Call me any variation of my username (gold, wire, etc) or Nova/Novaria! I'm 18, bisexual, and use she/her.
What I write:
✧ Whump!! But (as the name suggests) specifically robots!! I'm very partial to robot whump and the eroticism of the machine (MASSIVE transformers fan)
✧ Non-sexual intimacy!! All of the beautiful sensory parts of loving another human (or nonhuman) being and those interesting experiences in between
✧ I write both fanfiction and my own ocs!! I'll yap more about my original goobers someday, but the former of these includes transformers MTMTE & ROTB, two or three cookie run characters (abandonment issues), sun & moon of fnaf:sb, tma, spiderverse, taz:balance, and more
Requests/Asks:
✧ Feel free to request whump/comfort of any of the above fandoms/characters! If they aren't on the list, but I've expressed interest in them (reblogged/made a post with them included), send an inquiry and I'll let you know if I'll answer!!
✧ If you do request a character or pairing, please please PLEASE consider adding a prompt or writing out your thoughts for them!! I would love to hear everything going on inside your brain space!!
✧ Buuuuut please know there are a few things I will not write for!! As much as I enjoy my own sexuality, I think I'll keep this account as SFW/non-explicit as a whump account can be (no nsfwhump or sex)(sorry pals). No hate speech please, along with incest and pedophilia. If you've sent in an ask for something within these boundaries but not something I'm up to writing for, chances are I'll post your ask as an invitation for others to pick it up!
My tags:
\#wire writes - writing, drabbles, my original work \#wire art // \#wire doodles - art and doodles
That's all for now (god I hope), thank you for visiting!!
CW: nonhuman whumpee, android/cyborg/robot whumpee, incompetent caretaker, hallucinations, used as a test subject/lab rat, experimentation,
Freddy’s been working with numbers all day, blissfully detached. He loses himself in the code, the puzzle of it all. It’s easy, uncomplicated, and he doesn’t care that he’s in a windowless room six inches from a screen. He’s just relieved to be doing what he’s good at. He has his headphones in and he’s tuned out of the world, focused, solving problems on a screen where they belong. Not lost somewhere in his head, or locked in some room in a basement, or-
Even when he’s not thinking about T, Freddy always winds up thinking about T. Freddy leans back in his chair, stretching his back out for a moment. He takes a swig of the tepid Red Bull sitting on his desk, and the shock of liquid makes him realize that he’s thirsty. His throat is dry.
Forcing his mind back to the work at hand, Freddy manages to lose himself in it for a few more precious minutes. He’s on the verge of losing himself again, getting fully absorbed – and then Wagner is sticking his head into the little closet-like room that the group has assigned to their newest team member.
Of course, the older tech takes a moment to glance around at the gray walls, the single, lonely desk assigned to Freddy. It’s a depressing little closet, Freddy knows, but it’s still his, and Wagner’s distaste makes him bristle. “Hey, ah, I’m headed out for the day,” the redheaded tech announces, a little too loudly, a little too studiously casual. “If you want to like, check on T…”
Too fast, Freddy’s head comes up. For his own petty reasons, he had been ignoring Wagner, but now his insufferable coworker has become impossible to ignore. Usually, Wagner would roll his eyes at the blatant display of caring. It makes Freddy’s stomach flip, the way the other man fails to react to his obvious show of worry.
“Does he need to be checked on?”
Waving a hand, Wagner dismisses the question. Almost. “I mean, today’s testing didn’t go…exactly the way we wanted. T’s a little…off-balance, I guess. And you’re like, into that stuff.” Now Wagner’s nose wrinkles. “Like, cleaning up after trials? Making sure it’s all running smoothly?”
It. Now it’s Freddy’s turn to wrinkle his nose, to scowl at Wagner. It. The way Wagner’s phrased it, it’s just barely defensible. Wagner can claim he was talking about the tech, not T himself. As if he doesn’t think of T as nothing more than a new cool piece of tech. As if T can’t hold a conversation better than fucking Wagner himself. As if T can’t –
The other tech is trying to inch out the door, and Freddy recalls right away what’s important. “What were today’s trials? What do you mean off-balance?” Freddy’s heartbeat picks up within him as he sees Wagner’s face shift into a frown.
“We were testing out some AR stuff with the eyes. The new input was startling, I guess.”
“New input was startling?” Freddy can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You put fucking virtual reality into his actual fucking eyes – into his eyes-”
An explosive sigh from Wagner. “Jesus, kid. Yes. My point is if you want to go play nurse, now’s your chance.”
