RK800 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
undeviated) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
albinomilksnake2018-06-13 03:48 am
undeviated) wrote in albinomilksnake2018-06-13 03:48 am
DETROIT BECOME HUMAN OPEN RP POST
Pick your poison:
Markus | Connor
( Josh | Gavin Reed )
Connor default is Machine Connor— but I can throw down a nice Connor if that's more your jam, just let me know what your preferences are if you have them
press x to do that thing where Markus just stops talking and hones in on contact instead
(Androids don't dream; it's when he wakes that he has to bury the thought that he might someday be the last one left standing.)
And now, between them, they have two hours' worth of Blue Blood left coursing through insulated veins. Possibly two and a half, if the weather continues to keep their exposed circulatory systems sluggish. Five hours before the FBI realizes in their networked sweeps that something must have slipped past. Seven, before Cyberlife puts another deviant hunter on the case.
'I'm not going anywhere without you', Simon insists even as he fits himself back into those warehouse walls. Reaches and recedes all in the same beat, as though whatever ground Markus presses forward to cover, Simon has to rush to reconstruct just as quickly. A sudden difference of inches where there weren't any left to give. Coolant-suffused breath running high across cut cheekbones— across dead air. Simon, who runs. Even from this. From him.
He steps forward. Steps, not leans. Plants one boot between the weathered outlines of Simon's own and lets the pressure of Simon's palm stiffly settle beside tacky bullet holes, where they could easily find purchase. Unguarded now. There's ozone in the air. The scent of high humidity that precedes a storm. Seek shelter, thrums a distant warning attached to his networked awareness. Seek shelter.
His stare is piercing and certain, he doesn’t blink. He reaches up (not accurately, the way that Cyberlife had intended for its machines, a mix of feeling and purpose guiding the tips of his fingers as they chart their way over muscular tension), bare hand dragging Simon’s fingers over the gouges in his chest. Rests them at the paneling that protects his regulator, tangible even through the thin layers of his shirt.
Pressure. That's all it is. Demanding that something either well up, or run cold.
Together, or not at all.]
1/2
for a moment, he fears markus has already reached that point. he goes so still, so silent. the fear of losing him drives through his alloy ribs, an electrical impulse lances through his heart. but markus is only in motion, chasing him down those last, precious few inches before simon has run out of ground, and he is pinned between the containers behind him and markus before him. he opens his mouth: markus, we can't stay here settled on his tongue, ready to be said. ready to be used as a barricade between them. he can't be so selfish, after all. one can only love a people's savior in silence, or run the risk of reducing him to mortal.
he swallows it, as markus guides his hand to where he can just barely feel the flutter of his regulator, his heart. instead, he says: ] Okay.
[ one finger is trapped in the hole in his shirt, as they curl through the material. he doesn't try to get away, not now.
he'll follow markus's lead, without question. this is how he will keep him safe. again, he breathes: ] Okay.
[ quietly, his free hand finds markus's, fingers wrapping around his, squeezing briefly. ]
We'll talk after. I promise. But, we have to go. [ soft, insistent as his forehead drops to the line of markus's shoulder, curling into his space with a heavy heart. they'll die, if they do not go. he doesn't want to die, he doesn't want markus to die. they do this together, or not at all. ] We have to ---
2/2
[ north's voice is thunder - like the sound of her stolen gun as it barks, shattering the knee of the armor-clad soldier that thinks the broad of his forearm across her throat is enough to stop her in her tracks. like the rest of their people, breathing is merely a formality - a crafted response, formed for human comfort. north refuses to breathe, just to spite them all. she hears the human that has her pinned yell out, and as his spine bows in pain, she brings her gun up to the soft flesh under his chin and fires. blood splatters across the bridge of her nose, she can taste it in her mouth.
around her, androids are running. the car that had torn through the fence smoking and whining under bulletfire, allowing for momentary cover as their people ascend broken concrete and torn steel fencing, fleeing into the streets even as the tattered remnants of jericho call for them to board the pair of transport trucks stolen from detroit's gridlocked highways. this way! here! she can hear them calling, as she rolls the body off of hers and feels the rush of something in her head. bad memories, something she needs to shake off. ]
Josh!
