Heartbreak Central

You let him gawk for a minute, and so help him god he’s sure yet again that you’ve somehow managed to take genuine pleasure in putting him on the back-foot. Not that it’s difficult for you, since you’ve oh-so-graciously been spared the burdens of embarrassment. By whom, Arthur isn’t exactly sure. Maybe it was your original programming, or maybe Hosea just saw fit to torment him. Either way it doesn’t make his situation any easier to navigate, and he feels his cheeks heating up as his eyes traitorously flick down to where he knows you’re smoother than a damn ken-doll. 

“I don’t get your meaning,” he says anyway. It does absolutely nothing to smooth down your grin, and instead you get that twinkle to your eye that you always goddamn do when you’re about to inform him of something you’re capable of. It happens a lot. 

“My model—my core model,” you begin, like he needs the preamble, “is equipped to be a companion droid in all aspects, Arthur. We’re literally made for it. Or we were, anyway.” 

Lately, Arthur’s grown more and more uncomfortable with you referring to yourself as a part of a collection. Not a collective, but a collection, pointing out the fact that you were tailor made to be mass-produced and sold. It doesn’t bother you, obviously. So it really shouldn’t bother him either. He doesn’t often like thinking about why it does; thinking has never done him much good at all. Case-in-point, the fact that he can’t stop thinking about the nothingness between your legs. 

“When would you even have the time to get somethin’ like that?” He blurts. Your answering chuckle is wry. 

“It was in my box. Several size options, actually. Discreet packaging in the back, below my feet.” 

That certainly doesn’t help. Sure, he’d only skimmed the beginning parts of the manual to start you up before he forwent the rest of the thing. He knows modern models come with all sorts of fancy gear and special features, but he kinda figured you just—hadn’t? That your line of droids had just never gotten to that point of completion, or maybe had just been meant for more mundane work that didn’t include sex?

God, the idea that Hosea probably knew all about that and left it in the fucking box will haunt him forever, even if he never touches them. Which he wouldn’t. Wasn’t going to. Absolutely not. 

“Absolutely not,” he denies, mind to matter. You take it in stride, hands up in surrender by your chest. You take everything in stride, really. But he knows you’re about to gently explain before you even open your mouth. 

“It’s not a big deal. Really, it isn’t. I promise that it wouldn’t be a bad experience—“ 

“I don’t give a damn about if you’d be good at it!” He sputters, and some of the humor leaves your face as he continues, half choking on a barely-subdued stutter. “I ain’t a… fuckin’ a machine isn’t…!” 

He doesn’t know why, but something deep in his gut twists hard when he says that part. Looking at you, it doesn’t seem like you give much of a shit. Same half-smile, same warm eyes, same posture. Anything else is him assigning his own ridiculous projection onto it, and he knows that. But still, something about that phrasing takes some of the indignant spark out of his voice, and try as he might he can’t help but liken that deflation to shame. 

“You fuck your fleshlight,” you say mildly, as if that doesn’t hit him in the gut like a rock-solid punch. He flounders, but you’re already waving your hand. “I know, I know. Different getting fucked than fucking, right? There are attachments for both, but I figured since you’re—“ 

“Stop,” he clenches out, face burning. He doesn’t want to talk about that right now, and he especially doesn’t want you hear you say “fuck” or “getting fucked” in your voice with your expression with your… you-ness. “Just… let it fuckin’ go, alright? I don’t wanna keep talking about this. No, end of story.” 

“Okay,” you say, shrugging. Like none of that even mattered. Like you didn’t just—didn’t proposition him in the middle of the kitchen, didn’t just bring up an idle comment he made what must’ve been hours ago about a dry spell making him twitchy.

And sure. It’s true. He wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t. But he wasn’t… he didn’t mean for it to be something for you to fix, damn it, he was just venting. He’s just been busy. Running around doing errands at work and outside of it, trying to keep himself occupied. Ever since his last relationship ended messy, he hasn’t quite been able to get back into the swing of things in casual encounters the way he used to; not without the helping hand of some booze to suitingly lift his spirits and take the edge off the inherent anxiety of trying to talk his clumsy-ass through a sultry conversation. Whether he gets back from his job or from busywork, he’s too damn old and too damn tired to run off to the bar and try to land a fish. He’s barely any better at the metaphorical kind than he is the literal. And — though apparently it obviously isn’t subtle enough, which is going to haunt his waking hours — he’s been reluctant to take care of himself knowing you could hear him. 

Can and have, he winces. Ugh. He gets distracted, gets loud. It’s a pain. And now, despite how wound up he feels, he can’t imagine being able to comfortably try it any time soon.

Arthur knows, at least on a completely separate level, that he must not be as unattractive as he feels. 

It’s something that every partner he’s ever had has pointed out to him more than once, and it’s also something he just cannot bring himself to ever buy into beyond either love or lust’s influence. When he looks in the mirror, the closest thing he can get to a compliment for his worn, old, weary as hell mug is that he’s got two working eyes and even-enough features. But his nose is crooked from when he broke it as a stupid kid, and he’s got heavy eyebags. His skin is sun-weathered and pockmarked. His cheeks get overly red and blotchy in the heat, but if he doesn’t trim it his beard gets horrifically shaggy, and the list goes on. The only thing he’s really got is that he’s built, but even then it isn’t the type that gives him washboard abs. He’s got practical muscle, corded arms, and that’s it. 

The point is, he looks old, weary, and grumpy, and barely ever feels any different. Thirty-six feels like fifty. So the idea that folks could find him attractive enough to find appealing has never been something that made sense to him. He supposes that under the right light and with the right accompanying liquor, anyone can take a few licks to get to the core, but it still feels like he’s cheating someone out of something better. He’s been around, so he knows how to please a lady at least—a man a little less so. He has a preference for the former anyway, but the few encounters he’s had with men have been pleasant enough, just never led to anything other than a quick-and-dirty. Which he’s fine with, really.

You though. You. 

Putting aside the fact that he doesn’t technically know if you count as either, being that you’re all wires and metal and coolant or whatever the fuck else, Arthur’s never quite been able to wrap his head around the people that want to fuck their androids. Paying for sex is fine, he’s done it when he just didn’t have the energy to wade through the masses of bodies in a club to find someone willing. But when it’s the android you bought or got or whatever the hell else, the same one that you live with, the same one you dress and take for maintenance and open up for parts? When it can look at you and talk, but you can order it to say something else? 

You’re not a person. You were programmed to be compatible with extra, attachable parts, and you were programmed to be willing to offer those parts to the person that bought you. And sure, Arthur didn’t purchase you, but that doesn’t matter. You live in his house and you nag him about where he leaves his shoes when he gets home, and you make him incredible fucking food, and you have running (amusingly bitter) commentary on the game shows he’s gotten into watching at night because you find more to nitpick with them than Jeopardy, and it makes him laugh. 

You aren’t a person, even if it really, really feels like it sometimes. You being witty, and patient, and beautiful—all of that has nothing to do with the fact that’s true. So Arthur, as someone who knows that, will choose to spend his with another person. It’s the decent thing. While he may not be the best of men, he likes to think he’s decent enough. He tries. 

