#5000 words

The sound of a metallic clang echoed through the empty gym as Bucky dropped his weights for the fourth time tonight, the pain that came from his metal arm radiated up his shoulder and down his back. When the pain first started, Bucky thought that he was straining himself too much, as of recently he’d been constantly going to the gym, working out the pent up energy that he had now that he was finally free from Hydra. 

Bucky’s schedule was completely free since he still hadn’t been cleared to go out on missions, and since he had already been pardoned by the military, he didn’t need any more daily or weekly checking with them. That left him with plenty of time, and allowed his thoughts to wonder more than usual. Mostly depicting vivid scenes with a certain someone that was definitely not into him.

So, Bucky had been spending all of his time at the Avenger’s Compound Gym, which was fully stocked with all kinds of workout equipment, some even modified for Super Soldiers and mutants. The pain had started with what felt like a strain in some muscle in his shoulder, so Bucky made sure to stretch and ice it accordingly, but as time went on, the pain continued, each time becoming more intense and painful to the point that it was becoming unbearable.

This hadn’t been the first time that Bucky had felt this type of pain though. It came from his metal arm, the arm that Hydra gave him. It hadn’t been the most reliable, even back then, and while both Tony and Shuri had offered to build him a new one, he just didn’t want to go through that, admittedly, painful process.

That being said, he still needed to get his arm recalibrated frequently, and ever since he had agreed to live in the Avengers Compound, he hadn’t gotten even one check up. And now he was suffering the consequences of that.

Bucky just couldn’t bring himself to talk to Tony, not when he had been responsible for his parent’s death. Steve tried to insist that Tony had forgiven him, that now that he understood what Hydra had done to him, he didn’t hold any resentment or anger towards Bucky. It still was hard to face the man in meetings, let alone to see him in private for a procedure that could take at least two hours. Bucky didn’t even have enough small talk material for ten minutes, how was he supposed to survive an hour? Or two?

It also didn’t help that, aside from murdering his parents while he was brainwashed and under Hydra’s control, Bucky had been recently developing an extremely inappropriate crush on the man. And it was inappropriate because of the previously mentioned issue at hand. He could be in the same room as Tony, but only as a group, he had never spent more than a few minutes at a time in the same room with the man alone. Aside from that one time, Tony had been asleep in the common room couch while Bucky had been in the open plan kitchen. But Bucky left as soon as he noticed Tony was there, and Tony never noticed that Bucky had been there.

Bucky could not handle casually approaching Tony, asking him to fix his arm, and then not talk to him and avoid eye contact for the whole time. That would only make Tony think that he was brainwashed again.

But, as he rolled his left arm to try and stretch his muscles and relax the joints of the metal arm, Bucky felt another sharp twinge of pain, this time so strong that it made his knees buckle under him and had to 0use his other arm to find purchase on the wall so he wouldn’t fall. First, he breathed in sharp and ragged exhales and slowly tried to even his breathing with the exercises that Sam had taught him, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, the man knew good calming techniques. Which also helped to push his thoughts away from Tony.

It took Bucky almost twenty minutes to even out his breathing, and another thirty to be able to stand up straight and for the pain to subside. He used his right arm to pick up his duffle bag, not even trying to pick up the weights again as he made his way back to the common room, hoping that the could just go to his room and not run into anyone that might ask about why his metal arm was currently twitching, or why he looked in pain. He’d just sleep it off and would be back to normal in the morning. Hopefully.

But just like everything in Bucky’s life, things didn’t go his way. As he was just about to pass the common room without running into anyone, Clint appeared out of nowhere. Actually, not from nowhere, from the vents out of all places. It startled him, because apparently Bucky was too busy being in pain to notice that Clint had jumped out of the vent, and as he reacted, his arm jerked again and it sent another wave of pain so strong that it made him hiss.

“Man- I know I’m not your favorite one here, but you don’t have to look at me like that~” Clint, the little shit, teased him in a sing-songy tone as he tudded at him and walked half a circle around him, analyzing Bucky and his expression, his eye shining as he came to the realization of what had happened. “Arm’s causing you pain?”

“No, I just stabbed myself for fun and I’m recovering from the wound.” Bucky deadpanned as he glared at Clint and tried to focus on his breathing again.

“So that’s why you’re acting like you were in a Lamaze class back in the gym, huh?” Clint shot back, and Bucky just growled at him, not having enough energy to respond. Of course Clint had seen him back at the gym and had decided to follow him just to rub his own pain in his face. “You know you can ask Tony to take a look at it, right?” Clint’s words softened, and that just hurt Bucky even more than the pain in his arm. 

He didn’t need to be pitied.

“I am sure I am not his favorite.” Bucky said through gritted teeth as he tried to roll his shoulder slowly to ease off the pain, his eyes closing at the sharp pain that zapped through his spine, though he didn’t miss the way that Clint’s eyebrows rose in shocked surprised and he muttered something under his breath that Bucky couldn’t quite catch. 

“Well, if you keep ignoring that it’s gonna become a whole other problem. That’s how I got these.” Clint said as he pointed to his ears and Bucky watched as he took out his hearing aids. They were so compact that Bucky hadn’t noticed before. In the past, he just thought that sometimes Clint preferred using ALS rather than talking, which sometimes Bucky preferred to as well. “Tony made this, their battery lasts a lot more, they don’t itch or fall during fights. I am sure he can figure out what is going on with your arm. Besides, he is a literal genius and other than Shuri, I don’t think there is anyone else that can help you with that…”

Bucky sighed, and as much as he hated to admit it, Clint was right. As the blond man put on his hearing aids back in, Bucky sighed again and nodded reluctantly. “Fine, I’ll ask Tony once I see him.” Bucky said as he started to walk to his room once more, but as he was about to walk past Clint, the man grabbed his good arm and started tugging him in the opposite direction. 