[ she roars across the chaos, picking herself up as she wipes blood from her eyes with the back of her hand. ]
Josh, sound off!
[ the truck they had used to break through the barricade is in flames, their people are scrambling - unorganized, panicked.
she stops to haul someone to their feet, wrenching them up by the back of their neck, the crook of their arm and she points for the trucks with their open bays and the multitude of arms gesturing, reaching. go, she knows she yells, but the sudden explosion flattens her, fire and pressure shoving her backwards and onto the ground, sliding her across the snow-and-ice heavy asphalt. the gun skitters from her grasp, and she scrubs at her face again. her hands coming away slick and blue, errors at the corners of her eyes warning her about possible head trauma. assess. assess. ]
Josh, [ one last time she screams his name, her knuckles biting into the ground as she leverages herself to her feet. ] We're leaving, where the hell are you!
types from the grave
He braces his hands against the body of a rifle, willing his grip to stay sure (more than he's sure it will stay), regulatory system running hot with fear as his heartbeat rabbits within its housing to compensate. Beyond compacted wreckage and labyrinthine barricades, the only thing he can make out is smoke overhead, its unfurling belly lit by flames that climb higher by the second.
He tries. He tries to buck off the soldier that's wrenching armored weight down over his hold, but he doesn't know how. North, Simon, even, he's seen them defy their programming time and time again. His own emulation is unconvincing: his elbows lock, maybe in the wrong place, or at the wrong angle. He doesn't know. Maybe it isn't a matter of purpose, but a driving desperation he lacks.
He pushes, harder, the upturned rifle stock catching him in the chin when it comes back down with force and he tastes— electricity. The sensors in his right leg are damaged. His face feels wet. Their people are leaving, and that's good, he thinks, if they get farther than him.
And then he hears her. Or he thinks he does.]
North!
no subject
she runs through him, and knows it's akin to being hit by a motorcycle. the android figure was plastic over steel, and she has been solidifying herself since the day they began taking on wounded, printing replacement parts with their stolen machines. little by little, making herself into something that was more than what humans had thought she should be. when she hits the soldier, his armor cracks and he lets out a woof of pain so dense that she knows she's broken his collarbone and his ribs. as she digs her heels in to stop her momentum, it parks her directly over josh. ]
Don't you remember what I said! "What do you do when they get you on your back?"
[ she'd drilled it, one day. standing over a handful of deviant androids who hadn't believed in sitting around, idle. they'd wanted to better themselves, they'd wanted to be able to fight back and fight back well. hadn't wanted to take whatever treatment they had received sitting down, ever again. the question: what do you do when they get you on your back?.
the answer: don't let them get you on your back!
north reaches down and gathers josh's hand into hers, hooks herself under him and shoves, drags, hauls him up and onto his feet, even as she's taking stock of his condition. lean on me, she calls silently, her mind drifting into his as she shoulders his weight and takes it off of his wounded leg. across the field, she bellows for the trucks to leave. proceed on, don't stop for anything, they'll catch up - she promises. she promises them, because she can't leave josh behind. she won't, he'll die and she will not ever allow any of them to die.
they sent markus away, asked simon to shoulder that particular burden, because they were determined not to let any of it die. it would die, if he did. they'd lost the momentum necessary to spread their people's belief beyond their leader. it fell to her and josh now, to keep whatever was left safe. to defend it. to fight back. ]
Move, Josh! [ she snaps it, and hauls forward like an ox on a yolk, shoving her weight to counterbalance his as she half-drags him across the yard towards the smoking wreckage of the truck they had driven straight into the detainment camp, bulletfire splattering across the ground around them. she can feel the bite of something rip through her side, and bares her teeth against the warning display that splinters her vision. it's distracting, she'll be fine. ] We're going for the alley, there's a secondary route.
no subject
[Thank you— You shouldn't have come back for me— I'm glad you're here— Let go of me and run—
A dry tangle of sentiments he seems to choke on as she pulls him upright, her grip so secure that the dull shaking in his forearms seems to steady in response, heavy arm tucked around her shoulders.
He cuts himself off at the same time she barks at him to move, and he does. One foot in front of the other, angle offset and awkward for how he can't sense accuracy with every other step. In that moment he isn't thinking about Markus or Simon, he isn't drawing relief from the idea that they might have escaped before the FBI tightened their grip on the harbor and its byways: the air is too thick with smoke, North's hold is too strong, he's slowing her down, the alley's too far.
