Work Text:
[CPU… OPTIMAL]
[GPU… FUNCTIONAL — VISUAL CLARITY REDUCED WITHIN ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS]
[RAM… OPTIMAL]
[ROM… OPTIMAL]
[BLOOD… FULL CAPACITY]
[DIAGNOSTICS… OK]
Satisfied with this result, V1 dismissed the diagnostic scan window on its HUD. Nothing to do now except continue, further into the scarlet depths of Heresy.
If there was one enemy above all it needed to be thorough in preparing to fight, it would be —
'Limbo. Lust. All gone, with Gluttony soon to follow.'
Gabriel. No other enemy demanded the attention he did, in more ways than one. He was remarkably agile and swift, which meant he demanded attention to fight, but in addition, to V1's curiosity, he also demanded attention through loudly attempting to communicate with it — no, that was too generous, Gabriel wanted to communicate at it, not with it. Still, nothing else had tried that before.
'Your kind know nothing but hunger. Purged all life on the upper layers, and yet they remain unsatiated. As do you.'
New query. Why did Gabriel execute communication at all? Was it a mindless vent to something he thought wouldn't understand him, or care to? Did Gabriel expect V1 to understand every seething taunt? Was he bothered by its lack of verbal responses or acknowledgements? It hadn't seemed to stop him yet, as the voice floating through the passages of the cathedral reminded it.
'You've taken everything from me, machine.'
In the most simple, overarching terms, V1 was designed to receive, analyze, and react to new input data. Second only to its bloodthirst, this was the most critical part of their programming. It was what allowed it to continue its downward spiral into hell in search of fuel and not keel over at the feet of the most frail Filth. Its very nature rendered it a curious creature, always in search of something new. But lately it had been disappointed.
The husks and inferior machines it had fought thus far were… simple. The very concept irritated it. Data that wasn't even a challenge to exploit, things with obvious weaknesses. V2 was a much more complex and skilled opponent, of course, and that had been entertaining for a moment, but there was little new data to learn from something that looked and moved and fought exactly like you did.
Gabriel, however.
'And now, all that remains is PERFECT. HATRED.'
Gabriel was an ever-expanding network of data, always changing, learning, and growing. In truth, it was excited to fight him again. Endless strings of unresolved queries scrolled through V1's processor, and the anticipation of answering them made its fans whir.
When the heavy stone doors parted to reveal the expansive inner chamber of the cathedral, V1's optic autofocused rapidly to learn what the room was built to hold — a massive, ornate pipe organ. It had assumed that the chorale it had been hearing was some pre-recorded digital replica, but no. Gabriel sat on the bench, playing the keys with careful hands. The contrast of the brilliant periwinkle light of his wings and halo amidst the harsh red glow of Heresy was mesmerizing, and the organ was powerful enough to reverberate the hymn through its chassis as it approached the angel.
The moment V1's foot impacted at the top of the riser, Gabriel snapped to his feet. The pious hymn vanished from the room, and tension rushed to fill the empty space.
'Machine,' Gabriel hissed, 'I will cut. You. Down. Break you apart. Display the gore of your profane form across the stars!'
The chamber shook and the candles lighting the room dimmed, as if the angel's mere voice threatened the integrity of the building.
'I will grind you down until the very SPARKS CRY FOR MERCY!'
When Gabriel spun to face V1, arms outstretched, the shaking stopped as abruptly as it had started. He was howling into the wind now, voice cracking with exertion.
'MY HANDS SHALL RELISH ENDING YOU, HERE. AND. NOW!'
Gabriel was ridiculously, blindingly fast. This was not new information to V1 — a sensor bristled with the memory of pain — but now, seething with a fiery glow, Gabriel seemed even faster than the last time they had fought. His weapons were new, too — sapphire and gold swords, the same swords that had ended the Sisyphean Insurrection — and with it came new methods of attack. It had no idea what Gabriel was going to do, and it had no idea how fast he was going to do it — but V1 knew for sure it was going to hurt.
What an incredible opportunity to learn.
First, V1 needed a set of data. Sliding backwards with the irritating grind of metal on cobblestones, it summoned a twirling revolver into its shooting hand. Surges of power cascaded over its central processor — as much as the component could withstand — and it observed Gabriel's every movement with razor-sharp precision, firing off shots as it deftly avoided lunges and thrusts from Gabriel's twin blades.
