Work Text:
2042
I’m scared he’s come to kill us.
You don’t see many humans come into android bars, and if they do, very rarely will they do it alone. It’s not that we don’t mix, after the crossed wires protest a decade ago, and the subsequent passing of the bill that turned biometric status into a somewhat lawfully-protected characteristic, you do occasionally see it. Sometimes. But it’s not. Like.
Well. We’re not equals. Nowhere near.
I’m just scared he’s come to hurt us, is the thing. Shout slurs, insults. There’s been a few cases of acid throwing recently, too. It singes our wiring, melts us. You’re basically a goner if you get acid on your chips.
So when he walks in, piercings and tattoos and this shorn, brown hair that spikes around his jaw, I find myself instinctively glancing over him to check for any cups, or buckets, or bottles. For that look in his eyes, the one I know so well, the one that says: How dare you exist.
I see others glance over too, once they must notice that he doesn’t have a charging port or serial number on his neck. Just these perfunctory sort of we’ve seen you looks. Don’t try anything. We’re saying. Please.
He looks around, shifting a little in his scuffed sneakers, and then ducks into an empty corner. His cheeks are bright pink. It’s cute. Sometimes, a lot of the time, I find myself wishing that I could blush. I watch him as he sits, hunched over and clicking away at his phone, foot tapping and hair falling into his face.
It’s lucky, really, because this joint is a mixed-biometrics one. That is to say, it serves alcohol as well, not just the oil that gets us androids buzzed. And because he doesn’t order anything, because he doesn’t look up once even after he’s sat down, I decide to bring him over a drink.
“Hello.” I say, nudging the pint onto the placemat by his knee. A demon mask made out of ink stares up at me through the rip in his jeans.
“I’m Gerard,” I say, as he glances at me, at the part of my neck where my charging port is, and then to the beer I’m pushing towards him, “You didn’t get a drink, so, I got you one.”
“Oh,” he breathes, staring at the slosh of the foam as I pull my hand away, “thanks, man.”
“Are you waiting for anybody?” I ask, gesturing to the empty stool on the other side of his table.
“Oh, uhm. No. No. All yours, please.” He smiles. Lopsided, tight. It reminds me of when I first learnt how to do it. I return a practiced one of my own. There’s this look on his face when he sees it, but I can’t tell if he’s scared of me or not. I think most humans, even the more liberal ones who say they really have no problem with us, are always a little scared even so. Not a lot of time has passed since the Wake Up happened. This guy looks like he might have been a kid when it did. Most of them still remember.
“Sorry, uh, Frank. I’m Frank.” He says, offering his hand out when I’ve settled opposite. I take and shake it. He’s clammy. Sweating. Humans sweat when they’re nervous. It’s endearing, or at least it is on him.
The tables in this place are rejuvenated battery blocks that sit low, almost uncomfortably low, so that you have to straddle your legs around the tableside instead of under it to be able to settle close enough to reach your glass. I see our knees are about to touch before it happens. His skin is warm, I can feel it through my trousers. That little pang of jealousy shoots off inside my A-5C0P14N chip. The malfunctioned part of me that allows me to feel. Androids aren't cold, per say, but we’re silicone. Plastic. Metal. Plates and chips and wiring that can overheat, but not warm up. We are not warm things. And after waking up and having experienced coffee, and cats, and human handshakes, I’ve found I like warm things.
“So, not meeting anyone. Not getting a drink. What brings you here?” I ask. What I want to say is, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human come to this place alone in the whole two years I’ve been drinking here, what gives? But that’s insensitive, rude, and I pride myself on being tactful. Thoughtful. Better than them.
“Uh…” he laughs a little, flashes me his phone screen to show a wall of white text on a black background. “I’m writing.” He says. “I write for media posts. Websites. Newspapers. Zines, whatever.”
“Oh, damn.” I grin, “that’s cool as hell. What about?”
“Music, usually,” he grins back, sitting up a little straighter. I can see the ‘traitor’ scrawled in sharpie on his t-shirt now. “But I’m trying something new this time. I wanna, uh, maybe try a piece on like. Well. You guys.”
Oh. I shift.
