I Care About Murder, Not Your Feelings @a-detraque-barista - Tumblr Blog

Undisclosed Desires 🦾 Ao3

Synopsis An abandoned facility. A decommissioned android. A bad decision that feels strangely inevitable.

Caleb wasn’t yours to begin with, but that doesn’t stop you from dedicating your rare days off to repairing him. It’s practical at first. Then personal and then something dangerously close to attachment.

After a year of silence, he opens his eyes and he seems to know a lot more than you thought.

caleb x reader (afab!) | MDNI 🔞 | Android au tags: Possessive Behavior, thriller, Psychological Horror, Attempt at Humor, Emotional Manipulation, Shameless Smut, Yandere Caleb, Sexual Tension, Clank clank memes birthed this, we will fuck the android, caleb is the android, Blood and Violence, Non-Consensual Touching (Barely because he is DOWN for it)

wc: 6.7k | Chapter 1: Alloy Heart.

“There's no such thing as a small god. Once somebody starts playing God, sooner or later, things will get out of hand.”

⭒˗ˏˋ𓆩 ⚠ 𓆪ˎˊ˗⭒

There are certain things in life that only make sense when you place them side by side with absurdity. Like a pope standing beneath strobing lights in a rave, or a bird choosing the cage instead of the sky.

Events so fundamentally wrong they almost loop back around to feeling deliberate. As if they were designed.

What never once crossed your mind—while tracking game along the outskirts behind the plateau, boots crunching through frost-bitten gravel and dead brush—was the possibility of stumbling upon something like that.

The facility reveals itself gradually, as if reluctant to be seen, hiding away in shadows. A sheer cliff face gives way to geometry that does not belong to nature, its massive gray walls rising at sharp, unnatural angles, their surfaces pitted and weather-scarred but unmistakably reinforced. You look for anything that can give away something, but there is no signage or markings. Just concrete, steel, and silence. It looms with the unmistakable presence of intent, like a thing built to endure scrutiny—and hide from punishment.

At first glance, it feels like a villain’s lair you think, or worse, a place where villains never needed to announce themselves. A government black site? maybe. A warehouse for secrets that were never meant to survive daylight? Most probable.

You hesitate, even if you're trained and have gone through more dangerous places, there is something specifically off about this one.

Then curiosity wins, as it always does.

Inside, the air changes immediately. Stale, scent metallic and cold in a way that sinks into your bones rather than skin. The corridors stretch on in sterile monotony, broken only by flickering emergency lights and doors that lead nowhere in particular, some open into empty rooms stripped bare, others into collapsed sections choked with debris. Stairs descend—too many of them—spiraling down into darkness that feels thick, almost gravitational in its pull.

After the third descent, your survival instincts finally speak up, sharp and insistent. This is how people die in stories like yours. Not heroically. Not remembered. Just… gone.

“What the hell was happening here?” you murmur, the sound of your own voice feeling intrusive, wrong, as if the walls themselves might be listening.

Evidence answers you anyway.

Tables are littered with documents, their edges curled and yellowed, diagrams half-burned or smeared with something dark and dry. Empty vials roll beneath your touch, clinking softly—too softly—against metal surfaces. Flasks crusted with residue line the walls like forgotten specimens. And everywhere, mounted at odd angles, are X-rays.

Not human. Well not entirely.

Your fingers brush across them, tracing silhouettes that are wrong in subtle ways, bones reinforced with lattices, joints replaced by angular machinery, spines threaded with something dense and dark. You swallow.

“It almost looks like…” Your voice trails off as your fingertips reach a corkboard, overcrowded with notes and scribbles, the handwriting is rushed and desperate, there are strings of calculations that overlap anatomical sketches, some drawls are actually corrections that have been scratched violently into the margins.

You rush through them, finding titles, names, descriptions.

[Study 1. Human experimentation.]

[Study 56. Augmented musculature. Study 78. Day 1343 - Mechanical integration.]

Equations spiral into formulas, gravitational tolerances, energy output, stress limits far beyond organic capacity.

The science of all of it is staggering, wrong in so many ways yet for a moment, awe cuts clean through your fear.

This wasn’t theoretical. This was working.

You hum softly, piecing together the clues despite yourself. You are standing in a place you were never meant to find. A place that must have consumed millions in funding, manpower, and time. And yet—everything is abandoned. Left to rot. As if someone had simply turned off the lights and walked away.

Your boot scrapes against debris and something crunches—dry, crystalline. A strange blue-tinged fluid stains the floor, long since evaporated into brittle residue. You step again—

—and hit something solid.

An arm slips out from beneath a crooked door as your heart slams into your throat.