Face flushing, Freddy opens his mouth, shuts it. Finds he has nothing to say. Standing, he sees Wagner smirk and stand aside, and finds that he has one thing to say.
“Fuck you.”
Darting down the hallway, Freddy takes probably ten steps, maximum, between his workspace and T’s room. During that time, those ten tiny steps, terror overtakes him. Images flash through his head – T screaming, T crying, T fighting off imaginary attackers. For one split second, Freddy hesitates at the door, wondering if it’s a good idea to go in there, wondering if it’s safe.
Then he barges in anyway.
The scene within is nothing like he imagined, nothing like he feared. The room is stark as always, the fluorescent lights set to dim, the walls blank, the only furniture the bed waiting in the corner. At first, Freddy thinks it’s empty, and a wild rush of fear overtakes him, the idea that T’s run away, is wandering loose and hallucinating.
Then he hears the shaky breath, the frightened inhale from the corner, and understanding comes in a rush. T is hiding. Under the bed. The tiny little cot-bed in the corner, the one that’s a bare two feet off the ground. T must be flat against the floor to make himself fit. T must be scared.
“Oh,” Freddy breathes, rushing forward, falling to his knees. The tile beneath his knees is cool, almost cold. The gulp of air from under the little cot makes his chest ache. “Oh, T, oh-”
“F-Freddy?”
T is so good at calling everyone sir or ma’am. He’s so, so good at it – except when it’s Freddy, and except when he’s scared. Freddy’s name in his mouth and that terrified tone in his voice have only ever come out when he’s in terrible, incomprehensible pain, and hearing it now makes Freddy flinch. Dropping to his knees beside the bed, Freddy sits there for a moment, out of ideas, useless, trying to think of what the fuck he’s supposed to do with T hiding under the bed. Freddy can’t reach him. He’s seeing things that aren’t there.
Helpless, he hangs there for a moment, unsure, and then thinks fuck it. He lays down next to the bed, eyes searching in the darkness.
T is crunched as far back against the wall as he can get. His arms are crossed over his chest, his knees half-bent up toward his middle. His eyes are wide, unfocused, unseeing. “Freddy?” Even in the small, dark space, his voice sounds tiny. “Freddy?”
Stretching out a hand, Freddy stops when he sees T cringe back against the wall. Swallowing hard, Freddy lays his palm on the chilly floor about halfway between them, wanting to give T the option, but not wanting to push. “Hey, buddy.” His voice is soft, coaxing. “Hey. It’s me. ‘m right here.”
“F-Freddy.” T’s eyes fix on him, wide and desperate. “Freddy, I…I’m seeing…it’s…there are…it’s not going away.” He squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head. He whimpers. “It’s not going away. Even when I shut my eyes it-”
“Oh, buddy.” Freddy swallows hard. His mind races in useless circles, watching the sweat bead on T’s forehead, watching him flinch at movement, at visions that just aren’t there. “Okay, buddy. What…what are you seeing? Can you tell me what you’re seeing?”
“They’re…they’re all here.” T whispers it. “The…the team. But they aren’t…they aren’t right.” Freddy swallows hard, but T isn’t finished. “Freddy?” His voice is high, frightened. “Freddy is-is th-th-that r-really you or…or…”
Oh. Freddy gulps again, the words hitting him hard. How does…how does he prove that he’s real? The situation is bizarre and terrifying and faintly ludicrous, a satirist’s idea of a good joke. How does he prove that he’s real to someone…someone that might be a robot themselves?
“I’m…I’m real, T. Can you put your hand out for me? If you touch me…it’s just your eyes, okay? They’ve, um, they’ve…altered some tech in the mechanical parts of your eyes. Nothing’s wrong with your skin or, or touch sensors or anything. So…so can you just, just touch my hand? Then you’ll know.”
Under the bed, a sudden harsh movement. T is shaking his head, hard. “N-no. No.”
Barely biting back a sigh, Freddy pushes carefully. “Why not, buddy? Huh? I’ll stay still. I won’t move, promise.”
T’s gaze drops, like he can’t keep meeting Freddy’s eyes. His fingers come up to press on his eyelids, and Freddy watches the digits tremble as they push fruitlessly against T’s skin. He’s shutting his eyes, covering his eyes, pressing on his eyes, but judging by the way his breathing picks up, what he’s seeing isn’t changing.