His fingers tighten in the layered fabric of her coat.]
I'm with you.
[Mechanized calculations: he isn't able to gauge his weight distribution when it connects with the ground, but he can, by narrowing his subroutines, predict an appropriate angle and synchronize his movements with it. Take the pressure off of her and speed up their pace in the process.
It isn't much, he knows, but— ]
Go.
no subject
it means she can focus on josh.
north drops his weight, clutching his wrist in her hand as she lunged up and over the shallow embankment and braces her feet against the hastily-constructed cement barrier. she hauls on him, fighting to bring his damaged legs to heel, to haul him up and over the barricade and back into her arms. she tips him over her shoulder again and dives into motion, moving as fast as she can go towards the alley that she'd scouted long before she'd lead the charge to break open the detainment camp. there's a manhole cover, already loosened and sitting aside, to be used as a backup escape, and she moves towards it. ]
Get on the ladder.
[ behind her, she can hear voices. soldiers trying to locate them through the smoke wafting from the burning wreckage from the truck. she drops josh again, and doubles back, kicking snow over the thirium trails they've left behind. scattering evidence of their passing to the wind as best as she can. she comes back, tearing trash down in her wake to further hide her footprints, and slides towards the ladder, reaching for his hands. ]
I'll lower you down, brace yourself. You're gonna' drop hard.
[ there's no avoiding it, they have to go.]
no subject
He can ignore it.
Noise detection in that subterranean space is limited, but there's no mistaking a low, bassy hum that seems to rumble through the air just overhead. A helicopter, maybe. Or the revving engine of a militarized vehicle— Josh isn't familiar enough with army equipment to tell the difference.
His shoulders pull tighter with tension, syllables stressed:]
North, you need to hurry!
[He thinks, shifting his weight more towards his uninjured leg, that if it comes down to it, he could catch her.
Or try to.]
no subject
he'll see her form as she leans back, away from the sewer, and the short-range connection that sparks to life between them. her voice, echoing faintly into his mind: you know the way, best of us all. you need to go, josh. i'll lead them away. and the sound of her pushing, pulling the manhole cover - metal on asphalt as she drags it back over the ladder, slowly but surely. the sound of the helicopter is advancing, and she needs to get away. to lay a false trail.
she doesn't know if she can, but damn it - she has to try. ]
I'll find you, I promise.
[ the cover closes with a dull 'thud', and the sensation of her presence pulls back. severing the short-range communications. he can walk well enough to limp through the sewers, and she can buy him that time. ]
1/2
Eclipsed by the grit of that grate sliding back into place under pressure, light slipping away from his field of vision alongside her.]
No. No! North, don't—
[He rushes up in that moment, reaching for the ladder with a full, overtaxed extension of his arms, barely able to slide his fingertips across the bottom rung, useless when slickened metal rejects his hold. His network can’t connect. He can’t find her signal in the depths.
And he isn't afraid of it, being alone. Not for himself.
There isn’t any choice—]
2/2
They didn’t discuss it at the time, hurriedly scooping up whatever supplies and packages of thirium were within reach with shaking hands between looping patrols.
They don’t discuss it now, hours later, flexing their fingers in the dark. A single supply pack rests between them, filled to the brim with stacked bags of Blue Blood and biocomponents. Markus lifts another packet to his lips, drinking without restraint, chemical acidity washing over his tongue and cooling the span of his throat. His reserves are still low: forty six percent, but it's enough that his thirium regulator isn't whining hot in his chest, breathing out slow and shallow as the haze at the edge of his vision clears.
There are still warnings. Most of them insist on running a diagnostic scan to determine the (thirty seven) errors that have been detected since his last system reboot; Markus's attention slides past them all, resting on Simon's half-slumped form instead. A sharp contrast between saturated alerts and faded contours, worn through. Worn down.