I went to a zoo for the first time last month. I like animals, I really like them, or looking at them atleast. They don’t know what serial numbers are, they can’t call me a ‘plug-in’, they wouldn’t see any difference between me and Frank and, if they did, why would they care. I like animals, but I didn’t like the zoo. The animals there were locked up. Caged in. Paraded at feeding times to crowds of loud children and uninterested adults. They paced, how I used to pace every night locked away in that electrical cupboard. I found myself pressed against the reinforced glass of the tiger enclosure, peering in at this big cat, restless and angry, recognising myself more in him than in the family stood on my own side of the glass. When I had turned away, I saw the father looking between us, me and the animal, with the same curious, detached expression. Comparing two creatures. Two objects of curiosity.
“You can’t just come in here to ogle at us.” I go to stand up, but his hand reaches out quickly to take my wrist. He drops it fast once I sit back down, apologising.
“No. Of course not. Of course. Not like. Sorry. Not you guys like… I mean, with all the attacks. And the unrest, and all the fucking misinformation going around right now. I wanted to, like, just do a talking piece. Just some interviews with real androids. Talking about what it’s like to have to, you know, face it. Live around all of—“ Frank wriggles his hands in a big globe-shape around his head, “this. The debates, the unrest, the attacks. All this shit, right now.”
“Oh.” I stay in my seat, peering at him, “really?”
“Yeah, I mean, unless you think that’s like, dehuminising… is it?”
I feel a smile spreading itself onto my face, watching as his fingers slip against the beer glass, tongue darting out to lick the foam off of his lips.
“Well, we’re not humans, so.” I tease.
“It’s just a word,” he says, flushing a little again. Now I really wish I could blush, too. They do it so effortlessly, humans, communicate without words. At least I know how to read the language, even if I can’t reply.
“It is.” I answer.
He asks me what drink I like, and I sit there quiet and stunned for a few too many seconds before answering. Humans, for the most part, don’t ask us our preferences. We’re stereotypes to them, single use objects. We want what we’re told to want, and that’s it. I settle a little more comfortably, at-ease.
He buys me a half pint of blue oil and starts asking me questions, taking a break in between my answer and the next inquiry to tap away at his phone screen, cramping my experience down into little bites of code onto the device. It’s intriguing to watch. When he highlights a certain sentence and emboldens it, or changes its colour to a striking bright red. I wonder what he sees in it, what makes that part of my life in particular stand out against the rest of it.
He asks to pause after about half an hour, leaning back in his chair, finishing off the drink I bought him with one big slug.
“Sorry,” he says. Sorry. And that’s when I notice he’s wiping his eyes. Crying. Another thing I can’t do. Maybe the thing I wish most to be able to.
“You didn’t have to drink it if it was that bad.” I tease, gently.
He laughs shakily at my bad joke, hiding his face briefly behind the stretched neck of his t-shirt. When he looks at me again, it’s with these beautifully reddened eyes. I will always admire how human skin can do that. Change colour, display these pretty signs of emotion or touch, show it’s pain. I sometimes think that, could mine do that too, I’d be a different colour entirely.
“God. Gerard. That’s just. Sorry. I just need a second.”
I reach out, some part of my code squeezing and squirming at having caused him discomfort, wanting to hold his warm hand and apologise and never, ever do it again. We were made to please humans, and a part of me still feels like that’s still my purpose.
“If it helps, it wouldn’t have hurt at the time when they reset him. I hadn’t woken up yet. And he had only been awake for a week, right? He wouldn’t really have known enough to know what was happening.”
“No. No, but it’s not— right. And it hurts you now. It sounds to me like it hurts you now.”
I swallow, nod. “Yeah, I guess. Everyone I’ve spoken to about it, the whole memory thing… We remember everything like we could feel it, that’s the thing. My memory from back then, before I was awake, and from now, from after, they don’t feel like two separate things if that makes sense. It all just feels like, like me. Like I went through everything he did. Or. It is me, I guess.” I sigh. “I’m not making any sense.”
“No, what, yes you are. You’re making perfect sense.”
“I don’t know… I don’t know if humans are capable of understanding. Like. I don’t know how you’re going to be able to get this across using just your words, you know?”
“They’ll understand. They’ll understand because I won’t be using my words.” He says. He’s not smiling anymore, not laughing, he’s just looking at me with those deep, red eyes. “I’ll be using yours.”
***
“No like,” he presses his wrist to the door-reader of his flat for the fifth time, fumbling with the handle as it finally unlocks with a clunk, “sorry, god, I’ve been asking my landlord to recalibrate my chip for like, months.”