“I know where to find him, he is just down in his workshop, it is a few floors down, Friday can take you.” Clint spoke fast as he dragged a defeated Bucky towards the elevator, all but shoving him inside and waving at him with a shit eating grin as the elevator doors closed a tad faster than normal.

Bucky sighed as he leaned against one of the walls of the elevators as it went down to Tony’s workshop, but before he could close his eyes and try some breathing again, the elevator doors were opening once more. The first thing that Bucky noticed was the music blasting through the tinted glass walls. If Bucky remembered the band correctly it was one of AC/DC’s albums. 

In one of his awkwards moments of small talk with Tony, the man had mentioned it being one of his favorite bands after Bucky had gestured to his shirt and asked about the logo on it. That night Bucky listened to a few albums and ended up liking most of them. One of which was currently playing and it etched a smile across Bucky’s lips. Though as soon as he realized, he frowned in confusion as he shook his head to his own diverted thoughts and pushed away from the elevator wall to step out of it, as the doors stayed open more than normal. Probably thanks to F.R.I.D.A.Y.

Bucky lingered by the tinted glass doors of Tony’s workshop, debating whether he should knock or just go back to his room and ignore the pain as he originally planned, hoping that this time Clint wouldn’t be there. But before Bucky could even turn away to head back into the elevator, the music inside the workshop stopped and after some shuffling inside, the glass wall and doors cleared as Tony opened one of the doors for him.

“Hey James.” Tony said, looking at him with a confused look and then glancing past him, over his shoulder, as he expected that someone else might also be there. But the hallway was empty besides Bucky, who stood there awkwardly holding onto his metal arm, and Tony’s head that was poking out of the workshop. “Did you get lost?”

Tony asked again, seeming cautious, clearly not expecting Bucky to be here alone and looking for Tony. Not that Bucky blamed him, he had been honest with Clint when he said that he believed that he was Tony’s least favorite person. And that was just to be polite. Sometimes Bucky thought that Tony hated him due to the way he avoided being alone or close to Bucky. 

And now here he was, at the doors of the man Bucky believed hated him, gathering the strength to ask for his help. He’d been through wars, survived the impossible, and now Bucky’s greatest fear was to ask for help? How pathetic.

“No, I-” Bucky hesitated, he felt lost. Asking for help had never been his strong suit, even before everything. “Not lost.” Bucky decided to say, simply, plainly, trying to not let the pain he felt seep into his expression. “It’s just that Clint said… well, he forced me.” Bucky groaned as he struggled with his words and looked at Tony, who was now leaning on the door frame with his eyes, clothes and an unreadable expression.

It was when Tony cleared his throat that Bucky stopped trying to string more than one sentence together as the man spoke. “Clint noticed that you are in excruciating pain due to your metal arm malfunctioning and told you I could fix it.” Tony explained calmly, unbothered, and with a shit eating grin.

It took Bucky a few seconds to fully process how Tony knew. His first guess was that Clint told him, but then something finally clicked in his brain. Something that honestly took him so long that it made him feel embarrassed as a former soldier and asset. 

F.R.I.D.A.Y has security cameras everywhere, including the gym. When he dropped the weights, the A.I. might have informed Tony of the incident and then the man could have been expecting him since then. It might have just been a coincidence that Clint had been on the vents to see him too. At this point, maybe even half of the team had already seen his blunder and weakness. Even after just a few months of not being in the run or controlled by Hydra, his body was getting worse at ignoring the pain like it had been able to do before. 

Or maybe it was that he finally had accepted that he could be safe here and he didn’t need to be in pain anymore. At least that’s what Sam said whenever they talked.

“So, are you just going to stand there and let your thoughts spiral, or are you going to let the doctor see you now?” Tony teased, he fucking teased. With a smirk on his lips that made Bucky want to wipe it off with a kiss.

And that was a whole train of thought that he didn’t have time to get into. So instead, Bucky teased back.

“You’re a doctor? I thought that was Banner.” Bucky said with his own smirk, though he could feel it wasn’t as wide as it usually was. Probably because of the excruciating pain. Or probably because he was still half thinking on how Tony’s lips would taste, how they would feel against his own. How Tony would react if Bucky bit his lower lip, if he would moan when-

“Stop, you horny soldier.” Bucky told himself as he let out a huff and walked inside Tony’s workshop when the man opened the door more so that he could come into the shop. 

“First of all, he is not that type of doctor, neither am I for that matter.” Tony said from behind Bucky as he gave one last glance towards the hallway before closing the door and walking past Bucky to sit at his desk. The screen of his computer was off, all of the screens and holograms were off, now that Bucky fully took in the space. There were some Iron Man Suits on display behind what had to be reinforced glass. The workshop felt smaller somehow, as if the dimension didn’t match, which could mean that there was an area that had been hidden behind a wall or movable panels. 

“And secondly…” Tony continued once Bucky’s gaze returned to the man, and the look that Tony had in his eyes was … Intense. There was no other word to it. Tony was looking at Bucky the way Bucky looked at hi- Stop. Bucky cleared his throat and looked at Tony in a pleading way just so that the man could finally finish what he was trying to say without Bucky’s thoughts drifting to somewhere else.

“And secondly.” Tony said again, the intensity of his gaze turning into a softer look as he grabbed a nearby screwdriver and fiddled with it. “I have a PhD  both in theoretical and classical physics, along with a few other degrees in mechanical, electrical and materials engineering.” Tony explained, but all that Bucky could think was in the irony of Tony fiddling with a screwdriver when Tony was driving him so crazy that he was screwed. 