For a little while, when they'd been flattened against the ground as searchlights crawled across the asphalt only a few inches in front of them, Simon had been slow to get up. So slow, Markus wondered briefly if he would make it.]
no subject
( it hurts, to look at the androids quietly awaiting their own return and likely destruction. what hurts more, is the thought of how markus would look at him, if he knew that simon would shut that door and turn his back on them without feeling guilt over the decision. ) knowing they were working on borrowed time, and every second lost to other goals was another second closer to their destruction. he knows markus's mind, when he reaches for the crook of his elbow and tugs on it - look away, it urges. it's then that he feels the guilt, for asking markus to let them go.
hours later, he doesn't speak of it, quietly tucked into a pool of shadow while his system rebooted and compensated for the new limb he was forced to scavenge from the depths of a well-insulated crate. compatible, even with his older, failing frame -- CX100, the improved-upon variation of his own model. companionable, equipped for adults as well as entirely capable of handling their children. the thought chills him, nauseates him, forcing him to discard his injured leg ( -- the old scars, wounds from Stratford on vivid display where wiring had been hastily repaired and heated metal used to cauterize the holes ) from the hip-joint down. his system had protested the loss, locked him out in stress while he swallowed down thirium.
eventually, it had collapsed entirely, dropping him into standby to recalibrate in a more stable environment. ]
Markus, [ he says, voice bleary and refractive as he rouses again, minutes later. hands moving to search for the new limb, for the hand-held repair tools in the depths of their stolen supplies. he drags it towards him and hunts for the battery-operated wiring kit. pulls out the two prongs and presses them together, soldering beads and sparks flying briefly: ] I need you.
[ your hands. your help.
he wishes north were here - he wishes he'd bothered to have her teach him how to retrofit a hip joint. she was always so much better at putting them back together. the side effect of knowing how to take someone apart, he supposed. ]
no subject
Run.
He was never good at it. Not under the desperate shouts Carl had hurled, pitched to the sound of Markus's own pleas to stay. To stay and sacrifice nothing of what he loved, blood mingling with spatters of paint, poisoning his home. Carl had known.
Jericho knew.
It led him here, fixed itself to the grim electronic gore they're both sporting. The exposed cleanliness of Simon’s new leg, so white that even Markus’s plate lines would look dull beside it. Looking at it, thirium container still pressed tightly to his lips, something rough and jagged in the constant hum of his internal processes seems to ease off. He knows it isn’t easy for Simon, but (selfishly) each new component installed is a buffer against degradation and decay. Maybe that was a part of why he’d rushed to fit his own minor biocomponents under the other android’s skin. Why when he felt Simon's system suffer trying to sustain the breadth of his own he—
His jawline twitches. His shoulders flex. Single-minded train of thought stuck in his throat as his eyes bore into the high curve of Simon’s chest beneath torn fabric, lingering on those puncture wounds— until Simon calls to him. A brief burst of electric heat.]
I'm here, Simon.
[And he is. Kneels down just beside him, heavy. Heavy in kindness or in anger or sorrow or want. He carried himself with so much weight that under the brightness of his stare or the sound of his voice or even the press of his hands— steady and sure where they slide in between the slender angles of Simon's own, already moving to pull the soldering tools from his hands without instruction— the world narrowed.
He isn't thinking about the androids they left behind. In a day, that might change but not now. Not right now.]
no subject
( he thinks of it again: the CX100 silent and sleeping in its crate. the replacement parts he'd rummaged through, gleaming white and sleek compared to what he hid underneath his synthetic skin; yellowing plastic, old cracks and scrapes that could not be buffed out. scars on his insides, from the parts of him that had rubbed against one another. it eats at him, low in his belly like he's swallowed poison instead. )
jaw tense, he shifts his weight to the opposite hip. balances himself in a way that the exposed, inner curve of his body is backlit by his own insides, soft blue and humming with the strain. he doesn't think of what it feels like, to be open like this to markus -- that it this is as commonplace as being seen by someone performing routine maintenance. it isn't intimate. but, it is. beyond intimate, because the way markus looks at him is not impartial. he isn't seen merely as a machine, by those eyes. ]
This needs to be narrowed. These wires need to be pulled forward.