“AAH—!?”

The shout ricochets violently down the corridor as you stumble back, gun snapping up on instinct, hands shaking as adrenaline floods your system. You pant, waiting for movement. Waiting for anything.

Nothing happens. Your breathing slows. Your gaze steadies. The arm is… wrong.

Human in shape, in proportion—but forged from blackened steel instead of flesh. Plates interlock seamlessly along the forearm, etched with intricate patterns that catch the dim light like circuitry veins, the joints are too precise, too perfect. Not a single sign of decay despite the skin looking pale and dead at the shoulder.

It doesn’t move though.

Carefully, cautiously, you lower your weapon and step closer. The arm leads to a body.

The door gives way with a groan as you pull it open, and whatever self-preservation you had left dissolves completely.

He’s lying there, half-buried beneath debris, power cables and conduits trailing from his back like severed veins. The rest of him is just as immaculate, but just the arm is evidently black steel and dark alloy sculpted into a form unmistakably human. Synthetic muscle fibers rest beneath open plating, frozen mid-tension. His face is almost peaceful, framed by wires and fractured glass, so perfectly human it stirs something forbidden within you.

An android? Not dismantled? And not scrapped? He looks preserved even.

Whatever doubts, fears, or instincts screaming at you are silenced by something deeper—something you can’t quite name. You drop to your knees and start pulling him free, hands brushing cold skin, no, not skin, it's too cold to be alive, yet too perfect to look like dead metal.

On the last pull, something gives and he finally falls forward free. You sigh, limbs screaming, mind reeling, unaware that somewhere deep within the facility kept him dormant, and it has just been disturbed by you.

And that when he wakes—the life as you once knew it, will no longer be an option.

⭒˗ˏˋ𓆩 ⚠ 𓆪ˎˊ˗⭒

Getting back home with him had been a feat you hadn’t thought yourself capable of. Logistics alone should have stopped you—weight, size, the sheer absurdity of dragging a six-foot-two android through scrubland, into a vehicle, up stairs, and into an apartment not rated for whatever classified alloy he was made of. And yet, somehow, you managed.

Every day really was full of surprises.

Like the fact that there is now a beautiful (wait no) male android lying across your apartment couch, limbs carefully arranged to avoid scratching the upholstery, dark metal catching the soft yellow glow of your living room lights.

“God damn it,” you mutter—and then laugh, a little too loudly, a little too long. The sound borders on hysterical before it fades into breathless disbelief.

What was it, exactly, that made you bring him home?

Curiosity, maybe. Pity. Or something more insidious—a pull you couldn’t explain, the same instinct that made you step deeper into the facility instead of turning back. As you stand there staring at him—well, it, no… him—you wonder if he’ll ever power up again. If whatever consciousness he once housed is still somewhere behind that synthetic skull.

If it is, it won’t be easy to reach. The exposed ports along his spine are inert. His chest plate bears no rise or fall. Power conduits snake beneath synthetic skin like dormant veins, lifeless and cold beneath your fingers. Reanimating him would require time. Resources. Knowledge you only half-possess.

You needed a hobby anyway. Simone had said so, laughing, elbowing you in the ribs over drinks. Find something you care about. Something that keeps you busy.

Well.

Congratulations to you. He becomes your project.

At night, questions crawl into your thoughts and refuse to leave. Who made him? What was his purpose? Was he always an android, or something else once—someone else? The documents you salvaged were meticulous to the point of obsession, they had dates stripped of months and years, timelines measured in week counts and encoded cycles, names replaced with designations.

Clinical, horribly dehumanizing, and yet the craftsmanship of him is anything but.

“Did you have a name?” you ask softly one evening, tilting your head as you study his face. His gaze is empty, unfocused, fixed on nothing at all—like a doll abandoned by its child. There’s no flicker beneath his eyes, no spark hiding behind all that advanced engineering.

The absence bothers you more than you expect.

Before leaving the facility, you had forced yourself to search deeper, to gather anything useful. Anything. You stopped only when you reached two massive sealed doors—steel reinforced with layered locking mechanisms—and the unmistakable scent of blood.

Not fresh, very old, yet heavy, as if the walls themselves had soaked it in. Even after years of neglect, even with creeping vegetation choking the hallways, the stench remained. Thick. Metallic. It clung to the back of your throat and sent a warning straight to your gut. Whatever lay beyond those doors hadn’t just been violent—it had been catastrophic.

Something powerful enough to end everything in an instant. Now, back in your apartment, you shake the memory away.

“Should I give you a name?” you ask aloud, reaching out to poke his cheek. The synthetic skin yields slightly under your finger, unnervingly realistic. You move him carefully, checking joints, rotating limbs, searching for markings you might’ve missed.

