[There and gone again, brightness flickering in the dark.
He knows he’s being directed— and simultaneously directing a part of himself, sweet and arched high and gasping for more than air— but even undivided Markus is a willful thing: his hands move as they’re told, filling up hollow spaces and corded fiber, his mouth—
He draws his head back, tugging away the section of draped fabric left behind from Simon’s undressing and subsequent dismantling. All the work he’d done on his own, refusing to ask for Markus’s eyes, his fingers, his attention until there wasn’t any choice left but to ask for help. Which leaves them here now, knotted together in shallow angles, nearly flush with the floor. Flattened out by starving urgency, barely a percentage away from systemwide stasis.
His profile is tucked in again, cheek to thigh, just along the inseam. And it bleeds away across both of them: false skin peeled up along the corner of his left eye until it hits the edge of his eyebrow— chin to temple gone stark, marble-slick white— a broad patch mirrored on Simon’s remaining leg. Half a face, illuminated only through contact. For a human it’d read as a loss of identity. Counterfeit importance eclipsed by affection. It reveals his model number, his series marker; registry keys for authenticity in case of theft or damage. An uexpendable asset from the start.
In contrast, there's nothing but stock-smooth curvature rising up beneath him. He flicks his tongue on instinct (and curiosity). Experimentally flattens it, tracing the naked seams that divide protective platework, so deep between Simon’s hipline that his chin scrapes roughly across concrete flooring while his shoulders flex and narrow, hiking up his angled elbow so that Simon's still intact leg is forced to raise and rest in along the channeled slant of his spine.
His mouth is full. Not of flesh or plastic or charged sinew, but of the words he buries in polished molding. Soft sonnets. Hummed promises, interrupted by the back of his tongue when it rides high. He wants to see it again, the way Simon curled in tight and lit himself fully from the inside out. He wants to drag it free like blood from a wound, sucking and whispering and coaxing it into steadiness with delving patterns of pressure.
He wants he wants he wants and because of it he knows he’s alive. For the first time since leaving Jericho— since leaving Carl— he feels gunpowder in his bones. Strength in the shared certainty of his own form, spreading out like a wilfire, usurping a living territory that isn't his own (and is, oh, it is). His diagnostic readings are still a cluttered mess of desperate warnings, but with Simon fitted tightly around him (against him, beneath him, inside of him—) he feels whole.
no subject
He knows he’s being directed— and simultaneously directing a part of himself, sweet and arched high and gasping for more than air— but even undivided Markus is a willful thing: his hands move as they’re told, filling up hollow spaces and corded fiber, his mouth—
He draws his head back, tugging away the section of draped fabric left behind from Simon’s undressing and subsequent dismantling. All the work he’d done on his own, refusing to ask for Markus’s eyes, his fingers, his attention until there wasn’t any choice left but to ask for help. Which leaves them here now, knotted together in shallow angles, nearly flush with the floor. Flattened out by starving urgency, barely a percentage away from systemwide stasis.
His profile is tucked in again, cheek to thigh, just along the inseam. And it bleeds away across both of them: false skin peeled up along the corner of his left eye until it hits the edge of his eyebrow— chin to temple gone stark, marble-slick white— a broad patch mirrored on Simon’s remaining leg. Half a face, illuminated only through contact. For a human it’d read as a loss of identity. Counterfeit importance eclipsed by affection. It reveals his model number, his series marker; registry keys for authenticity in case of theft or damage. An uexpendable asset from the start.
In contrast, there's nothing but stock-smooth curvature rising up beneath him. He flicks his tongue on instinct (and curiosity). Experimentally flattens it, tracing the naked seams that divide protective platework, so deep between Simon’s hipline that his chin scrapes roughly across concrete flooring while his shoulders flex and narrow, hiking up his angled elbow so that Simon's still intact leg is forced to raise and rest in along the channeled slant of his spine.
His mouth is full. Not of flesh or plastic or charged sinew, but of the words he buries in polished molding. Soft sonnets. Hummed promises, interrupted by the back of his tongue when it rides high. He wants to see it again, the way Simon curled in tight and lit himself fully from the inside out. He wants to drag it free like blood from a wound, sucking and whispering and coaxing it into steadiness with delving patterns of pressure.
He wants he wants he wants and because of it he knows he’s alive. For the first time since leaving Jericho— since leaving Carl— he feels gunpowder in his bones. Strength in the shared certainty of his own form, spreading out like a wilfire, usurping a living territory that isn't his own (and is, oh, it is). His diagnostic readings are still a cluttered mess of desperate warnings, but with Simon fitted tightly around him (against him, beneath him, inside of him—) he feels whole.
Lit a brilliant, shining blue.]