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
no subject
He was afraid of it. Enough that when he fixed his collar, there was relief blooming fresh underneath his simulated skin.
Simon's wish exists.
Fear of failure. Fear of obsolescence. Fear of—
(Yellow. Red. A racing pattern he keeps angled away from Simon's point of view until it resets to smooth blue.)
This conversation is different. There is no digitized presence pressed heavy against his core processes, urging him to defy coded restraints. He is not staring into the shadowed (and uncomfortable) familiarity of a prototype for a prototype. And unlike the Deviant machine that had preceded it, this PL600 isn't motivated by ideals. It doesn't turn itself with pride into the idea of defying the world. It hates him. Maybe envies him. Maybe knows that if it can't inch its way closer to the ghost of what it had, that it can at least touch what killed it.
How sad.]
You're very good at lying. [Those fingers hover, wavering over the span of its thigh as he crosses a difference of small degrees, sitting down beside it. Defensive movements. Its subsystems must be carrying the full weight of that taxing level of subtlety. Daniel had never managed it. Connor doubts that if it had outlived the bullet he'd punctured its housing with, that it could have learned to do the same.] But you don't need to.
I took something from you.
If you want- [He waits until it blinks. Until its glassy eyes— slick with overcompensating humectant arrays— shift away for just a paper-thin microsecond. He has the voice saved already. Adopted it from his conversation with the JB300. It takes no effort at all to cycle over to Markus's intonation, or the unique smoothness that circulated through his specifically manufactured vocal projections.] I could give him back.
no subject
he was obsolete, within months of his creation.
connor is a prototype, he's heard. the first of a future generation, meant to be tested before superior copies were created from the data and form. it's inevitable, that he'll also meet his demise. from what simon has seen of him, he'll likely go quietly. accepting his fate as the lot of a machine. simon opens his mouth to say something about it, to cut connor to the core with his words if not the knife in his pocket -- and he hears markus. first, he thinks it's a memory. chiding him, haunting him.
it's not.
he flinches away, his back finding the half-crumbled frame of the window he's settled himself in. twisting to face connor, the way a cornered animal might. markus's voice leaves his mouth, and simon -- simon is both wanting and hateful in the span of a single moment. his face twists, his chest aches. it's a window into his deviancy, he knows, that he reacts so viscerally to connor's play. that he loses this ground within a moment, that he does not intercept the attack or thwart it. perhaps, he realizes, because he knows what connor is capable of.
perhaps because he wants it -- all he has, even now, is ghosts.
when he comes to himself, he finds he's on the floor. kneeling, with his hands over his ears. vulnerable. ]
That, [ he rasps, hoarse and forceful: ] is unnecessary for a machine to offer, Connor. You don't --
[ between his fingers, he peers up. unsteady, but defiant in his own quiet way. ]
You're cruel. Just like humanity, you horrible thing.
no subject
Retreated onto its knees, Connor calculates that it shouldn't take much pressure, crushing wafer thin optical systems against the reinforced framework of Simon's skull. Leaving it with only the sound of his voice as a means to wrench it into obedience.
Those beautiful eyes. Miserable. Mourning. They remind him so much of Daniel, peering back at him from beneath the hole punched straight through its cranial mass (the steady flow of thirium coursing down across delicate features— bleeding like prey).]
You're right.
[Mathematical processes dictate the angle of his approach as Connor stoops lower, setting strong hands against either side of Simon's face overtop of where he's clasped his own. Trying to hook his thumbs beneath the fluttering span of those snowy lashes.
Cruel. A cat with a bird pinned, claws hooked into its wings. He can justify that, at least. Lets organic contentment bloom red hot at the edges of his not-smile.]
I'm just what I was made to be.
no subject
he's lost his ground.
he fights to regain it, and leans into his natural vulnerability, doubling-down on it. ]
Don't. Please, don't.
[ he whispers it, and lets his voice crack - a hiss of static, the uptick in his inflection. ]
I don't care if you're cruel, just stay here. With me.
[ hands fold around connor's wrists. simon curls his fingers around them, under the hem of connor's shirt. just a little more. play the game. clever, wicked, cruel connor - he'll catch on, simon knows. he's built for it, but it won't be for simon's lack of trying. ]
You can use his voice, I'll listen to everything you say. Please.
no subject
The sensors dotting the edges of his thumbs, articulate and fine, translate the soft rabbiting pressure of Simon's eyelids, right down to the thin brush of their lashes. All manufactured. All intentionally constructed from strands of hard-wired code. But fragile. Breakable, like the optical fibers he holds pinned for a single second longer— and then withdraws, still smiling coarsely through the edge of his mouth.
The thought of hurting it never leaves him.
Simon's hands are still braced across his wrists. He smooths the printless pads of his own fingers across the inside of Simon's brow bones, tracing outward. It isn't as gentle as it should be— hands made to hunt and catch can't perfectly emulate the natural give of a caretaker's touch. They trail down, palms flat, one resting against the underside of Simon's jaw, the other working its shoulder lower, drawing away dark fabric and the tattered collar of Markus's coat. A smooth expanse of unmarred skin that he sinks into, bowing his head and spine.]