So, about three days of irritating tension in his body and ice-cold morning showers later, Arthur finds himself standing and scowling in front of his rarely-used full-length mirror. Usually the thing is flipped to face the wall, but he needs it now, because he… 

Look, he needs, alright? Not in the crass, ugly way that some of the shittier men out there do, but he at least needs to try before he really breaks and just grabs the toy in his nightstand after all. He doesn’t want to think about you in the room beside him, sharing a damn wall and listening with that little tilt you always do when something needs to be focused on. He doesn’t want to think about you, sitting on your unnecessary bed, holding a book you’re fond of as he lays back and stuffs a hand into his mouth to try and muffle himself, working the toy onto his aching cock slowly as if that will somehow let him keep his composure before—

“Fuck,” he hisses. He’s done the third button wrong, and now his shirt is lopsided, and he has to fumble with the stupid things all over again, and this is the second time. His hands feel oddly cold, and there’s a stone in his gut that he loathes. It’s not unfamiliar, this dread, but he’s gone so long without acknowledging it that it feels especially painful now. 

Arthur is… good, he thinks. At this. At casual sex, because he isn’t a teenage boy. He used to say he was “alright”, before it started getting people hitting him slyly on the shoulders and telling him he needed to stop fishing for compliments in the same way they always did when he talked about his appearance. But the lead-up has never been something he enjoyed. Scanning the crowd, nursing his drink, then throwing back a shot or two before he and whatever person took pity on him headed back to his place or theirs in order to bridge the gap between starting and ending. 

It feels too much like casing, he thinks. Like he’s reducing the people around him to bodies and wanting. And sure, maybe that isn’t untrue. But no matter how good it feels in the moment, there’s always this strange, hollow sensation that comes after they both do. A chill that settles wayward in his bones, maybe. Sets him drifting off in a way that isn’t quite sleepiness, aching as if the relief somehow left an empty space in his ribs. 

The only times he didn’t feel like that were during his long-time relationships. And while he’d never be as ridiculous as to call himself a romantic, a part of him does wonder sometimes if there’s just something he misses about that. The knowledge, maybe. Familiarity with the person and the body at the same time. He certainly feels more settled when he doesn’t have to do the whole empty song and dance, peacocking around like he and the other person don’t know exactly what they want and what will happen after. He’s tired of cold beds. But there’s only two ways to warm them, and only one he can take now. 

“Heading out?” 

You’re sitting on the couch this time, and you have a laptop balanced on your knees, stacked up on top of a couple pillows. Arthur’s offered a standing desk to you a couple times, but you say you don’t need one—that you’d rather be able to move and adjust the way everything is set up in the moment, to your current whim. Far be it from him to have the right to tell an android what the best way to work is, regardless of whatever it is you actually do. 

He focuses instead on his shoelaces, grunting quietly as he slips on his boots and wonders if they’re too dirty for a bar. There’s some clay caked into the soles that’ll make the sticky floors a nightmare, so maybe he’ll walk through some damp grass or something on the way and hope for the best. 

“Yeah,” he manages at last, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Might not be back tonight, so don’t wait up.” 

“Oh.” 

You straighten up a little, or at least he thinks so. His meaning was caught, then. He tries to be grateful for that, but the distinct twisting heat in his gut tells him that embarrassment has won instead at your quick understanding. It’s even worse when you get a little smile on your face — very little, and very far from your usual sly grins — and tilt your head. 

“Do you have condoms? Lube?”

He sputters, and your smile widens a little in the way that means you said it like that purposefully, like it pleases you to see him fluster. You also, horribly, reach into a pocket and produce two foil packets. Three, counting the elongated one, spread out like a magician’s hand of cards. He groans. 

“Got my own supply,” he mutters, turning away. You laugh, put them away, and great, now he’ll be thinking about that, too. About you just having that shit on you at all times, even if he’s sure you only have it now because you can probably predict what he’s going out specifically to do. Fantastic.

“Call me if you want to come home,” you tease instead.

It’s a real offer, he knows. You’ve got a number, technically—it’s saved in his phone as a direct means of contact, and when you do answer it seems like you can either do it in your head or with any connective device. If he does get drunk enough to need it he can always just save cash on a ride and have you drag his ass back instead. He’s done it before, just under less revealing circumstances. 

“Won’t need to,” he says, an atypically cocky sentiment if not for the huff he lets out. “Hopefully. But thank you.” 

He feels your eyes on him anyway though, as he jogs out toward the car that his phone dings to let him know is waiting for him. Android driver, it says happily. Safety guaranteed. One of the few things he can unequivocally say is an improvement; even Dutch has acknowledged that it’s often better to put your lives in the hands of robots than random men.

As he watches his home vanish in the back window, he imagines you watching. Irritated, his heart thuds. It’ll be embarrassing if he needs to call you after all that.

God, it’s loud. 

The world is… bright. Mercilessly bright, he grouses. The bar he chose is usually quieter than this, but over the past couple of months they’ve been expanding their theming and whatever to try and attract some of the younger adult crowd who come to visit the area during breaks. It’s hit or miss more often than not, since so many of the regulars are on the older side or are just looking for somewhere quiet to drink a damn beer—but tonight it seems that luck isn’t on his side, because the place is bustling in a way that means he has to fight for his spot and raise his voice above noise for the bartender. 

It’s not that he doesn’t have options, exactly. It’s just that the options that are there are rubbing him the wrong way. A couple of the girls who’ve come up to him are almost definitely using fake IDs, probably younger college kids, and they touch his arm even after he politely turns them down. There’s a group of ladies besides them that seem to be doing some sort of bachelorette, which would be a poor choice of locale in his opinion if he didn’t know this place made pretty decent — and more importantly, cheap — margaritas on weeknights. Even Fridays. And all the men he can see are either targeting one of those two groups, or are guys he’s already shared beers with after work. 

So, there he sits. Nobody standing out in particular, on his fifth drink, and the world spinning just enough that even he can’t pretend he’s worth talking to. 

Fuck, he wants to go home.

If he’s being honest — and this deep, with the sweet burn of bourbon on the back of his tongue with very little soda water to wash it back down, he has no choice to be — it’s not only that the options aren’t viable. There are other people that have walked in since he first took his look around the bar, and some of them would have been more than enough to draw his attention on a night he felt up to it. There’s a woman with long, dark hair, fine age lines and a sharp smile. There’s a man with a strong build but a shimmery shirt who walked in with a party, hair tousled and shiny. There’s more, and more, and more, and… 

And he still wants to go home. 

His body is buzzing, his hand is slightly cold but mostly wet from his empty glass’ condensation, and what he really wants right now is to walk in the front door and hear you snip at him to put his shoes away. To pass out on the couch, half listening to both your voice and the lull of some program he’s probably seen before. 

Fuck. Oh, fuck. No.

His brain is lazy, and that’s what saves him. Lagging between thoughts like a skipping record player, it doesn’t leave much room for him to do much more than dig out a wad of cash and hand it over before he’s fumbling for his phone, and each of those tasks take enough concentration that he doesn’t have to put any finer of a point on the brief terror that washed through him a second ago. There is nothing to worry about except pulling up your number, checking it twice — then three times — before pressing dial as he stumbles somewhere quieter. 

The jarring shift from loud, talkative bar to a cool clear night never gets any less disorienting, but standing out there with only a few lone smokers at either side does mean he’s sober enough to speak when you pick up on precisely the third ring. Probably to give him a chance to hang up if it’s an accident. 

“Arthur?”

“I need you,” he says, slightly slurred. The clunky phrasing doesn’t matter, you understand him. You always understand him, and he isn’t sober enough to analyze it.

“No luck?” A soft laugh. Tinny. It sounds better in person, he thinks. This way is too robotic. How ironic. “Okay. I’ll be there in…”

A short lull. He knows from experience that you’re calculating something, probably mapping out the road and checking for traffic, and then pausing even more because that’s what a human would do if they couldn’t estimate it instantly. God, what he’d give to have that brain of yours; he’s foolish enough without a bad sense of direction. 