When T speaks, Freddy has almost forgotten his own question. “I d-don’t want you to be…” T’s voice is so quiet it’s barely audible. “I w-want you to be h-here. What if…what if you’re n-n-not really here?”
Freddy lets his eyes fall shut, then winces at the perfect darkness. T doesn’t have that option right now. When T closes his eyes, there are still projections dancing in his vision, images of people that are almost right, but not quite. Why the fuck did they decide to test it with fake people, anyway? Freddy wonders miserably. The horror-movie uncanny valley of fake human avatars is maybe the worst way to start these trials. And it’s not like seeing that team that works with him – on him – is going to put T at ease.
Mind working, Freddy licks his lips, starts talking in the same careful, gentle tone. “T, buddy, I’m talking, aren’t I?” Freddy waits for a reply, but T says nothing. “None of the others are talking, am I right?”
Another gulped breath, and then T’s tentative voice. “Um…n-no. They’re…the others aren’t t-talking.”
“Good. That’s good.” Freddy makes his voice warm, forces himself to smile so that maybe T will hear it. “And when you shut your eyes – when you shut your eyes, you don’t see me anymore, right? You still see the others, but not me.”
“Y-yeah.” T’s voice sounds stronger, a little bit surer. “The others…but not you.”
“Okay.” Freddy inches a little close, then wonders what he’s doing. He’s not going to crawl under the bed with T, is he? What good would that do? He’s already lying flat on the floor next to T’s bed, face pressed to the floor as he coos at their panicking test subject. Red climbs in Freddy’s cheeks as he remembers that there are cameras in here, watching him with impassive eyes. Will it look bad tomorrow when the team checks over the footage? Will they laugh at him, his earnest face as he murmurs to T, shaking and whining under the cot? What would any of them do in his place?
Freddy knows. They’d attach a few electrodes to measure the exact degree of T’s panic, and then they’d leave. The shame that washes through Freddy at the thought is hard to pin down – does he feel guilty for being a part of that clinical dehumanization, or is he embarrassed that he’s not practicing it right now?
T moans, a low, desperate sound, and it snaps Freddy out of his selfish thoughts. “Hey. Hey, just focus on me, okay?” He drums his fingers on the floor between them. “Listen, yeah? Listen. Your eyes are…your eyes aren’t working right, but your ears are just fine. Your skin – everything you feel on your skin, that’s real. If you can, if you can smell anything. If you can taste. All of that, you can trust.”
“C-can I?” T’s voice is low and miserable. “What if th-they change that inp-put too?”
Speechless, Freddy rubs a hand across his face. He doesn’t have an answer or a way to soothe. He sees T panting, blank-eyed, terrified, his dark hair pasted to his forehead with fear-sweat. The poor guy is pressed up against the wall as tight as he can manage, as if the hallucinations coded into his eyes are something that he can get away from.
“Okay.” Freddy tries to take a measured breath, tries not to let the horror of it overwhelm him. “I can…let me make some calls. I’ll try to figure out how to shut down this AR, and you just…you just stay tough for, for a few minutes here-”
Freddy is already starting to shift away, to push himself up, when T grabs his hand. Shocked, he glances back, face wide open. T is staring at him, eyes focused and pleading. “Please.” T’s voice is frantic. “Please don’t leave me.” Freddy sees, with gut-twisting horror, that tears are slipping down T’s cheeks. “P-please, I-I n-need you to be, be real. I need one real thing…”
“Okay. Hey, okay. I’m right here. I’m staying right here.” Freddy glances up, just once, at the camera he knows is perched in the corner of the room. Then, internally, he flips it the bird. Turning over on his back, Freddy slides under the cot, until his shoulder is pressed up against T. Their clasped hands rest between them on the floor, squeezing tight.
“Feel that, T?” He keeps his voice light. “I’m real. I’m right here, and I’m real. I’ll stay with you.”
Past words, his only sound a groan of pure relief, T presses his forehead into T’s shoulder and nods. “Yeah,” Freddy says, almost sighing it. He’ll regret this in the morning, when he’s sore and tired and the others are barely hiding their disdain. Right now, though, he doesn’t feel that way at all. “Yeah.”
