a win.

Tracht let go and slumped back onto the couch. “No protest at all?”

“You’ve made me eat worse.” Or drink worse. Alex tensed up and hoped Tracht wouldn’t suddenly get the idea to piss in Alex’s mouth, but apparently whatever had Tracht in a good mood was holding up and Tracht just sighed.

“Fair enough. Bring the cherries over, and let’s hope these are a bit more palatable than the oranges.”

They did turn out to taste better, although Alex could have done without the hard seed in the center. Those got a bit messy, especially when Tracht forced Alex to hold all of them in the palm of his hand. But it was kind of fun too. Tracht petted Alex and fed him fruit and told Alex a story from one of his early days in the merchant academy with a classmate who had wanted terribly to try some vegetable from Khoina and then, after months of searching, finally acquired it... only to have a terrible allergic reaction.

“I guess we’re lucky that the only adverse effect from these oranges is unhappy taste buds,” Tracht said. “They’re growing a bit on me though.”

“Yeah, I think the first bite was the worst.” Alex opened his mouth for another piece. The last one.

Tracht popped it into his own mouth and chewed very loudly.

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