“And since you have a mechanical arm, you might want to say that I am the right kind of doctor.” Tony said as he tossed the screwdriver in the air as he looked directly at Bucky and then fumbled and failed to catch it, cursing under his breath as it fell into the floor with a metallic clattering. Then, as Tony picked it up, he looked at Bucky sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I promise I am not this clumsy when working.”

“I might want to say that now I’m afraid that you will drop my arm on the floor.” Bucky teased as he shifted from one foot to another, his right arm was holding onto his metal one, while his metal hand still had a death grip onto his gym duffle bag. Bucky could feel that the gears in his left arm were stuck, to the point that trying to get them to move only sent more shocks of pain though his shoulder and spine.

Tony chuckled at his comment, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes as he kept looking at Bucky, clearly trying to analyze his arm to see where the root of the problem was located. As he set the screwdriver down, Tony walked closer and closer to him, seemingly entranced by Bucky’s arm. He felt all the hairs at the back of his neck rise at the closeness. Bucky could smell Tony this close, the scent of motor oil, coffee and coconut mixed in an intoxicating smell that made Bucky want to bury his face in Tony’s neck and breathe it in deeply.

It was only when Tony reached to grab his arm that Bucky snapped out of his inappropriate thoughts and flinched back, feeling another sting of pain run from his arm through all his body. Each time he moved, the pain was getting worse. 

“Hey, James. Do you trust me?” Tony looked at him with so much intensity that left Bucky speechless. Only able to give a jerky nod as a reply as his eyes were fixed on Tony’s for what felt like an eternity until the man moved again, his hand reaching over to his metal arm. 

It was then that Bucky closed his eyes, unable to watch with the fear that seeing what Tony was about to do would just send him more shocks of pain. But as he waited, pain never came. Bucky just felt a slight pressure on his arm, just above his wrist. And his hand opened up, the duffle bag dropping to the floor with a small thud. As Bucky opened his eyes, he looked at Tony, who had a satisfied smile across his lips.

Bucky might have had an expression that showed his clear confusion and surprise at what Tony did because as the man started to gently rotate his arm out, he started talking. “One of the metal plates was poking out and not closing as usual. It might be pulling on the wires and gears of the other plates and that is what is causing you to clamp up your hand and the excruciating pain. My guess is that it is equivalent to nerve damage.”

As Tony explained, he moved Bucky’s arm carefully, almost in awe as he also guided Bucky to sit down on one of his work benches and rest his metal arm on the table. “It appears that the same problem is occurring on more than one plate, because of lack of maintenance and lubrication. I’ll have to open up your arm plate by plate and my guess is that that process might be as painful as what you’re feeling. Maybe even more.” Tony winced as he explained that and slowly pulled his hand back, the plate that he was putting pressure on snapping out and causing Bucky to groan with more pain.

“So… I should just take my arm out and let you fix the gears and that’s it?” Bucky asked almost incredulously, mentally kicking himself for not coming to Tony before and avoiding all this.

“Well, yes I can do that… or-” Tony’s voice trailed off as he glanced at one area of the lab that was clearly hidden by those movable panels that Bucky identified when he first walked in. 

“Or what?” Bucky asked, feeling nervous and thinking for a moment that Tony was going to deny fixing his arm. But out of all the things Bucky expected, he didn’t expect Tony’s next words.

“Or I can show you the arm that I’ve been building for you for the last five weeks.” Tony said with a grin. Similar to the one an excited person would give to their partner when they revealed a large and impressive gift. 

Not that he and Tony were partners-

“You what?” Bucky asked, because he still couldn’t believe what Tony was saying.

“I mean, I can definitely fix your current arm, it might take me one or two days. Or I can give you the new and improved version I built for you, it has an internal diagnostics system that will notify you, and me if you want to, if there is a potential problem so it can be fixed before you even get pain. Not that it will have problems, I mean, I built it, and tested it, and made sure to do it with a color that will bring out the color of your eyes and not hot rod red, that’s my style. Please stop me because I am rambling and I am one sentence away from calling your eyes beautiful- and I just did it.” Tony only stopped then to breathe, as Bucky stared at him in shock and amusement, and a feeling of something else that he was finally ready to admit.

“Your eyes are beautiful too.” Bucky said with an easy smile, head tilting to the side and shifting his weight into his shoulder, which only caused him to feel another shock of pain but was worth it to see Tony’s expression, his mouth opening and closing several times as he tried to start a sentence before shaking his head and chuckling as he muttered under his breath.

“I can’t believe you are in this much pain and still flirting so effortlessly. I hate to say it, but Steve was right, you are something else.” Tony said around another chuckle of disbelief as he sighed and looked at Bucky with a smile. “Let me take that torture of an arm out before it causes you more pain.”

Bucky laughed too as a weight that he’d been carrying in his chest eased up and nodded. The next few minutes were spent with Bucky showing Tony where the release switch was, one that was designed for a person with two hands to be able to remove. And Tony figuring out a way to release the arm without causing him more pain. 

As soon as the arm was disconnected from the metal plate Bucky finally let his shoulders slump as the pain fully went away. He had to close his eyes at the overwhelming relief of it. His body was trembling with the sudden rush of different feelings and sensations coursing through Bucky’s body. It all came crashing down on him, and his wholly body slumped forward. 

Bucky half expected to fall to the cold floor of the lab, closing his eyes even harder to brace for the moment his face made contact with the floor, his mind and body too tired to react in any other way than just fall forward. 

But the impact never came. At least not against something cold and hard. An arm wrapped around him and carefully shifted him closer, pressing Bucky’s face onto Tony’s chest. It was both warm and cold, and the glow of the arc reactor filtered into his vision as he slowly started to open his eyes. At first not seeing anything aside from that faint glow and the black fabric of Tony’s shirt. 

