The pitter patter of the shower is almost enough to dull the sounds of gunshots down the hall. Well not dull, but it makes them seem further away. There’s some cold comfort in hearing them again. In the rabble and harsh pounding of his shitty apartment. 

Water pitter pattering against the raw cold carbonated black metal of his cyberware still settling into his body like a rain chime. This was his body now. 

There was even less of him now. 

It’s the first time that thought hits him, looking at the new synth skin covering his new arms. From the front, he looks remarkably human, top grade synth skin can’t help but look slender and uncannily when he knows what it’s all a visage for. Doesn't betray the neat array of glistering chrome and bright yellow wires that snake up his arms and spine. Doesn’t betray the exposed obsidian metal endo-skeleton that houses it all now. 

He misses the arms Doc gave him. Misses his old spinal implant he had lifted from some psycho and polished off. Misses his ribs - he knew they would have to go at one point but this new chrome sits uneasy in his chest. 

Sitting on the floor of his shower, knees close to his chest, Xisuma watches the water swirl the drain with a dull unfocused gaze. 

He had always thought about jumping to tier 5 mods. What netrunner hasn’t. Save the hassle of ice baths and skull jacks. Although it’s still there, heavy metal in his skull, exposed as his hair parts and falls down in a curtain of taupe and dark byzantium ombre either side of his face. He just wishes would have had a choice. 

Fingers trace the edge of the port with a sorrowful nostalgia. EX did always like seeing him jump when he jacked in. Little fucker always made it more pleasureful then painful just to roll in the embarrassment of him moaning like a girl in one of those holovids.  

The fingers, his fingers, dark and mechanical, devoid of synth skin so as to not impede any interconnection and interfacing via a touch matrix, look alien. His old hands have been dark, but they have been smooth. He liked little rivulets of lilac running along. These new ones. Brutalist in comparison. 

How long he’s been sitting here. 

He doesn’t know. Hours, days, maybe weeks. He isn’t even running any subroutines, processors and neural interface blank, stalling. All this potential, and here he was sitting in his shower, drifting in and out of his own mind. 

The wants and needs of a humanoid body feel so far away now. And he can’t help but feel rotten about missing creature comforts. Half the runners he knows would trade their soul for this, for the raw processing rig to netrun at will, expunge and explore into the depths of the old net with all of its dark treasures. But more than the raw potential of this new body forced on him, Xisuma finds himself longing for a cigarette. 

Was there even enough of him left to smoke? 

“You’re seriously still here?” a familiar voice fizzles in his ears. Clouds of crimson data moulding itself into a vaguely ill defined humanoid shape.

Xisuma lifts his head to at least look at EX, it’s face pressed and pointedly dismal. There was some small comfort in the fact he could see him. Although if some gonk walks in they would find a out of it metalhead netrunner staring up at nothing, sitting alone in the shower. 

Still looks like him. Maybe even more so. All those months nesting in his subconscious as they tore him apart and stuffed him with chrome, Xisuma half expected EX to come out as an incomprehensible mass of code. But he had retained his shape well.  

“Corpos aren’t kind to people running off with their property and you are just sitting here. Still.” Property. That’s all he was now: lost property. Him and the little nano-syphilis picking at what’s left of his organics that is EX. 

The lack of response clearly frustrates the ai, annoyance growling through his receptors. “Can't have you withering the body beyond a usable base” 

“Is that your twisted way of telling me to take care of myself?” Xisuma leans back, skull port clanking against the rough orange vinyl of the shower. Gets a real look of EX. It had mirrored the ombre of his hair, white flowing into a red, its ends ill defined and rendered, like a cloud of half formulated assets. 

“No. I’m telling you to take care of my body.” The certainty that EX would win out and seize the body almost made X laugh. Not in a triumphant confident manner - just, something sadder, hollow. Wouldn’t matter if he did. Not that he will. 

“Aw you do care.” His own voice sounds so hollow. Defeated. But still him: and he’s quietly thankful for that. 

EX rubs its temple, a bizarrely human act from the cluster of old net code. Catches Xisuma by surprise, eyes widening just a fraction from their current half lidded sunken state. “Take a walk. It sickens me to be stuck like this.”

“It’s raining.” The irony of saying that while sitting in a shower is not lost on him. What was left to worry about getting wet. His hair. Yeah. But it was already wet. 

EX pulls low, sitting on its haunches as if it needs to conform to the limits of biology or the permeability of realspace. It presses a hand to the shower wall and leans into Xisuma’s space. Instantly a warning flashes, flinching back. 

A flash of a dark room, someone above him pulling his ribs out one by one. The smell of bone burning filling his nostrils as a circular saw whirls ravenously. His organs wet and loose in him. He can feel the eyes appraising them, deciding what to chuck and what to sell on - not like he will be needing most of them anymore - 

EX drags him from that dark. Some sort of dark angel. A mask of his own face looking at him stern but with something akin to kinship. Here they were. Not in that moment. Not in the tortuous darkness of the architects who did this to them. Two broken toys in the shower of the shittiest high rise in the city. Free. Chained together, but free. 

Construct’s hand to the side of his head, the other tilted him up by his chin to look at him. Xisuma lifts his head to look at nothing. 