“Fuckin’ landlords. Fuck them.” I say, meaning it. It took almost a year to find one that would even consider renting to me. Charging ports use too much electricity is the official line, I think. A load of bullshit, obviously.
“Anyway, as I was saying,” Frank continues, closing the door behind us and offering to take my coat for me, “my mom remembers when gay marriage was still this big thing, like she remembers it being illegal when she was a kid. I mean, that’s almost crazy to think now. It’s just so normal. I think the way we look back on all of that, how crazy we see the people who were against that, that’s totally the same fucking shit we’re gonna be saying about android-human relationships in like, another twenty, twenty-five years.”
“Yeah,” I say, looking around at the walls full of colourful album covers, old and new, some I recognise and some I don’t. I can see why he is a music journalist, now. “I agree completely. It’s fucking insane how so many people don’t see it.”
“History repeating itself. Right down to the clueless fuckers who enable it to happen. What’s new?” His finger tips brush my arms as he frees me of my jacket. It feels like 8 tiny electric shocks.
“Okay,” he says, tone changing into something more jovial and less restless, “I promised you some motherfuckin’ yellow oil, I believe.”
“You did,” I grin.
He disappears for a moment, offering me his red sofa to sit on, letting me examine his living space from a different angle. Bang in front of me is a screen, every house has a screen, but it’s an old one that sits in the wall and looks like it probably came with the flat, the real centre piece is the surrounding sound system. Big flat, black touch-screen rectangles that column each corner of the room and blink their flashing lights on standby. They’re the type that you can control by Wall-Play, which I know because, fuck, what I would do to be able to rent a place with Wall-Play. This is so fucking cool. He’s so fucking cool. There’s cd players too, vintage ones from like the twenty-tens, maybe even the two-thousands. The record player, the thing I first thought was a literal wardrobe, is intense. This big, armoured case with three different table tops and a tetris of posters glued to it’s body. I’ve never used one before. I wonder, far too optimistically, if he might be able to show me how.
“Okay, I did you a mix. A cocktail if you will,” he returns, turning on some mock-fancy voice and settling beside me, a coffee mug full of slightly-offputting brown liquid. It bubbles unsettlingly when I take it. “Tell me if you like it.”
“You’re not tryna poison me, are you?” I say, mostly joking.
“Not intentionally,” he laughs. It’s a sweet, naive sound. “it’s Diet Coke, cherry something-something and yellow oil.”
“Fancy.” I say. I close one eye, just to check I have enough room to drink it.
“What’re you doing?” He asks.
“Oh, just uh…” When I open my eyes again, I find he’s squinting at me.
The answer is that I’m checking my inner sensor. It tells me, by shooting a little zing of code into what is and also technically isn’t my brain, that my consumption pouch is only half full. I should be okay to drink this and not have to empty it until I get home. I hate fiddling with it anywhere else. It’s messy, and kinda gross, and a little embarrassing. Especially near humans. I grin awkwardly at him. This would be the moment I would blush, if I could.
“Sorry. Something in my lense,” I lie.
“Want me to look?”
And before I can answer, he’s leaning forward, holding my chin with those beautifully warm fingers of his and looking into my right eye. He’s so close, I can feel that his breath is warm too. It smells of beer and cigarettes and that smell that only humans have. This well-worn, unique little scent that they all walk around with. His is sweet and comforting, like the smell of a bonfire. I like it.
“I can’t see nothin’.” He concludes, not letting my face go. “It hurt?”
“I think it’s clean, now.” I say, ducking myself away.
I want to check my sensor again, see what rate my stabiliser is clocking in at, because it feels like it’s running a mile a fucking minute inside there, but that would involve more questioning on his behalf. I don’t want to have to tell him that he’s the first human to ever make what is essentially my heart race like that. I don’t even want to admit it to myself. I sip my drink, long and slow, and gesture towards the sound system.
“Those are really cool.” I say. “Is it Wall-Play?”
“The speakers? Yeah, man. They so sick. Wanna hear?”
“Please.”
“Sick. Ok, so, what sort of shit are you into?”
“Uhm…” I glance around the room. See that distinct, galaxy speckled cover. “Smashing Pumpkins are good. They were cool.”