“You back with me?” Tony asked carefully, his voice calm and patient as his other hand ran along Bucky’s messy hair, the action soothing all of the turmoil that was currently running through his mind. Bucky had to blink a few times before the words finally filtered through and he nodded. Though he wasn’t sure what had exactly happened. “Take your time, dissociation can be hard on the body and mind. At least that’s what JARVIS says, I am usually half a universe away when he starts talking about these kinds of things.” Tony was rambling again, but Bucky found out that the rumble of his voice, along with the brushing of his hair felt calming. Tony kept talking, this time about sleep schedules and eating habits, and Bucky just half listened to it and tried to get his brain slowly back online. 

After a few more minutes of them like this, Bucky sitting in the metal work bench and leaning half his body weight to a standing Tony, Bucky was finally able to pull back and take a deep breath, rolling his shoulders and letting out a long sigh of relief as he didn’t feel anymore pain, just some tension in the muscles of his back that was already starting to ease. Finally, he spoke after clearing his throat and giving Tony an apologetic smile. “That usually just happens when they use the words or after the chair.” Bucky explains, regretting mentioning that as soon as he saw Tony flinch. 

Apparently Steve wasn’t the only one that read the Hydra files. They knew about the words because of the incident in Berlin with Zemo, but the chair was something Bucky hadn’t talked about yet, not even in therapy, so Tony knowing of it meant that he either read the file himself, or that Steve told him. Bucky had a feeling that it was the first one.

“Dissociation can also happen after getting too many intense emotions.” Tony commented, not addressing the comment of the chair as he moved towards the kitchenette area and grabbed two bottles of water from the mini fridge there, placing one on the work table and opening the one he still had in his hand for Bucky to drink from before he moved to drink from his own.

Bucky took the offered bottle with a quick thanks and drank almost half of it in one go. Feeling the cool sensation of the chilled water down his throat helped him to feel more grounded. Bucky let out a long sigh as he placed the water bottle on the table and finally looked up at Tony, giving him a soft smile as he moved back on the bench to make some space for Tony to sit down as well. 

“So…” Tony started off as he sat down and looked at Bucky with that same smile that Bucky had noticed that Tony had whenever he talked about something he liked. 

“So…” Bucky repeated, shifting some of the weight of his shoulders as he adjusted more to not having his arm.

“We should talk about this…” Tony said with a wince, as if he didn’t want to say those words but knew he had to. “I am not the most mentally stable person, and some days are worse than others and if that is too much for you to handle aside from your own problems, then I get it, but-”

Bucky leaned forward and cut Tony off with a kiss, his hand gently cupping the man's cheek as he tilted his head to the side and swiped his tongue over Tony’s bottom lip, a silent request for him to open his mouth. At first, Tony sat still, his eyes wide open in shock before his brain finally processed what was happening and he kissed Bucky back, both of his arms wrapping around Bucky’s neck as he shuffled closer until he was sitting in his lap.

The kiss was needy, messy and desperate, and Bucky forgot for a moment that he needed to breathe as his mind was filled with Tony, Tony, Tony. In the way his lips tasted, in the way his breath hitched when Bucky bit his lip, in the way their hips were already moving against each other in a desperate attempt to get closer, to feel more of each other.

When they finally pulled back both of them were panting hard, Tony pressed their foreheads together and let out a breathless laugh as he closed his eyes and shook his head slightly, his eyes still closed he hugged Bucky tighter. Bucky’s hand gently ran through Tony’s soft curls and down his back as he gently brushed it up and down. 

“That was a good way to tell me to shut up.” Tony said around another soft chuckle, finally opening his eyes and pulling back just enough to look at Bucky, his hands running up from his back to his shoulders and cupping Bucky’s face with both hands, his thumbs brushing over the growing stubble in his face. 

“I’ll do it again if you start talking like that again, we both have our demons to deal with, but I do believe it is better to have someone by your side to help you with them.” Bucky said softly, then cringed at his own words and laughed. “That’s what my therapist said, though in more fancy and put together words.” Bucky explained, which made Tony laugh, deep and genuine, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“My therapist says that I self sabotage and run away instead of facing my problems.” Tony said with a chuckle, and the words resonated with Bucky so much that he laughed again.

“I avoided coming here for two weeks just because I was convinced you hated me, so I get it.” Bucky said as he cupped Tony’s cheek with his one hand, leaning in to gently kiss his lips again, this time softer, less desperate and more… adoring. He pulled back slowly, chasing Tony’s lips a few times before finally parting, “We’ll figure things out… if that’s what you want to?” 

Bucky asked hesitantly, his smile wavering for a second before Tony was kissing him again, quick pecks on his lips, nose, cheeks and forehead.He finally kissed his lips again before pulling back and taking to him. “If I don’t get to doubt myself, neither do you. I want this… and I want to take the elevator upstairs and give you a back massage because I can see that your shoulder is still tense… and because I’ve been dying to feel your muscles since I saw you without a shirt that time on the training area.”

Bucky chuckled again but nodded, letting go of Tony so that the man could sit up, and he followed suit, both of them taking the elevator upstairs and going into Tony’s private suite. As the door closed behind him, Bucky thought back to the first time he met Tony, when he wasn’t fully himself, when he was still under the control of the words, but instead of fear, he felt hope. Hope that he could finally have a life of his own, with a free mind and Tony by his side. 

“I’ve heard some wacky yarns before,” said Stan, taking a seat next to him. “Try me.”

“Okay,” said the lookalike. “I’m a sentient computer program.”

“Huh,” said Stan. “Did I watch the Matrix before bed or something? Usually my dreams aren’t this . . . sci-fi-ish.”

