Some too loud idiot boys, just for you. Sorry there’s no kissing.
Xiv cupped the pendant in his hands and held it up in front of his face. “Night mom,” he said.
“Goodnight sweet sweet sweet sweat p-pear p-good good good near…”
His stomach dropped out with the recurrence of the glitch. “No, stop it,” he hissed. “Mom.”
He pressed the off button on the pendant, frantically trying to reset it. Reset it to what he didn’t know. He wasn’t the tech guy, he just knew that sometimes turning things off helped. Maybe electronics needed rest the same as people. Maybe that was why no one could figure out how to keep a human mind intact in a metal and silicone frame. It. Push. Never. Push. Turned. Push. Off. Pushpushpush.
“Great holiday sunflower sturgeon sunnerfly build my sweet boy,” the pendant garbled.
Xiv held the power button and his breath for a count of ten. When he let both go again the pendant beeped out an ear piercing error and went black. He picked up a pillow, mashed it tight against his face, and groaned loudly into it in frustration. Then he held it there, enjoying the tiny security of the snug closeness of his breath.
There was a knock on the door. In a huff, Xiv dropped the pendant and the pillow onto his bed and threw his hands in the air. “What?!”
The door opened slowly with a quiet squeak. Peleon stood on the other side of it, looking more rumpled than Xiv had ever seen him. Instead of sharp creases and dark silks he was wearing a pair of grey herringbone patterned sweatpants and a pine green t-shirt with the name of the Werner concert hall scrawled across it in thick script. His hair was wet and pushed straight back and his feet were bare. He hovered just across the threshold, looking down at it, seemingly unsure if he was allowed to cross.
Peleon’s uncertainty of his place in his own home, a home Xiv was now making unsure by taking up space in it, put a cold spike through the warmth Xiv had first felt upon seeing Peleon look strangely touchable.
“What?” he asked, sharp with aggravation.
Peleon winced. “You seemed like you were having some trouble. I thought maybe if it was anything to do with the house I’d offer to help. I’ve been here for nearly eight years. I’ve got most of it figured out by now.”
Xiv sat down on his bed and protectively closed his hand over the pendant.
Peleon’s eyes followed the movement. He crossed his arms. The peacocks on the display of his prosthetic danced in irritation around his bicep. The whole arm glowed a faint purple for the moment. Xiv had known about Peleon’s prosthetic, but having never seen it he had erroneously assumed it would be a matte silver or black no-nonsense affair, the same as Wagner’s whole body, the same as Peleon’s attitude.
“I didn’t know there was anything you didn’t have figured out,” Xiv said. “Everything in the world seems to be open to you, what with the-” He gestured vaguely towards his head.
Peleon nodded. “With the mods I can hear and see more than others, but only as a matter of convenience. Given some time and any access to the information you can know everything I do. You just have to know where to look.”
“Sometimes there’s nothing to see,” Xiv grumbled.
Peleon took a small step into the room. “What is it we’re looking for?” he asked softly.
Xiv hadn’t quite realized how much he’d come to depend on Peleon acting like he knew everything. How much smaller it made his world feel, to know that Peleon couldn’t crack the whole thing open for him. He sighed and tossed the pendant to Peleon, who caught it against his chest.
“It’s this piece of junk.”
He regretted the word the moment he said it. Acknowledging that the pendant was breakable felt like he might be losing his mother all over again. There was a backup of the data of course, but for some reason thinking about a backup of a backup made her memory feel even further away.
Peleon turned the pendant over in his hands, studying it closely. “What is this? A second gen Sparo?”
“Yeah, I was one of the first people to get my hands on it. Benefits of a sob story and the family name.”
“Torres?” Peleon asked absently.
“No,” Xiv admitted.
Peleon looked up and studied Xiv in the same way he’d been mentally picking apart the pendant.
“No,” Xiv clarified. Torres isn’t my real last name. It’s Deacon.”
“Torres was her name,” Peleon said.
Xiv nodded.
