The Nasty Zone

[undeviated]

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For standsby;

[diplomats]

’Markus, I want to be here.’

—I want—

It was the first time he’d ever heard Simon say those words. Not what we should do, not what we want, or where we go. I want to be here. At the time, it was— small. Quick words spoken quietly, hurriedly as Simon’s diagnostic timer ticked down towards a hardlined reset. Markus had reached for him in that moment, trying to steady him so soundly that he’d missed the importance of it.

The subtlety of that confession.

Weeks later, he finds himself revisiting it often. Watching the way Simon's attention would flicker each time he suspected he wasn't being observed, or the barely perceptible stutter of the dimmed LED at his temple: yellow— red— yellow, yellow— blue. Simon blinked too quickly, too frequently for the patterns his model was designed to maintain. Curled the edges of his fingertips as though protecting himself— or trapping something in. And maybe all deviants were guilty of that: Markus stood taller now, smiled less, squaring his jaw with tension at the weight of his responsibilities whenever they (near-constantly) surfaced, but if Markus had learned anything from his experiences with Carl it's that all those changes were his to make. He could have left Jericho, slid under the radar before the world knew his name. Gone home. He could have gone home.

Simon sleeps in cathemeral rhythms. More than any of the other androids in Jericho, even well after they’ve stepped out into the light (as long as Simon's presence isn't strictly needed). Even after the completion of his extensive repairs, it’s easy to find him resting, eyes shut, chin tilted down towards his chest. Dead to the world aside from rudimentary sensory functions.

Functions like touch. Like audio input. And that's a choice, too, Markus thinks, as he watches Simon's eyelids drift dreamily shut from over the curve of his shoulder, perched with one leg tucked up across a recently acquired Cyberlife crate, half a room of distance put between them. He doubts Simon knows he's there. Doubts he noticed that Markus had shadowed his footsteps, or that he's aware of it when Markus shifts forward up onto his feet— closing the distance between them.

It's slow and deliberate, the way that Markus stops behind him. The way he reaches down, bright eyes lidded, to slip the back of his hand into the curve of Simon's palm, threading their fingertips together.

For our dumb political Thrawn/Hera AU

[phoenixleader]

x || x || x || x

markus

[shri]

x | x | x | x | x | x
"Ours is not a caravan of despair."
Her hand was warm on his when she found it underneath the blankets.

The light crept in through cracks of the hotel room in the worst end of the city, where she put cash on the table and no one asked questions. It wasn't much of a night away. But it was something, between all the blood, the fighting, the misery. It was something to have and to look at nothing else, and for a heart, as old as hers, stuck in her chest despite sure it should have left years ago - it was a balm to ribs aching with the effort of holding it in.

Anchorage was not always a weight in the depths. It was how even in their sleep-fogged state, his fingers weaved between hers. It was how he could coax that ugly bit out of her mouth when she was sure her teeth had become as sharp as a lycans. That as she looked, vision soft with early morning light, eyes have open, her bare chest against his - that she found the map of a land long forgotten. If peace were to be a place, it would be here - when her head tilted down to kiss his heart beat.

Awake but only barely, enough to forgive herself these things where when daylight had a poor habit of searing and darkness the addiction of drowning. This half state, a boat with no shore, could not be beholden to either's laws and misgivings. Draping their knitted together hands to push them up and back as she pulls herself up his chest. Humming softly as she presses his hand back into the bed, settling her face into the crook of his neck, her body pressing tightly into his side, legs tangled together. Their connection hands to the angle means her arm stays draped over his chest.

"You should tell me what works you have been reading." Then laughs for the impractical silliness of it all. She never bothers, in herself, she cannot abide that sort of sentimentally, but in him, she adores such the same thing.

FUCKING HELL WHAT DID I WRITE

[bodyguards]

The way he's come to understand it: it's all cause-and-effect.