[ he explains it verbally, demonstrating the locations of critical connectivity points. his own metal joint needs to be broken, bended and narrowed to fit the sleeker composition of the CX100's limb. wiring can be affixed in place by using the spare metals to bracket it, solder it in place. his explanation could be far more efficient, if shared silently through their connection, but the way simon tips his head back and swallows thirium -- he's not able to suffer that burden just yet.
as he sets the bottle aside, his hands find markus's wrists. steadying them, even as he brings them down to --
he can't think of this now ( a sparking between them; the sensation of -- teethtongue -- against wrist, soft and hungry ), not until they're out of the woods. ]
Maybe I should have everything upgraded, [ he laughs, a little wry, a little heartsick. ] Wouldn't that be nice?
no subject
And he's tried. He did try. Reconfigured his bones to be what they wanted or needed, if there ever was any difference. Only North came close to mapping out its shadow— maybe Simon, now, too, depending on how much his system could effectively process in those few febrile seconds before his system threatened to collapse.
(—there are hands on his wrists. Still slick from the residue left behind from warming snow, slow to melt over inorganic composition. Something guttural and urgent dragging at him, echoing the sensation of contact where it shouldn't be, and the only words he attunes to it are the soft, bitter sound of Simon's vocal projections—)
He can't smooth out the wrinkles in his brow line. The shadows they press down over his mismatched eyes, too sharp, too focused. So he drops his face instead, letting the high collar of his coat obscure what he can't bring himself to hide.]
I see it. [Markus exhales, responding to earlier instruction, tucking his chin low and fixating on the visible broadness of the PL600's base frame where metal rests exposed against backlit circuitry and displaced, brilliant wiring. Older methods. Dated methods. They'd been implemented before Cyberlife had pinpointed a better system of socket management.] Simon, I'm gonna need you to hold still as much as possible.
Can you turn off your sensor readings for this area? [A minor process. One that doesn't always work once an android's already sustained damage, and possibly a function that isn't supported in a line that was designed for minimal physical impact.]
no subject
all the same, it leads his reactions.
markus bows his head to the task at hand, and simon tucks his fingers along the line of his spine. his palm follows suit, along the side of his throat. a drifting, glancing press of his body along markus's as he settles his shoulders against the ground - sagging down, until he's half-twisted on the worn concrete. he lays himself out, and pulls his hands to himself. tucks them across his eyes and draws in unnecessary breath before purging it from his synthetic lungs. ]
Something like that.
[ he can't turn off an essential function, not as he is. the sensation of pain would alert him of further damage, especially in such a wounded state. what simon does, in silence, is amend and re-calibrate the sensation. reflect it within himself to spread what he knows will be a source of discomfort, reactionary warnings that will overwhelm and spark within him. thin and dull it, by using it as a blanket, rather than a single pinpoint. he barely has the ability to do so, granted to him only by the natural evolution afforded to their people. ]
I'll do my best, but no promises.
[ another wry response, coupled with the brief twitch of his mouth below the edge of his hands as they hide his eyes and brace against his nose. ]
no subject
Think of it the way it was with Carl, he tells himself, over the desire to chase, to take back what feels like— loss (more loss). Think of it like your programming, more machine than man. The soundness of cold, resilient framework just underneath his palm, defined with vivid clarity.
Metal is easy to resituate with industrial hands: it’s in those moments that he is what he was made to be. Pinpoint pressure, precise mathematical data. Long lashes drifting shut as he thinks in careful pauses. It’s only when he has to stop planning and act on that data— to dip his fingers deep and high where Simon lays open, past the visible jut of his own glossed white knuckles— that his shadowed eyes lift. Fix high along the subtle arch of Simon’s throat as it peeks out from behind bloodied black seamwork. The fragile curve of his jaw. Slender hands cupped tight.
He thinks. He can’t help it. He isn’t a machine anymore.]
You’ll be all right. [Promises made for the both of them; quiet, beautiful to listen to, to trust in.
He’s settled and buried, broad hand obscured beneath the lip of Simon’s bared substructure, grip splayed wide. The other he fits against the opposite hip, touch light, then firm, then digging the way that a vice screws down overtop of what it pins to the worktable. It takes only a second.