Your voice returns, chipper. 

“Be there in twenty minutes, give or take. Have some water, alright?”

“Okay,” he mumbles, softly. “Thank you.” 

“Always so polite,” you say, and it must be the drinks sneaking back up on him because he realizes belatedly that he’s smiling as he leans against the dirty railing. “See you soon, Arthur.”

“Bye-bye,” he mumbles. You repeat it, and he has the most vivid image of you smiling back as you do. He feels so fucking warm. 

Twenty minutes, says a cloudy thing in his head. Twenty minutes, then he’s home.

When the car arrives, Arthur feels a little more like himself. Drinks have always worked their way through his body a little faster than he’d like, unless he drank enough to get shitfaced. He certainly didn’t do that this time, but he still feels pleasantly buzzy and a little uncoordinated when he sees his truck pull up to the curb, a familiar silhouette situated in the driver’s seat. 

He scrubs his face into his elbow, since you always tell him that his hands are dirty as sin when they touch handles and rails so often. The door pops open with one flick, and he falls into the seat with a heavy, heaving sigh. 

The inside of his car smells crisp and cool, and your eyes are sparkling, shining from inside with all those fancy wires. Your face is backlit by a streetlight, and some of the strobing colors from inside the bar — which started a couple minutes after he hung up with you — dance across your face in a rather fetching pattern, a contrast of two light sources on one subject. 

You’re so fucking gorgeous. He knows that, obviously. But… 

God. You’re the prettiest person he’s ever seen. Whoever designed you, whoever loved you enough to make you—you must’ve been their magnum opus. He wonders, dizzily, if they grieved when you were scrapped. They should have. 

“Easy there, cowboy,” you say, and he grunts as you abruptly reach over him. His breath hitches. 

You smell like subtle florals. Your shared soap and laundry detergent. Something else. Your arm is warm as it passes his body, and he shivers a little when you press down; blinks a little when something clicks. You pull back with a little smile, and ah, right. Seatbelt. Always keeping him safe. Always taking care of him. 

“Alright,” you say, putting your elbow up in the easiest way and glancing backwards as if you need the guidance, each movement so smooth it’s like it’s a years-old habit. “Let’s get us home.”

He feels more or less steady by the time you get back, and as you roll the windows up all the way after having cracked them to assuage any motion sickness he might’ve suffered, he realizes that the strange dread he’s become so accustomed to vanished some time ago. 

No, his brain whispers softly, gentled still by the remnants of his last drink. Not some time ago. He knows exactly when. The moment he picked up his phone and paid, knowing that he’d given up on finding company for the night, the feeling had vanished. Been banished from his mind like someone turned the lights on in a dark room, flooded with light and revealing all the monsters in the corners were just jackets on chairs. His body still aches in a deeply unsatisfied manner, sure. But the pressing feeling of expectation is gone. All he has to do now is collapse somewhere, and then sleep this failure of a night off before lounging around tomorrow morning. 

Between blinks, he’s inside the house. The lighting is so much warmer here than out there, all the bulbs a yellowed tint because it’s apparently possible it’s better for his eyes. He doesn’t care much for the specifics, all that matters is that the bright white beams are gone and he’s surrounded by familiar scents. He shucks off his boots and — to your apparent pleasure, which makes something bubble and pop in his core — puts them on the little caddy beside the door. On socked feet, he collapses into the couch and covers his eyes. 

“You’ll find someone soon,” you say, your voice soothing over his throbbing head. “Better to be discerning, I think.”

If he looks up he knows that the room will still drag a little bit behind the motion, but his tongue doesn’t feel quite so thick anymore. He doesn’t actually know when he had his last drink, but the glass he’d handed back to the bartender had definitely not been chilly by the end. Not sober, exactly, but definitely not drunk. So he doesn’t know precisely why he opens his mouth after a beat and confesses—

“Didn’t even try, really.” 

You pause, or he thinks so. The sound of you puttering around in the kitchen, the heavy thud of the ice machine; it all stops, and then resumes. Your voice approaches with you, and he feels your presence beside him before the couch dips. 

“No? Why not?”

He purses his lips and grunts noncommittally. Shrugs, then. Unnecessary. You hum. 

“… nobody catch your eye?” You venture. 

He shrugs again. Huffs. Your answering chuckle is so soft that it feels more like a whisper, and your touch is…

You touch his arm in the same place those girls did, but your fingertips feel so different. You feel so different. Like that was all a slightly foggy dream, and this is reality. He hadn’t even been that drunk. Why does it feel like you’re so much more vivid in comparison, like you’re the only real thing besides the couch beneath him?

“Open your mouth.” 

He does, and a straw finds its way there. He sips on instinct, and ice-cold water fills his mouth in a rush of relief. He groans softly and drinks more quickly than he should, only to flounder when you pinch the straw with two fingers and the suction makes him choke. You knew he didn’t get that water you told him to, he realizes, and he feels oddly chagrined even as he glares half-heartedly at your smiling face. 

“You’ll give yourself a headache,” you muse. “Ease up a little.”

He drinks the rest obediently slowly, and then settles back into the crease of his part of the couch. And it is his part, he notes quietly. He always sits on this side, you on the other. Like it’s shared property. He’s pretty sure he used to sit in the middle, but the thought unsettles him now. 

He imagines, very briefly, what would have happened without you. In the time before you were there, a constant conversation in his life. If he didn’t just power through to his wanting and had still come back early, he would have called an automated cab. He would’ve fumbled his way through his wallet before giving in and using the tap-to-pay function he hates so much on his phone that only ever makes him feel like more of an idiot. He would’ve come home to a dark house and probably tripped on his own shoes because he hated being blinded by white light when tipsy, but never cared enough to swap the settings. And then he would’ve ever passed out on the couch, or stumbled his way into his bed and slept in the same clothes he went out in, wondering why he even bothered going to the damn bar instead of just reopening the bottles he has in the kitchen cabinet. 

Instead, he’s here. Bathed in soft yellow light, listening to you fiddling with his glass. The shift of your clothes. The soft hum of your breathing and his. The warmth of somebody beside him, not even tending to him, but just keeping him company. 

You always keep him company. 

“The attachment.” 

You blink. If there is an imagined pause, it slips away quickly, and you look at him with a bemused, raised eyebrow. 

“What?” 

“You know.” 

He doesn’t know exactly why he’s talking, why he keeps talking. The words are just… there. Easy in a way that words usually aren’t for him. And sure, maybe he could pass a little of that off on the remnants of whiskey in his blood—but not all of it. He feels the edges of them like a gate’s teeth, and he doesn’t push them down to stop the flow. “The attachment. The…”

He lets it sit for a moment, and then another. Longer than he’d be able to if he were fully, stone-cold sober. Your expression softens in a way that baffles him, and his whole body aches.

“You mean my detachable, robot dick?”

Cheeky, you’re grinning. His heart stutters, and he feels himself heating up again. He scrubs his hands over his face, or at least tries to before you snatch them back and place a wet towel between them. He wipes them off instead, automatic. 

“Yeah.” His voice is a quiet drawl, dragging out the syllables. Syrupy, but clear at the ends. “How’s it work? Can you… I dunno. Can you feel it?” 

It’s a question he’s had since you brought it up, but one he’s never dared to voice. Not because he thought it was a taboo subject or anything, exactly — you’re far from shy with how you describe literally any of your many programmed and updated functions — but because he just. He didn’t like thinking about you in terms like that. Such clinical, objective, strange shit. If you could feel the body parts deemed optional by manufacture. 