The data it was relying on, from their fight in Gluttony, was something, but not even close to sufficient. Gabriel feinted down with one blade, then thrusted up with the other. A pain sensor in its chest beeped angrily, and blood sprayed from its sliced cables.
'YOU'RE GETTING RUSTY, MACHINE!' he taunted.
It's data analysis software had begun to notice patterns. If Gabriel raised both swords over one shoulder, he would cleave them twice in sweeping, heavy swings before throwing them. However, if Gabriel only raised one sword, he would cut down in a feint, and then deliver a thrust, like he had earlier.
This time, when Gabriel's gold blade cut down, V1 was ready, and the Feedbacker slammed the blue blade down into the ground. The perfect opening for its electric railcannon, which V1 lined up right between his breastplate and belt, and squeezed the trigger.
Gabriel staggered backward, but not for long. He swung forward again, and his violent roar peaked out V1's audio sensors.
'NOTHING BUT SCRAP!'
It had him now. A lunging thrust was punched into the ground, opening Gabriel up to a swarm of pellets from its overpumped shotgun. It dashed above a cleave, and used its height to rain a cacophony of red-hot nails onto the angel. A now-familiar feint was anticipated and deflected, and when Gabriel hurled his swords at the retreating machine, V1 struck them with the screech of metal-on-metal to return to sender.
Gabriel clearly took immaculate care of his weapons. Now, betraying their master's hand, they knocked him square in the jaw, in a mean, slicing uppercut. By the time they hit the ground, blood was already pouring from Gabriel's throat.
For a precious second, Gabriel was silent. Neither of them dared to move. Then his swords flew back into his hands, and he… laughed. A heady sound, like sacred bells.
'Is that the best you got?'
The inflection was different. The attitude was different. In fact, Gabriel himself was different. Where his wings and halo had been an orange inferno, now, their former pale blue color faded in from the tips, suffusing him in a new, brilliant light. The scarlet color burst from his armor, and underneath it, bright steel, brighter than it had ever been.
Gabriel's question, although it was most certainly rhetorical, shot from V1's head to the endpoint of every limb on it's body with a power surge.
[IS THIS THE BEST?]
In mathematically perfect unison, every iota of hardware and software in V1's body returned the answer:
[> NO]
That was not the best it had got.
'Show me what you were made for!'
But Gabriel deserved, truly, the best of the best.
When they collided in the air, they did so with the force of a dying star. To an outsider, it would have been impossible to pinpoint where divinity ended and machinery began. Blood — it couldn't tell who's — showered the both of them, and what didn't hit their bodies reflected the light of twinned wings from the floor. Gabriel was laughing again.
'Come on, machine!' Despite the helmet, V1 could hear that Gabriel was… smiling. 'Fight me like an ANIMAL!'
So it did. The meticulous algorithm of parries, weak spots, and weapons melted into a glorious haze of unstoppable force. Logically, its central processor had to have been making decisions, executing orders, but it couldn't have pinpointed where they were and what they were doing. Everything faded into the positive feedback of its reward system singing hallelujah. It could have been days, it could have been seconds. It didn't matter. Everything that wasn't Gabriel didn't matter.
It didn't register what it had done until Knuckleblaster's shockwave shredded through Gabriel's wings of light, and all at once, the great cacophony of the world fell silent.
When V1 regained awareness of itself, Gabriel was kneeling on the riser. It floated above him, wings coating Gabriel in a mockery of the first hour of sunset.
'Twice!' he exclaimed, finally. 'Beaten by an object, twice!'
With a gasp, his legs gave out from under him, and he fell onto his back.
'…I've only known the taste of victory, but this taste is — is this… my blood?'
Blood. Blood. BLOOD.
V1's fuel system had been trying to get its attention for a long time now, and that word made it impossible to ignore.
[ERROR: SELF-REPAIR NEXUS NOT RESPONDING]
[INSUFFICIENT BLOOD]
[WARNING: FUEL CRITICALLY LOW]
Huh.