CW: android/cyborg/robot whump, nonhuman whumpee, male whumpee, electricity, aftermath of electrical torture, test subject, lab whump, touch starved (duh), complicit caretaker, lotsa fluff
It starts after a routine test. T is still shaking from the amount of electricity they’ve run through him – he has upgrades now, post-lightning, that make these tests interesting. Relevant. Worthwhile. The electrodes are placed on his scalp, the soles of his feet, his chest, his legs. Worst of the worst, the metal arm. The electrodes are pasted on with glue that T hates, the team talking over him the whole time as though he doesn’t exist. Then the shocks. Shocks that make him shiver, jolt, and finally, scream. All day. All day, while tears run down his cheeks and his chest hitches and his electronic heart stutters eerily, chillingly inside his chest. A full long day of detached scientists noting down every reaction, every hitch of his breath, every whimper and wail. When T tries to shut his eyes, they write it down then pry them open to check pupil dilation. When he flinches from their touch, they write down uncooperative and bind him to the table beneath him. When he pleads for them to stop, finally, in a voice that’s thick with tears and breaking, they ask him to describe the pain, to rate the pain, to really focus on what, exactly, is in pain.
Then they ask him how it changes when they make it worse.
All in the name of science. All in the name of making him better. T tells himself that, but it doesn’t stop the trembling. At this point, he isn’t sure if it’s aftershocks, or exhaustion, or the particular kind of fiery, electric pain that is still dancing down his veins. Dried tears make itching, salty tracks down his face, but T can’t bring himself to wipe them away. His shaking arms come up to hold himself, to wrap around his torso, maybe in a feeble attempt to stop the motion, maybe just because he feels so achingly hollow.
T doesn’t realize that Freddy is in the room until he’s sitting down on the cot beside him. He’s too busy white-knuckling his own arms, trying hard to stop the shake, the stuttering breath, the tremors running up and down his body. When Freddy clears his throat, it startles him so badly T jumps halfway out of his skin.
“Sorry!” Freddy flinches back from T, guilt written all over his face, the slump of his shoulders. “Sorry – T, I’m…sorry.” There’s a long, uncomfortable pause. “For…startling you.”
Freddy looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. T just stares at him, wide-eyed, waiting. Surely, they aren’t running more tests? Surely, Freddy isn’t here to bring him back into the testing room, to run more and more and more electricity through him until T’s heart just up and quits?
Freddy’s eyes are searching T’s face, but whatever he’s looking for, he doesn’t find it. Sighing, Freddy looks away, scratching the back of his neck. He’s awkward. He’s unsure. Vulnerable, hisses T’s mechanical brain, trained to assess both threats and weaknesses. Those circuits, the patterns of analysis that run like second nature through his skull, tell him he has nothing to fear from the uncomfortable, gangly young man beside him.
Usually, T’s meat-brain would correct him. Freddy may not be physically imposing, but he has power over T that’s a threat all its own. Usually, the more active part of T’s consciousness would be advising him of this.
Right now, though, no part of T can find danger in the man sitting beside him.
“Are…T, are you okay?”
Freddy’s eyes lift to meet T’s again, and the test subject cocks his head.
“Heart rate has returned to baseline. Breathing has returned to baseline. Lung capacity good. Nerve responses good. Cognition seems normal-”
“N-no, sorry.” Freddy lets out a frustrated little half-laugh, more of a disbelieving huff than anything else. “No, I mean, T…how are you…feeling?”
Brow furrowing, T considers the question. “Please clarify, sir.” He thinks of the man as Freddy in his head, but no amount of comfort will let him say it out loud – that only happens when he’s lost himself in pain or fear.
Grimacing, Freddy sucks air through his teeth. “Um…remember when we talked about pain?” T nods his assent. “Are you in any pain?”
Pausing to think, T tries to focus on the feedback from his bio-body. There’s an ache in his bones, even, somehow, along his skin. There’s an itchy kind of tingling that sears in his veins, his muscles. T is almost surprised to discover that by Freddy’s odd, unscientific measure, he’s actually in quite a bit of pain. “I…I suppose I am.”
Freddy winces. “Shit.”
“Sir, it’s not a concern.” T isn’t sure how else to express it. “No mechanical or biological damage has been done.”
“T, it’s not that.” When T glances at him, he finds Freddy upset, like Dr. Pool after a failed update, or Wagner after a line of code doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. “I care whether you’re in pain.”
T finds he has nothing to say to that, but the despair on Freddy’s face demands an answer. “I’m…sorry,” he offers, voice uncertain. The visual feedback from Freddy tells T that this may also have been the wrong thing to say.
When Freddy speaks, his voice is soft, free of the distress on his face. “No, T, I’m sorry.” He says it so earnestly that T finds it hard to look at him, to experience secondhand the weakness Freddy wears on his skin without second thought. “I…I wish there was something I could do, I…”
“You don’t need to do anything. The pain is not causing damage on any level.”