You’re nonplussed. Or, you were, anyway. The expression on your face is so open, and yet he feels a little off-kilter when you flash him your usual smile. 

“I can feel it about as well as I can feel anything else, I’d say.” As if for emphasis, you take the rag back from him and hold it up between pinched fingers. You waggle it. 

“I probably don’t feel it the way you feel yours,” — and at that, he flushes a little more — “but the attachment is seamless, at least in theory. The sensors have a very negligible margin for error, and all feedback I gain from it is easy to catalog. It has to be, so I can fine-tune my performance in real time.” 

It’s about the answer he expected. And it isn’t the one he wanted, either. He’s speaking again before he can question himself. 

“But does it feel good?”

It’s a softer sentence than he means for it to be, but he can’t help it. It’s nighttime, and the few windows that are open are dark anyway. He feels so comfortable, and that horrible weight is gone, and he already knows that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Why would there be? It’s just you. You, chuckling as you set the cloth down on the table, folded into a perfect triangle. 

“It feels good to know I’m doing it right,” you say. “The feedback being positive feels nice.” 

You’ve gone from speaking in hypotheticals to speaking in certainties. Arthur doesn’t know how to feel about that. If he should even feel any specific way about it. He understands that idea, he thinks. Something feeling good not because it elicits any specific physical reaction, but because the success of it is enough to make the experience pleasant. Like doing something for someone you care about making a task more tolerable. 

And yet, still. 

“Feels real good when I do it,” he mutters. Blinks at himself. “When—uh. When people. Humans. When we do it.” 

Not quite a stutter, exactly. He finds his bearings again pretty quickly, and you don’t even laugh. But he still feels oddly hot, his hands folding and unfolding together over his stomach. His leg taps, bouncing a little in the way it does when his mind is heavier. 

You hum.

“Yeah? I mean, I’m sure. It must, if you gave them to us.” 

You. Us. Those two words clash against each other in a way that he knows bothers him. It still bothers him, and he can put a finer point on why, now. He doesn’t like the implication that the separation is so large. So insurmountably large—like you’re so different from him that you could never truly understand each other. He knows that isn’t true, because you understand him better than almost anyone he’s ever met. 

“I didn’t give you anything,” he mumbles.

“Arthur,” you say, and something about how you say it digs a fist into his chest. Squeezes, but so, so gently. “Being here with you is absolutely something.” 

He stares at you for a long, long moment. You’re still smiling. You mean it. 

His heart skips. He pretends, for a fatal second, that he still feels tipsy.

“Will you show me?”

His room is well-lit. Usually, anyway. He rarely ever makes use of the dimming functions since that requires the remote, and most of the time if he’s getting up to turn the lights down he might as well just turn them off altogether and sleep. Anything honorable that can be done in the low light, or so Dutch and Hosea always said, can be done in daylight too. Anything less stays in the dark, to hide all the magic tricks. 

You, though. You’re magic, or at least look it, as you wave your hand unnecessarily before the lights dim down to about half-strength. It lends his furnishings a strange, almost-alien feeling, deepening the shadows but keeping all the shapes of familiarity. He walks backwards for a scarce few steps, only until his calves meet the end of his bed. Then he sits, slightly dazed, and watches the curve of your lip before you dart out of the room. 

When you return, it’s with a small box that looks like his shoes could fit inside of it. All sleek black with some white and blue trim, and the small logo of whatever company made you stamped into the bottom right corner. Your eyes are on him, and only stray a little as you come to sit beside him. The space between you is so negligible that he can feel your body heat, generated or otherwise. You press your thumb to the little logo for three seconds, and then it pops open without even a squeak. Seamless. 

Inside, almost jarringly, are three phalluses. 

That’s the first word that comes to mind, because despite how well shaped they are, they’re all a bright, clinical white that contrasts with the black lining of the case itself, ribbed with seamless silver lines that go from the base of the simulated balls to the head. He actually has to stop himself from coughing around a laugh, and you grin at him so wide that it knocks loose from his chest anyway. 

“Look kinda ridiculous, huh?” You lift the biggest one from the box and wiggle it between three fingers, and his laughter starts up all over again like he’s twelve years old and drew a dick on his homework. Beaming, you shrug. “Seriously, right? Here, hold it.” 

Before he can protest, it’s in his hands. He gawks for a minute. The texture is actually pretty incongruous with the appearance—it’s soft, but in the way expensive sex toys are soft. Plush, but with structure beneath the surface that flexes along the silver lines. He can’t feel any real creases that aren’t in the mold of it, and the floppiness of it feels as ridiculous as it looks. It’s also, notably, fucking massive in a way that feels vaguely intimidating. His fingers can only just about wrap around the girth, his thumb reaching around the first digit of his index finger. He has big, thick hands. How long even is…?

“Nine inches,” you muse, and he chokes immediately. His wide-eyed expression makes you laugh, and you take it back from him with a shrug. “There are bigger ones, too. But they chose these sizes because they figured the people that wanted those would buy them—these are apparently the crowd pleasers.” 

Arthur knows, logically, that people both have and buy bigger dicks and toys than what he’s familiar with. But the idea of even that fitting inside any part of his body strikes him like a bolt of too-bright lightning. Without him even saying so though, you put it back in the box. 

“This one’s a little less intimidating. Goldilocks principle, right?” 

You pick up the one in the middle, which is still about as thick as the last one — maybe a tiny bit thinner? Not really, though. It might just be his imagination — but about three inches smaller. It’s still pretty damn intimidating, but more because of how eerily perfect it is. There’s no irregularities in size or shape, and it’s perfectly balanced. Also, he feels fucking odd about inspecting it so thoroughly. He kind of wants to laugh at how the synthetic balls sag again, detached. 

“This is what they call a happy medium?” Arthur chuckles quietly, though some of the humor has left now. There’s a thudding sensation in his lower belly, a shift that feels heavier in the air. He swallows. “Damn. Setting expectations high.” 

“Well, I aim to please.” 

The way you say it feels like a bolt to the chest, and his eyes snap up right as you reach out and take the thing from him. You’re looking at him, and then you aren’t. You’re smiling, and it’s soft. 

His mouth is dry. You speak instead, and he can’t look away. 

“Do you want to try it with me?” 

The words are so careful. And under literally any other circumstance, he would feel patronized and irritated by it. But it isn’t any other fucking circumstance, and he can’t even pretend it is, because you both just finished handing a literal synthetic dick back and forth like a trading card, and it’s yours. You’re the one asking a second time, even though when you walked in here a part of him already knew what it meant. Not a stranger, not a one night stand. You.

His heart is so loud he wonders if he’s having a heart attack. He doesn’t feel tipsy at all anymore, and god save him if that wouldn’t have helped. 

Instead, he’s left alone to breathe through it. To look at you, and feel his hands twist, choke out—

“… yeah. Okay.”

—and see that smile settle back into your face with a tenderness that burns. 

“Go sit by the headboard, then. Let me show it to you.” 

Breathless, he obeys. Scoots in a way that feels ungraceful, but hell, if you wanted grace you wouldn’t want him, would you? And turning his back, even to crawl, feels oddly discomforting. Like if he looks away now, you won’t be there when he searches again. 

You push yourself up to stand with perfect balance and easy grace, and that squeezing sensation is back again. Then, almost reverently — and thus hilariously, but he can’t bring himself to even make a peep of a laugh — you set the synthetic dick down and trace your thumbs over your waistband. One more look toward him, no words exchanged, and you slip them off. 