Now that it checked, Gabriel had pushed it to burn through nearly its entire fuel supply. At the moment, it was trying (and failing) to run its entire body on slightly under a quarter of the intended voltage.
With delayed amusement, it realized it didn't even have the processing power to calculate the exact amount. How stupidly quaint.
[SHUTTING DOWN NON-VITAL SYSTEMS]
[ERROR: SELF-REPAIR NEXUS NOT RESPONDING]
[WARNING: FUEL CRITICALLY LOW]
[INSUFFICIENT BLOOD]
Gabriel was talking. V1 was not listening.
[INSUFFICIENT BLOOD]
[INSUFFICI —]
[REFUELING…]
[REFUELING…]
[REFUELING…]
[BLOOD… ACCEPTABLE]
[RE-INITIALIZING SELF-REPAIR NEXUS…]
[SELF-REPAIR NEXUS OPERATIONAL]
[REBOOTING NON-VITAL SYSTEMS…]
[REBOOT COMPLETE]
When V1's non-vital systems had been shut down in an attempt to prioritize power supply, tactile feedback and audio processing had been some of the first systems to go. Rebooted, the first sound it processed was sharp little huffs of air through clenched teeth, and the first sensation it processed was tacky warmth.
Gabriel was trembling beneath the machine's body, where three of its fingers were digging into his rich, angelic gore, circulating through its overworked body. He said nothing, but his breath came in quavering puffs of hot air, and his leather gloves creaked with the effort of balling hands into tight fists.
V1 had needed fuel, and Gabriel, for some reason, had given it without protest.
In a careful motion, conscious of the damage both of them had suffered, hydraulic systems hissed and propelled V1 to its feet, pulling its fingers free from its savior's wounds with a thick squelch. At that, Gabriel finally vocalized his pain with a small cry.
The last of V1's systems to reboot was its data analysis software and the associated strings of queries it was designed to answer. This made sense — if V1 was critically damaged, it had emergency protocols to rely on, such as the one that had gotten Feedbacker into Gabriel's abdomen, and spending precious power to create new systems instead of relying on the ones it had already created was, objectively speaking, the most wasteful place for that power to go.
But now, as it powered on, it had something to submit to V1's main processor.
New query. Gabriel had not given that strong of a pain response — the shaking, the gasping, the noises — to any of the physical injuries that had taken place during either of their fights. What had changed?
V1 was not a combat medic, with no medical protocols, but it had a biometric scanner for organic threat analysis.
Elevated pulse. Accelerated breath rate. Increased blood fl — hold on.
That couldn't have been right.
[REBOOTING BIOMETRIC SCANNER…]
[REBOOT COMPLETE]
Elevated pulse. Accelerated breath rate. Increased blood flow to the pelvic region.
Gabriel was suffering from sexual arousal?
A chipper ding from their internals. Query resolved.
Gabriel… was suffering from sexual arousal.
'Machine…' Gabriel's wounds seemed to be healing perfectly fine, but his breath rate was still unsteady. 'I… I think I need t—'
Despite its prioritization subroutine protesting that this was not a task that needed as much power as it had allocated for it, V1's central processor exploded into a flurry of activity with a shockingly loud whine of machinery, and Gabriel fell silent as if interrupted. Calling on every data analysis program it had, pending queries unleashed themselves onto the sum activity of Gabriel, leaving no aspect of the angel untouched.
Why now? What caused this? The humans that designed V1 and decided what protocols to give it had, shockingly, not outfitted it with a database concerning courtship behaviors, so it was dead in the water there. What other database could it even examine?
It recalled their fight, the church bell laughter, the warmth of fresh blood straight from the source.
Show me what you were made for, he'd said breathlessly.
Gabriel experienced feelings of euphoria during their fight, and demonstrated arousal responses from V1 using physical force on him.
Now the more interesting question — why?
Well. Honestly. It doubted a supercomputer of its caliber was necessary to try and get even a basic hypothesis started on that one.
It was likely that Gabriel derived sexual pleasure from being physically and psychologically dominated.
When the next step materialized in V1's processor, its fans spun feverishly as it began to redirect power to its tactile feedback sensors and reward system.