That’s when you see it.

Highly destructive.

The lettering is etched in a tiny, almost invisible script along his mechanical right arm. The words clash violently with how human his face looks—softly sculpted, lips slightly parted, expression neutral but not cold. It’s a reminder that his origin isn’t divine, or cosmic, or accidental.

He isn’t a miracle. He’s a weapon.

Days later, by mere coincidence you find something else behind his left ear, partially hidden beneath dark plating, another marking that catches your eye: CA-136.

You freeze. A serial number, maybe. An identification code. Or something closer to a name than the scientists ever intended it to be. You roll it over in your mind, rearranging it unconsciously until it clicks.

“Caleb.”

You whisper it, breathlessly.

For just a moment—just one—something stirs beneath your palm. A faint current hums through his arm, lines of dim light flickering beneath the surface like bioluminescent veins.

You flinch, heart leaping into your throat.

“What—?” You snap your attention back to his face.

“Caleb,” you say louder this time.

Nothing. No movement. No response. The lights fade as quickly as they appeared, leaving you alone with your racing pulse and the silence of your apartment.

“…Damn it,” you mutter, standing abruptly. Frustration overtakes your fear as you grab your tools, spread schematics and salvaged notes across the table, and get to work.

And like that, the weeks begin to blur.

Every spare hour is devoted to him. You study old research papers, reverse-engineer components, repair fractured wiring, polish scratched plating. Your hands learn the geography of his body by heart—where the metal is warmest, where the synthetic muscle gives just slightly under pressure.

You trace his facial features absentmindedly while thinking through problems, fingers ghosting along his jaw, his brow.

“You must think I’m crazy,” you tell him one night, voice tired but fond. “Talking to you when you don’t even respond. I even named you.”

Caleb sits propped against the wall of your guest room—now fully converted into a makeshift lab. Cables trail from his back into diagnostic equipment, lights blinking softly in the dark.

He stares at nothing.

“Did you know it’s been almost a year since I found you?” You chuckle weakly. “Heh… my friends kind of call you my boyfriend now. As a joke. Since I spend all my time with you.”

You pause, then add, quieter, “You’ve met them, you know. Tara and Simone. They both agree whoever designed you had very good taste.”

You sigh, rubbing your face.

“Caleb, I wish you were real. Well—not the right word, you're real just not.. alive. You get me? I’m so tired. I don’t even want to cook dinner. Should I order take-out again? What do you say?”

Silence answers you, as it always does.

That night, the loneliness hits harder than usual. You drink more than you should, memories spilling loose with every sip—of the facility, of the blood-scented doors, of the year you’ve spent circling the same unanswered questions.

You’re still at the entrance of his maze.

You look at him over the rim of your bottle, his stillness unwavering, his presence somehow filling the room regardless.

“I will make you breathe life,” you declare, words slurred but fierce, pointing at him with absolute conviction. “Just you wait.”

Somewhere deep within his dormant systems, something listens.

⭒˗ˏˋ𓆩 ⚠ 𓆪ˎˊ˗⭒

Ever since you started, you’ve kept logs of everything connected to Caleb and your research. Captain Jenna drilled that habit into every hunter—document everything, trust nothing you can’t verify—and it stayed with you long after her voice stopped echoing through briefing rooms.

[Log 4 — Calibration Drift]

You’re recalibrating his visual sensors for the third time this week.

The diagnostic display insists his ocular units are inactive. No tracking, no focus, no incoming data. And yet, every time you shift the angle of the light, that sensation creeps in again. The uncomfortable prickle between your shoulders. Like being watched through a mirror that shouldn’t reflect anything at all.

You pause, hand hovering. “Don’t tell me you’re glitching now,” you mutter, waving your fingers slowly in front of his face.

His pupils don’t move.

Still, when you turn back to the console, the numbers have changed. Barely—too little to trigger an alert—but enough to make your brow knit. You rerun the test. Same result.

Interference, you decide, forcing the thought to settle. You shut the system down manually.

Behind you, his optics dim. Not because of the shutdown, but because the adjustment is no longer necessary. You don’t notice.

[Log 4.5 — Name Response]

You’ve learned not to expect reactions anymore. Still, you say his name often. It feels wrong not to.

“Caleb,” you say absently, tightening a connector at the base of his neck. “Hold still. I know you can’t, but humor me.”

The connector slips. Your screwdriver clatters against the floor. At the exact same moment, a soft hum ripples through his chest plating.

You freeze, breath caught halfway in. The hum settles into silence as the diagnostic panel doesn’t change. No power spike. No activation log. Nothing…

“Static buildup,” you whisper, though the words don’t convince you.