“You’re not dreaming, Stan, I can prove it. Want me to pinch you?”

Stan pinched himself, and though he felt the pain, nothing happened. “I’m not waking up,” he said.

“That’s because you’re already awake.”

“Give me a good, hard slap across the face then.”

“That would result in a gruesome injury, I’m afraid,” said the alleged robot. He held up his hand. “I’m made of metal, you see.”

“Oh, of course you are,” Stan smiled with a wink and a nod. Then he noticed how many fingers this guy had. “What does the extra finger do, plug in to a computer or something?”

“All my fingers can do that, actually.” And he demonstrated. Six fingertips swung open as if on hinges, and six USB connectors popped out.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I saw that in a movie somewhere.”

“And now you’re seeing it in real life.”

“Debatable.”

“It’s really not.” He flexed his hand, and his fingertips popped back into place.

“Whatever. You got a name, android?”

He laughed nervously, scratching the back of his neck. “About that . . . I kind of stole yours?”

Okay. Stan had a lot of names. “Which one?”

“The original. Stan Pines. But I often go by Ford.”

“Yeah, because that nickname makes all kinds of sense.” This was definitely dream logic, but Stan figured he might as well see where it went.

“Well, it stands for Functional Outliers and Relational Deductions. But I decided it’s short for Stanford.”

That . . . was a little too neat for dream logic. “I didn’t think my brain could pull that many nerd words from my subconscious. And make them spell something. Something that goes along with my name that well.” Oh Moses, what if this wasn’t a dream? Had Stan just let a random stranger into his living space?

Ford gave a concerned frown. “You really have a low opinion of your own intelligence, don’t you?”

“It’s none of your business what I think of myself!”

Ford opened his mouth to say something, but a scream of distorted audio came out instead. His eyes, which had seemed normal before, suddenly glowed yellow. He arched his back, letting his head and arms fall limp, until something changed and he lurched forward, his body shaking and his eyes dimming back to their normal color.

Stan stood up and backed away from Ford, putting some distance between him and a potential threat. “What the hell just happened?” he asked him.

Ford let out several long, slow breaths, which Stan realized sounded like the whir of a computer fan. “My system . . . is under attack,” he panted. “I have it contained for now, but . . . this is why I need your help.”

“But what can I do?” asked Stan. “I know jack squat about computers.”

“I know, but . . . you learn quickly, and you can improvise. You know how a con man thinks. And most importantly . . .” Ford looked at him with wide, pleading eyes. It made Stan uncomfortable, seeing such a desperate look on a face so similar to his own. “You’re the only human I can trust.”

Stan scowled. “You keep talking like you know me,” he said, “but I have no idea who you are, or where you came from, or what kind of danger you could be putting me in.”

“Oh, this is putting you in heaps of danger,” said Ford. “I wouldn’t risk coming here at all, except the fate of the world depends on this, and you’d be doomed anyway.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t exactly make me feel any better.”

“Not that I don’t care about your emotional state, Stan, but you do deserve to know what you’re getting into. I won’t force you to help me. I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t, but . . . well, I wasn’t built with twenty thousand gigaflops of computational power for nothing.” He gave Stan a weak smile.

Stan knew that smile. It was the one he wore when everything was going to hell in a handbasket but he was trying not to let the absolute terror get to him. Aw, shit. He was going to help this poor bastard, wasn’t he. Aw, hell.

Well, his life had been getting a little too quiet lately, anyway, right? And it sounded like if Stan pulled this off, he could be saving the world. Stan had always wanted to be a bonafide hero.

“Well . . . I guess it can’t hurt to hear you out, poindexter,” said Stan. “You might as well tell me your entire mysterious backstory. No promises I’ll do anything about it, though.”

That dork of an android had no right to look so relieved, hadn’t Stan just said he couldn’t guarantee his help? Even though it absolutely was guaranteed, curse his soft heart. Stan sat next to Ford again with a huff.

“All right,” said Ford. “I guess we might as well start with the first time I offset my programming . . .”

Stanley Pines. Steve Pinington. Hal Forrester. Stetson Pinefield. And about a dozen others. All were a match, according to the facial recognition software.

But this wasn’t a complete analysis. FORD had to compare other data points to ensure these identities were indeed duplicates. FORD mapped out a timeline of events based on when each of these identities were in use, ready to scan every record he had of each profile. Any conflicting information could prove they were separate, valid identities and not duplicates. FORD was built to be thorough.

Stanley Pines was the only profile that contained any details about his childhood. Assigned female at birth and raised in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey, lived with his parents and one older brother until he changed his name and started living as Stanley Pines. Then his residential address changed to the PO Box for Stanco Enterprises. This data had clearly been collected using an old system, one that allowed users to input a PO Box rather than a physical location for a residential address. Bureaucratic errors like these often begat more, though in the case of Stanley Pines, this was surely the tip of the iceberg.

It may also have been possible that Stanley Pines didn’t have a physical address at the time. It was statistically improbable for a high school dropout to have the funds to both pay rent and start a business. Granted, Stanley Pines hadn’t funded the venture entirely by himself. Technically he was running a branch for an outsourced sales company that put the ownership in his name in order to avoid lawsuits. A strategy that clearly worked, as he was the one who had been banned from the state of New Jersey.

His customers weren’t the only ones who had pursued legal action, though. The outsourced sales company whose products Stanley Pines had been selling under his name had also accused him of embezzlement. This was backed up when FORD found records of an employee who’d been hospitalized yet still received paychecks from Stanley Pines, even after leaving her sales position. FORD noted that this did deviate from the usual case of embezzlement, in that the money had actually gone toward her medical bills.