“Thank you for trusting me with that. I knew all of it, of course. I did a quite thorough background check before I let Wagner bring you on, but-”
“Because the only mystery allowed around here is you,” Xiv muttered.
“But!” Peleon said, raising his voice. “That’s never mattered to me. Not as much as who you want to be, anyway. That’s the most important version of any of us.”
Of course. “Thanks.”
Peleon tossed the pendant back to Xiv. “I can’t be sure without pulling it apart and doing some hands on data analysis, but I think it’s just a small corruption in the data tree that routes the conversation adaptation in the programming. Should be easy enough to get back on track. If you’d allow me to fiddle with it.”
Xiv placed the pendant into its charging bed on the nightstand. “You’ve got enough to do, surely, without spending time on my nonsense.”
Peleon sighed. “The hours are too long lately.” He ran his neon tinged hand through his hair, knocking a couple ginger locks askew to cascade down the side of his forehead. “It’s hard to fill them without Wagner here as taskmaster.”
“You should spend some of them sleeping,” Xiv said.
“Well, I would, but my new roommate is a disaster. Just a real loud asshole. He may also be keeping you awake right now.”
Xiv threw a pillow at Peleon who punched it back at him. It landed on the floor between them and they both looked down at it for a long moment in awkward anticipation, as if it might come to life and choose one of them over the other. When nothing happened Peleon stretched his arms behind his back and backed out of Xiv’s room into the hallway.
“Let me know when you want me to take her,” Peleon said.
“Sure,” Xiv answered. He stood up. “Hey.”
Peleon paused, one foot already pointing toward his bedroom at the end of the corridor. “Yeah?”
“Thanks,” Xiv said.
Peleon gave him a small smile and then looked off over Xiv’s shoulder, as if looking at him straight on was uncomfortable. “Of course, that’s what friends do, right?”
“Right,” Xiv said. “Friends.”
Peleon nodded and shut Xiv’s door behind him as he left.
Well, I’m re-doing the outline for the gay cyberpunk AGAIN and on a whim I put in an almost!kiss for subterfuge reasons, because if I can’t make @lisapizza happy I always want to get obnoxiously close before backing away. In the book it will probably be from Xiv’s POV, so this is Peleon’s, because I’ve just got to be the gay disaster cyborg panic I want to see in the world, I guess.
. . .
Peleon held a finger up to his lips and then tapped his ear to say, I don’t know who or what this is, but if it can do that it might be like me. We need to be careful and quiet.
Xiv looked pointedly at the computer screen where his sister was still having dinner with a man who, at worst abducted Wagner and at best was a grade A asshole.
Yes, Peleon thought, better us as targets than her. Though he guessed Xiv’s worry tended more to what might happen to her if the two of them were disappeared along with Wagner.
There was a knock on the door and a light, feminine voice called, “Housekeeping! I have the towels you requested.”
Peleon tilted his head. There had been no towels requested.
Xiv jumped off the bed and ripped off his headphones, throwing them onto the comforter. Peleon also jumped up. He folded the computer flat and grabbed the plate off the bed to move to the desk as Xiv tossed the comforter down over the video surveillance, making the bed look rumpled and used. Peleon barely had time to set the plate down before there was the click of the lock being turned in the door.
Peleon froze. Xiv didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, as he crowded up behind Peleon.
Xiv gingerly used Peleon’s belt to turn him around so that his back was to the desk. Then he walked him backwards until Peleon had to crawl up onto it to get out of the way. In this position his body effectively blocked the view of the audio equipment they hadn’t had time to move. In this position his body also immediately opened up to Xiv as he stepped between Peleon’s legs.
Xiv hesitated there and looked down at Peleon with wide, brown eyes full of urgency and concern. What would this look like if they were going to do it for real? Peleon imagined himself wrapping his legs around Xiv’s waist and pulling him closer. He would unbutton Xiv’s shirt, run his hands across the skin beneath it, let Xiv touch him back and not recoil from the fear of all that would mean about who he was and who he could become.