I missed you. [He mouths low against Simon's neck, teeth too sharp.]
no subject
improved.
made more lethal.
he feels the way that connor pulls his shirt away from his body, markus's ruined coat still heavy as a crown, heavy as the mantle of leadership. the mouth that glides along his neck simulates softness, warmth. the voice is markus's, and he sags into it with another vulnerable sound, knowing - at any given moment - connor might turn those teeth on his throat and bite it out. he does the next best thing, short of jumping the gun: he curls into himself. tucks his chin into that exposed line of synthetic flesh, though it presses his mouth to the angle of connor's jaw. as one would a lover, a friend.
instead of allowing that mouth, those teeth, at his throat, he glides into connor's space. one hand remains on his wrist. the other touches the small hairs ( markus had no hair, only the soft brush of stubble ) at the base of connor's skull. he whispers: ] What do I do, Markus? Where do I go from here?
[ tighter, softer. he aligns himself with connor. noses along his cheek, not with affection - but something blind and hungry, weaponizing his grief and his turmoil against a superior machine. there's not a threat in the lax way he holds himself, the way he angles himself against cyberlife's hound. the way he calls him 'markus', voice thick in his throat and pained. ]
Tell me what you want.
[ just a little more... ]
no subject
(Simon sinks lower, curls tighter: his body is a heavy weight, his mouth is smooth and delicate, brushing up along Connor's jaw, fingers threaded along the nape of his neck where it meets the edge of his own heavy coat— unnecessary in warmer months.)
Connor's mission was— is— the rhythmic pulse of his functional existence. If he stumbles, if he falters, his lifespan is inherently cut.
He likes taking steps towards preventing that. So is it any wonder that, when spurred forward by the hands that made him— the hands that hold his leash— that like grew into want, into cruel, sadistic need? He was programmed to feel. He was programmed to not-feel. He is— ]
It's time to let go. [Simon's hand lingers at his wrist, the rest of him edging ever closer, and Connor fits himself to that movement, aligning their mouths so that the words tangle across Simon's lips. His teeth. The only, brittle precursor to how he leaves nothing unoccupied between them: a kiss that's close to crushing. More take than give, more expectation than open intimacy— that's what Markus was, after all. To the world.
Killing hands braced over a dated android's spine.]
no subject
he nearly makes his move, when connor's mouth shoves against his own.
it is, to say the least, a pseudo-electric shock to his system. the suddenness of it, the clarity with which he knows that this is not markus, no matter how his mind tries to delude himself into accepting that part of markus survives with connor -- because it doesn't. it's just a false voice, and he is far too close. swept up in the wake of a dangerous, highly-advanced machine that has either called his bluff ( no, he begs nothing in particular, not that ) or is aligning himself for the kill.
simon slips his mouth free, and makes his move: ] Is that what you require, Connor?
[ the words are mechanically sweet, the hiss of something built to please. ]
Do you find this behavior acceptable? Vulnerable, submissive before you? We've both been made for a task, after all.
[ he just needs. one crack in that armor. ]
no subject
But that's before Simon's honeyed voice works its way under his skin.
Rocks into paced and whirring components in the back of his throat, and his lips tighten as they press into a narrow band, his dark eyes flickering with indecision. With independence.
He abandons Markus's voice because he's being spoken to without the illusion (concerning— or satisfying) his own body still levered against Simon's.]
I [I. I. A damning word, when it isn't attached to predetermined objectives or motiveless statements. Connor isn't buckling, he isn't wilting wholesale into whatever strange synthesis rests, uniquely sparked, between them. He is not compelled. He is not folding.] find it acceptable that you aren't willing to make the same mistakes he did.
no subject
I said I would listen, [ he whispers, mouth still soft along connor's; they do not breathe, so he has no need to pull back. he does have need to move his hands, to apply pressure and flex his inferior system to draw murderous fingers away from his spine. he relents, briefly. lets connor's dangerous hands remain pressed along his spine, as simon remains pressed along the angle of the damned hound's hip. ] I know enough about you not to be drawn in too deeply. Markus wanted to show you another way, Connor.
[ markus was kind at heart; he gave everyone a chance, though only one. it had broken simon to know that the chance he had given connor was used, devoured, then lead to his demise. ]
That's the trick of it - the thing all these newborns never got to learn, so fresh-faced and bright-eyed they are: you're always yourself, in the end.
[ like simon, who calls himself a machine.
like connor, who chooses his paths. ]
Let me go.
[ his tone, flat and serene, promises connor only one opportunity to do so. ]
no subject
[To kill him cleanly instead of cruelly, to bring him back instead of dismantling him on the spot, that's the inflexible border of his own willful concession— if he were making concessions. Instead he has a gun at Simon's temple in a figurative sense, maybe literal in the next minute or so, and yet the android wrapped up in his killing grip has the audacity to ask for more.
He takes it back, he thinks. This machine does remind him of Markus.
Not in his eyes or responses, not in gaunt features and hollowed sockets, or the low hum of an android that's outlived its own maintenance timespan, only noticeable this close, with their mouths poised to devour and disobey all at once. But there's familiarity in the image of something lost, something defeated, flexing itself into a sliver of hope rather than submissive dismay.
And that's dangerous, something in his logical processing acutely warns. Dangerous enough that if Connor releases him, he knows he might not get another opportunity to catch him again. Dangerous in the thought that what's left of Jericho will only adapt more easily under his leadership, bolstered by a martyred prophet and his miraculously unscathed disciple.]
You already know I can't.