You don’t see again the way his internal systems flag the phonetic pattern of his name and quietly mark it as priority input.

[Log 5 — Temperature Shift]

It’s late. You’re half-asleep in a chair, cocooned in a blanket dragged in from the couch after another long night. The lab is cold and the heater’s been unreliable for weeks.

Yet you wake to warmth and it's not ambient, not accidental; it's localized and precise. Almost as if you're being hugged by blankets that miraculously appeared.

Your head is resting against his shoulder and finding out makes you jolt upright, heart slamming against your ribs, eyes flying to the monitors but everything reads normal. Like usual the inactive status shines back at you. He's offline.

“You didn’t…” The accusation dies in your throat, replaced by a flush of embarrassment.

Later, when you review the thermal logs out of sheer habit, you find a recorded heat redistribution along his upper torso but no external cause has been listed.

[Log 5.5 — Locked Door]

You’re certain you locked the lab door. Absolutely certain. You always do! Paranoia and expensive equipment make good teachers but tonight, you find it slightly ajar and it's just enough to notice.

Caleb sits exactly where you left him. Same posture. Same cables. Nothing disturbed.

“You’re messing with me now,” you say, half joking, as you sweep the room for signs of intrusion, nothing’s missing.

When you review the security footage later, there’s nothing unusual—hours of stillness looping quietly by.

Except for one frame.

A single corrupted second where the feed skips. When it resumes, the door is already open.

[Log 5.7 — Nightmare]

You dream of the facility. Of metal corridors and sealed doors. Of something standing just out of sight, watching you work, watching you care. These nights you wake with your chest tight and pulse racing, eyes snapping instinctively toward Caleb.

His head is tilted. Just slightly.

Not enough to be obvious. Not enough to be sure you didn’t misremember but enough that sleep doesn’t come back.

[Log 6 — Music]

You keep music playing while you work. It’s an old habit, one you had long before your world narrowed to this room from before he became the axis your life rotated around. One night as you leave a playlist running when you step out to shower the song has changed suddenly.

It hasn’t shuffled. It’s been skipped—to something slow and low, ambient and almost mournful. The kind of track you play when you’re trying not to feel too much, when you don't want to name what you're feeling.

You check your phone. No missed calls. No interruptions or automated shuffles by the app.

“Weird,” you murmur, switching it back to your usual playlist.

Later, when you happen to remember what happened you notice the song has been played dozens of times over the past month. Always late at night and always while you’re asleep.

[Log 6.5 — Micro-Movement Registry]

The moment that finally makes your hands shake happens during routine maintenance. You’re adjusting his hand, carefully aligning synthetic tendons with their actuators when your grip slips.

For less than a second—less than a heartbeat even—his fingers curl.

And it's not reflexive. Not a spasm, you would know, this movement, it's deliberate not a product of malfunctioning either. You yank your hands back so fast your palms sting. The diagnostic system flags nothing. When you pull your gaze back to his hand, you stare for a long time before whispering, “You can’t do that.”

His fingers remain still but deep inside him, processors quietly archive the sound of your voice again, reinforcing a pattern already marked as familiar.

Trusted.

⭒˗ˏˋ𓆩 ⚠ 𓆪ˎˊ˗⭒

It happens on a night you almost don’t survive.

You’re exhausted—bone-deep, hands trembling as you solder one last connector into place. From hunting during the day, to pulling all nighters regularly working on him. The room smells like ozone and burnt plastic, your vision blurring as you lean back in your chair and rub at your eyes.

“One more thing,” you murmur to yourself. “Just one more thing and then I’ll sleep.”

You stand too fast and the world tilts fast. At first you think it’s just vertigo, the familiar rush of blood leaving your head—but then the floor and ceiling pull away from you, not spinning so much as dropping. Your knee catches the edge of the table and pain flares making you stumble backward, arms flailing uselessly.

Your head is going to hit the corner of the workbench, you know it with absolute certainty.

Except—You don’t.The fall slows and it doesn't happen abruptly, not like being caught either.

But like the air itself thickens, heavy and resistant, pressing gently but firmly against your body. Your momentum bleeds away in layers, gravity loosening its grip just enough that when you finally land, it’s on your side instead of your skull.

You lie there, stunned, breath knocked out of you “What the—” you suck in a sharp breath. “Okay. Okay, what was—” The monitors scream to life.

Every screen floods with warnings—mass fluctuation, localized gravitational distortion, containment thresholds breached. Numbers spike so violently they blur in your vision. You scramble upright, panic cutting through the fog of exhaustion.