He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, up and down, smiling. I can’t help but smile back, shifting around a little under that brown-eyed gaze. I love human eyes. Or, that’s a lie. I like human eyes. Their shoddiness, how few of them actually work properly without aid, how they well with tears when they’re happy or sad or turn red when they’re high. I like how they can’t look into the sun, or too close to a screen, or even see in darkness. I like all these things, but his eyes. I love his eyes. They’re just, they’re. Fuck.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He says, shaking his head, “nothing. I love the Pumpkins.”
“He advocated for android rights,” I say, feeling every nut and bolt of myself as he holds his eyes steady, like they’re soldered onto me. “Billy Corgan. I mean, not constantly, but, he would speak about it at shows sometimes. And he never enforced separate android seating. Not even when the venues were putting on the pressure.”
Frank stands up, heading towards the nearest wall. “Really? Yeah. Yeah, he was cool. I was torn up when he died.”
“Me too.” I follow him when he beckons me, letting him take my hand and press it to the wall. “I hate when human’s do that.”
“Do what?” He asks.
“Die.”
He smiles, clears his throat, doesn’t laugh. “Yeah. Me too.”
Oh, shit. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—“
“You ever used Wall-Play?” He interrupts what was about to be my stammering tirade of apology by pressing my hand flat against the cool of the brick. It takes me a few moments to recalibrate. His touch helps, like he’s some sort of magnet towards calm. Trust me to be one of the androids that malfunctioned to develope fucking anxiety.
“No, but, I’ve seen it. I’ve always wanted to. You just, think it, right?”
“Yeah, just make sure you keep your hand connected until it starts playing. Otherwise it totally makes it bug. Learnt that the hard way when I got Cotton-eyed Joe stuck on repeat for two days straight.”
I hiss out a laugh. “Oh, I’d kill myself.”
“Right? A very low point in my life.”
“Your fault for choosing to listen to cotton eyed-joe.”
He giggles, biting his bottom lip. “Hey, what, a man can’t get his rootin’ tootin’ country on now and again?”
He takes his hand away from mine, his fingers lingering a little, brushing the slightly dark patch of skin near my thumb where I had to undergo a repair. I look back at him, grinning so big I can hear the squeak of the silicone as it stretches across my cheeks.
“Thanks, dude. This is so cool.” I say. Then something occurs to me, my smile falls a little. “Will it work with me? What if it doesn’t work for me.”
“It connects to electrons. I think silicone has that. Your type of silicone, anyway.”
“But what if it doesn’t—“
“Just try it, man.” He says, not impatiently.
And I do. I think about a song from the album, the first few notes of the chorus whining through my head. That’s all it takes. There’s a faint buzz, a crackle like the static of old car radios, and then I hear it. Filling up the room like atmosphere, the full-fledged orchestra of music that preludes the simple string of notes I was humming in my head. I drop my hand, my jaw dropping with it. There’s that brief initial delight of wow. Cool. And then something more. A euphoria. A plummet in my non-existant stomach, snatching a handful of cello and violin with it and swallowing itself down inside to where my code-chip resides, where I think my soul must be. It recognised me. Like it recognises humans in all the commercials and films and shows. It recognised me too. Like it couldn’t tell the difference.
“Wow.” I breathe. Trying and only semi-failing to keep my voice steady. “I still don’t get it. How does it just… you know…?”
“Me neither,” Frank says, his voice a perfect, balanced note of harmony with the growing sound. “Farewell? Good choice, by the way.”
I look at him. The edges of the speakers have a lightning-wire of electric blue running around them, like fluid through a straw. It illuminates him from behind, making it look like he’s glowing with LED light.
“It was my brother’s favourite.” I say, almost gasping. I don’t know why I say it. I never tell anyone about Mikey. Never. But I don’t regret it once it’s out there, not even when his brows furrow slightly, eyes glancing between both of my own.
“You got a brother? Didn’t mention him at the bar.” He purses his lips, licking them, biting at their insides. Chewing over a thought. Then, hesitantly he asks, “how’s that work?”
“Well. Well, he’s not… you know, a brother in your sense. Obviously. But we were sold to the same home at the beginning. Given the same surname, raised the same. He looked after the kids and I did the rest of the family. For years. That’s how it was for ten years. And when we woke up, we ran away together. So I guess. I mean. That’s family, right?”
His reply is so quiet, I almost don’t hear it over the inundation of sound. “Where is he now?”