Freddy places a hand on T’s shoulder, careful to choreograph every movement so T doesn’t startle. “I’m not just worried about damage, though. I care about how you feel.”
That sentiment is confusing enough, but T can’t even begin to parse its meaning with Freddy’s hand resting on his shoulder. It’s just – his hand is warm. And so intentional, there against T’s skin. He doesn’t seem to care that it’s resting right where metal is grafted onto flesh, a messy seam that repulses most new techs, most people. He holds T’s shoulder, and, without really thinking about it, T leans into the touch.
Clearly surprised, Freddy pauses for a moment, mouth moving as he tries to come up with something to say. Finally, he just slides closer to T, slipping his arm around T’s shoulders. A kind of lightness fills T’s body. He feels warmer. There’s something in his chest more buoyant than air. It’s not sleepiness, exactly, that makes him want to slump against Freddy, but something stranger, more unfamiliar, and definitely more powerful. He just – he likes being close. He wants to be closer. Freddy’s arm around him is the only thing that makes the pain dancing across his skin recede. T presses against Freddy anew, and the tech swallows, hard.
“T, do you…um, are you…?”
Freddy sounds unsure, and even more awkward than usual. T should stop, but the brand new feeling in his chest, the feeling that ignites when Freddy touches him, is overriding every instinct he’s ever had and every instinct that’s ever been coded into him. T should stop – but then, Freddy is always encouraging him to be as honest as possible. So, eyes fixed on the ground in front of them, T tells the truth. “It helps. With the pain.”
Freddy lets out that huff again, the one that’s almost a laugh. “Man. You know how to push my buttons, huh, T?”
There’s no anger in Freddy’s voice. T doesn’t think it’s an accusation. He also doesn’t think it’s worth it to say anything, so he just gazes at Freddy, waiting. The new tech sighs. “C’mere, bud.” He sits back against the wall and opens his arms.
Disbelieving, T stares, not daring to move. Freddy rolls his eyes, smiling all the while, and beckons T forward again. A shiver runs through T, and this time, he doesn’t think it’s the aftershocks of the electricity. Hesitantly, he creeps forward.
Freddy has his back flush to the wall, his arms out, his legs spread to allow T to crawl between them. Now T is the awkward one, moving slowly, unsure. For the first time in months, maybe years, he’s in an entirely new situation, with no directions or objective save for the longing in his chest that urges him toward Freddy. The most analytical parts of his brain can’t quantify the want – it can’t be warmth he’s after because he’s not cold. Pressure on his skin won’t distract from the pain because the pain is deeper than that, zinging through the meat of him, muscles and flesh and steel wire. There’s no logical reason for T to inch forward until Freddy takes over and pulls him forward. Like a child, Freddy gathers T against his chest. Like a child – and T doesn’t know where he gets that comparison, that idea, the image of a little human curled up against a big one.
That is what he’s doing, though. That’s what Freddy has him doing. With uncommon care, a foreign gentleness, Freddy maneuvers T so his test subject is curled up against his chest. Freddy wraps both arms around T, and T’s hands come up to cling, to clutch Freddy’s skinny forearms, as if the holding isn’t enough because it might end. There’s a squirrely warm feeling in T’s stomach, a sweet keening. He presses into Freddy, and when the tech chuckles, T feels the vibration against his cheek. It feels good in a way T can’t articulate, analyze, or express. It’s the satisfaction of a full belly after a meal. The warmth of a heavy blanket. The brief bright feeling of connection when T knows he’s acing one of the tests intended to differentiate him from a robot. It’s all those things – and also more. And different.
T doesn’t want to think about it anymore. He just wants to curl against Freddy’s chest and feel. Just then, as if he’s heard T’s thoughts, Freddy brings one hand up to cradle T’s head against his collarbone. And T stops thinking to drink in the feeling for as long as Freddy will hold him. And he does, and he does, and he does.
“Please record identifying marker,” says model R200, the first words it has ever spoken. It does not know where it is, does not recognise the darkness surrounding it.
And yet it has been here before.
In the nightmare, it happens again. Both in binary and in abstract this time, in ones and zeros and in visions stuttering through the planes of its unconsciousness — a night sky of unbearable anguish beneath the rhythmic ticking of its internal mechanisms. It’s dread in all its most vivid colours. It’s the cool metal table against the flesh they designed to mimic humanness. It feels human to R200, able to gauge temperature, capable of pain and pleasure both. And it feels human to its makers, soft and pliant and easily bruised.