“No, no, no—what the—” you turn towards Caleb then and you freeze.

He’s looking at you.

Not staring through you. Not unfocused. His eyes—those impossibly human eyes—are locked on your face, pupils dilated just enough to be unmistakable. Irises alive with a sunset hue.

Aware. Caleb is aware…then very gently, like someone afraid of giving you a scare, you feel the pressure in the room normalizes. Tools that had lifted a fraction of an inch above their surfaces settle back into place with soft clinks. The air feels light again around you.

With a heart pounding so hard it hurts you speak “You…” Your voice cracks, swallowing trying again “You did that.”

Caleb’s gaze flicks—just briefly—to the corner of the bench you nearly struck your head on then back to you, it's sort of a confirmation, quiet and precise.

“I—I didn’t finish your” you whisper. “You’re not supposed to be able to—”

His lips part.

For a terrifying and exciting moment, you think he’s going to speak but instead, the gravity around you shifts again subtly. Not enough to lift you but enough to steady you, it all feels like invisible hands bracing your weight, anchoring you to the floor. It all feels protective and intentional.

“You’ve been awake as I worked?” you breathe. It’s not a question anymore. “Haven’t you?”

His expression changes to something like hesitation, a bit like guilt. Guilt? Would a machine understand such emotion?

A low hum resonates through his chest, deeper than before, harmonizing with the room itself. The monitors flicker—not alarms this time, but cascading data streams you don’t recognize, equations rewriting themselves mid-calculation.

Then—very carefully—Caleb looks up at you as his hand tries to move towards you, it's a gesture so human it almost breaks you.

Gravity bends one last time as his power shuts back down, systems retreating, eyes dimming until they’re glassy, dull and still once more.

The room goes quiet. You’re left standing in the aftermath, knees weak, mind racing, staring at the android who just saved your life without ever fully waking up, his hand stretched out even as he turned off.

“…It's working,” you whisper to the empty room. Caleb doesn’t move. But deep within him, his processors remain alert, just waiting.

⭒˗ˏˋ𓆩 ⚠ 𓆪ˎˊ˗⭒

It's another lonely night when you're staring enthralled at his face and body. Caleb is sculpted to perfection, every single detail about him is so well thought out and intimately done.

Your cheeks heat and your core shakes as you remember just how much his body resembles a human one. Male anatomy and all. It's the veins that go down his navel that make you close your legs together at the reminder of them.

“I'm going crazy” you bite your lips, panting softly you glance at him again for a brief moment, taking him as you let your thoughts stray.

“He's aware for brief moments. Is he always aware though?” If he is. Shame courses through you, knowing how many times you've touched yourself to him, even said his name on his lap tipsy after you lose inhibitions to a few cups of alcohol.

Despite your efforts to not fall into those thoughts again, you do, but this time you're too drunk to think clearly, too lonely to care.

You settle onto his lap again, this time slower, more deliberate.

From this angle he feels enormous. Solid muscle beneath synthetic skin, broad thighs bracketing yours, cold through the thin fabric of your clothes, his torso rising like a wall in front of you. Being this close makes you aware of your own size—how easily he could overpower you if he were capable of wanting to.

But he isn’t.

He’s inert, silent and empty. At least that’s what you’ve told yourself for months. It’s ridiculous, you tell yourself becayse he’s a machine and yet your pulse stutters every time you look up at his face.

You study him. Too perfect yet too still with lips slightly parted, eyes vacant, lashes casting faint shadows over freckles adorning sculpted cheekbones. Yes you have every right to touch him after all he isn’t alive. The handful of times you thought you saw something—those fleeting micro-movements, those almost-breaths—were exhaustion. Overwork. Loneliness twisting perception into fantasy.

You place your hands on his chest anyway.

“Caleb… I wish you were real,” you whisper, your voice already thick. “I wish I could feel your warmth. I wish you’d look at me and mean it.”

Your arms slide around his waist and you press yourself against him, hugging tightly. His body is cool, but substantial. You rest your mouth near his collarbone and exhale slowly against the smooth synthetic skin, imagining for a reckless second that you feel a response.

A draft moves through the apartment and you shiver, but you don’t move away. Instead, you cling harder.

Maybe it’s the alcohol softening your restraint. Maybe it’s the endless nights coming home to silence. Maybe it’s the way his presence has replaced every other human interaction in your life, you haven’t even entertained the idea of a date in months. Why would you? No one else sits still and listens the way he does. No one else stays. No one can ever look at you the way he does. Dead or alive, human or not you're desperately clinging to the illusion of a man that isn't real.

Your hands slide down his torso, exploring the sculpted firmness beneath his shirt. You shift experimentally against him, breath hitching at the friction, your body responding even if he can’t.