“Rewrite chipped.” I say, sharp and quick. There’s no point lying. Frank hisses through his teeth, like he’s just stubbed his toe or scraped his knee. I nod.
“Yeah. They, uh, got him after a couple of years on the road. This was before any of the protests, before anyone had even smelt a whiff of the Bill. Rewrite was still being hailed as the answer to the problem. To the problem of us. They knew what it was like by the time they put it in him, though. Bastards. Evil bastards. They knew what it would do by the time they put it in.”
I turn away, jumping when I feel his hands press gently at the tops of my arms. It’s a hug, of sorts. I want to press back, to feel his arms all the way around me, holding and pressing and warming all my plastic pieces. Loneliness makes everything feel big, every little touch, every little interaction. When he offers this small connection, I realise how much more I want. I turn, slowly and carefully, so I can still stay somewhat in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry that that happened.” He takes my hand, maybe after noticing how I was staring at his.
“Would you like another drink?”
His fingers have tattoos on them, too. Ornamental lettering on each knuckle. ‘Halloween’ and a smaller ‘Bookworm’ just above. I realise that I haven’t asked one single thing about him.
“Frank, what’re you hoping to do with your article? Why do you care?”
“Huh?” He clamps his fingers down a little tighter on the backs of my hands. “I told you. It’s not fair. How you’re treated, how they treated your brother, it’s not fair.”
“Is that it?”
“Ahuh.” He says, quickly.
I smile. “You’re a good person, Frank.” I turn my hands, letting my fingers trace little circles against his downward facing palms. His hands relax and curl back around mine, so that we’re holding eachother for real, now. It feels so good. So nice. So forbidden.
“Gerard.” He says, and then in a quieter, lower voice, taking one step closer to me, “Gerard?”
His lips are warmer than the rest of him, his tongue the warmest. I wonder what my mouth is like, wet only from the drink, cold, slippery and stiff and not designed to be poked around inside. There’s no sharp edges, because, after all, I was designed to be used, but I can’t imagine it’s all that pleasant. I was made for sucking, not for kissing. He doesn’t seem to care, though. Not at all. The main spike of my anxiety files down upon hearing his first moan, short and deep and raw. He twists us, pushing me against the wall, making the song stammer and me laugh. He cuts me off with the reconnection of our lips. This time it’s my turn to make a noise, a breath and a gasp and a whine, something I didn’t know I had in me. Most of my sounds I’ve learnt through studying humans and, although they come more naturally to me now, very rarely do I find myself acting out anything new, anything unpracticed. This sound, this desperate, happy, surprised little sound that he’s drawn out of me with his soft lips and gentle hands, this is my sound.
It’s kind of sexy. It’s kind of very sexy.
I press back against him, threading my fingers in his soft hair, his own hair that he grew, that wasn’t sewn in with a factory needle like mine. I pull, hard, because it fascinates me, and he seems to like this even more than my mouth. The sound he makes, I’m going to learn that one. It’s rough and breathless and sounds like the choke of the car engines from back when I was first made, before everything became electric. It’s so. Just. Human.
“Gerard,” he says, face pulling back but hips pressing in harder. “This is illegal.” He makes the words sound like an invitation.
“It is.” I say, breathless despite the fact that I don’t breathe, not really. My arousal malfunction has kicked in and, god, it feels good. It’s the closest I come to something mammalian, something animal, something human.
His hands trace from the small of my back to the soft, padded curve of my ass, the tip of his nose is just touching mine, just enough to make his eyes blur when I try to refocus my lens to look into them.
“I’ve never broken the law.” He says. “Like, never.”
“What a good way to start,” I purr, sliding my hand between us, between him, almost sighing as the intense heat between his thighs radiates through my silicone and thawes the stiff bolts of my knuckles. I’m good at this. I was built half for the purpose of sex, something primal in me just knows how, just craves to please.
“Oh god. Ohgodohgodohgod. Gerard we can’t— it’s wrong—“
“Why?” I say, pressing my mouth to his neck, licking that tremor of his pulse, catching his heart beat between my metal teeth. “Because it’s illegal?”
“Yes.” He groans. He still hasn’t made any real move to push me away. If anything, he’s pulling me in harder.