To confirm or deny this, the most direct method would be to subjugate Gabriel and collect data on his reactions. If he responded well, it would support its theory. So it was critical for V1 to pay very, very close attention to him.
'…machine?'
In a perfectly calculated burst of pistons, all four of V1's arms moved at once and pounced onto the prone angel. Knuckleblaster, the biggest and bulkiest, seized Gabriel's waist where his charcoal flesh was bare, and the tips of its claw-points dug into Gabriel's half-healed cuts. Its shooting arm and Whiplash grabbed both of Gabriel's wrists, and the winch spat out to bind them together and pin them to the floor. Most importantly, to hammer home the psychological force of its actions, Feedbacker grabbed his chin, and tilted it up so V1's optical lens dominated his vision. Look at me. Look UP at me. I am bigger and scarier and stronger than you right now. You are beneath me. YOU are the object.
In response, Gabriel's heart rate skyrocketed, and his throat wavered with a poorly-restrained moan.
Oh.
This was much, much more fun than fighting Gabriel.
Knuckleblaster dug into Gabriel's abdomen harder, and this time he fully gasped as blood pooled around old puncture wounds.
That statement required amending. Fighting Gabriel had just gotten much more fun, too.
Hypothesis likely.
Of course, further testing was required. It would be poor statistical practice to confirm a hypothesis based on one preliminary data set.
Its shooting hand, the only unoccupied one, rested the pads of its fingers on the flesh of Gabriel's inner thigh.
'Wait, w-what are you doing?'
New query. Was Gabriel fucking stupid? It had thought what it was doing was incredibly obvious — damn this lack of a courtship behavioral database. V1 slid the hand further up his thigh, fingers now under his skirt. It got the point across, and a shiver wracked his entire body.
'Oh — oh. I… I would have never thought — you…' He swallowed audibly. 'I didn't know you had the capacity to pleasure yourself in that way…'
V1's processor buffered, and its movements halted to process what he was saying. What way?
'But… you have proven your superiority.' He was trembling again, and though his eyes were not visible, his helmet was tilted in the direction of V1's pelvis, watching and waiting. 'If this is what you want, then… t-take it, machine. You have earned it.'
Query resolved. Yes, Gabriel was fucking stupid.
V1 pulled its hands back from his body. Some clarification was necessary before it proceeded. How could it communicate with him beyond boolean values?
Its optic blinked in variable lengths.
'Wh — is that Morse code?'
V1 nodded, and blinked the simple message again. [N-O/S-E-X/O-R-G-A-N-S]. It wanted to call him 'stupid', but that would have probably confused him further.
'I… oh. Uh.' Gabriel drew in a shuddering breath. 'Well. I — then why are you — why?'
[W-A-T-C-H/Y-O-U-R/R-E-A-C-T-I-O-N-S].
For the first time in all of their recorded interactions, Gabriel willingly passed up an opportunity to speak, rendered dumbstruck. V1's optic clicked on and off again.
[F-U-N].
'Watch…' Gabriel repeated, barely above a whisper. 'I… you want to… watch me?'
V1's reward system lit up with satisfaction as it nodded. It was learning so many ways to make him shaky and breathless, and it didn't even need to touch him for this one.
'I… I don't understand,' confessed Gabriel. 'Why? What is fun?'
V1 yanked on the Whiplash's cord, still bound to Gabriel's wrists. As his body fell forward with a surprised yelp, Knuckleblaster swooped in and closed around his neck. Not enough to restrict — its hands, even Knuckleblaster, were not big enough to choke him with only one — but a reminder as to who was in control here.
[T-H-I-S] — it tapped Gabriel's chest with its shooting hand, feeling him shudder under its touch — [I-S/F-U-N].
'Oh, fuck,' Gabriel breathed in realization. His hands were balled into tight fists, and he squeezed his thighs together. 'I — you can't. Angels, we… our purity is part of who we are. I can't choose to give it willingly — I purged this from me.'
[A-N-D/Y-E-T]. With an experimental softness, V1 placed its foot on top of Gabriel's codpiece, and pressed down gently, watching the angel squirm into the touch.
[Y-O-U/H-A-V-E/N-O-T/T-E-L-E-P-O-R-T-E-D/A-W-A-Y].