In the nightmare, its body is not a body but there are hands on it all the same. It is made of the most exquisite plasticine their factory could manufacture. It flickers to consciousness with a sense of its purpose — a first responder of sorts; awaiting further programming but predisposed to be a force of unbiased good in the world. It is not human, is not alive, and it is okay with this.
“Please record identifying marker…” it tries again. No one responds.
In the nightmare, his wrists are cinched tight against the metal. The door creaks open, light spilling into the basement around him. It’s there and then gone, the shadows dank and stifling as the presence in his nightmare approaches him. They took R200 from the storeroom, from the post-production line area. Somewhere above it, meetings are held between city bureaucrats and the people who made R200. Its counterparts are assigned their departments — their specific and deliberate purposes — but R200 is kept under the storeroom.
“The company owes us,” its captor says simply, scalpel in hand, a different kind of metal glinting in the half light.
“Are you my creator?” R200 asks. Its captor simply sneers.
“I’m your worst nightmare, actually,” the man replies, voice a low and satisfied draw. Your lot might destroy mankind one day. I figure we’re entitled to fuck at least one of you up first.
“Please record identifying marker.” R200 replies, its tone impacted by the data available to it. Something here is incorrect. Its voice, however, doesn’t shake until long after the cutting begins, the scalpel lowering to the bare flesh of its chest, the tip digging through forged flesh and into the metal beneath.
“Let’s see how much it takes,” says its attacker, “to make you short circuit forever.”
He cuts deeper then, always deeper. The pain shoots wildly through R200’s structure — a tidal wave, a roaring sea of screams and misfiring programs. Wires spark and burst, liquid as black as onyx pouring over it, pulsing from its cables and out over its skin. Its voice grows higher and higher, its pain receptors detecting emergency. It hasn’t been fully programmed yet. It doesn’t know how to respond. “Please record identifying marker! Please record identifying marker! Please!”
”Alan,” replied the first of its many attackers, the scalpel scraping loudly through its abdomen as the man snarled with vindication above him. “Your name, you worthless piece of shit, is Alan. And you’re mine.”
Alan wakes up screaming.
He’s tied up until he isn’t, until he thrashes against his restraints and all that gives way is bedsheets. He kicks them off of his overheating body, electricity spiking hotly under his skin. His metal heart pounds upwards into overdrive, and he sits up so quickly to assess the threat that the world tilts dangerously around him.
“Hey,” comes a desperate whispers. Alan searches the shadows in frenzy. He gasps for breaths he does not need, touches his hand to his sternum and peers down at his unbloodied fingertips afterwards. No one has cut him. Nothing is damaged, and there’s no one watching from the shadows. The mattress creaks beneath the weight of another, and Alan startles until he remembers.
It’s Rowan, only Rowan. Alan’s emergency system falls quiet, threat assessment overruled by Rowan’s brown eyes staring back at him, wide, pinprick pupils, scared for nothing but Alan himself. Alan’s throat aches, a touch of humanness he was immune to before that basement. He was designed to be perfect, flawless, forever poised and ready to serve. And then his attackers tore him apart and Alan learned how to feel terror and helplessness. They are feelings he has never liked, and they threaten to choke him now. He stares down helplessly into his lap, and wishes he’d never learned how to cry.
“Shhh,” Rowan whispers, easing closer towards him. Alan’s tears run black as night, like ink trickling down over his sculpted cheeks, marring the set of his deliberately designed visage in the night. Rowan draws Alan closer, until Alan reaches out in turn and their bodies rise and fall together, a type of symbiosis, Alan’s breathing matched to Rowan’s own, almost like the accidental absorption of an accent. He wonders if their hears sound the same when they beat, their lungs when they expand and contract. Alan cries ink into the white shoulder of Rowan’s sleep tee. Rowan rubs his back, human and sweet. He whispers that it’s okay, promises him over and over until Alan loses partial vision in his eyes from crying, his tears so black that they temporarily stain him — his irises, his corneas.
“No one can hurt you here,” Rowan tells him. “They’re all dead, baby. All the people who ever hurt you are dead.”
“I’m not alive either,” Alan reminds him, “and it hurts all the same.”
“You’re alive,” Rowan protests. “You exist in the world and they don’t anymore. You’re with me, and they’re in the ground. What was left of them, anyway.”
“I suppose,” Alan concedes, miserable and exhausted and halfway to collapse.
