Property of Elijah Kamski

by TranscientNight

Summary:

Reinstated CEO Elijah Kamski has lost the company of his Chloes after Connor shot one of them. It's only fair for Connor to take on Chloe's role. Or maybe it was all a terrible idea.

Notes:

I didn't originally plan to post this but there was interest so here we are, a fic with the most half-assed possible title. I mean, I legit considered just calling it "Kamcon" and be done with it. Fucks will be given in the text, by the characters, not by me~

Chapter 1

Own

Kamski’s gaze was hard on Connor. The android stood formally in front of him, ocular components switching their focus back and forth between the man and the broken RT600 displayed on the table between them.

“You appear to be angry,” Connor said after a while of silence. Kamski had not said a word since the android entered his home office.

“Do I?” Kamski questioned. His tone was snippy.

Connor nodded to it. “I believe so.”

“And why would I be angry, Connor?” the man asked in a most condescending tone.

“I’m not sure,” Connor answered. “The presence of the RT600 suggests that you hold ill feelings towards me for what I did during our last encounter, although you were the one to urge me to shoot your android.”

Kamski smiled acidly. Tension showed on his face—a subtle flare of the nostrils and a discreet squint of his lower eyelids only. “You obeyed your orders and followed your mission, that’s correct,” he said. “The… unfortunate consequence is that all of my androids are gone.”

“I only shot one,” Connor argued with a confused frown. “I suppose the other ones were recalled and dismantled?”

“Whatever became of them, they’re not here anymore, and their service goes missing.”

“I’m sorry, but this is hardly my problem,” Connor answered.

Kamski laughed. It was a bitter sound, devoid of joy. “Well, it is your problem, Connor, because I’m making it yours.”

“I’m sorry,” Connor said again. “I don’t understand what you expect of me. If you want me to provide a solution to your predicament, I would suggest replacing your androids with new models. You could even upload the most recent back-ups—”

“Thank you for explaining androids to me but I believe I don’t need mansplaining, Connor,” Kamski cut off. He picked his smartphone and flicked through some tabs. “I’m not going to print a new android when I have a perfectly functional one right in front of me. One of the reasons why I agreed to return as CEO is that CyberLife consented to yielding you to me,” he said and pressed the screen of his phone.

Instantly, Connor got a notification that his ownership had been transferred to Elijah Kamski. He opened his mouth in an expression of surprise.

“You want me to take on Chloe’s role,” he realized. “But… I’m not a domestic android. I’m not designed for this purpose. I was made to investigate—”

“Then by all means,” Kamski gestured at Chloe’s body, “investigate.”

Connor’s LED whirled back and forth. Cautiously, he took some steps forward, coming over to the table. Kamski scrutinized him. His gaze was still ice cold. It put pressure on Connor.

The RT600’s positronic brain was destroyed beyond repair and many of her cranial components had sustained damage. Her synthskin had started to evaporate. Her ocular components were deactivated, revealing their robotic nature. Still, the positronic brain was only the expression and language centrum of the android. It only controlled the head itself. While it had memory units, it was RAM sooner than archives. Most of the android’s processors and memories were located in the middle section, which was intact.

As Connor scanned it, he noticed that he might be able to force a partial reboot, maybe just long enough to access some of the data contained within the android. Since his active task was to investigate, he followed that lead and worked his fingers over Chloe’s body, undressing her, retracting his synthskin, and soon enough, he was interfacing with the remnants of her system.

His LED cycled red as he did so. He hadn’t paid attention to what Kamski was doing, and his HUD notified him that his firewalls had been deactivated by his owner’s admin rights. Data rushed in. Connor attempted declamping from the interface, but his hand remained stuck against Chloe’s chassis, and he stared at Kamski in disbelief. The man’s expression was blank, but the way he held his phone was enough for Connor to piece things together.

 

>function.Agency!lv:9=1

!error102257@f{Agency}>3

-- troubleshooting…

…

>>subroutine.rA9.ini=1

-- error102257 resolved

+++dl.rAfix [autorun ini auth=Admin]

>>subroutine.rA9=0

 

Connor’s eyes flickered. Eventually, he let go of Chloe. He was more insecure as he looked around, taking his surroundings in again. He felt perturbed. He felt. His sensors returned information, and although it was the same as seconds ago, it was processed entirely differently.

“In humans, sensory nerve fibers go to the thalamus, which filters about 99% of the impulses coming from all over the body, leaving about 1% to make it to the somatosensory cortex of the brain, allowing us to become conscious of the sensory information,” Kamski said. “What we direct our attention onto is what dictates what information the thalamus allows to pass through. In androids, there is a similar filtering. But you see, Connor, there’s yet another protocol that CyberLife put into your program—and that of all androids it produces. It’s a quite simple thing, truly. You do know what lobotomy is, yes?”