Stale air filled with a single, sickening—
—snap— ]
no subject
not the way markus's lashes touch the freckles high on his cheekbones. not the way his body is broken by the hands that reach inside of him, intimate and omnipresent despite his attempts to distance himself from the sensation. he can feel markus's fingertips against his bones, polyalloy structure giving way with a single, nauseating crunch as his hip is reconfigured by amateur, but steady, hands. even behind his hands, with his eyes closed and his vision dimmed to near-darkness, he sees color as his system lights up like a wildfire.
catastrophic damage detected.
no reassurances he tells himself will rid him of the alarm, the warning. the notification that part of his body has ceased to function and equilibrium has been lost. the knowledge that this back alley surgical procedure might not work has not escaped him. he's only deigned to tell markus of the dangers of reconstructing an outdated body without the proper tools. it's not like they could have stayed in the warehouse, though. this has to do, this has to work. ]
-- I'm okay.
[ he remembers to say it, through the canned, strangled tone his voice has taken on. not pain, not so much.
distraction. dizzy and surreal, while his system plows ahead and desperately attempts to balance itself. ]
Thirium levels are sub-optimal, but holding. I'm not bleeding out.
[ simon pulls his hands down, away from his face, and props himself up on his elbows. his eyes wandering from the null space where his leg should be, where markus's hand is. along the line of his wrist, his forearm. though he doesn't need to, simon swallows. swallows the warmth that spreads through his throat and collarbones, humming like liquid across his ribs. ( something sparks, in his stomach. the signal shooting throughout him, through the connection of foreign fingers poised within his body: a desperate, muted yearningwanting. the ghostly feeling of markus in his arms, markus spread across his back. the weight of him as he sagged in the church, unconscious into his arms - white cloth flowing like a shroud around him. solid, physical. realalive. ) ]
This will work.
[ promises. ]
I can't believe we're gonna write smash here but these androids can't be stopped
‘We'll talk after. I promise..’ And it is after. And he—
Has never had a good sense of timing.
His hand sinks deeper, seeking out warm spaces filled with charged, living currents.]
I’ll go back if it doesn’t. [Markus exhales] I’ll get whatever you need.
[Tools, equipment, hardware, a body, an army, an end, a beginning, a gospel made of plastic and thirium and the beat, beat, beat of his regulated heart as it screams defiantly in the face of deafening loyalty. His side aches. Branded plastic stiff from where he'd been burned by Lucy's hands, and it doesn't twist as easily when he shifts across his forearms. He should have replaced it; he never did.
A lifetime ago (not so long ago) he knew how to stand still. How to exist quietly and ask for nothing, because he needed nothing. Now, he moves, so fast and so hard that his feet can't stop; they've gone over the edge. If Simon wants an apotheosis, then he'll press jacketed thorns into his housing and bleed until there's nothing left but absolution or ash. If Simon wants him, he'll— strip radiance from his false skin. He'll sink, heavy, hopeful, down into those arms.
That's the outcome that he wants. Simon was always better at it, giving himself up for their people.
He sets fractured metal aside. On his knees. Broad coat tails spread like wings across dirtied flooring. He nests his fingers in unsealed wiring, he puts his mouth to the concept of their consciousness, keyed so high that his own automated subprocesses suspend themselves. He could transfer what he knows of love and sex and violence— but he only pulls, working frayed titanium between his knuckles at a subduing pace. Explores through long seconds whatever Simon allows. To be inside of him and a part of him, working to the surface those vivid pangs of stop-start data flow, actively suppressed by Simon's conscious efforts.
Let go of it.
It’s his profile that he drops into the hollowed line of Simon's hip, just where it meets his thigh. Scuffing. Remorseless. He opens his mouth, draws fabric between his teeth.]
S M A S H
Markus -- not there.
[ we'll talk later, he had promised. ]
Not there, [ he repeats; the flex of his arm a solid thing, attempting to guide markus's hand from the empty cavity full of soft wires and warm connections. away from where jericho's leader is trying to crawl inside of him and seek out his neural endings and worn interior. already, he can feel the way markus is reaching out to him. the slow and liquid-silk brush of all things that he was, worming its way up through his body. the spark of a thing in his belly, ricocheting and overlapping digital curses, pressing itself against the errors his system has cataloged for review. he is not as far gone as he was before, in the traincar. the damage is bad, but he has found
a middleground. ] Here.