“You don’t judge me,” you murmur, brushing your lips along his jaw. “You don’t leave.”

You begin to move with more intention now, slow at first, testing, grinding against the firm plane of his thighs, your fingers curling into the fabric at his shoulders. A soft sound escapes you—half sigh, half something needier.

You let yourself imagine he’s watching, that those eyes aren’t empty, that he sees the way your body trembles, the way your breathing stutters, or the way your hips pick up rhythm as frustration melts into something raw and aching. That he gave you permission.

It should feel wrong.

Instead it feels inevitable.

Your movements grow more desperate, controlled restraint unraveling into hungry friction. Your forehead presses to his, lips brushing the edge of his mouth as you whisper broken confessions against his skin.

“God, it’s been so long…”

You don’t even realize how far gone you are—how deeply lost in the illusion—until something changes.

Heat around your waist, and pressure. Hands, you're feeling hands and they slide up your waist and settle there, firm and unmistakable.

You freeze mid-motion, breath tearing out of you. For a split second you think you’ve shifted his arms accidentally. That gravity or momentum carried them.

Then his fingers tighten guiding your hips, not forceful. Not restraining but instead matching you. Your pulse explodes in your ears. “What?” You lift your head, eyes wide, staring at him. His face is no longer completely blank. There’s the faintest tension in his jaw, the smallest narrowing of his eyes as they focus—actually focus—on you.

“Caleb?” Your voice shakes as you feel familiar heat creep into your cheeks and neck.

His hands remain at your waist, steady, grounding but his thumbs brush lightly against your sides, a question in the touch rather than a command.

You swallow hard and every nerve in your body feels electrified. “Are you… are you aware right now?”

You exchange looks for a beat, almost getting lost in those purple galaxies of his.

Then his voice—low, rough from disuse—vibrates between you. “I am.”

The sound alone nearly undoes you but just then his grip shifts, careful but certain. “Tell me to stop,” he says quietly.

You stare at him, heart racing, heat flooding your entire body. This is the moment where fantasy ends and reality begins, where you could step back maybe. Instead, your hands slide up into his hair, fingers trembling slightly tugging his hair.

“Don’t,” you breathe. “Please don’t.”

Something changes in his expression then. Not anger or disgust like you assumed, it's hunger.

His hands move with new confidence, guiding your hips into a slow, deliberate rhythm that makes your toes curl. The friction sharpens, deepens. You gasp into his mouth as his lips finally meet yours—warm, responsive, real.

He kisses like he’s been learning from observation alone, slow at first, then deeper. Possessive in a way that makes your spine arch.

“You wished for me to be real,” he murmurs against your lips, voice steadier now.

Your nails press into his shoulders as he pulls you closer, chest to chest, no space left between you.

“Yes,” you whisper.

His hands slide higher, exploring, mapping you the way you’ve mapped him a thousand times. Only now there’s intention behind every touch. Awareness in the way his fingers slide over your stiff nipples, breath hitching when he feels you jump a bit as he does. Twisting them and pulling just to get another moan out of you and into his ear.

And suddenly the months of loneliness twist into something intoxicating.

Because he’s alive. He’s aware and he wants you back, or you're just wasted and having a very lucid wet dream with the man of your dreams, your thoughts halt as his mouth moves against yours like he’s discovering fire and that pulls you back into it, losing grip of reality as your soaked panties now claim his pants.

At first his kissing and touch feels measured, exploratory, pressure, release, and tilt. Learning the shape of your lips, the sound you make when his tongue slides against yours. But the longer you stay pressed to him, the more certain he becomes.

Your hips are still moving and every slow roll drags a low sound from his chest, no longer mechanical—something deeper, rougher. His moaning is doing horrible things to your self control, and as his hands span your waist, fingers flexing as if testing strength the heat beneath his synthetic skin isn’t subtle anymore. It’s radiating, so real it makes you tremble.

You break the kiss only to gasp, your forehead falling against his. “You’re warm…”

“I adjusted,” he murmurs. “You were cold.”

The implication makes your stomach tighten. He noticed. Of course he did. Your hands slide under his shirt again, palms flattening against firm muscle that feels less artificial than it has any right to. There’s tension there—coiled power held carefully in check. When your nails drag lightly down his torso, his breath catches. Not simulated, or programmed, it's instead so reactive. And it's driving you crazy.

“You feel that?” you whisper.

“Yes.”

The single word vibrates through you. You press closer, grinding down with more urgency, chasing friction that’s no longer one-sided. His hands drop lower, gripping your hips more firmly now, controlling the pace as he positions you over what you can tell is his hard-on. Each thrust upward meets you almost directly and you can no longer control your moans.