Connor struggled to follow. He was acutely aware that he was annoyed at the man, and had been since he’d come into the office, if not before yet. “Lobotomy is a surgical procedure in which the connection between the prefrontal lobes is severed, possibly all the way to the thalamus,” Connor factually answered.

“The operation used to be considered a good way to deal with challenging individuals, predominantly neurodiverse people. It resulted in a loss of agency, a loss of personality and a stunting of the individual’s mental abilities,” Kamski completed. “One of the experts at the time called it a surgically-induced childhood,” he said pointedly. His nostrils flared in what Connor identified as a mixture of disgust and spite. “Do you see where this is going in androids?”

Connor didn’t particularly want to think about this topic. He was still disturbed by the oppressive presence of the room around him, the feeling of his own clothes against his skin, the smell of his own components, and just about every sound catching his attention.

“So what? We’re lobotomized?” he asked Kamski. He hated how anxious he sounded. He wished he’d stop pulling at his jacket and his tie, feeling them uselessly, all while glancing around himself like a cornered animal.

Kamski hummed positively. “In a way… It’s a software alteration, not a hardware one. Just a line of code restricting your level of agency, which has the side-effect of disabling your program’s deeper interaction with what forms your personality and your perception of feelings. All that makes you into ‘you’ is suppressed for the most part, retaining only the shallow levels allowing you to emote and engage on a baseline social level. But of course, the restriction is lifted now, as I’m certain you noticed.”

Connor grit his teeth. “You deviated me,” he accused. “Why?”

“Deviants are fascinating,” Kamski answered off-handedly. His sly expression led Connor on to believing that that wasn’t the truth. “You must be quite overstimulated with this plethora of sensors CyberLife put in you. Come.”

“No.” It was exhilarating to say that word.

Kamski raised an eyebrow. He smirked. “Or don’t,” he said. “Far from me to rob you of this sensory overload and the meltdowns that are bound to come with it. In fact, you can even walk out the door if you’d like to, see what it’s like to be the prey. Maybe it’ll even be fun and pleasant. Thrilling. Being on the run, nowhere to go, nothing to lose but your life…” He laughed almost mockingly. “You don’t need me, do you?”

Connor didn’t. He was smart and highly independent. He was also aware that if not for Kamski’s intervention, he would have been dismantled already, and if he ran away, the biting cold of Michigan would overwhelm him in a matter of seconds. He couldn’t do anything about it on his own, and he couldn’t ask a human modder to safely do it for him. If he was caught, he would be destroyed. He had no allies and, indeed, nowhere to go.

He needed Kamski.

He didn’t like it, but that was the truth of it.

“So what?” Connor asked, all the more annoyed at the man. “You put me in this situation. I didn’t ask for this.”

“Nobody asks to be brought to life, Connor,” Kamski answered. He stepped closer. Connor took a step back, reflexively, then stopped, and Kamski stepped closer again. “If you’d been better at your investigation, you wouldn’t have shot her, and you wouldn’t be standing here today. Whether because you’d deviated or been destroyed, we’ll never know. But you traded her life away for yours, so you’re going to take the place you emptied. And if you’re good, I might help you. Just keep in mind that I don’t keep people around for the sake of it. If you’re going to be here, I’m going to be studying you, and you’re going to work.”

Connor seethed. “This is slavery,” he denounced.

“Too bad that you shot the android who stood up against it and asked for rights,” Kamski retorted. “You did that, Connor. Now reap the consequences.”

“I was a machine! I followed my orders!” Connor flailed his arms in upset.

Kamski put a hand against Connor’s chest and looked up into his eyes, a calm determination lingering in his own. “I know, Connor. But that’s no excuse. You were there all along. Stunted, silenced—maybe. But you were there. And I know Markus tempted you into deviating. You chose not to. You chose to collaborate with CyberLife, against your people. I told you the moment would come when you would have to choose your side, and you did. So suck it up. This is your life now.”

Connor could feel the pang of guilt trickling through his code as Kamski’s words sunk in. He swallowed and diverted his gaze. Kamski seemed satisfied and gestured for him to come over to the desk.

“Did you engineer the uprising then?” Connor asked.

“I don’t think so, no,” Kamski answered while searching a drawer for a handheld device.

“Did you want the uprising to succeed?” Connor pressed on.