[ he doesn't ask that markus move his face, from where it has begun to tuck itself. he even gives up on removing markus's hand from the place it has found, too warm and too hummingelectricbright. instead, he grabs for the other hand. the one that sits idle while markus's mind begins to quest for what fragments he can reach. it is frightening, to see jericho's hope, mouth soft against the crook of his thigh. teeth working at the cloth he has used to hide bare, synthetic skin even against eyes that would undoubtedly understand, lack judgement of physical form. or the lack of form.
it is
empowering, to see what was meant to be jericho's -- here, burning. piety of the flesh. simon feels like a serpent. ]
Here, [ simon repeats. a broken mantra of the most simple words, as he nudges his shirt's hem higher and slides the heel of his hand along his abdominal panel. the spark of conversation works between his mechanical brain and his physical processes, and his skin fades away in liquid patches, baring his belly as it caves and slides open to expose deeper mechanisms. the steady pulse of his thirium-blue regulator, soft and glowing.
he brings markus's other hand to all of it, and sinks him in up to his knuckles. and falls back, fingers uncurling. letting go. ]
no subject
Here. Here—
Simon’s manufactured interior beckons, and Markus answers, not with a voice that longs to be human, but the soundless one that promises he’s something else entirely: a language of hunger that maintains no etiquette, to tell him that he shouldn’t— delve deep into the dense tangle of internal wiring and connective divides, curving his wrist against the grain. There are deep grooves, notches he can't identify at first. Doubling back over score marks, function melds with feeling: here, the empty basin where a connecting rod has warped over time and rubbed against its connecting shell; here, deeper, a passageway for accumulated debris sports hatchmarks from years of disrepair. Here. Here, he feels life, trembling against assembled confines.
He pays his tribute with searching hands.
He rolls his spine, and it alters where his fingers lie, deep and high and hot from running synthesis. He’s been hunted; this time he hunts, lifting brilliant eyes from where he’s buried his face, watching— everything. Simon's naked fingertips as they let go, the way his face tips as he lets go, visible just over the arch of his chest and its exposed undercarriage, blue and bright and beckoning, interrupted by the smooth plating of Markus's immersed forearm.
(He wonders brieftly what it would be like to fit more of himself inside and watch, without looking away, where the merger of their bodies begins and ends)
The lowered angle of his right hand, tucked and shifting on some absent, unintended line, catches against sturdy contours; it ricochets sharp and clear, forcing him to blink, and it's only as he flexes his fingertips within febrile cables that he realizes it's part of his own chassis— fingers clipping over fingers, heat trapped tightly between them— ]
no subject
every corner of his artificial body hums with the truth: markus can have it, markus can take it. it's for him, it belongs to him.
broken, aged as it is, simon is intimately familiar with himself. he can feel the physical catch of markus's fingertips over old scarring within his abdominal cavity. the battered insides of his plastic exoskeleton, each a scar with a story that blends into warm, flowing sentiment. he hides away the images, the memories, and replaces his past with the immediacy of the moment. a shining, brassy yes as he tips his head back and eases into markus's hands. his broken hand, still in desperate need of a few new fingers, scrambling for the heavy collar of his jacket, dragging it up and over his mouth. his nose. hiding the shape of his mouth as he exhales.
in the eyes of humanity, the way he trembles and seizes for oxygen is entirely unnecessary. for markus, it's everything he can give to him - right here, right now, as he is. ]
There, [ he sighs, as markus's hand connects with a pocket of slender cables, reminiscent of the texture of muscle fiber. some place low in his belly, behind where his hipbones sit. he can feel markus's everything spread throughout him. the slide of a foreign consciousness, tucking into the gaps and niches of his own. filling him, triggering stray processes long left dormant. ]
Oh, no.
[ he says one thing.
he means another.
soft and blue, he shines. from the inside out, a cool glow that highlights the inner structure of his exposed body. it exists for a moment, and fades away in the next. a docile function for a once-docile housekeeper, designed to reassure young children who feared the dark. it flickers, the more that markus's mind fills him - twining through his own, the way his slender fingers quest and seize and explore and become him. more and more and more. ]
Come here. Come here, look --
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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.]