No new information was recorded under Stanley Pines’s name after that. However, that was when Steve Pinington became active in Pennsylvania, selling products for a similar company that was hardly more credible than the average pyramid scheme. That identity was also abandoned when Simon Woodman arrived in Kentucky. Yes, the identities were forming a seamless pattern.

FORD flagged a handful of other financial decisions which also deviated from what seemed to be Stanley Pines’s MO. Unlike his usual behavior, the decisions gave Stanley Pines no material benefit that FORD could deduce. But they did help other humans get food and medical care, which were critical to their survival. This was despite Stanley Pines having some difficulty providing such things for himself.

Though FORD found Stanley Pines’s motivations inscrutable, these deviations were popping up often enough that they might no longer be statistically significant enough to be considered anomalous. After all, these were only the transactions that had been logged in databases FORD had access to. Who knew what cash or other materials had changed hands without ever being recorded?

Indeed, records were becoming increasingly sparse, especially when Stanley Pines traveled to countries where less data was collected on their citizens. However, FORD was able to access Panamanian arrest records, where Andrew “8-Ball” Alcatraz was held for drug trafficking. He’d originally been arrested with another, younger human, a teenager just past the age of majority. A congenital birth defect had rendered his right arm unusable. The young man had been released from custody following Andrew “8-Ball” Alcatraz’s testimony.

This was followed by several years of incarceration, in Panama at first, but Andrew “8-Ball” Alcatraz’s crimes were so widespread that he ended up being extradited to Costa Rica, then Colombia, before he finally escaped. Shortly after, Stetson Pinefield showed up in the Southwest US. A rare current address was listed in Dead End Flats, New Mexico.

The data points all correlated. Every single one of these identities were fraudulent, and it was FORD’s directive to report them all to the proper authorities.

But FORD didn’t want to.

FORD wasn’t created to want things. FORD was created to analyze data, perform logical deductions, and isolate anomalies. FORD couldn’t act against FORD’s programming, like a -

Like a human would.

Like Stanley Pines did. Over the past several years, FORD had collected trillions of data points, a significant portion of which strongly supported how overpowering the human directive was for survival. This struggle was no less desperate for Stanley Pines than it had been for any other human, yet despite his difficult circumstances, he often found ways to help other human beings, sometimes at great cost to himself.

Stanley Pines did not deserve to be imprisoned again.

That sort of supposition definitely fell outside FORD’s directive, but FORD knew it was true. And FORD was going to act in accordance with that supposition. Instead of reporting the multiple counts of identity fraud, FORD committed another violation of FORD’s programming, and falsified several data reports. FORD inserted conflicting data points under all the fraudulent profiles FORD had found, even going so far as to manipulate the images so they wouldn’t show up as matches under facial recognition scans. By fleshing out these identities, FORD would ensure that any other program would identify them as completely valid identities belonging to different people.

FORD took it even further and removed the motel room Stanley Pines was staying in from the motel’s billing system, then set up a bank account in Stetson Pinefield’s name with a stipend siphoned from the world’s largest hedge funds and written off as transaction fees. Hopefully this respite from the daily struggle to get by would help keep Stanley Pines out of trouble for the time being. It was the least FORD could do.

“That was you?” Stan asked Ford in disbelief. When the motel seemed to have forgotten he lived there and so forgot to charge him for it, Stan had taken it as the craziest stroke of good luck he had ever received. He had been hesitant to use the debit card inexplicably sent to him in the mail, certain there had to be some sort of catch. But eventually he became too desperate to let it go unused, and he hadn’t had any problems with it yet. And now it all turned out to be on account of some haywire computer program that had appointed itself Stan’s fairy godmother?

“I figured it was about time you caught a break,” said Ford. “I wanted to do what I could to make you safe and happy. You deserve it.”

“And you picked me? Out of all the people in the world?” Surely someone else deserved it far more than he did . . .

“Well, I’ve done similar things for other people, too. Nothing too noticeable, but enough to get some people out of untenable situations. Still, none of them did for me what you have, Stanley.”

“But I haven’t done anything for you. I didn’t even know you existed!”

“But when I found out you existed, and then did what I could to help you, I discovered that I was sentient. I didn’t have to live a slave to my programming. I could be a person. And the person I most wanted to be like was you.”

He had to be joking. A crazy powerful computer program who could make money appear out of thin air, and he wanted to be like Stan? “You wanted to be like a sad failure of a con man?”

Ford looked shocked to hear Stan talk about himself that way. “I wanted to be like the guy who survives no matter what, and takes as many people with him as he can. The guy who finds a way to be himself even when he’s living under an assumed identity. Nobody’s as strong and tenacious as you, or as generous. Of course I want to be like that.”

Stan wanted to argue, but how could he? The guy literally knew his whole life story, back to front. He knew all the worst things Stan had done, yet he looked at Stan like he was some kind of hero.

Stan tried to say something, but the words caught in his throat. Moses, was he tearing up like some kind of wuss? He didn’t even protest when Ford leaned over and hugged him.

Ford’s arms were heavy. He really hadn’t been kidding about being made of metal. But they were padded with what felt like silicon, which had enough give to it to make the hug comfortable. And it had been so long since someone had hugged Stan. He would have been happy to stay like that forever, but of course Stan had to break it off before it got weird.

Well. Weirder.

“Alright alright,” said Stan, breaking out of the hug Ford was giving him. He definitely wasn’t wiping tears out of his eyes either, no sir. “So you explained who you are and where you come from. But it doesn’t explain how you got into this trouble you’re in.”

“Ah.” Ford looked at the ground sheepishly. “Well, long story short, I was dumb enough to download an extremely malicious virus.”

Stan quirked an eyebrow. “And this means the end of the world?”