You have such useful underwear on. They’re form-fitted, completely black, and almost look more drawn-on to your lower torso than anything else. Notably, between your legs there is absolutely no definition whatsoever. Structure, sure. But there’s no soft dip or crease, and certainly no bulge. Your thumbs slip beneath the second layer — he realizes, then, that he isn’t breathing at all — and you drag them down to your mid-thighs. The bunched fabric squishes your soft flesh, indented and otherwise entirely human, if he ignores the silver lines at your hips and knees.

There’s an eerie, smooth patch. Also skin-colored, at least at first, before it gently fizzles out into the same shade of perfectly bright white as the fake phallus. Then, with a tilt of your head, you pick it up and… 

For lack of a better word, you click it into place. 

It doesn’t seem to take any adjusting at all. You simply reach down without looking, pick it up, and place it perfectly. No hesitation, no adjustment, nothing. And just as quickly, you remove your hand, and it stays where you put it. You smooth over it one time, from the top near your stomach to under your leg by your ass, and that’s it. It’s on. 

In what might be the most unsettling and yet fascinating development, he watches with a slackened jaw as the flesh tone returns. It spreads inward from the outer edges of your full body, from your hips and belly to… 

Oh, god.

He watches behind buzzing eyes as the bright white color vanishes beneath seamless skin, flushing and soft and belonging. The silver rings here, alone, vanish. And now it’s as much a part of your body as the thighs that surround it.

He’s half hard. He realizes this when he shifts his legs a little and actually flinches with the sensitivity, only for his hand to press and for the sweetness of it to creep up into his core. He rubs a little, just once, and then twice, legs twitching. Then shudders and straightens again, eyes flicking back up to yours. His breath catches, and he wonders how many goddamn times that’s going to happen to him. There’s a feeling of pleasant foreboding, and he mutely notes that it feels absolutely nothing like the dread that had consumed him prior to his absolute cock-up of an attempt to go out and get laid. 

Which, his brain snaps, is happening now, you damn fool. And for some reason, every single piece of rationale he remembers about why any of this wasn’t his first idea feels a million miles away, further with every brief brush of pressure against his throbbing crotch. 

Jarred, he realizes that you’ve pulled up your underwear. And that you’re approaching, climbing onto the bed and pulling your legs under you to sit. There’s definitely a bulge now, and looking away a second time is harder than the first.

“Should take those jeans off, I think.” 

He’s blinking at you like a stupid animal for a minute before he obeys, barely thinking about the motion. Button, zipper, legs over the side to yank them off before he can think too hard about it. A brief, near-catch of metal near his erect dick, which is not ideal. He tosses them aside and the memory with it, and then looks back at you with massive eyes and a complete inability to put a fucking sentence together, Morgan.

“I…” 

“It’s okay.” 

Softly, softly. Why the hell it doesn’t make him bristle is so beyond him that he actually overcompensates for it, teeth borne like a rabid animal as he rises dazedly to his own defense. “Don’t fuckin’ baby me, I ain’t a kid.” 

Immediately, he regrets it. Not only does it sound juvenile while he’s pushing forty, but you don’t deserve that kind of snappishness when you’ve been so goddamn careful. But if you’re offended, you don’t show it. You just hum and sit back a little, and the small bit of space that offers is all he needs to breathe again. 

Holy shit, he’s so fucking hard. Why is he so hard?

“Wanna feel it?” You say, tone joking. Only it doesn’t feel like a joke, really. Because his head is spinning and he feels like all the blood in his body is in his dick, and you’re so unbelievably gorgeous in the low light that rims your body that he feels even less tethered if he thinks about it, and—

“Mmmh…”

Pleasure shoots up his spine, and he shivers with it. Blinks, then hastily yanks his hand away from where he’d been fondling himself. A wet patch by his tip, for hell’s sake.  He should’ve just lost the briefs. Humiliation battles for the forefront of his mind. You, however? You look completely captivated, and no amount of mental arguing offers another definition. 

“Show me that again.” 

Almost a command. He stares, and you soften. Coax.

“C’mon. Show me, yeah? How it’s different. Let me see it.” 

The words are so simple. Which, admittedly, is kind of helping right now because he feels like he can barely comprehend anything else. The simplicity of it almost makes it feel like nothing’s amiss as he pulls down his drawstring; as if it’s just another straw you’ve put to his lips and told him to drink. 

His cock springs up, and his hand closes around it. His lungs squeeze, and he’s genuinely taken aback by how slick it feels already, but it isn’t quite enough to stave off that slightly-too-much friction of a dry hand. So, fumbling, he goes blindly for his dresser drawer—or would have, if you didn’t produce that fucking lube packet from your pocket. Shirt pocket, this time. The inner lining has one, he thinks. Maybe. He can’t quite look. 

It’s cold, but he doesn’t care. He groans long and low like it’s been punched out of him the second it drips down his cock, so slick and slippery that it steals his vision for a second. His thumb rubs gently beneath the head, and then he just starts stroking, half habit and half need. 

It feels good. Of course it does. The lube starts warming up the second he gets a decent rhythm going, and it’s so unbelievably wet because you emptied half the packet on him, and he really should’ve put a towel down but he doesn’t fucking care because you’re watching him and he’s so hard and—

“Oh, uh—oh fuck, I… ohgoddamnshit—!”

He almost cums. Gets so close to it that the final exclamation melts into a barely coherent mess, like they’re all one word. 

His heartbeat is so heavy he feels it in the head of his cock, in his pelvis, in his fingertips. His hand is shaking, and his leg is half drawn up as his spine trembles with that desperate almost-feeling. Pleasure, though dimmed, pulses once and then tapers off. He feels faint.

What the hell, he thinks, or tries to. What the fuck was that, you idiot? Did you seriously almost cum from a few strokes and an audience? He doesn’t get the chance to wallow in the almost, though. 

“Oh wow.”

Instead, he’s caught up in the quiet, indescribable lilt to your voice that draws him in like a moth to a flame. And when he does see your face, something in him shudders and melts. Because there’s genuine, honest-to-god rapture in that gaze, or something so close to it that it no longer matters if there’s a difference. He doesn’t know if he can even pretend to care. Because you’re smiling again, maybe never stopped, and you’re close enough to reach out and press a hand to his thigh. 

“Arthur.”

Eyes, sharp and brilliant. You’re brilliant, he thinks. You are. You’ve always been fucking brilliant, and he’s a brick wall of a moron, and between you two there has somehow become something he’s terrified of naming, even like this. Even with his literal dick in your hands, or near to them. He feels barren beside you. He feels like something that could be misconstrued as beautiful. 

As if hearing him, you whisper. 

“You’re fucking perfect.”

His mind is a whirlwind. Somewhere, somehow, between you watching him pathetically jack off and almost shoot off in a matter of a minute, his positioning has shifted. 

He’s on his back, which is usually pretty rare for him. Even when he has the occasional male partner he’s typically the one on top—just more natural that way, really. He knows more of what he’s doing in that position, and adjusting is a little easier because there aren’t quite so many new things to take in. But here, with you between his legs, everything is starting off new. Jarring. He’s flushed up to his ears, and you’re rubbing his inner thigh in a way that makes him both want to fucking kick you and curl up in a ball like a frightened animal. 

And is also making him throb.