The long word took a while to blink out, which was irritating, but the dawning indignant realization in Gabriel's body language made it worth it.
'Vile — insatiable — godless thing! — I — I…'
V1 was running on borrowed time. At a certain point, it would kill everything and everyone in Hell, run out of blood, and die. It didn't want to think about that part, so it didn't, but it still knew, without directly confronting why, its lifespan was ultimately limited.
And yet, it let precious power drip through their cables in complete silence, holding him firmly in place, waiting like it never thought it had the willpower to do, because the only way to do this right would be to break his gilded pride and make him say it.
Gabriel tried to look away, but Knuckleblaster squeezed his throat tighter, holding him in place. Without noticing, V1 realized it had moved so close to Gabriel it could see the glow of its optical sensor in the reflection of his helmet. The only thing Gabriel could see was its unblinking, unwavering gaze, never moving from the spot, never breaking from him, scanning down every last layer of his body and mind and soul until it knew him like only a God ever could —
'Godless thing,' he whispered again, his voice both anguish and desire. 'Defile me already.'
It wanted to live in this moment forever, stretch the satisfaction of this victory into infinity. It decided it could stand to hear some manners, for once.
It counted nine heartbeats from Gabriel before the last of his dignity crumbled.
'Please.'
Knuckleblaster's claws pulled off Gabriel's throat, and shredded the front of his skirt and loincloth in one vicious swipe. As V1 had suspected, and could now visually confirm as it knelt down between his legs, Gabriel was ridiculously aroused. Both the golden tip and the overhanging lips that crowned his hole were completely soaked with glossy fluids. Two lines of blood beaded up on Gabriel's left thigh, where the claws had cut through skin too. Lifting both Feedbacker and its shooting hand up, its fingers traced through the wet heat of pain and pleasure in symmetrical, circling motions.
If there was one consistent thread to their interactions, Gabriel never shut up, but the lungs used to somehow deliver taunts across entire levels of hell were now heaving with the effort of tortured little whimpers as V1 tested various figures of motion on Gabriel's body. Side-to-side stroking with a firm thumb smeared the already-drying blood on his wounds just so, drawing thinner, huffed sounds from him, but his back arched with a marvelous, full throated sob of pleasure if V1 opted for a circular motion on his dripping head with two lighter fingers.
'Fu-uck,' he whined. 'F-fuck, this is — fuck, yes.'
Although the sentence wasn't structured the way it understood sentences were supposed to be structured, V1 got the idea. Power to its servos increased only by a fraction, but to Gabriel, it might as well have been electrocuting him. (Now there was a thought — tying him up with the Jumpstart cable instead of the Whiplash and watching him thrash and scream.) His hips rolled desperately against the machine's smooth metal fingers, and his chest heaved with the effort of vocalizing his pleasure.
When V1 adjusted Feedbacker slightly to properly spread Gabriel's thighs apart, the angel held his breath in an involuntary gasp, and when V1 slid two fully lubricated fingers into the warmth of his hole, he made a noise like he'd been shot.
[S-O/N-O-I-S-Y]. It couldn't resist a dig — it was fascinated by the way Gabriel's pulse hammered when he was flustered, and deep in the warmth of his body, it felt his heartbeat almost as acutely as it had with its fingers in his guts, separate but equally as compelling as the entirely new flutter of Gabriel's muscles parting for it.
'Ngh — finally — oh, God!'
Wet squelching, like the sounds of digging around in Gabriel's abdomen, marked every push and curl of its fingers. Like everything else, V1 moved with exploratory patience at first, getting a feel for what technique of pleasure was the most efficient, but little pleading sobs drove it inwards and upwards. The beginnings of a linear relationship began to assert themselves in V1's processor — when allowing for proper arousal, the more intensely it fingerfucked Gabriel, the louder he became. With anticipation, V1 added a third finger, and its reward systems buzzed in mechanical glee when — as anticipated — Gabriel's noises rose in an ecstatic crescendo, and he thrusted back into it with his hips, matching V1's pace. The wet noises picked up speed, settling into a rhythm, free from the inconsistencies of experimentation, and with them, Gabriel, still, was talking.
'Ah — fuck — machine!'
