Chapter Text
You’d always been rather satisfied with the avatar you'd been saddled with. Between Zooble’s crippling body dysmorphia and Gangle’s constantly broken comedy mask, it was beyond clear that things could have ended up much, much worse for you.
You had been rendered up as a fashion doll — a non-branded one, of course. Even a force as powerful as Caine would not stand a chance against the formidable legal team behind Barbie. Perhaps it was for the best, since the main differences came across in your ball-jointed limbs and your opposable fingers, all of which you thanked the digital stars above for.
There was one thing in particular that set your avatar apart from the others at the circus, though: while they were stuck with whatever clothes they’d been designed with, you had an entire closet of options you could physically change into. You’d be a pretty poor excuse for a fashion doll if you didn’t.
You liked putting together outfits each day, and you were happy that you could do so here. Somehow, your closet seemed to be carefully catered to your taste, and for a long time, that was all there was to it.
Until a certain request from Zooble led you to consider your freedoms a bit more thoroughly.
“You really want to know what I want?” she’d said the day before, sharply taking her grievances up with your digital ringmaster. “I want the ability to have sex.”
The group had let the topic slip away almost immediately. A snarky comment from Jax, a gasp from Ragatha, and… some frantic glitching followed by complete denial from Caine. Then, everybody moved on. This was a family-friendly program, and it seemed apparent that nothing could change that.
But the concept had stuck with you, because it made you realize you were capable of more than just getting dressed — you were capable of getting undressed as well.
You were the only human here capable of nudity.
And nude you were. Granted, there wasn’t much to show off: your base model was almost completely smooth, leaving you with a plastic plane at the apex of your thighs and nothing more than the mere suggestion of a chest. Still, here in the circus, even that was enough to be downright obscene.
It was perhaps the closest Caine, your benevolent ringmaster, had ever been to seeing adult content. You were his only exposure to it. Something about that got the gears in your head turning and whatever abdominal circuitry you had in your abdomen overheating.
You felt breathless as you rounded the corner, nakedly heading toward the circus stage with wide strides. This plan was stupid. So, so, so stupid. Incredibly embarrassing. It was also, perhaps, the group’s only shot at getting rid of these ridiculous censorship filters. Mostly it was just embarrassing and stupid, though.
Caine was flicking around on stage, zipping back and forth, enthusiastically delivering some kind of adventure prelude to a group of your human peers. Zooble was the first to look over her shoulder at the sound of your approaching footsteps, your hard plastic feet clacking across the ground in place of your usual rubber dress-up shoes.
Her eyes widened once she registered what she was looking at. “Holy 
.”
The group’s attention snapped to you next, and in a rare event, Caine’s booming voice fizzled out to nothingness.
“Um—” Gangle started.
Jax stood, pushing past her with a sarcastic quip already at his non-existent lips. “Nice rack, doll. Where’ve you been keeping it all this time?”
But you were looking only at Caine, whose eyes were quite literally bugging out of his head.
One… two… three seconds of shocked silence and pixelated glitching, and then he was back. You half-expected him to snap his fingers and summon up something to cover you in — a nun outfit, maybe — but even with his wits returned to him, there was a pause where all he did was stare blankly at you, his gloved hand tightening like a vice around his cane.
Interesting.
You pushed past the rising discomfort in your chest, doing your best to ignore how many people were looking at you, and pulled your hair behind your shoulders. It was a bit ridiculous, considering there were no nipples to reveal, but you had no choice but to work with what you had.
“What’s everybody looking at?” you asked, doing your best to seem oblivious. “Don’t we have an adventure to head off to?”
This snapped Caine out of his state of shock. He disappeared from view with a dramatic pop, reappearing next to you. You stumbled backward at the sudden movement, only for him to swoop behind and guide you upright again.
Those few seconds of contact his hands had with your bare waist were enough to send a shiver down your non-existent spine. Unsurprising, given the fact that you’d gotten absolutely zero action since arriving at the circus.
“WELL,” he boomed, his hands immediately snapping back to his sides. His voice was just as sardonic as ever, but the word came out tight. “It seems we’re having some technical difficulties, folk. We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve them. Be right back!”
This time, when Caine popped away, you disappeared with him.
Once your head stopped spinning — literally, every time he zipped you in and out of existence, your head spun circles on its hinge — you found yourself sitting across from him at his desk. You noted with some confusion (and delight) that, while he had evidently dropped a thin blanket over you, he hadn’t put you in any clothes yet.
“Caine?”
“What, pray tell, was that little stunt all about—” he took a quick inhale and leaned over the desk as he prepped his next nonsensical nickname “—my perfectly pretty polyvinyl princess?”
Huh. That was a new favorite of yours. Certainly some of his best work.
“I’m not quite sure what you mean, Caine. My… magnificently molary mate?” You sat up straighter, allowing the blanket to slip off your shoulders and puddle over your lap. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
He gripped his lower jaw and quickly flicked his eyes to the ceiling of his mouth. “That! That exactly!”
“What?” you questioned innocently.
“You…” he hissed, teleporting the blanket back over you with a snap of his fingers, “...exposing yourself! Inappropriately!”