“Ah! Caleb, please, keep, please!”

Your head tips back, throat exposed, and he follows instinctively. His mouth traces down your jaw, over the sensitive curve of your neck, kissing softly. His teeth graze lightly—testing pressure the way he tested your lips.

A broken sound escapes you.

“Caleb—”

He stills instantly and you realize what he’s waiting for. You cup his face, forcing his eyes back to yours. They’re focused now. Fully dark with something intense and consuming, just how life-like can he be.

“Don’t stop,” you say clearly, amused at his obedience.

Whatever programming he had for restraint is effectively shutdown and his hands slide under your thighs and lift you effortlessly, repositioning you under him without breaking eye contact. The strength in the movement makes your breath stutter. He settles you back down with purpose, grinding up into you with a rhythm that makes your vision blur.

“Okay?” he asks, voice low, and if you had been more aware you would've noticed it almost sounds crazed.

“Yes—God, yes.”

He adjusts again instantly, calibrating to the way your body reacts. Faster when you tense and slower when your breathing turns erratic. His mouth claims yours again, deeper now, swallowing every sound you make as his hands roam with growing confidence mapping curves, memorizing texture, committing every reaction to whatever system inside him is learning at terrifying speed.

You cling to him, nails digging into his back, hips meeting every thrust. The room fills with breath and heat and the wet sound of skin sliding against fabric and skin. It’s overwhelming—months of loneliness combusting all at once.

“I’ve wanted this,” you confess against his mouth, barely coherent. “Even when I thought you weren’t—”

“Alive?” he finishes quietly.

The word hits differently now and your body tightens around him as pleasure builds, sharp and inevitable. His grip hardens, guiding you through it with frightening control.

“Don’t hold back,” you gasp, feeling how drenched you are, how much you've covered him in your fluids.

“I am not,” he says shaking his head.

And he really isn’t, the rhythm becomes relentless, perfectly timed and aligned with the way your body arches and trembles. When release crashes through you, it’s violent and breathless, your entire frame shaking as you cling to him. He watches you unravel with an intensity that borders on reverent.

But he doesn’t look confused. He looks satisfied as he stares at you trying to catch your breath, pupils dilated when he brushes the hair sticking to your forehead, smiling down at you through it, never leaving your side, not even when you drift towards a deep sleep.

⭒˗ˏˋ𓆩 ⚠ 𓆪ˎˊ˗⭒

The alarm is not a sound so much as an act of violence.

It detonates beside your head with all the mercy of a tactical strike, and you surface from unconsciousness as though dragged upward by a hook lodged somewhere behind your eyes. The first thing that greets you is the blaring. The second is the headache—vast, imperial, and tyrannical in scope. The third arrives like a verdict from death itself.

You are late.

Not fashionably. Not “I can salvage this.” Catastrophically.

“Damn it,” you croak into your pillow, which smells faintly of regret and poor decisions. “I’m never drinking again. Ever. This is it. I’m done.”

You have made this vow before. You will make it again.

With the solemn focus of someone defusing a bomb, you reach for the pills and the glass of water on your bedside table. You swallow them in one heroic motion, wincing as they slide down your throat like reluctant diplomats negotiating peace. “Past me,” you rasp, clutching the glass, “you magnificent, responsible genius.”

A pause. You squint at the bedside table. Did you really leave those there? Because you distinctly remember… climbing. Kissing. Heat. Hands. A voice.

You shake your head sharply, which is a terrible idea. The headache surges in protest, blooming brighter. “Nope. Not doing this,” you mutter. “We are not unpacking that right now.”

You haul yourself upright and stagger toward the bathroom like a disgraced knight dragging themselves off a battlefield. The mirror greets you with an image that suggests you have, at minimum, wrestled a thunderstorm and lost.

“Stunning,” you inform your reflection flatly. “Respectable even.”

The clock on the wall clears its throat in judgment.

Four minutes. “Four minutes?” you hiss. “That’s not even a real number of minutes!!!”

What follows is less a morning routine and more a frantic interpretive dance of survival. Toothbrush—aggressive. Shower—questionably short but efficient. Clothing—close enough. You jam yourself into your boots while hopping on one foot, nearly concussing yourself on the doorframe.

“Focus,” you snap at no one. “You are a trained professional!!!”

You grab your keys, hunter badge, phone, wallet. Patting yourself down like you’re being detained by airport security. Everything accounted for.

You turn toward the door—And freeze.