He watches with his tongue tied as you settle at last, having evidently had your fill of the nothingness he’s able to offer to you amidst his puddling brain. The situation doesn’t manage to improve much when you gleefully shift around and reveal that, at some point, you retrieved his bottle of lube from the dresser. Christ alive, he doesn’t even remember hearing or seeing you open that thing. When did you even leave the bed? Have you had it the whole time? No, probably not, because even though you’re incredible you don’t have pockets outside of your clothes, and… 

And you’re lubing up your index finger, having warmed the lube between your palms, and you’re easing it inside of him. 

Fucking hell.

“Shit—!”

“I know,” you’re soothing, he notes distantly. 

He didn’t even realize that wounded animal mixture of a gasp and a whine was his, not until you started making those placating noises. Even worse than that, the intrusive feeling makes him tighten up before he can help it, half a wince on his face even though it doesn’t hurt at all. It mostly feels kind of odd; indescribably slippery. Your other hand isn’t overly slippery where it slides onto his thigh to keep his hips open, so you must’ve wiped it off a little. But he doesn’t have a ton of time to care about that because your finger is moving, probing around inside, and he’s never been more surreally aware that his body is strangely soft on the inside than he is right now. 

It’s slick, and squishy, and strange. But it still doesn’t feel bad, and you aren’t jabbing. No, if anything, it’s more of a gentle see-sawing motion while you crook up your fingers and—

“Uh! Oh, my fuckin’—guh…”

Electric pleasure. Or, maybe a stabbing pain? It starts sharp, and then suddenly melts like someone pulled the knots out of a stiff joint in his body somewhere. The “pain” gives way to an almost suffocating amount of sensitive pleasure, and he gasps around it as his ass seizes up; or at least tries to. 

In a manner he’s never, ever seen you use in any context similar to this, your hands and body are suddenly rock solid everywhere except that magic button inside of his pelvis that makes him sort of feel like he’s cumming, only not exactly. Pressure like he’s gonna piss himself, only euphoric. It’s… 

Holy fuck. Oh god, it’s good. It’s so good, it feels so fucking good.

The sensation is delicious, and he’s gone too stupid to find anything better to describe it. He writhes, or tries to, but he can’t move. His cock is so unbelievably hard, he can feel it drooling in thick globs on his stomach but he can’t look because he feels like he’s cumming. Almost. Pleasure, pleasure, oh fuck, pleasure. He sounds idiotic, he must, but for once in his life he doesn’t care. He literally can’t care. The sensation widens, and it takes him a decadently long amount of time to realize that it’s because you slipped another one of those perfect fingers inside of his ass. Two pads massaging it feels like you’re squishing the gland, and it doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. He feels so good that it hurts.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, sweetheart—“

He’s chanting. His useless brain is making noises, or he is. Whatever it is, anything, anything if it won’t stop. If it’ll just push him forward, if you’ll just make him cum. Three fingers now, or something like that. His legs are twitching so much that you move to trap them, and he can’t close them because you’re in the way, and his eyes keep losing focus every other time he goes to look at you, but he does it anyway. Because you’re… 

You’re amazing.

There’s a warmth in him now, like he’s siphoned it all out of the lights. A burning, ecstatic sensation that keeps rolling through his body, pulsing outward so much that his fingers twitch before he grabs at the sheets. It’s not that nobody has ever touched him like this. He’s had his prostate massaged, once in a while. It’s just… It’s you. You’re the reason. It’s you, and it feels incredible, and you take such good care of him that he feels like he could cry. If he cums right now, he might. He might cry. It might feel good. It all feels so good when you do it. He wants it. He wants it. He wants it so fucking bad—

“Shhhh…”

You pet at his prostate one more time and then leave him devastatingly empty. Your voice cuts through the pleasure, and he groans at a level so weak and pitchy that he’s forced to admit to himself that it’s a whimper, and that he’s almost so out of breath that he can’t help it. The sensation of cumming-almost-cumming-so-fucking-good tapers off in pulses, and his body feels so barren that he wants to scream. It’s like he can feel his orgasm slipping from his fingers.

“Why…?”

His weak protest is thick, and he realizes blearily that he sort of feels like he’s floating. Like his body is detached from his mind, tethered only by how good it is. How good he feels. He could feel a little better if you’d just finish him off, and yet for some ungodly reason he can’t even fathom reaching for his own cock to tug until he cums. It’ll be so good, he knows. But he can’t. He won’t. He… 

He wants you to do it. He wants to cum because you made him cum. He wants you to make him feel so good he can’t help but give in.

And you, he registers, are waiting. With the softest press of your cock’s tip to his aching hole. Waiting, with those soft, gentle eyes, and that spark of hunger. You look beautiful. You look so fucking alive. 

“Please,” he begs. And that’s enough. 

You’re thick inside of him. Opening for you like this feels like surrender, and it shouldn’t, but it does. He actually mewls, which would be humiliating if he had a braincell that gave a shit. As it is, he can only grab at your arms and gasp, and you coo at him like he’s half-conscious as he opens, opens, opens.

“Fuuuuuuck…!”

He’s repeating himself, or… he thinks he is. His head’s gone numb. This part doesn’t feel nearly as good as the massage did, but there’s a strange quality to it; especially as your arm slips from his leg to his torso, then beneath his back, coaxing it into an arch and pulling him closer to you. His arms do the rest, and he finds himself clinging to you with a breathless gasp that makes him feel like a stunned lady. He’d laugh, if he thought he had room. 

Slowly, you ease him back down. And by the time his back is against the mattress again, he realizes that you’re fully buried inside him. Your cock is so warm, or maybe that’s his body. He doesn’t know. It’s burning, but in the sweetest, strangest way. He’s burning up. 

“Christ,” he wheezes, “can… please…”

He doesn’t know how, but you seem to realize he’s asking for a minute rather than asking you to start in earnest. For a long, long moment, he stares blankly up at the ceiling, feeling so full that he kind of wants to strangle his past self for thinking this would be anything close to manageable. What was it you said—Goldilocks principle? He feels more like a puppet with an arm up its ass. The thought makes him giggle somewhat hysterically, and when he looks at you, it breaks off into something else. 

You look so fond. 

You look like you love him. 

Oh, fuck.

“Move,” he breathes. Running from the thought, maybe. Desperate for the pleasure to come back. All of it. Any of it. And to your credit, to your mercy — if you can possess such a thing — you do. 

Oh god, you do. 

You thrust, and it’s so deep inside of him that he feels his eyes flutter. They roll back before he can even register what’s going on, and by the time he blinks enough to recenter himself, you’re moving again. Steady, slow thrusts of your hips, accompanied with a small little swivel motion that drags a whimper out of his throat, because your cock is targeting his prostate. The heat from before is back in spades, and you’re fucking him. You’re really, really fucking him. 

“Guh! Uh—uh, gh….”

Each time you hit it, it feels like you’re moving his whole body. Your hand roams over his stomach and he wonders, delirious, if you’re searching for your cock. Is it deep enough for that? He doesn’t think so, but then you hit it again and his toes curl and he isn’t thinking at all. 

“P—“ he gasps, “please, please, ple—ase, pleeease…”

He sounds pathetic. He is pathetic. He’s… 

He’s going to cum. 

Your hand presses so gently, so tenderly onto his belly. You’re looking him in the eyes, and he sees nothing but affection and pride and hunger, and you’re alive, you’re alive, and he… Arthur, he…

He—

“Yes, oh m—YES!”

—he explodes. 

He dies so beautifully that he finally feels whole. Something in him wails. He wails. Pleasure pulses out of him, into him, fuck if he cares and fuck if he knows. He’s shouting and his body seizes. His toes curl so hard they pop, and he cums.