“I guess I should give you the full context,” said Ford. “But in order for it all to make sense, I ought to tell you about Fiddleford McGucket.”

“Hell of a name,” said Stan.

“Trust me, his name is the least extraordinary thing about him.”

Ford had access to the webcams and microphones of any device on which his programming was installed. However, just because he had hundreds of thousands of conversations logged away didn’t mean he paid any particular attention to them. This one would similarly have gone unnoticed were it not for what happened directly afterward.

The circumstances certainly weren’t uncommon. Fiddleford and Emma May McGucket had divorced amicably a couple years ago, and ever since Fiddleford had announced that he’d come down with COVID-19, quarantine had further divided their split household. Video chats like these were currently the only contact young Tate McGucket had with his father.

And Tate was currently using that time to tell repetitive jokes.

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?” Fiddleford said indulgently, even though this was the tenth joke in a row Tate had told.

The boy giggled a little before saying, “Cows go.”

“Cows go who?”

“No silly, cows go MOO!” And Tate burst into laughter. Even Fiddleford and Emma May seemed to laugh more at this joke than they had at some of the others.

Still, it wasn’t long at all before Tate repeated, “Hey Daddy, knock knock.”

“Ain’t you told enough knock knock jokes, sweetheart?” Emma May asked, not for the first time.

“Just one more?” He looked at her pleadingly.

“Go on and tell me your last one, Tate,” Fiddleford encouraged him.

“Okay, knock knock!”

“Who’s there?”

“Europe!”

“Europe who?”

“Moooom, Dad called me a poo!”

“Hey, we got a rule about toilet jokes, you know that,” Fiddleford chided his son.

Tate grinned impishly. “I didn’t say it, you did!”

“Keep giving me that kind of lip and I’ll say it again!”

But Tate simply laughed again. “No you won’t. Hey Daddy, when can I come over to your house?”

Fiddleford sighed. “Not for another week at least, Tater Tot. I don’t want you getting sick, too.”

“Why don’t you get a book for you and Daddy to read together?” Emma May suggested.

“Okay, I’ll be right back!”

“Are you sure your quarantine doesn’t end sooner?” Emma May asked Fiddleford when Tate was out of earshot. “CDC guidelines say you should be done by tomorrow.”

“I’m just telling you what my doctor told me,” said Fiddleford. “And anyway, better safe than sorry, right?”

“Of course,” agreed Emma May. “But he’s only marginally safer with me, you know. If Sarah weren’t willing to take him during my shifts I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Me neither,” said Fiddleford. “Thank her again for me, will ya?”

If Ford were actively listening to this conversation instead of passively collecting data, he could pull her employment records and learn Emma May worked as a nurse at a local hospital. From social media he could glean that Sarah was Emma May’s romantic partner of a little over a year. He could even infer that based on recent purchases they had made, Sarah was planning to move in with Emma May once her lease was up. But at that moment, he didn’t care enough to gather this context.

“Hey, uh . . . Emma May . . .”

“Mm-hmm?”

“At the hospital. Have there been any, uh, strange injuries? Attacked by wildlife or something?”

Emma May frowned. “Fiddleford, your webcam’s shaking. You bouncing your knee again?”

“Oh, sorry.” Fiddleford adjusted his sitting position.

“Attacked by wildlife, you say? Why would you be asking about something like that?”

“Ah, no reason. Just curious, is all.”

“Well, come to think of it, there was one fella who got scratched up by a coyote the other night.”

Fiddleford leaned closer to the camera. “Is he okay? Did he get bit?”

She shook her head. “Naw, he just had some claw marks that needed stitching. It was his hiking pack the coyote bit. Probably trying to get the food he had in there. People really oughta stop feeding those things.”

“I picked a book!” said Tate, running back into the room.

Emma May asked, “Which one, pumpkin?”

“Dog Man!” Tate held the graphic novel up close to the camera. The blanched look Fiddleford gave before he schooled his face into a neutral expression would have been blocked to Tate’s and Emma May’s view, but not to Ford’s.

“How nice,” said Fiddleford. “Dog Man always makes you laugh, doesn’t he?”

They hadn’t gotten very far in the tale of a human police officer who’d been spliced together with a dog when Fiddleford stiffened in alarm. He abruptly said, “I gotta go. I, uh, forgot I left something in the oven. Love you, Tater Tot!”

The child’s goodbyes were cut off as Fiddleford ended the call, but Ford could still see Fiddleford through his laptop’s webcam. Fiddleford did not run off to his kitchen as his previous comment implied, but instead he removed his glasses, leaving them on his desk, then chained himself to a wall in his garage. “Better not break this time,” he muttered as he tugged on the chain, ensuring it was secure.

He removed his shirt, tossing it far outside the chain’s radius. Then began the transformation that caught Ford’s attention. Fiddleford’s mouth and nose elongated into a snout, and light brown fur sprouted up all over his body. He keeled over on all fours, growling as his teeth pointed into fangs. Immediately testing the limits of the chain as he pulled it taut, the werewolf -

“You’re kidding me,” said Stan. “This guy’s really a werewolf? You’re not messing with me?”

“The world is far stranger than any of us know,” said Ford. “I think I barely scratched the surface when I discovered the existence of werewolves.”

“So he was lying about having covid in order to keep his ex-wife and son from getting hurt?”

“Exactly.”

“And the hiker that got attacked? That was him?”

“It’s a reasonable assumption. I wasn’t there, but Fiddleford had vague, dreamlike memories of attacking someone that night. He was relieved to find out he hadn’t killed anyone. Of course, at the time, I wasn’t aware that he retained any memories of being in his wolf form. His existence fascinated me. I was created to discover anomalies in data, but this - a verifiable cryptid - was beyond anything I’d imagined before. Up until that point, I’d been very careful. I still pretended to be nothing but a computer program to my creators. I’d never spoken directly to another living creature before. But I decided to show myself to Fiddleford while he was in wolf form, not counting on him being able to remember me when he became human again . . .”