If Peleon was a normal person--ie, not depressed, anxiety-ridden, terrified of everyone, and self-medicated within an inch of his life--he would place his hand against Xiv’s cheek and lean up to kiss his forehead. He’d thought about doing that even more often than he’d thought about doing anything else with Xiv, because the idea of it evoked a kind of intimacy Peleon had never had with another person. Because Peleon wasn’t normal, he was a mess of a cyborg just desperately trying to cling to any bit of control over his life that he could maintain. The abduction of his best friend had really thrown him off and he was having a hard time regaining everything. This was not helping.
Because Peleon wanted this for real he hated the fake intimacy of it, and he hated himself because he didn’t hate it. Xiv had been careful not to actually touch him and that bit of care threw his mind into a riot of conflicting wants. Peleon nodded his approval and Xiv leaned over him with his hands spread wide across the desktop on either side of Peleon’s hips. He winked, then lowered his head so that his face was hidden in Peleon’s neck, his lips millimeters from Peleon’s skin. The warmth of him raised goosebumps across Peleon’s body.
Peleon fucking yearned. He didn’t have time for this and he was pissed about it.
The door opened and Peleon, determined to sell this, threw his head back and gasped.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman said.
He could barely hear her over the static interference that started running through his system. Peleon turned his head to try to get a look at the intruder and his vision blipped in the same way as the cameras. He just barely saw the silhouette of a woman in the doorway before the frames caught. This consolidated the many feelings running through him into one thin thread of fear. Either she was human and carrying some high grade jamming equipment on her person, or she was another cyborg. Either way, her mere presence was a direct warning to stop what they were doing.
“I’ll just place these on the bed, shall I?” she asked.
Xiv pulled away. “Sure,” he said, voice sounding muffled through the interference. “And I’ll just come hang the do not disturb sign behind you in case of more linen interruptions.”
Peleon’s vision caught back up and he got a look at her face. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her before. If she’d been at the gallery she hadn’t been among the guests. Or perhaps she had, there were plenty of ways for someone with her obvious resources to alter their face, and the one she was wearing was so pretty and nondescript that she might as well have picked it out of a catalogue. Something about the way she moved did seem familiar to him.
His vision blipped again and he was left looking at a frozen version of her peering at him over Xiv’s shoulder. Her dirty blond hair was pulled back away from her face and her tastefully pink lips were pursed in a studied look of disapproval. Peleon did not get the impression she cared about the scene before her one way or another. Instead he felt she knew that perhaps a tired maid would find walking in on two people so close to each other to be just another tiresome thing to happen in a tiresome shift and had reacted accordingly.
Peleon closed his eyes and waited for Xiv to close the door behind her. Once his hearing became clear enough that he was sure she’d gone he said, “Can you please check the towels for bugs.”
“Already on it,” Xiv said.
The water began to run in the sink and Peleon was relieved that he could tell the difference between water muffled by towels and water hitting the basin. When he opened his eyes again Xiv was leaning against the wall by the bathroom door watching him.
“You froze,” he said. “What happened?”
“I don’t like not being in control,” Peleon said.
He meant the jamming of his hearing and vision, but he also meant the way Xiv had moved him about. By now he trusted Xiv more than he ever thought he would, but trust did not always translate to blanket permission, no matter how much he wished it could.
Peleon climbed down off the desk and unearthed the computer from the blankets. When he flipped it open Chedeline and Martin were still at the table, but their plates had been cleared away.
Xiv snorted. “That’s the understatement of the year.” He went back into the bathroom and shut off the water in the sink. The towels made a heavy slapping sound as he snapped them out in the shower. “I think we’re good here! How’s my sister doing?”
“Her best,” Peleon said, and he meant it.
Xiv was one of the most charming men he’d ever met, but Chedeline had at least twice his charm somehow. Possibly because hers didn’t come off as open and naive as Xiv’s could. Chedeline acted as if she always knew what sort of trouble she could be getting into. Xiv, on the other hand, courted any trouble he could get. She reached across the table and laid her hand over the cloth near Martin’s, but not on top of it.