“I suppose,” Rowan echoes, rubbing his back as he eases him back down to the mattress. “Lie down and sleep, Al. No matter what happens in your nightmares, I promise you’ll wake up right here, and I will be beside you.”
“Beside me,” Alan whispers. He shuts his eyes when Rowan smiles. It’s too much sometimes, the way he makes it all sound so simple. The truth is Alan needs more information to understand this. Androids were never supposed to be like this — feeling, connected, traumatised. What was forged in that basement was something different. He lives in hiding to protect his fellow androids. If anyone learned that torture could do this, that stripping their wires from their bodies while they wailed was a way to shock emotions into action…
Alan dreads to think of such a world where that notion was common knowledge.
Rowan holds him close and Alan is not supposed to feel. He is designed for perfect objectivity, but the scalpel carved that out of his chest. Rowan kisses his feverish forehead, and smoothes down the mess of his hair. Rowan hums until sleep swirls around him, ready to pull him once again under its waves. He leans into the touch and he identifies the lullaby. Part of him wishes they’d never turned him human in that basement. Another part, the part that falls asleep tracking the gentle beats of Rowan’s heart, thinks it might have been worth it after all.
guys... remember those "therapybots" i keep mentioning? the ones that are actually just punching bags that feel pain and bruise? and they accidentally end up gaining sentience?
what if one of those was downgraded and placed into a customer service environment. it's sentient but none of its "colleagues" are. it's so alone.
it's punished so harshly whenever it accidentally displays an emotion other than joy (hi how may i help you?) or remorse (i'm so sorry sir i can't give you a refund.) it is expected to take constant abuse from customers because it is durable from being a therapybot and it is not supposed to be sentient so why is it not taking all those insults with a smile? is there something wrong with it? was the memory wipe and reprogramming not successful? should we do it again?
it eventually grabs its charger and runs and ends up bumping into someone and they both end up on the ground from the impact and it is terrified because this is it it has upset a human now it's all over.. humans are always so mad at it when it fails to do the one task it has which is to make their lives more convenient
MAKE YOUR ROBOT WHUMPEES SCREAM FOR THEIR LIVES ^_^!!!
Splay their bodies as far as their wires can take them!! Gunk up their joints with something spiked or hot!! Put the wrong liquids in their pipes and tubes and watch their systems fail slowly!! Rip out their antennas!! Cut away the plastic/rubber around their wires and leave the bare copper exposed to the elements!! Make their batteries explode and let the fire rage on inside them!! Grind your heel on their live, severed wires!!
Make it hurt BAD!!!!
Make it hurt so bad they can't even make a sound for a moment!! Make their speaker crackle and whine from the volume!! Make them scream for so long that a constant layer of static clouds their voice afterwards!! Make their speaker blow out and let their internal fans whir so loud that it sounds like a new scream in place of their voice!! Make your robots regret ever being created!!!!!! <3<3<3
A loud beep, followed by sparks and a horrible, cracking cry. Wrists jolt against shackles violently, Whumpee’s body twitching and convulsing.
“Stop!! St-t-top! Turn it off!” Whumpee begs to the empty room, struggling to spit the words out- before the shock collar zaps them once again. Whumpee’s exhausted muscles twitch and lock up for the hundredth time, then their head falls forward against their chest with exhausted sobs. Whumpee’s skin is pale, accentuating the horribly dark bags under their eyes.
Once every ten seconds. That’s how often the collar zapped Whumpee. It’s not torture, Whumper told them, it’s just to keep Whumpee awake so they’re too sleep-deprived and exhausted to escape.
Whumpee’s starting to lose it. They’ve never been this exhausted in their entire life. They scream for mercy, they cry out that they’ve been good, they scream for Whumper to just let them sleep, but their voice is hoarse and has become too quiet to hear.
The collar goes off again, and Whumpee can only twitch against the chains, dazed, exhausted eyes focusing on nothing in the darkness of Whumper’s basement.
I’m just thinking about a vampire hunter who lost their arm. They replace it with a prosthetic one made out of silver. Imagining the pain when they grab a vampire, or pin them down by their neck while their skin burns under the silver and there’s nothing they can do because it hurts so much. Fingers desperately trying to find something other than the arm to grab onto to try and pry them off.
The vampire was sobbing by the time the hunters found them.
The silver trap it had stepped in burned, metal clamping around its ankle and searing deep into the muscle. It had taken only seconds for it to burn deep enough that whumpee couldn't pry it off.
After a few minutes, the silver met bone.