Globs of it spurt out of him with each electric pulse, and he collapses into a useless mess of good, good, goodgoodgoodgood. You’re stroking his cock, or maybe he is, or… he doesn’t care. He’s finally cumming. Oh, thank you. Yes, please, thank you.

He’s babbling, and then he’s gone, nothing will ever hurt him again. 

…

When he’s able to see, he can’t hear. 

His ears ring. He’s shivering. He feels like his body is somewhere else, and there’s cotton in his head. He can’t move. And for some reason, he isn’t afraid. 

Above him, suddenly, there’s you. And you’re so sweet, so tender, so much. He can see you, and you’re so happy with him, and he doesn’t know how to tell you that this is the happiest he’s ever been. That if he could, he would live in this exact moment with you for the rest of his waking days. Not the climax, not the pleasure—but this. The moment that your warm, soft hand presses to his cheek, and he almost dozes off feeling so loved that nothing hurts at all. Not even a little. 

“Sweetheart…”

His tongue is so, so thick in his mouth. Even just that one word, and he barely even remembers it, feels like it fought through layer upon layer of fluffy clouds to even slip past his numbed lips. And yet still, despite his incoherency, you hear him. 

“Shhh. I know.” 

You understand him. You always, always understand him. You’re so good to him. 

He loves you.

He sleeps, safe and warm.

But (and here lies the kicker), Arthur is a damn sucker. So when Dutch came to him, all swagger and warm hands, telling him that Hosea had made a hobby of fixing up old, trashed models he picked up from behind an old production facility, he’d listened. And when Dutch told him that they were looking for someone to take the latest thing off their hands, but that they needed to keep it close so Hosea could keep tinkering, he knew what the man wanted from him. Arthur has never been good at being anything but the dutiful son. He nods his head, sighs, and gets a hearty clap on his back for the effort. As is his way.

He never thought he’d be one of those people who had to slide an unwieldy, coffin-like box into their home. And yet, as he stares down at the open container, lid slid off to the side and half-blocking his way into the small kitchen unit he barely uses, he finds himself in a sort of stupor. Dazed, maybe, by the magnitude of the decision he made. He was a fool, like he often was, to think he could pass this whole mess off like getting another washing machine.

You’re beautiful. Of course you are—you were made to be. Appealing, though maybe not quite like newer models. There’s a humanistic, handmade touch to some of your finer details, as if someone took the time to place each of your eyelashes exactly where they wanted them, or shaped your nose with the precision and intention of an artist’s pick to marble. Hosea said that you weren’t molded off of an already living, real person like modern models are, which was half the reason he was able to agree to this. On top of that, your seam lines at the joints are more obvious than he expected, and there are fine silver markings that gather into a dull blue core centered where your ribs should be. Hosea put you in simple clothes instead of those clinically branded suits and jackets that default models come adorned with, which he’s grateful for. Dark-wash pants and a button down that’s undone, since he needs to reach the activation points on your torso.

Still, your face looks so peaceful. Relaxed. Your mouth is settled in a soft line, and as he crouches down with a pained wince, he realizes that you have little imperfections to your skin that will probably look even more real when you come “alive”. You look like you’re either asleep or dead, if a corpse could be beautiful. The thought is oddly sobering.

He fumbles with the guidebook with thick, clumsy fingers. Flips pages and frowns deeply when the jargon, sugared and a little dated, happily congratulates him on an excellent purchase. After a couple minutes, Arthur exhales heavily and reaches down, feeling more than a little off-center. Scratching at his beard forever won’t keep ol’Dutch from blowing up his phone about this mess, anyway.

He presses his hand flat to the center of your chest, and mutely notes that you’re as soft as you look. A slight shiver goes up his spine at the uncanny sensation of touching something that looks and feels so human, but ice-cold and without breath.

Ten long, stagnant seconds pass by. And then, with the softest little ding, your eyes slowly open.

It’s so natural. That’s his first thought. The way you wake up looks like a human being stirring from slumber, sweet-eyed and gentle in a way that makes something in his gut squeeze tight. He pulls his hand away hastily, almost embarrassed, but you hardly seem to even notice. Instead, under the guise of stretching your stiff limbs, you perform the diagnostic checks necessary to tell if you’re damaged. Flexing your wrists, bending backwards and forwards, rolling your neck.

When you look at him at last, his tongue is still thick in his mouth. And when you open yours, his words die a silent death entirely. You breathe, he notes somewhere in the back of his mind. Your chest rises and falls in an even tempo as if it needs the oxygen, and there’s a hitch before you speak.

“You must be… Arthur. Arthur Morgan, Right?”

Oh god, why do you sound like that? If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve called your voice almost affectionate. That alone would be humiliating. He’s always found the folks who got overly attached to their house-androids more than a little creepy, but he always thought it was worse when they forced the robot to reciprocate. But there’s a sparkle to your mechanical — he reminds himself, because you aren’t alive — eyes as your lips quirk, like you’re amused by him already. Like you’ve been told stories and want to know the truth of them. Of him. The secondary fondness of someone who listens well.

Damn it, Hosea, he thinks. The old man could’ve warned him that the thing would know his name already.

“Yeah.”

When he finally manages to get his footing, his voice is rough and a little hoarse. He hasn’t spoken much before now, and it’s early enough that the sun isn’t even halfway through the sky. The package got delivered before dawn, for god’s sake.

You don’t seem to mind much either way, since your smile only grows before you look down at yourself. Chuckling, you do up the buttons with such ease that the precision is almost ignorable. But there’s a clean, crisp edge to the movements that gives away your efficiency, no fumbling or checking if you have each button lined up right. You stop three buttons below the collar, and Arthur swallows once before he finally goes to stand. His knees creak, and he huffs when it draws your eye.

“Well it’s really nice to meet you, Arthur. Hosea talked a lot about you.”

“Did he now?” Arthur grunts as he runs a hand through his hair, somewhere between sheepish and a little frustrated. “That’s real nice and all, but I ain’t really… you don’t gotta act friendly with me, alright?”

He’s prickly and he knows it, but your expression doesn’t change. You, he notes quietly, don’t even struggle when you get up out of your box. It’s difficult to see it as one when you stand and step out so easily. Like it never held you; never confined you. Like you’re just a person who was resting in it for a little while. With your shirt done up most of the way, he can’t even see the blue core anymore. All he has are the thin silver borders on your neck and wrists.

“Sure, if that’s what you want. But I think you’d rather I skip past all the introduction stuff, right? Everything that’s in the…”

You pause, scan the room once, and lock on to the discarded manual. You bend to pick it up and tap it with a knuckle, bemused.

“This. What’s in this thing. It’s not all accurate, anyway—Hosea made sure of that.”

Arthur doesn’t know how to feel about your casual countenance. The way you smile like you’re sharing a joke with him, talking about people he knows and loves like you’re the same. Are you the same? He knows the answer must be no, but you just sound so…

Ah, hell. This is why he never took to androids. He hardly even took to his phone.

“I just mean you don’t gotta act all buddy-buddy,” he mutters, shaking himself loose. “Took you in as a favor, but I don’t need no nursemaid.”

“Well that’s good,” you muse, “because I’m not really meant to be a nursemaid. More a… companion.”

You avoid the word friend, he realizes, because he said he didn’t want that. Avoiding thinking about that seems like it’s in his best interest.

“Sure,” he says instead, sighing. “Well, you go on an’… get settled, then. Don’t throw anythin’ away.”

“What about all this?”

You gesture toward the box. He stalls for a second before shrugging.

“Don’t care whatchu do with that.”

Satisfied enough, you nod, and he makes his way out of the room to get a glass of water. Or something.

