pretty boy ...

A hand slips upward to around his shoulders. Holding onto him to adjust herself further onto his lap, getting more comfortable. She moves back in another kiss to his lips. Something more gentle as her long raven hair slips along her exposed shoulder.

“Don’t stop,” his voice is a low, reverent hush against her lips, “never stop. I need your love. Always.”

He closes the space between them again, his kiss deeper and more confident this time as he sits upright to help her adjust her position. His hands rest gently on her lower back, guiding her closer to him.

During their conversation, how unnervingly close he kept trying to get, she'd forgotten that he was wearing a Ghost Mech. Was "wearing" even a proper term for it? Inhabiting? How did this even work?

"...could you elaborate?" Her mismatched eyes flicked over his face, catching the brief gaps in the hologram, wondering if that was the only issue he was facing. Unlikely, a voice whispered in her head. Målingen. Together forever but separated. "Damaged emitters," she whispered, receiving an affirmative hum from Målingen in return. "Some cracked. Faulty internal power source, too? Maybe. Won't know until we take a closer look. Is the issue purely physical--mechanical--or could there be a coding malfunction? Original programming trying to boot him from the system, triggering virus protection? Ask him? I don't know."

Falling quiet again, she found herself staring. Flustered. Her friends never seemed to be bothered when she and her sister held conversations aloud, but this was someone that she...wasn't exactly sure could be trusted any further than she could throw him.

It wouldn't have been very far.

She asks for his symptoms, presents herself as his doctor, and his expression ripples to one of amusement.

“Well, other than havin’ a bad case of the glitches? I suppose I’ve been strugglin’ with whatever the equivalent to brain fog would be for a machine. I sometimes find myself… goin’ offline.”

He shifts his weight from left to right, loosening his hips and assessing how the movement feels. The metal creaks, his artificial joints hardly providing any give, the spine of his suit stiff.

"...I'm trouble and you're unstable. Not exactly a good mix, is it? Scientifically speaking...or mentally." It was very difficult for Lockne not to flinch at his close proximity, immediately tensing at the touch to her hair. He was too close, too unpredictable, and too dangerous to risk pissing him off too terribly hard.

Like a rogue, messy bit of code. There was no telling if there was any way to correct this deviance in his code, too many variables to consider. Too much damage done.

He was fascinating. Fascinating and deadly, erratic, and the reason she nearly wasn't able to say goodbye to her sister. To Målingen.

"....what do you even want? You're hard to read. I....I've never really been good with people. Even before isolation."

“What I want?”

Does he even know what he wants? He came here on business, and yet the way she stills at his close proximity, the way she tenses at the slight touch of his hand— now that thrills him.

“Well, I heard you were Bridges’ little genius when it comes to the sorta thing I need help with.”

He reaches up, slow and steady to avoid scaring her again, and knocks on his head, allowing her to see the hologram flicker with each beat.

🎀  ⸻⠀⠀He tries to envision what that might be like, a deep sense of dread forming in the pit of his stomach. It feels similar to the eternity he feels like he's lived since his family passed, locked in a limbo of grief.

Patients spoke of feeling like they were trapped in purgatory when it came to their conditions, but the real thing has never been achieved quite like Higgs' experience on the Beach. That sort of isolation could drive anyone mad, Dollman thinks—but he was doing these things before that.

❝ Fragile told me about that whole mess with Amelie… she was an EE, correct? ❞  Dollman won't pretend to be knowledgeable about them. He knows the basic gist from Sam, but the truth is that he has no clue about their inner machinations. How they work. How culpable they are for their prerogatives.  ❝ So, you're saying she used you? ❞

It occurred to him before, as someone who lost his Ha and had it resituated, that perhaps Higgs' actions weren't entirely his own. However, the stakes had been so high that the origin of his behaviour hadn't been all that important. Now that they're not all trying to evade certain death, there's space for him to sit and consider Higgs as a human being again.

“Used me,” he echoes, letting the words resound, trying to test if they ring true. “She promised me a lot of things, notions and fantasies she knew I wouldn’t resist. I ate those breadcrumbs right out the fuckin’ palm of her hand.”

He crouches in front of Dollman’s chair, bringing himself as level as he can with the doll. His artificial joints ache with something almost painfully human, a puff of air from his internal cooling system catching in his hollow throat. He is reminded in this moment that he and the doll are not too different.

“I got lost in the role she wanted me to play.”

A frown curves his features and his eyes cast down once more— impossibly expressive for being nothing but porcelain and hologram. Anger dissolves into a quiet pain, memories unfurling like a dusty film reel.