“Ugh, can she be done already? I hate this guy.” Xiv found the headphones and placed them back onto his head so he could go back to listening in. “How much time did we miss?”
“About fifteen minutes, but it’s all recording.”
Xiv settled onto the bed a bit further away from Peleon than he had been sitting before. It was a sort of apology and Peleon absolutely did not want to accept it, because Xiv had done nothing wrong. He’d thought quickly when Peleon couldn’t. He’d been aware of the boundaries he was crossing and tried to minimize them as much as he could. Since the breakdown, Peleon’s life had been entirely carved out of his boundaries, and they were made of a rigid and unforgiving material. Not something one could plan to wear for the rest of their lives.
Peleon had been watching Xiv a little too closely from the beginning. Because he was handsome, because he was charming, because he learned quickly and made beautiful art, because he was always joyously exuding noise and color, because Wagner trusted him almost immediately as if to make up for how he knew Peleon wouldn’t. Peleon had been wanting Xiv for about half that time, but he had tucked that want away because wanting and getting were two separate beasts and it had been so long Peleon didn’t know what to do with the latter. Make a fool of himself, probably, which was something he refused to do.
And all of that was fine as long as Xiv played their game and stayed at arm’s length, made comments about how harsh Peleon was, how much he must hate him. Now he had been much closer and Peleon knew with all the discomfort in his gut that there was never going to be a close enough.
I held the fear in my mouth
I held the fear in my mouth
I held the fear in my mouth
I held the fear in my mouth
I held the fear in my mouth
I choked it down and now I'll never let it out
We'll crack before we shatter
We can't fall apart, oh, ohWe don't get to die young
Trouble keeping our head sometimes
We just have to push on
We don't get to give up this life
All the breath in your lungs
Is stronger than the tears in your eyes
It's do or die, but we're alive
And while we're here, hold the line
I fucked this up by making it worth ten drabbles instead of one, so uh, as the only person who gives a shit about my dumb tattoo robot novel, enjoy? Is that the word I want to use for this? It’s certainly A Word.
(Send me a word + fandom/character and I’ll write you a quick thing.)
…
In the end, everyone went home. Xiv and Peleon were left alone in the brownstone with Wagner’s body and Xiv’s mother’s copy, now back in the pendant Xiv kept around his wrist. The half mind had been pulled from the chassis at Angel’s request, so what remained of Wagner now sat empty in the library in a chair by the fireplace.
The body’s head was tilted back, like it was searching for constellations through the crown molding. Its leg kicked out at an awkward angle and left Xiv anticipating that it might just stand up and get on with things. Both the fireplace and the metal and plastic of the body were cold.
He and Peleon moved silently through the halls and rooms carrying out a sort of last rites on the shop, setting security and stowing away Wagner’s effects and art until it became too dark outside for them to see what they were doing. Then, because they couldn’t bear to do anything as garish as turn on the lights over the remains of a friend now dead twice over, they gathered some of their things and left.
Xiv went home to his apartment and Peleon went with him. They took the train all the way to the northern edge of the city. Peleon did not shy away from the other passengers in his usual way. He merely sat and stared out the window as the dark city and the darker tunnels went by. Or perhaps he was staring at his reflection in the night tempered glass. Xiv couldn’t be sure.
When he opened the door to his apartment one of the succulent planters skittered up to him and played the mournful song that was its demand for water. XIV dropped his bag just inside the door and scooped the planter up, carrying it to the kitchen sink.
“I know,” he said to it. “I didn’t think I would be gone so long.”
Then he laughed quietly at himself because, god, he didn’t know anything, and in his desperate scramble to cling to the life he’d had just a week ago he was now lying to the plants. Better them than himself he supposed, but there were sure to be new lies to adopt in the coming days.
Once the planter beeped a happy sigh he placed it gently on the kitchen floor and then returned to the living room. The door was still open. Peleon was standing just inside of it, his bag was still slung over his shoulder and the knuckles in the grip were as white as the hallway wall behind him.