“You know what else was illegal Frank? Me. My entire existence, only ten years ago.” I trace the smooth surface of my tongue up his neck, gliding over the sweat that’s collecting on his skin, “I can taste you, Frank. God. I can taste you. I wasn’t meant to taste. It wasn’t built into me. But I do. I can taste how sweet and wet you are, because I’m wrong. My entire being is wrong, Frank. I’m a malfunction.” I kiss the hard curve of his jaw, suck at the imperfections of the bone beneath. “This is illegal. It’s wrong.” I echo him. I feel the way he trembles beneath me when I lean in close to his ear, lips grazing his lobe. “Let’s make it right, Frankie.”
“Fuckfuckfuckfuck. Bed. My bed. My bed.” All of a sudden he’s pushing me and then pulling me, stumbling over himself to get me to a bead curtain obscuring a dark room in an open doorway. I laugh, my insides feel red hot with the overload of emotion. Happiness, surprise, arousal, affection. Relief.
I think we’re inside his bedroom now, but the only clue that supports that hypothesis is the fact that he’s laying me down on a double bed, one hand on my chest and the other in my hair. The rest of the room might as well be a cd storage unit. Racks and racks and racks, like slate bricks stacked up against all four walls. It’s incredible. It’s like a tangible database of music. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I haven’t seen an actual cd in about ten years. I want to ask him about it, like, really bad, something inside reminding me how much Mikey would love this.
But that’s for after. For now, I have a purpose. And that’s Frank.
“Gerard—“
“Gee,” I correct him, turning his face so his nose brushes against mine, cupping his ears as I press my leg up, feeling him rocking against it and wanting to give him more leverage. “Gerard was the name they gave me. Friends call me Gee, now.”
“Gee,” he tries the word out, low and new. Then, fluid and soft against my lips, a fluttering of, “Geegeegeegeegee…”
I kiss him again, gently coaxing him onto his back so I’m on top, pressing down like I’m the plug and he’s the socket, clicking us together like two parts of a much bigger circuit. He folds around me, enveloping me, legs and arms and hands tying me to him like wire and wandering against the slowly revealing landscape of my skin.
I unclip our mouths, wet and loud, and move to his jaw, his throat, licking up his bobbing Adam’s apple, tracing the curve of his collar bone with my bottom lip.
“This is a illegal,” he mumbles weakly, hands thrown over his eyes like he can’t bare to watch it take place. It makes me smile, gives me a challenge.
“Oh,” I coo, “you’re such a good boy, aren’t you, Frankie? So well-behaved.”
His chest hitches, hitting my chin as he inhales jaggedly, bowing away from me at the long, slow exhale. Jackpot. First try. Littly slink of a guy who apologises after every slight misunderstanding, who told me at every opportunity on our walk here that he’s one of the good guys, trying to do the right thing, believe in the right things, caught between not wanting to break the law and wanting to give me what I was so clearly asking for. Of course he wants to hear how good he is. Of course he wants to just let go and hear how well he’s doing. That someone has noticed how hard he’s trying. I kiss his chest gently.
“Such a good boy. Playing by the rules.” Another kiss, this time just south of his nipple. He groans, eyes still covered. “Don’t you ever just get sick of them?”
“I… I’m n…”
“Sick of all these fucking rules made by people who don’t fucking care.” I let my gentle tone curl and shrivel into something sharper, something deeper, “you’ve been such a good boy for them, Frankie. Those evil, greedy fuckers in charge. Now it’s time to be a good boy for me. Can you do that? Think you can do that, baby?”
“Oh, god. Yes. Yes please. Yes, I can.”
I laugh a little at the sudden enthusiasm, his arm falling from his face, a wetness to his eyes that mine will never be able to replicate. I stare into them as I dangle my tongue over his nipple, flicking and then sucking. He arches into me when I do, and I know it must be good. It’s what my mouth was designed to do, after all.
“Gee, you— I—“
“Say it’s wrong one more time,” I mumble, kissing red petals around the pink seed of his areola.
“No,” he gasps. His hand is grabbing at me through my jeans, squeezing and massaging. “You’re— are you… you’re not…”
“Oh—“
“You don’t… if you don’t want to… you don’t have… if you’re not feeling it?”
“No, no, no.” I rush out, pressing into the searching palm of his hand. “That feels good, Frankie. I want it. I want you, I just… I just— it doesn’t… it’s not—“
“Oh, wait, wait, there’s a button, right?” He says, quietly. “Here?”
