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St Martin grunted softly as Beaumont extracted the thread from his gastric cavity in a long, slow pull. As the piece of half-digested meat came into view, peeking out of the reddened lips of the fistula like the tip of a tongue, he looked up at St Martin’s face. His forehead was creased, which suggested discomfort, and he flinched a little when Beaumont tugged the meat out. “There,” he said. “You may rest on the divan.”St Martin lowered himself onto the padded bench and lay on his back with an exhalation. With his usual carelessness, he did not put his shirt back on. His huge, hairy chest, his solid shoulders and white stomach marred with the pink scar-crease and its tiny mouth, filled Beaumont with a kind of revolted envy. He caught the doctor’s gaze with his own; Beaumont busied himself with his notes, sketching the meat, comparing it to its state twenty-four hours before. He was conscious of the weight of St Martin’s gaze on him, and, irritated, felt his face heating under it. There was something in St Martin’s eyes these past weeks, as his experiments drew out and grew in complexity, that Beaumont did not quite like. An unsettling awareness, a hint of amusement, particularly when Beaumont explained the reason behind a next experiment, as if he saw straight through Beaumont; it made him blush and stammer, even though there was really nothing to see behind his thrill at the research possibilities that were unfolding themselves as he explored St Martin’s gastric cavity. Next time, he would not explain. He would merely command him, briskly and curtly. The man was in his pay, after all.“Have you forgotten something, Doctor?” St Martin murmured. Beaumont realized, to his chagrin, that he had stopped writing as he mentally composed how he would order St Martin to obey him.“No,” he snapped. He finished his notes, and picked up the rancid lump of meat with his tweezers.“This must go back in now. Up, if you please.”The thread, sticky with fluids, trailed from the beef. St Martin took his time sitting up, shamelessly nude.“If you could?”St Martin, with just the hint of a sneer, spread his big, hairy hands across his stomach and stretched the skin between them, spreading the puckering lips. Beaumont was conscious of his gaze again as he inserted the beef with the tweezers. He wiped his finger on a clean handkerchief. The tweezers were not long enough, and he feared causing a tear with them; although he preferred the impersonality of the metal, this seemed safer. Again, St Martin groaned, just a little, as Beaumont, with his finger, pushed the meat back into his stomach through its strange passage, the lips and channel of the wound sucking him in. He felt sweat prickling at his hairline.“Can you not keep silent?” he snapped.“It hurts,” St Martin said, and the walls of his channel tightened around Beaumont's finger convulsively, as if he were laughing.