Simon fumbles. A stuttering series of movements and thoughts that all fall short of his intended mark, clipping directly over one another. Blue eyes flickering in their focus beneath stained lashes, and Markus knows (instinctively) what this is. He was designed to. Programmed to understand in the way that all advanced androids were equipped for their human owners and companions; where prepackaged compulsions left off, the vast amounts of art, music, poetry and visual performances he’s consumed over the years have done the rest. Markus knows intimacy. He knows that life and death have a way of wrenching it loose in humans— maybe even in androids as well.
Maybe in Simon, so relieved to be alive and safe now against all odds.
But that set of conditions excludes Markus. Markus, who has no excuse for the way he opens himself to the slim spread of long fingers coasting across the corded planes of his throat, footsteps carrying him backwards. Bending where he’s pressed (twisting away to rest flush against cold shipment containers, intake patterns hitching narrowly— humanly— ) and allowing Simon a kind of access that’s nothing short of administrative.
'Don’t fight', Simon urges quietly from a point beyond his own range of vision, comprised of starving angles in the dark— and Markus doesn’t. Why doesn’t he? North would chastise him for being naive: they’d lost track of Simon, he was— in so many ways— dead to rights. What came limping back to Jericho, spattered with blue blood might be compromised, might have been picked apart and repurposed. But Markus knows him. Something intangible, something he chased when he dragged Simon into his arms without hesitation. This is his choice.
Simulated skin peels back under pressure. His open palm moves to drag itself up along slick metal, searching for a brace. Artificial breath slides across his unmasked casing and it could be a mistake but his eyes drift shut. He feels teeth. Not bone, but stronger. Sharp and digging. He feels that sound weight slide effortlessly between the vulnerable paneling that protects his every motor function and he— wants it. Whatever comes next beyond Simon’s fingers where they’re anchored beneath his now-rucked jacket, the way Simon's tongue dips into him, tracing out buried ley lines along metal vertebrae.
And if he knew exactly what it was, he’d adjust himself to meet it. If he spoke the language of hardware and electronic pressure instead of the acutely curated codex he'd been branded with from birth. Turns one of his hands to reach low behind him, characteristically impatient, thumb digging harshly into the jut of Simon’s hip as it hunts for the soft slide of false skin beneath fabric: all human footnotes for something humanity could never grasp. He feels out of step. He feels—
tongue. Teeth. The half-present warning of a thirium leak, spilling out.
A R T that's what
Maybe in Simon, so relieved to be alive and safe now against all odds.
But that set of conditions excludes Markus. Markus, who has no excuse for the way he opens himself to the slim spread of long fingers coasting across the corded planes of his throat, footsteps carrying him backwards. Bending where he’s pressed (twisting away to rest flush against cold shipment containers, intake patterns hitching narrowly— humanly— ) and allowing Simon a kind of access that’s nothing short of administrative.
'Don’t fight', Simon urges quietly from a point beyond his own range of vision, comprised of starving angles in the dark— and Markus doesn’t. Why doesn’t he? North would chastise him for being naive: they’d lost track of Simon, he was— in so many ways— dead to rights. What came limping back to Jericho, spattered with blue blood might be compromised, might have been picked apart and repurposed. But Markus knows him. Something intangible, something he chased when he dragged Simon into his arms without hesitation. This is his choice.
Simulated skin peels back under pressure. His open palm moves to drag itself up along slick metal, searching for a brace. Artificial breath slides across his unmasked casing and it could be a mistake but his eyes drift shut. He feels teeth. Not bone, but stronger. Sharp and digging. He feels that sound weight slide effortlessly between the vulnerable paneling that protects his every motor function and he— wants it. Whatever comes next beyond Simon’s fingers where they’re anchored beneath his now-rucked jacket, the way Simon's tongue dips into him, tracing out buried ley lines along metal vertebrae.
And if he knew exactly what it was, he’d adjust himself to meet it. If he spoke the language of hardware and electronic pressure instead of the acutely curated codex he'd been branded with from birth. Turns one of his hands to reach low behind him, characteristically impatient, thumb digging harshly into the jut of Simon’s hip as it hunts for the soft slide of false skin beneath fabric: all human footnotes for something humanity could never grasp. He feels out of step. He feels—
tongue. Teeth. The half-present warning of a thirium leak, spilling out.
“Shit—“
Oh, shit.