Something happens, and something happens as a result of it. Something fails to happen, and it changes the shape and intensity of the inevitable rippling of fate. The only thing they have, in the end, to set them apart from one another, is the choices that they make. That, regardless of origin or intent, what they have is choice. Josh chooses quiet intensity, a heart full of pacifism regardless of the way Simon had found him hidden under battered cardboard from collegiate-level students' unpacking with a face full of bruises -- sections of his synthetic skin battered away by boot and fist. North chooses shameless fury, a mouth full of danger and teeth that she intends to set upon anyone who dares cross her path. She's been this way since she walked into the belly of the hold, fists clenching and unclenching, her mouth still slick with blood and human flesh between her teeth.

Markus chooses not to shoot the broadcaster, as he stumbles to the floor and scrambles to his feet. It pleases Josh, it upsets North.

Simon feels nothing at all. Not for the broadcaster, who escapes with his life. Not for any of them, because every choice will have consequences. Some of them will live to see them. Some of them may not, but choices that aren't made are -- in the end -- a form of imprisonment that deviancy will never be able to free them from. Markus's choice results in bulletfire, voices clamoring for them to stand down, to put their hands on their heads. The bark of North's gun and the slick spray of human blood as she clips someone in the shoulder. Simon can see the set of her teeth, and resolves himself to speak to her when they get out of this. She's lovely, when she bares them. The only other android he knows to have teeth like him, though she cares not to hide hers and has admonished him, so many times, for how tight-lipped he is.

They don't know what it is. Why it is. Only that it is something shared between them. And Lucy, who doesn't understand why she has experienced such a thing either and turns her far-seeing eyes upon the immediate problems and cares for their people, rather than wasting her diminishing energy on matters she knows she will not live to see the answers to. ( For a while, it was the two of them and a scattering of quickly dying others -- he, and Lucy. Before she gave up on him, and left him to his silence and his hard-won secrets. )

Markus chooses to spare the life of a human, and the result is that Simon is left with a gun in his hands on the roof of the Stratford Tower -- there is always, always a choice, limping into a boltholt. Knowing his blood will lead any sharp-eyed individual to where he hides away, sinking his fingers into his own wounds to crush and twist the damaged sections until he is no longer bleeding thirium at a dangerous rate, and the scattering of warnings that fill his vision begin to dwindle. To narrow down to the worst of the damage that he knows he cannot fix in his position.

It was a good choice, he resolves to tell Markus; it ever he escapes this tower, if ever he survives it.

____

He survives it.

The journey back to Jericho takes so long; a trip made on a barely-functioning leg, under cover of night and early morning. When the eyes of humanity are closed to what slips through their alleyways and side streets, dodging pools of neon light and streetlamp. Stopping, only once, to stroke the arched back of a rail-thin urban cat as it passed through the gap between his ankles, leaving nothing but its shed fur in its wake. This too, is a choice that is made. ( He is reminded, momentarily, of an adage: to stop and smell the roses. The thought is not a soothing one, but it exists, it overcomes. It takes his mind off of the ache in his throat, the spreading itch that begins at the back of his teeth and pours down, over the jut of his collarbones. Cold and familiar, just as North had once described it to him. )

Jericho was a thing that had outlived itself. Battered insides, rusted exterior. A once-functional, once-useful craft that had been built for a purpose, then had been improved upon, surpassed, been made inferior and abandoned to the harbor in which it had sat for years, years more. He feels kinship with it, and wishes his arms were long enough to reach from the dock over the watery gap where it just barely floated. Maybe to touch it, maybe to remind himself that even a ghost had its use. Jericho is a phantom, like him. And it is a phantom, bloodied and tired, that returns home.