Machine… while not inaccurate, it was growing tired of Gabriel not using its name. It was putting a fair amount of work into this experimental procedure, it deserved to be properly credited. Additionally, it was written right on its chest — this should have been easy. Maybe he didn't get it? It would have to correct him.
V1 pulled out, and with slick dripping from its wet fingers, pointed to it's chest.
'Ah! What are you… why use that hand?' To hear the humiliation in your voice, it answered with smug pleasure to itself.
Its optic flashed in blinks. [N-A-M-E]. Pointed again for emphasis.
'…Name?' Gabriel shuddered as an aftershock of pleasure hit him. He was clearly not in a thinking mood, but it didn't care. If it was going to fuck the air out of his lungs, it wanted to be treated with the appropriate ceremony. 'V1? Is that your name?'
Yes! V1 gave a very energetic nod and thumbs up combo. [S-A-Y/I-T].
'Oh, Lord, this is —'
Knuckleblaster's claws tore into the meat of Gabriel's inner thigh, and it shook its head as the blood splattered across the two of them. [S-A-Y/M-Y/N-A-M-E].
'V1!' Gabriel wailed in pleasure-pain. Any last iota of dignity the angel could have laid claim to disintegrated as it tore him open, his throat sounded ruined already. 'Fuck, V1, V1, p-please don't stop, please, oh God please —'
Much better. That was the kind of respect it had earned. Its fingers slid back into Gabriel's warmth before he could finish the thought, and he threw his head back with an unrestrained groan. If he was begging that nicely for it not to stop, then it wouldn't.
Knuckleblaster traced the gold swirls on Gabriel's inner thighs with an excruciating slowness, slicing him open, letting him almost fully heal, then slicing him open again, smearing drying blood all over him. While V1's self-repair nexus bristled at this horrendously inefficient usage of fuel — only 21.379% of blood available was being absorbed instead of the ideal >=85.000% — its reward systems, the only thing high enough in priority to matter right now, could only focus on the angel beneath it, crying in pleasure as it strained against the Whiplash's bonds.
When the rocking of its fingers into him felt wholly and completely effortless, V1 dared to add a fourth finger, and Gabriel howled in delight, spreading his legs eagerly to welcome the additional digit. Feedbacker fell limply onto the floor, and it bristled at the lack of efficiency to see it unmoving when there were so many things it could be doing to Gabriel. It took up the noble duty of attending to Gabriel's swollen tip, rubbing the bud of flesh in quick little motions, and his hips tilted into the touch.
That should have been it. While it was tearing him apart, giving him a moderate amount of both internal and external pleasure, and holding him fast in its cables, Gabriel would have most likely eventually reached orgasm without any further adjustments — all available data pointed to this conclusion. But Gabriel was saying its name again, in the most coherent sentence since they'd started.
'V1!' he sobbed. 'Don't — fuck, ah, d-don't hold out on me! Give me EVERYTHING!'
Hmmm. So far, the fuel expenditure had been significant, but never dangerous — it was taking apart Gabriel with a marathoner's stamina, conserving fuel until it could really tear into something again. The increased thermal and electrical strain from sprinting to the finish line like he wanted would absolutely cause thorough damage to its internals, on top of expending most of its remaining fuel supply. It would take a lot of energy to repair that kind of exertion.
That would have been an absolutely laughable idea.
…If it didn't have incredibly close physical proximity to an eager source of biofuel.
'Oh, G-od, V1,' he moaned. 'Fuck me like you fight me!'
Show me what you were made for, he'd said breathlessly.
Fuck it.
V1 tucked in its thumb, slid its whole hand into Gabriel, and overclocked itself.
Immediately, warnings about overheating and excessive voltage swarmed its HUD, faster than it could dismiss manually, beeping incessantly and blocking out Gabriel. Unacceptable.
[DISABLE ERROR MESSAGES?]
[> YES]
[WARNING: DISABLING ERROR MESSAGES NOT RECOMMENDED]
[> FUCK YOU]
At once, the messages parted to display the angel. Gabriel was screaming with a wholly ruined throat as its hand pistoned in and out of him at an impossible speed. The cracked, incomprehensible sounds that poured from his mouth filled V1's audio sensors in their entirety, and it scrambled to apply equalization in its audio processor as Gabriel threatened to peak them out again. Even though he was saying the same things, over and over, looping like a memory, V1 wanted to listen.