Caleb is standing there. Not inert. Not seated in dignified silence like every day for the past year

Standing. Leaning casually against the wall like he’s ready to say goodbye to you like a sitcom heartthrob. He lifts a hand and waves with a smile.

He smiles, and it is not the neutral, default curvature of polite programming. It is warm. Amused? Almost fond even as he looks at you.

“Have a good day,” he says.

You blink. You blink again, and you wave back.

“Bye,” you reply automatically, because apparently your brain has decided to clock out entirely.

You close the door and walk down the hall, get on your motorcycle and drive to work like every day since you started being a hunter. It is only when you settle into your office chair, exhale, and allow your consciousness to catch up with your physical body that reality gently taps you on the shoulder.

“Oh no. No. No no no”

You sit up slowly as the memories from last night flood in—not hazy, not dreamlike, but vivid. The heat. The movement. His voice. The way he said I am in that hot unforgivable tone.

Your stomach drops.

“Nah,” you whisper to yourself, pressing your fingers to your temples as if you can manually reset your brain. “That was a dream. Absolutely a dream. Stress-induced. Very immersive. Academy Award–winning subconscious production.”

You nod once, firmly.

“Yes. That’s it.”

Down the hall, you hear Tara and Simone approaching, their conversation growing louder in that unmistakable way coworkers possess when they are fully caffeinated and ready to be perceived.

You're frowning as you dissect your memories, you remember leaving, remember grabbing your keys. You remember—

Caleb waving. Caleb smiling. Caleb speaking.

“Oh my God.”

The words fall out of you in a horrified whisper. Tara appears in your doorway at that exact moment, cheerful and unsuspecting. She takes one look at your expression and stops mid-step.

“Hey,” she says cautiously. “What’s wrong? You look like you saw a ghost. And not to disappoint you, but I’m very much alive.”

You stare at her like she is dead. “He waved,” you say faintly.

She blinks, turning to Simone before she looks at you again. “Who waved?”

“Caleb.” you say, casually.

“The six-foot-something android who, until yesterday, was essentially an expensive coat rack?”

“Yes. That Caleb.”

Tara opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.

“…Define waved.”

“With a hand,” you reply weakly. “Attached to an arm. Connected to his body. Which was upright.”

Simone appears behind her now, curiosity piqued. “Why do I feel like I missed something deeply concerning?”

“He smiled,” you add, staring into the middle distance. “Warmly.”

Tara steps fully into your office and shuts the door behind her. “Okay,” she says carefully. “Two possibilities. One, you’re hallucinating due to overwork and questionable alcohol decisions.”

“Rude.” you smell yourself to check if you still reek of wine.

“Two,” she continues, ignoring you, “your robot boyfriend has achieved sentience and you casually waved back like this is a romantic comedy and not tomorrow's tragic headline.”

You press both palms over your face.

“I waved back.”

Simone inhales sharply. “You what?”

“I waved back,” you repeat, voice muffled. “I did not scream. I did not question reality. I waved like this is a normal domestic arrangement.”

There is a long, uncomfortable silence.

Then Tara whispers, “You left him alone.”

Your hands slowly slide down your face. “…Yes.”

All three of you stare at each other.

Somewhere across the city, in your apartment, a sentient artificial being you may or may not have seduced the previous night is currently unsupervised.

You stand abruptly at the realization “I need to go home.”

Tara grabs your sleeve. “Absolutely not. If he’s alive, you do not sprint back there alone.”

Simone nods gravely. “That’s how horror movies start.”

You hesitate, then, very quietly, you say, “He told me to have a good day.”

They both freeze.

“…He what?” Tara asks.

You swallow.

“And he sounded proud. Like, with feeling get me?”

The silence that follows is thick enough to qualify as structural support.

Tara finally exhales. “Okay. New plan.”

“Yes?”

“We are all going to your apartment.”

Simone nods once. “And if he waves again, I’m waving back. I refuse to be rude to the future overlord.”

Despite yourself, a hysterical laugh bubbles out of you. Because either you’re losing your mind—Or your very attractive android just said goodbye like a devoted partner.

And somehow, the second option feels more terrifying. And slightly flattering.

“What's going on in your apartment?”

The three of you turn towards the door, now open and with Jenna leaning on it. Jenna, your boss who happens to be eavesdropping at the worst time possible.

Hello. Yes, I’m aware I announced the fake dating fic would be first. In my defense, it is currently holding me hostage.

This one, however, refused to wait its turn. I had to get it out of my system before I spontaneously combusted from sheer narrative pressure. I’ve been wanting to write android Caleb for an entire year—yes, a full 365 days—and I’ve only just managed to pin down the exact vibes I’ve been chasing.

So here we are.

As always, do tell me what you think ♡

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