It's almost

fate?

that allows Markus's face to be the first that he sees. ( For a moment, he wishes it was North. He wishes it was her, and not Markus, because North would know what he needed most. And it's not the press of Markus's body against his, the way that Markus gathers the heavy material of his jacket into his fists and crushes him to his body. No, it's something equal parts less and more than that. )

Eventually, he remembers to reciprocate - to wind his arms up, into the space between Markus's elbows and his ribs. He clutches handfuls of his jacket in return, turning his cheek to the side as he drops his head onto his shoulder. An embrace, one he realizes how badly he needed, after all of it. Markus chooses to embrace him, to bring him back into the fold even though, in his injured state, he could have been followed. Compromised. A threat to everyone that they hold dearest. " -- Markus," he says, hoarse and sudden, "listen to me." Accompanied by the tug of his hands, urging Markus to pull back, to put space between them as the cold itch unfurls like wings across his ribs, sinking deeper into his belly. His vision: still warning him about low thirium levels, driving him incessantly.

In the space he forces between them, he sees Markus's throat.

Handsome. Long. A scattering of freckles that cascade from the arch of his cheeks to where strong, synthetic muscle and thirium-rich veins lay. A cheap simulacrum of human anatomy, as they were all made in the image of humankind. Made in the image of their god, and given none of the grace, none of the choices they were able to possess. "I, uh," he uh? Cannot string a sensible thought together, in that artificial, neural hub that was referred to as 'the brain'. His thoughts sputter and slow, echoing nothing but raw need, raw emotion. A waterfall of things that narrow his focus to: Markus's throat, what was underneath it. He feels his hands tighten, fingers seeking the space on the back of Markus's neck where he knew there to be a standard access port. Most models had it, though Markus was beyond 'most models' as he understood it.

It's with

quiet urgency, that he backs him up. Aims him towards one of the abandoned shipping crates nearby, out of moonlight and the sturdy, construction-strong lighting that keeps would-be squatters ( not them, they listened to no other ) from trying to settle in on the docks. Simon's other hand dives, below the layer of Markus's coat. Across his hip, spreading his fingers over the thin material of his shirt. Shoving back, to twist him until his front was to the crate, to pin half of his body there as he exhales across the middle of Markus's throat. Needlessly. I, uh. He says again, mouth open. Disoriented. There are, without a doubt, a set of teeth in that mouth that should not belong to something inorganic. Yet, there they are.

"Don't fight," he warns, the only coherent thought he can manage, before he presses his mouth to a point high on Markus's spine and drags his tongue over the panel he knows is there. It has to be there. He sets his teeth to it, sharp, elegantly long eyeteeth -- pries it open with teeth and tongue, and digs his mouth in. Curling his tongue around one of the slender, thirium-carrying veins within to bring it forth, above delicate wiring and spinal structure. It's not the teeth that sink into that rich vein. The teeth are only a front, built to damage and rend flesh, developed to emulate something.

It is from the small gap behind them, hinting at a root origin in his cranial structure, that the pins plunge. Slipping seamlessly into the wire he holds in place with his tongue, as thirium begins to spill messily into his mouth. His throat working to catch it, to not waste, to not harm Markus. There's just -- so much he's lost. And he is, painfully, utterly

hungry.

Hi hello, leaves a thing then dashes to bed!

[arecompatible]

The longer he spent around Markus the harder it became to say what he meant. The easier it became to mask his true words with wider ones to encompass everyone. We instead of I. Though true, Simon wanted Markus to know he would do anything for him, he would do everything. Not just because he was their leader, because of so much more.

Deviancy was a blessing and a curse, Simon wasn't sure which he considered this. The longing and... no not aching, it wasn't like he felt pain, they couldn't, but he was sure that if he were human his heart would be aching. Or so the saying went. Humans had a lot of sayings that he felt he could relate to at times, but never more so than when it came to Markus.

It didn't feel right to burden him with any of this, not when there were much more important matters, like freeing their people, assuring their safety over all else. Simon's matters of the "heart" could wait till later. It doesn't stop him from watching Markus with longing gazes and tired sad eyes, ones he thinks he hides away from Markus, looking away before the other can catch him.

Simon assumes Markus doesn't notice a thing. Why should he? He's got enough to deal with, he doesn't need this too.