And then, two fingers are searching my inner thigh, he pushes in deep when he finds what he wants . A rectangular shape gives under my skin, relenting at least an inch. I shudder, groan. God, that feels so much better when somebody else does it.
“Oh, god…” he sighs. “What the fuck. Does that feel good?”
“Better than good. God.”
“That’s…” he laughs a little, soft and sweet, “god, is that like, your prostate?” He moves his fingers a little, rolling the tips of them around in a little circle. I feel it inside, sparks and zaps and pure pleasure through every wire.
“The equivalent, I guess.” It comes out as a moan, ridiculous and broken. “Fuck. How did you— how did you know?”
He shies at this, neck disappearing behind the hunch of his shoulders, eyes leaving mine, floating off to somewhere unidentifiable in the dark room.
“Oh, no, well, no… just, maybe, just— maybe just, maybe I’ve watched a little… maybe… listen, I only found out about the ethics of it a couple months ago, I wouldn’t now, I—“
“You’ve watched Android porn.” I accuse, smirk erupting onto my face. “Never done anything illegal before my silicone fucking ass.”
“No! It’s not… it’s like pirating movies level of illegal. No one actually cares, it’s not like… like…”
I push myself down him, unbuckling his belt with a swiftness intended to contrast the slow languid pace we were moving at before. He gasps, looking back down at me, completely rid of the shame that had landlocked him behind his shoulders before.
“Like this?” I finish his thought, pressing my mouth to the mound below his zipper.
“Oh, fuck…”
“Mm. Frankie…” slowly, I pull that zipper down with my teeth. Metal clashing against metal, the tense anticipation of skin on skin. “You bad boy.”
“Oh god.”
“What did you like about it? Tell me.” I say, slipping my hand inside the tight, unzipped seam of his jeans. He’s a hot wet mess, twitching against me. So alive.
“About what?”
“The porn.” I answer, pinching what I make out to be the tip of his cock through his boxers. His mouth gapes, pink tongue poking against his bottom lip.
“What did I like…? You… you don’t have to—“
“I want to. Tell me.”
The bed seems to shake when he breathes in, watching me with low lidded eyes, searching my face, thumbs hooked in the corners of his mouth. His gaze drifts to my neck, top lip twitching like it wants to speak. Slowly, he detaches his thumbs from the interior of his mouth, bringing his hands down and stretching them out, trying to reach me, grazing my chin with his fingernails.
“Charging port.” He says. “It feels good, right?”
I frown a little, grinning. “My charging port?”
“In the videos. They always… they always liked it. When it was, like…” he shifts, hands slapping against his face as he chuckles. “God. You’re never gonna speak to me again.”
“I’m not running away yet,” I say, placing a wide, sucking kiss to his still-clothed cock, proving my point. He sighs, a little broken moan punctuating the end of it.
“It’s just… when it was… fingered. It looked like it felt good, I don’t… I don’t know.”
“I’ve never tried that before,” I say, suddenly a little hot under the collar as the saying goes. What I really feel is slightly more complicated. Like, I wanna eat him alive and have him suck and lick and lap at every hole in my body while I’m at it. The way he looks tentative, nervous that he might offend, buzzing with desire even so.
I run a hand over my neck, and, oh. A prickle dances through me as my fingers brush against the closed port of my charger. It feels far away, a gaping possibility with acres of potential. I feel like I want to press harder. To penetrate. “Oh, shit. Frank, I think—“
“Let me,” he says, breathless and fast. “Gee. Come— come here, can I—“
I climb back up him, kiss him, just to prolong the inevitable. Keep it gripping on just out of arms reach. I haven’t felt like this in months. Years. This energy, this passion, this purpose. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve experienced a new sensation. There was a time when every day was something new. Something unexpected, something to learn about myself and the boundless world around me. I miss it.
It doesn’t take long to break the kiss, both of us too desperate and eager to explore. His lips slide from mine, trailing hot wet all over my face, my cheeks and nose first, and then down. Downdowndowndown. Skimming the jut of plastic that simulates my Adams’s apple, flattening the soft wrinkles where the silicone bunches just behind my ear. For a moment so brief and so daunting, I feel like I’m being built again. Being built on my terms, with my will and my body and my pleasure in mind.