It’s voice is nevertheless firm, harsh even, broadcasting into his ears. “Then take an umbrella. Put a hood on. Helmet. Just, get out of this bloody shower.” Still Xisuma can’t bring himself to move his servos. The idea of shifting in this body, this tomb, he can practically hear EX broadcasting over his neural trenches - don’t be so dramatic. Despite everything. It’s still you. Still us.

His actual words do not match the imprint left on his brain. 

“Go outside or I’m disconnecting your balls.” It seems so pitiful compared to what he has been through, it almost makes him smile in a weird way. Reminds him of how he and EX would bicker and push and pull months ago. 

“You wouldn’t,” it 10000% would. 

“How do you know I haven’t already?” The words fizzle uneasy across his cortex. He could use this new system thrust upon him to check in a nano-second. But he doesn’t. Just sits there.

The city had never felt as overstimulating as it did now. Xisuma shuffles through the horde, still flooding the streets even at this late hour. City that never sleeps. 

His hands remain in the pocket of the heavy jacket Grian had given him. Leather techware that swallows up his chest with its size. The fabric of his hood rubs uncomfortably against his skull port. The fabric scratchy against the exposed endoskeleton and wires are constantly unsettling. 

Prismatic lights of endless advertisement and business refracting in the dark, catching the downpour. His eyes struggle to adjust, often downturned to avoiding blinding himself. He moves stiffly, new body and all, but walking is like riding a bike, you somewhat never forget, but might need training wheels. 

The sounds and smells of the city clog his senses. Slow his processes like infinite programs being run simultaneously. But thanks to this new body, it’s a little easier to digest. Doesn’t get what X was throwing a fit about. 

Climbing up a fire escape, Xisuma ends up on a roof in Japantown. Looking across at the vast ravine of buildings, breathing in the thick aromatic scents of the many food stands littering the walls and intersections as a holographic koi swims the middle of the buildings like it is simply swimming down river. 

Even it could admit, this was pleasant. Beautiful even. 

“Okay, take it back.” Xisuma's eyes, stark red, roll back for a moment, until his usual purple replaces and he gasps like he’s just been drowning. His body stutters, overloaded with information 

“Never do that again!” Xisuma barks. Turns to look at EX, leaning against the railing with a blood boiling casualness - like it hadn’t just hijacked his body and piloted him out into the rain. He could still feel the ai’s code lingering under skin and bones, slowly rescinding back to his neural matrix. If he still had much of a stomach it would back its content’s paint the floor. 

“How… How long have you been able to do that.” The realisation of far EX’s infraction into his core system’s chills him to his chrome bones. 

“A time.” 

“EX!” 

The ai sighs. “Sometime you were at the facility, they accidentally removed a cerebral dampener to get you to interface with the rig better. It let me map new pathways, and well… walking is weird. In real space. So clunky.” Xisuma stares down at the labyrinth of neon below him and lets that all sink in. The dissonance between EX’s casual control of the body and its dismissive review of using makes X balk out a short, choked laugh. He is royally fucked.  

“Relax, it takes a lot out of me, not planning to take you on a joyride for a while.” The casual cruelty is what he’s come to expect of the ai. But he can see his words manifest. How the edges of it’s being rendering in through his optics are less defined, coarse and blocky. 

“Next time. Ask.”

EX chuckles. “Sure.” 

Xisuma lets the neon wash of the city flood his senses. The brightness seeming so dull after all those months away. All the life of the city inspires nothing but solemn mavelling. 

Red catches the corner of his eye. Like a truck’s headlights about to crash into him. Xisuma turns and sees EX holding a cigarette. Well, holding a construct of one. 

“Would be a shame to come all this way and not enjoy a smoke.” Xisuma inspects the digital facsimile of a cigarette EX had constructed. Data puffing out in the shape of smoke. 

Hates that he has such intimate knowledge of his thought. 

Xisuma takes nothing in his hand from nowhere - takes the cigarette from EX and stares out at the city and takes the longest drag of his life. A smile catches his lip. 

He can actually feel it fill a ghost of his lungs - instant relaxation.

Nothing comes out, but EX renders clouds of data puffing into the night sky. It’s part of the charm afterall. 

It didn’t fix anything. Or anything. Does make things feel a little less insurmountable. Comforting, even. 

Xisuma offers the digital smoke to EX. Not making eye contact, just holding it out for it. A feeling like touch ghosts his mechanical fingers as the ai takes back it’s never ending digital smoke. 

Don’t know what it does for an ai, if it bothers to run a simulation replicating the human sesnation, if it even cares for human things. Regardless, EX smokes, pantomimes it before hanging it back to Xisuma. 

While EX inhales, or some sense of it, Xisuma grinds his metal finger into the worn metal they were standing on. A grinding of sparks, metal on metal. When EX hands him back the smoke, it sees the large XV carved into the metal. Doesn't say anything, doesn't even project a thought across his cortex. Just holds the cigarette out for him. 

At least when he's gone. When the corpo's get him or EX assimilates into his body and forces his mind who knows where - some part of him will remain. Refusing to fade away. 

c/w: agegap, teacher student, watersports, intox, dubcon, hung t-dick/hyper kinda ig idk?

AO3 Link

thoughts on ex boobs? ummh hels should grope and suck on them. she can do this with their post op chest too ofc but uhh yyeah 👍