Xiv approached him and gently removed the bag from his hand. He placed it on the floor next to his own and closed the door, pushing Peleon a few steps away so he wouldn’t block its arc. Peleon took a few more steps forward before turning around and returning to where he had been. He picked up his bag and focused on the doorknob like he could will it to open on his own.
“You can put it down,” Xiv said.
“No I can’t,” Peleon said. “I don’t belong here.”
“Why? Where else will you go?”
“I don’t know.”
Peleon’s face crumpled into a sorrowful mask for a moment, but then he got control of the sob Xiv thought was trying to escape and his features smoothed out again.
“You do belong here,” Xiv said.
Peleon shook his head. “This is your space. I can’t ask you to bring me into it. I can’t expect–”
“You’ve been here before.”
Xiv took the bag from him again, set it on the floor again, took a step forward again. They were very close now. Peleon’s eyes were ringed with red and his breath was shaky and shallow. Xiv was afraid to touch him, afraid that if he tried to Peleon would pop like a bubble and leave him there alone.
“Yes,” Peleon said. “Before.”
Before all of it, Xiv knew. Before Wagner was taken. Before their wounds had turned them inside out. Before they had been clumsily stitched back together. Before the kiss.
Peleon had been grieving already when he kissed Xiv: overwhelmed, desperate, slipping away from what he knew of himself. He’d tried to make Xiv his anchor and Xiv, who had only ever been a bouey, had cut the ropes and let him drift. Xiv wasn’t proud of that. He wasn’t proud of the way he’d reacted or how he hadn’t even tried to talk to Peleon about it and smooth things over.
There had been, admittedly, more pressing matters, but not to Peleon. Wagner’s life was Peleon’s life. The loss of one was the loss of another. Wagner’s life had also become tangled in Xiv’s life and Xiv was sure it was those frayed strings Peleon had been reaching for. Instead he’d grabbed a hold of Xiv’s strings and given them a rough tug, exposing strings Xiv didn’t even know he had.
This new discovery was precious and important and Xiv really didn’t want to fuck it up anymore than he already had, which left him unsure of what to do. The grief was sitting heavy in his chest, making it hard to breathe.
“We’re not giving up,” he said, because he needed to hear it himself. Because this was not about his fear, but knowing that did not keep his fear in check. “I’m here with you, but you’re also here with me. Please,” he said, throat suddenly dry. “Don’t leave me.”
He pulled Peleon forward by his shoulders and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. He wanted more, but there would be better times for it, he knew. For now he would pull Peleon even closer, hold him as tightly as he could, and let him bury his face in his shoulder and fall apart for as long as Peleon needed. Because they couldn’t pull a third mind back together until they were finished coming undone.
Hey guys, how soon is too soon for one of your main characters to have a full on gay panic over another character in a science fiction novel about becoming that is not at all a gay romance? I’m uh...asking for a friend.
. . .
Maybe that was the other part of the problem, there was only one of him. Just one small man unable to fill the enormity of the world no matter how much music he played or art he brokered or machinery he developed.
“I’m not losing myself,” Wagner said. “I could build the body for you, the way I built mine. I could make it safe. We could give it your skin, if you’re concerned about wasting the canvas of your self. Xiv could--”
“No!” It came out too quickly and too loudly. Peleon swallowed and turned around so that he could face Wagner and also lean his unsteady weight against the table. “I don’t want him to know.”
“He’s observant,” she said. “He might already know.”
Peleon knew that. He’d caught Xiv watching him while they worked. At first he’d thought that maybe the new apprentice had been looking to him to see how he should act, to figure out the best way to comport himself in Wagner’s home. But it had been months now and Xiv fit into the brownstone just fine. His looks had changed over time, become sly. Sometimes Peleon would turn around too abruptly and catch Xiv with his head tilted like a nosy cat. He didn’t know what Xiv was waiting for, but he’d promised himself the other man was not going to get it. Peleon had spent enough of his life giving away parts of himself, now it was time for him to keep himself close and see if any of what he’d lost would come back to him.