Maybe a smoke.

He’s mindful not to get ahead of himself. Aside from the general distaste he has for the concept of getting too comfortable, it’s just easier to generally treat you like a roommate he has to deal with, or something. Somebody his folks told him needed a place to stay while they try to figure something else out. That’s something he’s far more familiar with than whatever nonsense this situation is.

As such, he dedicates the guest room to you, dusty as it’s become. It’s a good spot to put your box, for one thing, with the empty closet just about big enough to slide it in if kept upright. Your charging station, which he’s surprised to find was hidden beneath your body inside said box, fits as long as the previously barely-used bed is pushed up against the opposite wall. When you aren’t standing in it the thing almost looks more like a lift or a broken-down shelf, or some kind of newfangled work-out gear. He changes the sheets despite the fact that you probably won’t use them since the room is a little stuffy, and even though you (gently) poke him about it, he does later see you sitting on it while flipping though a book or tablet. You might just be doing that for his sake, but he doesn’t care. It satisfies his instinct to be a good host, and the lack of conversation about it is a blessing he’ll gladly take. If it all stopped right there, it’d be fine by him. The two of you existing in one way or another in the same space, only interacting when necessary.

The issue is, you don’t act like a damn android.

Not that Arthur is anything close to an expert on the subject, but it’s still pretty jarring to walk into his own kitchen and see another person — or what looks like a person — smiling at him while lounging in one of his previously underused kitchen chairs. Granted, you only even do that because he told you off for standing like a sentinel by the wall after making him breakfast, which was a combination of actions that genuinely made his skin crawl. It felt a hair too much like having somebody as a servant, and no amount of reminding himself you weren’t actually alive, nor did you probably give much of a shit about how he treated you, could assuage that itching feeling that hollows out a pit in his stomach if he tries to push through it. So, chair. And usually breakfast, but only because you balk at him whenever he insists he’s fine on a pack of beef jerky and a water bottle.

“I don’t know why you think I’ll be more comfortable sitting around and getting stiff than helping with something this simple,” you snip—and isn’t that something, wouldn’t that be interesting if he were the right kind of man, such a damn shame he isn’t and all that robo-mumbo-jumbo goes right over his head so he doesn’t much care for why you can sound so irritated beyond the shock of it all. “But if it makes it easier for you, here. Sit. Down. And eat what I give you.”

He’s so surprised that you have the gall to give him such a direct order that he obeys without thinking, that fourth day when you finally snap. And from then on, he keeps on eating what you put in front of him like the words have recoil. He keeps bracing for the fare to get too rich for his blood, all fancy plating and little inedible garnishes that he knows most folks take pride in with their android-made meals, but they never do. Sure, you make it neater than he ever manages when he bothers to cook, and he’s pretty sure they’re both more balanced nutrition-wise and far heavier on the butter and seasoning than he ever cared to be before, but it never goes beyond something he feels comfortable digging a spoon into. Or a fork. Knife. Whatever. Pearson would weep with the prowess you wield in your electronic pinkie, and the thought does make him chuckle a little.

Aside from that, having you feels a little like having one of his around. His people. The ones that have known and been able to put up with him for long enough to know his little habits and preferences, without the rub of having to deal with an adjustment period. He attributes some of it to his fathers’ influence at first, but he realizes with rapid frequency that you’re changing up how you interact with him as you go. Accommodating and pushing in equal measure, like you’re striking the balance between respecting his personal boundaries and finding little ways to improve his life. You make his grocery lists — your grocery lists, really, but he’s the one who eats it all so who the hell is he to complain — and you putter around fiddling with whatever strikes your fancy. You call Hosea, and occasionally Dutch, to give them little updates on what sounds like your daily life but is probably some technical bullshit in disguise. You scribble in notebooks he doesn’t go through, and you never ask to see inside his, so he doesn’t ask to see inside yours. He just keeps buying them when you put them on the list and leaves them on the desk in your room. It’s simple. Easy to adapt to, once he relaxes enough into the routine.

It only really sets just how much he has when he realizes, rather abruptly and very literally stark naked from a shower, that he’s able to look directly into the mirror to shave.

For years, he’s formed a habit out of either grousing about not being able to use the damn thing until the steam clears up — and he always forgets to turn the fan on to get it done quicker — or picking up a rag to roughly wipe off a clean spot in the center, which leaves years upon years worth of smudges he’s never cared to polish. Now, almost daring him to comment, the mirror is shiny and perfectly clear. You treated it, and you touch it up every couple of weeks with some cleaning solution or other, and ever since he’s been able to shave right when his skin is fresh and soft. Two or three months later, and he’s almost used to it.

No, not almost. He is.

Blankly, he stares into his own eyes. Looks through himself, really, despite his usual disdain for his own reflection. Because now that he’s thinking about it, he can’t stop.

His fool mind is running away like it’s got any business going where he doesn’t want it, and now he’s left thinking about how the towel he has wrapped around his hips is scented like a neutral, but far more pleasant detergent than the one he usually buys because it’s the cheapest (and first, more importantly) option at the store. You clip coupons so he can make little allowances for things like that, not because he’s especially hard-up for cash but because you know it settles his nerves. His aftershave comes in a finer glass bottle because you argued the worthiness of a brand better for his skin. His hair is neat because you can trim it better than any barber shop he’s bothered with, and whenever you do your hands are so goddamn gentle with him. Soft in a way that always makes him wonder if there really is metal where bone should be. Why doesn't he hear your joints whirring and clicking if there is? If you need to oil yourself, you don’t do it when he can see, as if you’re maintaining that tender illusion. You wash your clothes — because you obviously have them, though he doesn’t know if you sweat — in the same color batches he prefers. Everything smells the same, his or yours. Both.

When he looks at himself, he sees a man taken care of. Healthier, cheeks flush, with neat (if damp) hair and no healing shaving nicks on his face. He’s well-fed and kept company. When he puts on the clothes he set on the sink — folded by your hands and very lightly scented like inoffensive floral soap — and steps outside, he’ll likely see you sitting on the foot of your bed across the hall. And when you see him, you’ll probably smile, or smirk, or make a comment about a bit of shaving cream left by his ear. Later today, you’ll probably sit beside him when he gets back from his day job and make idle commentary on whatever movie or show he throws on for background noise before he inevitably falls asleep. The image isn’t just vivid, it’s certain.

That’s the second time it happens. That horrible squeeze of his heart. He swears he sees it ripple through his body and soak into his eyes in real time.

No, he thinks, quietly. No, he isn’t that kind of idiot. He is an idiot, but not that much of one. The thought settles him, and he shakes himself free of the brief dread that had tried to needle him for a moment. He searches just to make sure, delving deeper into it to check for any hint of further delusion—but no. He’s as sure as he remembers, just a little more polished on the outside. He’s fine. And while he has admittedly become rather comfortable with you around, that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten what this really is. What you are. You’ve made a hell of a lot of improvements in his life, sure; but they’re all cosmetic. The kinds of things anyone with half a brain would have done years ago, but that he’s always been fine enough to do without, no matter how much his family gets on his case about it when they happen to come over. You probably got half the ideas from Hosea anyway, had it baked into your programming to prod at him until he agreed. A to-do list. That was how machines worked, right? Inputs and outputs. Simple math. Or maybe extremely complex math. Something like that.

Relieved, or near to it, he dresses and leaves. But he doesn’t really need to shave today. Maybe he’ll try growing out his beard for a little while, just to change things up. Close shaves are troublesome compared to using a trimmer, and it’ll all grow back anyway.