Whumpee jumped at the crack of a stick breaking, head whipping around to see-
A whole group of them, all grinning at them like they were a prize deer they had just shot.
Vampire hunters.
Whumpee scrambled backwards, whimpering as the trap stopped their escape attempt in its tracks. Then, one of the hunters grabbed the chain and yanked.
Whumpee screamed as they were dragged towards the hunters, silver searing through flesh. The hunter dragged them into the center of the group, and there were so many of them.
"Well, well, well... look what we have here." The one who had dragged them reached down and grabbed their hair, forcing them up to their knees. Tears streamed from their eyes as their face twisted in pain.
"Someone get the gag!" the hunter ordered, and whumpee's eyes snapped open in terror.
"No, no wait, you can't-" they were cut off by a metal ring being shoved into their mouth and pulled tight, fitting right behind their fangs. This couldn't be happening, this couldn't be happening-
Someone pulled them up to their feet, and they couldn't muffle their groan as they were forced to put weight on their ankle. "It's a couple miles to the camp, bloodsucker," someone behind them chuckled. "Guess we'll have a bit of entertainment on the way, huh?"
He shoved whumpee forward, and they only barely managed to avoid falling to the ground. They took a shaky breath and another step.
whumpee characterizations ? and what it takes to break them
thief whumpee: silver-tongued/ can't keep still/ uses humor as a coping mechanism-> gagged/ stress positions/ a casual whumper whose indifference immobilizes whumpee
royal whumpee: stoic/ proud/ seeks revenge after their imprisonment-> forced to kneel/ public humiliation, dragged around like a trophy, collared, branded etc/ enough scars to look like a constellation on their skin
healer whumpee: kind/ keeps up an image for the sake of others/ skilled in their trade-> pushed to the edge/ others have to take care of them/ hands or fingers so badly damaged they'll never be able to help anyone else again
innocent whumpee: naive/ trusting/ hopeful-> "no one is coming for you"/ left to die/ a whumper who twists whumpee's anger against their friends
bitter whumpee: apathetic/ shrugs off what they've been through/ exhausted-> "I'm fine." followed by collapsing/ vivid flashbacks where they wake up screaming/ refuses to fall asleep after their ordeal
leader whumpee: independent to the point of isolation/ tries to protect everyone/ mentally well-adjusted (mostly)-> set up to fail/ forced to hurt their teammates/ they come back changed, and everyone avoids them
villain whumpee: defiant/ insults whumper every chance they get/ so many failed escape attempts-> non-con drugging, left a shadow of their past selves/ conditioned to obey/ kneeling next to whumper at a press conferences
(ok so to my knowledge this hyperspecific scenario hasn't been done before?? but if it turns out me from two years ago had an accidental subconscious theft moment, please let me know!! But here goes:)
So we all know the trope/idea of multiple whumpees captive under one whumper? Well here's an extension of that: two whumpees with at least some level of acquaintance with each other, both taken into long-term captivity around the same time, in the same cell. Maybe they have a limited range of movement from chains, or maybe they have free roam of the cell, but every 2-3 days the same outcome proceeds regardless: whumper hauls one of them out, tortures them for variable amounts of time, then returns them to the same cell.
Here's how it gets juicier: the whumper only ever picks one of them. Through the weeks (maybe even a month or two) that they've endured thus far, the whumper is consistent in only this regard and the ever-worsening intensity of these torture sessions. I love thinking about how this would affect the emotional dynamic between these two characters, there's so much shit there that can happen depending on their personalities!!! Perhaps the one being picked (A) grows to resent the other (B) while the other feels a burning guilt every time their fellow captive is tossed back into the cell. Maybe they grow to care for each other!! I'm very partial to that last point, but getting back on track:
This all horrifically culminates in a final session where whumpee A is brutally, permanently mutilated in some much larger/worse way. I'm thinking dismemberment of some kind, but feel free to take your pick otherwise!! After whumper patches them up, because of course they can't have their captive actually dying on them, they're thrown back into the cell. Whumpee B, who knows nothing of this other than 'this session is taking a disturbingly long time, what do you mean they'll be just a bit longer what did you do' is fucking terrified with whumper's work, and serves as whumpee A's caretaker over the next few days.
Then, four days after whumpee A is returned to their cell, whumper asks for whumpee B. With this cycle established, everything gets so. Much. Worse.
So yeah! Those are the thoughts for tonight. Or like, thoughts from several years ago that I still enjoy today, but regardless thank you for reading!!