They were prayers, it eventually determined, but not to any God V1 knew. Just a machine.
The muscles under the broken skin of his thighs were flexing erratically. His heartbeat pounded visibly through a vein on his neck. Half-dried blood and slick pooled together in a ruddy mess at the insides of his hips. A voice made for hymns produced nothing but broken wails.
But the effort was starting to show in V1, too. Its whole body hummed dangerously with the voltage of keeping it up and mobile. Cooling fans had accelerated to screeching pitches, and it swore if it opened its chest cavity, its heat sink would be glowing. It couldn't take much more of the stress, but Gabriel couldn't either. One of them would have to give out first, and — it tightened Knuckleblaster around flesh with determination, and Gabriel wailed — it was not going to be V1.
'So good,' he sobbed, thrashing beneath it. Everything that wasn't Gabriel faded from sight, not worth processing. The angel might as well have been all it ever knew.
'I'm — I — gh — yes, fuck, V1 — V1 — V1!'
His whole body snapped taught, and Gabriel came with a scream.
V1 had never witnessed a display of orgasm before, so despite its programming begging for normalcy, it kept itself overclocked for just a minute longer as it witnessed Gabriel's. His muscles squeezed its fist violently in tremors, and a gush of fluid splashed onto both of their thighs, but V1 refused to relent, fucking him through his climax, trapping him in waves of sensation again and again and again and —
'V1 — ah — ah — enough!'
The rest of the world behind Gabriel faded back into reality as it reset its clock speed back to standard operating conditions. Its servos halted immediately with a harsh screech, and V1 felt a pang of dread at the audible indication of internal damage. It carefully disengaged from Gabriel's body, pulling out with a filthy squelch and releasing Whiplash's cable binding his wrists.
When it manually re-enabled error messages, it was swarmed with knowledge of stressed fans and burnt-out fuses and overheated components. Walking seemed like something it could live without for now, so it decided to deactivate its legs and collapse next to its angel. Feedbacker gently laid itself on the biggest and freshest cluster of wounds, and Gabriel's breath hitched, but he ultimately didn't protest as V1 siphoned off blood for its repairs.
They lay there in the dark, Gabriel breathing shakily and rubbing his unbound wrists, while V1 oscillated with little whirs as its self-repair nexus dutifully repaired the damage to its internals.
Without a vocal interface, the duty was solely on Gabriel's gilded shoulders to break the silence.
'I…' he finally spoke. His throat sounded strained and raw. 'That was. Well.' He coughed a little. 'Unexpected.'
Although V1 had limited experience in the field of social interactions, between this and 'insignificant fuck' in Gluttony, it couldn't resist adding another note to Gabriel's data base. [> Terrible at improvising.]
'Then again…' — and he laughed, that ringing church bell sound again — 'so is everything else about you. You're… fascinating.'
It tried to sit up, failed, panicked, turned its legs back on, and successfully sat up. It loomed over him, optic warming him in the dark.
[Y-O-U/A-R-E/T-O-O].
Gabriel rose, on unsteady feet, but his wings blossomed out behind him to lift him up gracefully into the air. Instead of being pure blue or fiery orange, they were still the same mesmerizing gradient they had become during the fight.
'I've never known such… delight, but… I need some time to think.' He held out his hand, and V1 let him pull it to its feet. 'We will meet again, V1.'
He spoke with an unwavering conviction, and V1 saw how he had become so beloved among the people of Heaven, because it instantly believed him.
Gabriel vanished, like he had before, in a blinding column of light. Meeting again… the glorious, infinite spiral of potential futures, potential encounters, spiraled before V1, and it felt a spark of excitement as it fully internalized the idea that Gabriel, too, was theorizing about what they'd do together next.
It recalled a human idiom, from some ancient data-bank — 'absence makes the heart grow fonder'.
New query. Did it have a heart to grow fonder with?
It touched it's chest, and felt the thrumming of its components.
Query resolved. It had a primary fuel pump secure in its metal thorax, and right now, it beat solely with the blood of Archangel Gabriel.