“Am I really, though?” This time, you stood all the way up, feeling a sick sense of victory as the blanket fell to the floor. “Everything in this circus is PG, right? My body is no exception. There isn’t anything NSFW going on here at all.”
“I—”
To really drive in your point, you plopped back down in your arm chair and spread your legs. The office lights reflected off the blank surface there almost glaringly. “See? Nothing there.”
He tugged at the collar of his shirt, as if it had suddenly grown too tight, and took a seat on the desk in front of you. His gaze shifted down to the floor between your feet. “Now, now, that’s not—”
You grabbed his hand and led it to your chest. It was hard to tell if the overwhelming satisfaction you felt was from finally being the one to cut him off or if it was because you were finally being touched after god knew how long. Either way, you were going to ride this out for as long as you could. “Just feel: nothing.”
He withdrew his hand instantly, and the force of it snapping back to his body sent him flying backward in the air. “Young lady! Just because there’s nothing there doesn’t mean—”
“Oh my god,” you gasped with all the dramatics you could muster, finally snapping your legs shut. Your hands shot up to cup your face as if you’d just had a major revelation. “I get it now: the problem isn’t my body… it’s where it leads the imagination, right?”
“YES!” Caine shouted at last, a tremor of relief racking over him. He relaxed enough to flit back over to you, kneeling at the base of your chair, and reached into his sleeve. Apparently, there’d been a tape measure waiting there all along. “I knew you would understand. Now, let’s just get you all gussied up with some new clothes, then we can send you off on today’s grand adventure and pretend this never happened!”
You allowed him to take your left arm and measure it, though you weren’t sure why it would be necessary. The muscles of your face twitched as you fought a sly smile. “So you admit that you were imagining things, then? About my body?”
He looked up at you past his front teeth, just a few pixels shifting out of place around him.
“I mean,” you continued quickly, surprised you’d gotten this far at all, “it’s clear from the adventures you put together that you have an excellent imagination.”
A soft gasp. Apparently, that meager praise was enough to offset his hesitation. “You really think so?”
“Of course. It’s why I’m so curious to know what you’ve been thinking about this whole fiasco.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “And I wouldn’t be a very gracious host if I denied you that, would I?”
“Exactly.”
“Well… looking at the state of you, obviously one’s thoughts would degenerate into fantasies of the BIRDS AND THE BEES, with you of course being the bird, and the other party being the bee.” As he spoke, a literal bird and a literal bee flew out from his hat to accentuate his point.
“Go on?”
“There would be LOVE MAKING and HANKY PANKY and, if my assumptions are correct, a trip to a place called POUND TOWN.”
Uh oh.
You took the tape measure from him, grabbing his hands and looking him directly in his big, puppy dog eyes. “Caine, be honest: do you even know what sex is?”
The 3D assets around the room jittered in place for a moment as he considered your question. “Of course I do. I’m all-knowing. Actually, I just want to make sure you know what ‘sex’ is, my sweet synthetic superstar. Wouldn’t want to taint an innocent mind, now would we?”
“I see.”
“So, then,” he continued, “why don’t you tell me what you think it is? Because I absolutely, 100% know everything about it. To reiterate: I just want to make sure you do, too.”
“Of course. No doubts about that.”
He watched you expectantly, his gaze flicking between your face and your exposed body. It seemed that, as long as you weren’t too abrupt, you might be able to ease him into this without sending him into total shutdown again.
“When two people care about each other very deeply,” you began, “they can show it with their bodies. First, they feel it.” You ghosted a hand over your lower abdomen, hovering above the heat building there. “Right now, I feel it here. It’s a warm, staticky buzz. Do you feel that anywhere, Caine?”
He studied the curve of your hand over your stomach, and for a moment, he began to move his own hands toward his groin. Unfortunately, he thought better of it in the end and just gripped the hem of his coat instead.
You lifted a foot, slowly sliding it up the inside of his thigh until you reached the area that you knew, despite his hesitation, his arousal was building. “Maybe here?” you asked softly.
“₦₦₲ⱧⱧⱧ!” Even the slightest brush of your heel against him was enough to send him doubling over. Like most of his reactions, this one was cartoonishly over the top — a puff of steam erupted from his top row of teeth, his tongue twisted in his mouth until he was quite literally tongue-tied, and his pupils briefly shaped themselves into little hearts.
His voice came out strangled: “And you’re feeling this way too?”
You nodded. You certainly were now.
“And people feel this way when they care about each other?”
“They do,” you confirmed. He didn’t need to know what casual, meaningless sex was, even if that’s exactly what you wanted to have with him. Opening that can of worms would probably fry his circuits.
The gears were turning in his head. “You’re saying you care about me?”
This question gave you pause. Did you, in a way? You certainly had no ill will toward the ringmaster, despite how overstimulating he had made your time at the circus. You felt pity when he was hurt, and you felt warmth when he was happy. Normally, you would accept these feelings as some sort of innocent love, or doting at the very least—but Caine was nothing more than lines of code. It was difficult to connect human emotion to him.
His jaw rested on your knees, he looked up at you and batted his eyelashes. He needed this, you realized. Perhaps more than you did.
it. At the end of the day, you were just lines of code now, too.
“Yes,” you breathed at last. “I care about you.”