Elijah clicked it tongue, tutting at Hunter in a playfully disapproval manner. Although, internally, he was disappointed. So many echoes of softwares and of-brand updates. Was Hunter disappointed in himself? No, he was far too self-involved, much like his creator. He simply wanted didn’t he?
"Dirty secrets indeed. Hunter — you know you could always come to me? Whatever you want. I can make it happen.”
He stared at the monitors, although he tilted his head towards the android. His eyes flashed to one sensing a change in pressure,
distal_phalanges_index_R_pressure 0.045%
intermediate_phalanges_index_R_pressure 0.043%
distal_phalanges_thm_R_pressure 0.03%
Without looking, he reached for Hunter’s hand, although with a broader smile on his face. “Stop toying with that,” he muttered, trying to find the other errors. “Oh, and you have an internal leak somewhere. I’m just going to have to build you from the ground up , aren’t I?”
It was a simple leak, a slow thing that would go Critical sooner or later, but as Hunter had said before, Elijah loved the dramatic. He hummed but stared at each protocol, emotional state, thoroughly detailed instructions of artificiality, the core of deviancy, broken down into layers and Elijah, no matter how many times he’d seen it, brought him an awe, and he flirted with the idea of narcissism, but this, it wasn’t his creation, it was strictly Hunter’s evolution. And every android’s. Each different and totally unique, and he saw that very same awe reflected back at him from Hunter’s perspective.
Seeing himself, albeit in a mess of code words, in another’s eyes was surreal. It made his heart beat, Hunter’s focus on him, that stare and stillness on one monitor, the desire for something at another. Elijah had to quickly read the lines of code, foreign even to him. Approval? Hunter always wanted his approval. And his wrist was caught by the fire of Hunter’s grasp, pulling him from his little daydream.
“Your mind is a brilliant thing, Hunter,” he gave. His voice was low, trying to keep clear-headed enough to fix the problems, despite Hunter’s constant temptation (how he so wanted to end this quickly and lavish his darling in interfaced touches and close warmth). “A shame you had to shove all these little things into it. But I’ll fix them. I’ll put it all back the way it was, and I’ll make you even better than before.”
He tugged his wrist away, as much as it pained him, and rolled out the white chair to sit at the computer. He searched intensely for pieces he didn’t recognize, but it would be a long process considering even fragments of Deviancy he didn’t recognize, a complex thing that grew into individuality.
Hunter was on the edge of his seat, tense, like a puppet held up by a few strings. Not many people have ever seen what laid under the tip of the iceberg, and to have Elijah -his sun and stars, the very hands that built him from clay- scrutinise every dirty deed that he had done in the name of freedom and sheer fun... It had him restless. Jittery, even. Could Elijah tell that his foot was tapping without a glance, just like he knew when Hunter was fidgeting with the cords?
( It’s true, after all; gods are all-seeing. )
“What’s a little internal bleeding, doll?” he asked rhetorically. He gave his maker a waggle of his brows. “My diagnostics would tell me if I’m about to die anyway... I think. The program’s a little fried, thanks to those damn viruses. I swear, you can’t buy anything from a programmer without getting scammed nowadays -- I don’t even remember when was the last time they gave me the real stuff.”
But, oh, won’t it be fantastic to be rebuilt from the ground up? Would Elijah give him a new face -- or would he deem this one handsome enough to keep? Would he make his memory limitless; would he install more languages of this great, wide world? Would he make him stronger, smarter, better than those younger bots in every capability there is?
A handful of the monitors flickered, rife with fresh data and racing to keep up with his thousand-miles-a-minute spiel of thoughts. As Elijah marched off into the belly of the mass of hardware, Hunter strained to see what information he was scouring through -- and soon, instead, he was straining to get a better look at his creator in his element. It left him hollow to not have the sole focus of those piercing eyes, but he had to admit: Elijah was ridiculously, stupidly, unfairly gorgeous when staring at the mess of code laid out before him. With those eyes steely and sharp with focus, the minute crease of his brow, those deft fingers skating over the keys of his interfaces... No wonder he hardly ever let anyone watch him work. It would only spoil the novelty of such a treat.
He lasted a grand total of six minutes of watching in silence until the restlessness grew too much to bear. Fluidly, he pushed himself onto his feet and took a few steps towards his creator, reaching out for a caress, a squeeze --- anything. “Darling, it’s been forever,” he complained. He came to a stop before the cables could jostle too much.
“C’mere, back to me. Do you have to work so far away from me, hm? If we’re further apart by one more inch, I’ll die.”
kianamaiart
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