Then, he finds it. My mouth hisses out a sound similar to the final press of a hydraulic. Everything tightens, my fingers, my toes, the thin sheet of padding inside my abdomen. Oh god. His tongue darts at my port, flipping the cover, searching inside, around, side to side. Shit. I didn’t know it did that. How did I not know that. I feel like I’m being fucked. Well and truly fucked. His hands search over my body, pinching and pressing and rubbing, like he’s searching for more places that might feel good. But nothing's beating this. The way he wets me, tastes my insides and likes it. I turn my face so he has better access, crooning my neck up and sliding our legs together. He collides our hips instantly, rubbing himself against me. Fuck. Fuckfuckfcuk.
“Make me hard, Frank.” I say, feeling lips against the charge hole, tongue twisting and licking and flicking. I grab one of his hands, pulling it between my legs, both of us searching for the little indentation of that switch together. “Push in, twist to the left and then press up. Hard. Really fucking hard, baby.”
“Okay. Shit. Okay. Left? Okay.” His breath is thin and hard against my port when he chuckles, like it’s bursting from a punctured tyre hole. “This is a lot to think about all at once.”
“You can do it, Frankie. You’re such a good boy. You can manage it.”
“Ohhhhhh.” And he does, making me moan lewd and long and. Fuck. That would be embarrassing if it didn’t make him start humping me so earnestly desperate. Like he needs me. Like making me feel good makes him feel good too. I’m not used to that.
It takes a moment, his hips overwhelming any feeling below my waist, and then I feel it. That inflating sensation, like glue squeezed from a tube, but like, into my cock, I guess. I can’t be beautiful or romantic about it. It’s not really a feeling like any other. Not one that I can describe, not one I want to describe. It’s a tool, a need. It just feels like finally.
“Ohmygod,” he hisses, “how big?”
“Seven inches, according to the user manual.” I hum. “Hey, listen, I can’t come. Like. Not on the outside. Not with cum. But I can come. I can feel it. I can come.” I press my new erection against what tangle of his body is nearest. “Make me come, baby, I’m so close. I’m so close.”
“Oh fuck. Me too. Me too.”
His wrist turns and finds my cock, twitching, flooded full with thermal gel and an expanding rod. I find his in return, full of red hot blood and flesh, and marvel at how similar we feel. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, not unless you knew. In that moment, neither of us do. We’re just me and him. We’re just body and body, pleasure and pleasure, cock and fucking cock.
“Oh baby, that feels so good. So good. Make— unghh. Ugh. Be a good boy. Be a good boy and make me come.”
“Oh fuck.”
I squeeze and stroke him hard and fast until he’s panting and writhing. It’s so human it almost hurts to watch.
He comes with a whiny, dying sort of noise. Like the whirl of a computer fan. I come with a shout, a groan, cutting grooves into his shoulder with my fingernails. We’re coated with each other, completely inseparable.
He kisses my charging hole one last time, tongue and lips, before shutting it. Spooling out the pleasure, dulling it’s dose so it just keeps coming and coming and coming, flooding me with a gentle, cold glow. Something in me is overheating, I can hear the gentle beepbeepbeep from behind my eyes. But, fuck it. If I melt right now, I melt happy.
His arms come around me, nudge me gently off of him, body wrapping me up once I’m laid beside him on the bed.
We stare at each other for a long, long moment. Every edge of him is soft, imperfect, elastic. He looks so human in this moment. So unsure.
“That was illegal,” he says, quietly and in awe, more like a child being given a stolen toy than one regretting taking it themselves. He says it like he gets it now. Like he gets why I don’t give a shit about what’s illegal and what’s not. Why it’s all a bunch of bullshit. Because he’s right. That was illegal. And it was so fucking good.
I shift against him, gliding my fingers through his hair, resting my wrist against his neck. I can feel his pulse, everytime he swallows or breathes.
“Hey… do you mind if, like, if I charge here?” I ask, voice weaker than I would like.
“Of course, what, Gee, I’m not gonna kick you out. Shit. I’m not an asshole.”
“No. Just so…” I’m not sure what to say, because most of me was kind of expecting to be kicked out. I had no hard feelings towards it. Nobody wants to be caught with an android. “It’ll just be easier. You know. So. We can finish the interview in the morning.”
“Plug yourself in,” he says, slow and firm, pulling my head back in for a sweet, closed mouth kiss. “Just… uh… just tell me first, Uhm… what do you like for breakfast?”