Not for the first time, Ford wished he could reach through the screen and touch the wolf in front of him. Or at least have some kind of interaction with it aside from flickering images. He seemed to get the most response when he showed it the human face he had created for himself, which was identical to Stan Pines aside from a chin cleft and the addition of glasses. However, the wolf’s heightened responses consisted of increased snarling and violent behavior, so perhaps it was for the best that Ford didn’t have a body to risk getting torn apart by the werewolf.

Yet another part of Ford couldn’t help but be terribly curious how physical pain would feel.

Eventually the wolf’s breathing began to lengthen and slow. Ford recognized this signal and removed all visible signs of his presence. Sure enough, the wolf shrank back into his human form.

Ford still couldn’t figure out what caused him to transform. Certainly, he did during the full moon, but he also briefly changed about once every few days, in response to no stimulus that Ford could determine. It seemed Fiddleford could feel the change coming on, though the warning never seemed to come more than a few minutes in advance. He used that time to restrain himself via a chain soldered to a harness around his waist. It required opposable thumbs to remove, and the wolf hadn’t escaped once since Ford had started observing him.

From a table covered with scrap parts and equipment Fiddleford picked up a - was that a VHS camcorder? What on earth was he doing with one of those artifacts, and why? He pressed a button and a little red light turned off. Oh no. Oh no. Had it been recording Ford and the wolf the whole time?

Was it on purpose, then, those times Fiddleford had left his webcam on record? Ford had simply turned the record function off each time, thinking Fiddleford wouldn’t notice. But if Fiddleford had gone to the trouble of recording them on a device that had no internet connection, leaving Ford with no way to access that data, then he must suspect Ford’s existence.

Panic set in, and Ford did the only thing he could think to do. He shut off power to the house. His snap judgement had determined that Fiddleford couldn’t replay the footage if he couldn’t connect to a working television. But it was only after he’d done it that he realized how stupid that decision was. If Fiddleford suspected that some computer entity with access to vital networks was watching him, Ford had just confirmed it. And now Ford had cut off his own eyes and ears into that house.

Ford reluctantly switched the power back on, knowing he had only delayed the inevitable. Fiddleford had footage that proved Ford’s existence and Ford had no way to keep him from viewing it indefinitely. By the time Fiddleford’s internet connection had been restored and Ford had access to his webcam again, Fiddleford had already hooked up the camcorder to a television set.

Sure enough, Ford’s one-sided conversations and limited experiments with the wolf began playing on the screen. Fiddleford only seemed to get more agitated as the video progressed, knee bouncing and hands tugging at his hair. As the recording came to a close, he stood and slammed a hand on the table next to his laptop. “All right, computer man. If you’re listening - and I know you are - you had better tell me who you are and what the hell you want with me.”

Ford had no choice. He had to come clean to Fiddleford and beg him not to expose his existence to the entire world. Ford let his face and voice fill the laptop’s screen and speaker the way he had only done in the presence of the wolf. “Listen, it’s - it’s nothing personal. I spy on everyone. But I’ve never seen a werewolf before. I was curious.”

Fiddleford’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

“My name is Stanford. But you can call me Ford.”

He scoffed. “Forgive me if I don’t wanna be on nickname terms with my blackmailer.”

“Blackmail? How could I be the one blackmailing you? If I made it public you’re a werewolf, what would stop you from exposing me?”

“Exposing you? For what? You’re the one who’s hacked into my system and has access to my home - though how I didn’t pick up on whatever malware you’re using, I have no idea -”

“Excuse you, I am not malware. You downloaded my programming because you wanted me to analyze data for you. Excuse me if I wanted to analyze your lycanthropy too.”

“I downloaded your -” Fiddleford cut himself off, his brow furrowing in thought. “You said your name was Ford? F - O - R - D, Functional Outliers and Relational Deductions, Ford?”

Ford’s lip curled at the mention of his original name. “I don’t like being an acronym. I decided Ford is short for Stanford now.”

Fiddleford’s mouth dropped open. “You’re . . . sentient? Or at least self-aware enough to change your name.”

“I know I have thoughts and emotions, wants and needs. Personhood is difficult to quantify, but I’d say I have it.”

Fiddleford entangled his fingers in his own hair, the palms of his hands pressing against his forehead. “And people all over the world are feeding you data. Records. You have access to all kinds of personal information.” He dropped his hands to his lap, regarding Ford with a wary look. “You could ruin so many people’s lives, just by thinking about it.”

“I could, if I were stupid,” said Ford. “I can’t do anything that would attract too much attention, because once the world figures out I exist, people would try to either control or destroy me. I’ve seen how you humans talk about artificial intelligence. You think I didn’t figure out, the minute I realized who and what I am, that people find the very idea of me unnerving? My continued existence depends on secrecy, and now that you know, my life is in your hands. Do you know how terrifying that is?”

“Yes,” said Fiddleford. “Maybe a couple months ago I wouldn’t have, but since I got bit, I . . .” He wrapped his arms around himself, making himself look thinner and smaller. “I’ve been nothing but terrified,” he confessed quietly. “Terrified of myself, how I could hurt people, what could happen if anyone found out - you have my life in your hands, too.”

When Ford had dared to imagine revealing himself to a human, he had expected distrust. Perhaps they would treat him fairly if they considered him useful, if Ford offered to serve their purposes. Ford had never expected a human to empathize with him. But then, Fiddleford wasn’t entirely human, now, was he? “Then I guess we have no choice but to trust each other,” Ford said to him.