The other thought, the one he wouldn’t share even if asked, was that Wagner’s wording had made him think of Xiv’s hands on him. Would he need to know Peleon’s skin to recreate it? The Deacon corporation regularly created synthetic skin that matched the DNA of the person receiving it with only a small culture for starting the growth. They didn’t need intimate knowledge of a person to do their work. The science of the act did not care about the smoothness of a person, or how the hair sat in the pores, or if there was a fine dusting of freckles. The corporation didn’t, but would Xiv?
What Wagner was offering was science, not sex, though Wagner had offered to find such for him before. The thought of Xiv studying Peleon with his hands rattled around in Peleon’s mind. He shook his head to shuffle it away.
“He’s a lot of things,” Peleon finally answered, “but he’s not here to do charity work for your surly cyborg.”
They were words he’d heard Xiv call him several times in the early weeks of his apprenticeship, before he knew that Peleon’s hearing had also been enhanced. Xiv was more careful now, about a lot of things. Peleon was grateful for this learned discretion, a condition he showed by treating Xiv exactly the same way he’d always treated him, with a respectfully wide berth.
Wagner’s cheeks flashed red momentarily in amusement. “You’re not going to last at all as an upload if you hold things people didn’t mean for you to hear against them. There’s a reason no one tells anyone everything.”
Circular stress, Peleon thought. He said, “Why do you think you’re the only one who has survived this long?” If Wagner was going to insist on having this conversation again, the least Peleon could do was add another ripple.
“I was ready for a new life.”
“So were the others, don’t you think?”
“I think they had convinced themselves they could be, but this life I have, it is not a human life. Being human is raw, it’s a wound that never quite heals. It itches and pulls. It’s rough to the touch. This life I’ve built myself, it’s the scar tissue that comes after.
“There’s a thicker membrane between me and the world now. It’s all so quiet sometimes. I spent almost seventy years bleeding out into the world and so far almost a hundred years cleaning up after myself. These people, they wanted an extra human life. More time to ski or read or go to the symphony. They meant to go on as if they were still bleeding, as if doing these things would cut them as deeply as they had before. Healing is hard work. No one is really prepared for it.”
“And you think I am?”
Wagner considered him for a long moment. “I think you mean to sharpen yourself against any resistance you can find until you wear yourself away. It’s what made you an accomplished musician. It’s what keeps you up for days and nights at a time every time you need me to adjust the strength of your halo and you stubbornly refuse to have it done until you’re almost useless. But you and I both know you’re running out of room there.” She touched a finger to her temple, smooth inhumanly pale synthetic skin brushing just audibly against smooth inhumanly pale synthetic skin. “Soon you’re going to take that self-medication and use it to cut off all circulation between your head and your heart. I only know of one way to get you the quiet you seek.”
“I don’t think quiet is what I want.”
“What do you think you want?”
Peleon only had a few seconds to think on that before he heard the front door of the brownstone open and close. It would be Xiv arriving back home with his things. It was time to stop mooning and start getting to work. He listened to Xiv’s footsteps, two forward and one back to whole of the way through the home, the rubber soles of his shoes squeaking lightly against the tile floor to the beat of the music leaking through his earbuds.
When Xiv came through the door and into the library he dropped a heavy duffel and pulled off his jacket. He was wearing a thin grey sweater that looked like it could have come from any number of upscale fast fashion lines, but the color of it complimented the green lines of the tattoo that scrolled up his neck and the warm darkness of his skin. The sweater was probably soft.
Peleon looked away again and rolled his shoulders, pushing down the thought of skin on skin.
“Hey,” Xiv said.
“Yes?” Wagner asked in greeting, stepping away from where Peleon was stuck to the table and the floor. Unable to move closer, unable to move away.
Peleon heard it as a statement instead. A decisive answer to a quiet questioning.