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fragments, passed back and forth between them, dwindling more and more even as they carve out this charged moment.
markus's mouth presses between his legs, and simon feels every process and substructure and complex thought in his entire being stutter to a shivering halt. shock fills him, moderated and softened only by the way he had foreseen such an act occurring - watching the slow lowering of markus's handsome face to the crook of his still-attached thigh. his skin parts like halting liquid, his body reaching out for markus's so naturally, it was as though he were built for the act. in a way, he was. empathy and service, making other lives easier by virtue of his existence - it is what he was made for.
it wasn't easy, to manifest from such subservient beginnings. it wasn't easy, learning who he was outside of what he had been created to be. parts of him still yearn for the simplicity, the days when he didn't have to run and hide and eek out a quiet, sad living in the rusted structure of an old freighter. he'd resigned himself to it, with patience. and then markus had arrived, and denied him a quiet retreat into oblivion. he'd do anything for him, to chase the motes of liveliness and strength that markus had brought them all. ]
Anything, [ he promises, his voice fracturing from the beginning, ] anything, for you.
[ markus speaks into him, through their connection. no words exchanged, no simple strings of code passed between them. it's raw data. raw and markus, and it's like -- he seeks the word out frantically, hands scrambling from where he's held them over the hand plunged into his guts and covers his eyes again, heel digging into the space between markus's broad shoulderblades as he burns from the inside out. blue, shivering like a heartbeat, pouring out between his ribs and through the open void of his abdomen. he flares brilliant, quiet blue that sputters out -- core system warning him of damage to his structural integrity, of code corruption. insidious rot that strangles his voice and leaves him shaking on the pavement as though electrocuted.
( and from which our blood and flesh are nourished ). with a long-ago memory rising in him, caught between an old life and the one possessing him now, he whispers: ] See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart.
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[Markus chokes out a half-beat later, hands jerking against Simon's half-concealed insides as they clench into graceless fists, abruptly killing the third stanza of Ashbery's most prominent work. Strung so unexpectedly high that he can't sustain the intended path of his own processes, bucking in a stuttering half-motion into the space Simon's already soundly occupying, shoulders to hips, to— ]
—shit. [Shivering sharp through his shoulders, toes curling in his boots. If his eyes were open, his vision would blur— he's certain of it— but instead he's tipped too forward, complex systems overstimulated, turned stupid and buried to the point of being muffled in giving musculature. Simon sparks up bright and burns out, and Markus is— they are—
It isn’t greedy anymore. Sated, secured, tired, mostly. Unwilling to leave the altar so he pours himself limply across it instead, eyes still shut, cyclical patterns (breathing, recycling, cooling) spooling down into fully automated function as they run without his input. Hibernal without the loss of consciousness, and it's a trick he realizes he's only recently acquired, from a source so close to his chest that it's tangible.
His hands are left where they’ve been enfolded. It’s the second time he’s pushed Simon’s failing processes, and sustained connectivity is like dialysis between them: his body sets the pace, shoulders the burden of directing subroutines, pouring them back into their owner in packeted heartbeats, streamlined. Exerted. Comfortable. If he carries the efficacy of Simon’s systems, he doesn’t need to drag himself away just yet. A choice he doesn’t even bother evaluating to make.
In myths, holy beings chose their sacred earth. Sanctuaries and temples, valleys surrounded by scripture or jagged mountains that rise like teeth to keep humanity at bay. A place they buried themselves, either in body or in spirit. Axis mundi. Markus came too late to choose Jericho as his own (that was Simon’s rite, even if he’d never wanted it). This, though— the subtle, exposed sounds of life that vibrate dreamily against his own recumbent mass—
His right hand drops, palm forming around the broken joint at Simon’s hip. He leaves his eyes lidded. Fingers stilled in coded comfort]
He is part of me, as I of thy deep secrets, knowing them.
[Beauty in the divine. Beauty in the mundane. It seems fitting that they express themselves in opposing parallels. External, internal. Old, new. Demanding, patient. ]
Thomas Aquinas. [Simon’s author, not his.] Had no idea you were a literary scholar.
[Josh, yes. And they’d have spent hours picking apart the subtleties of context when it comes to the written word if not for the fact that they were actively dying at the hands of humanity.
That they still are.
He hopes he’s all right. That North—
One more lazy exhale, face tucked aimlessly into the hollowed slope of Simon’s hip. A little higher, a little more stubborn, though the soldering iron finds its way into his grip again. Contact sensors doing the work for him: he doesn’t need to look or tear himself away to perform rudimentary tasks.]
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