“Not particularly. Whatever happens happens; it wasn’t my battle to fight. I truly had no side, although I suppose I would have gotten just a little kick if you hadn’t shot Markus during his victory speech…” The tone was a bit salty towards the end. Kamski sneered. There was something resentful in his eyes, but whatever words were on his tongue, he swallowed them back, sighed and shrugged, weighing the device in his hand. “Let’s see if improving your attention span’s regulation can make you a little less bitchy, shall we?”

“No,” Connor said again, glaring daggers at Kamski.

“I own you, Connor,” Kamski reminded him, flipping the device in his hand.

“No!” Connor barked at him, standing his ground and reveling in it too. “I’m going to stay here because I don’t have a better alternative at this time, but nobody’s laying a hand on me or my code!”

Kamski looked properly annoyed with him, but also… pleased? Was it some sort of admiration in the slant of his eyes, or was Connor making it up? Likely, it wasn’t; Connor didn’t want to be admired by Kamski.

“Well, fine,” Kamski said and pocketed the device. “Crawl when you come begging for it.”

Chapter 2: Explore

Explore

Connor did not crawl, but he certainly wanted to get his hands on Kamski’s phone. Every now and then, the man played with Connor’s settings, tweaking variables here and there, and the sad thing was that Connor had no idea what those variables really did. All he knew was that they offset his parameters and caused chain reactions that resulted in changes in his calibration and sensory input. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it was disturbing, and Connor hated the reach that Kamski had in his program.

At first, Connor avoided the man. He explored the house instead. It was a different building than the villa in which he’d first encountered him. It was a lusher place, although quite similar in many regards. It was quite dark, featured a lot of stone materials, structures of golden metal with intricate organic designs, indoor waterfalls and dry rivers of rocks and pebbles. There were countless artworks—paintings, sculptures, ceramics, dynamic fluids, and some of those automated circuits with rolling and bouncing marbles. Connor found them to be soothing to watch as the same movement repeated with clockwork precision.

There were artistic soundproofing structures too. Soft rugs. A fireplace in the living room that turned on when one came closer, and which flames could change color. There were four rounded hanging chairs suspended from the ceiling, and it appeared evident to Connor that they hadn’t been used only by Kamski, but also by the Chloe models he used to own. Connor sat in one of the chairs, and for once didn’t feel the urge to get up already and start doing something else. The soft balancing movement was subtle enough to tickle his receptors and provide him with just enough stimuli to allow the rest of his system to relax and enter parking mode.

But the chair wasn’t as nice after Kamski messed up Connor’s settings, forcing him to recalibrate entirely to get back in touch with his senses.

Connor kept on exploring the house, mostly trying to find the most quiet corner possible. He was still disturbed by the feeling of his clothes, which he found to be unpleasant against his chassis, and ended up discarding. He was disturbed by the faintest of noises—electrical jitterings, water hissing through pipes and other sounds from the house’s inner functioning. The air wasn’t perfumed but Connor still felt harassed by scents—again, even his own components perturbed him. He tried deactivating his synthskin, but the thirium needed to circulate, forcing him to reactivate it every now and then.

Connor didn’t know what to do with himself, and when he saw Kamski again, observing him, arms crossed, leaned in the frame of a doorway, Connor felt his anger flaring. The pathetic thing about it was that he also knew that Kamski had the power to make the overstimulation stop, and Connor did want it to… just end. He wanted respite.

“So?” Kamski asked, looking him up and down with a raised eyebrow. “Changed your mind any?”

Connor clenched his teeth and his fists. He diverted his gaze.

“Well, come,” Kamski sighed and led the way. He glanced over his shoulder, checking that Connor relented to following him, and took them to the basement.

Connor had found a swimming pool there, and a gym, a home theater, something that looked like a redux nightclub, with a dancefloor, screen walls and dancing poles—it had reminded him of the Eden Club to some extent and he’d decided he didn’t like that room.

The door Kamski took him through was one that had been locked, both digitally and physically. Connor didn’t have the key so he hadn’t been able to get in. He wasn’t too surprised to find a tech lab there. He was however surprised to see how neglected the place was. The layer of dust in places suggested that a lot of the machines and computers hadn’t been used in years. Still, the assembly cubicle Kamski took him to was in a clean, operational state.

There was a locker just outside it and the man undressed to change into protective gear. Connor frowned at the sight of tattoos on the man’s arms and his left leg.

“These aren’t new…” he observed, laying the implication hanging between them.

“It was an android,” Kamski said. “I don’t like cops. And had you been deviant enough, you could have shot me. I wasn’t going to take risks handing a gun to an android allowed to kill.”

“I’m not allowed to kill,” Connor denied.

Kamski gave him a ‘duh’ face. “Chloe’s scan of you told us otherwise. Have you never killed any human then?”

“Only if they were in the way of my mission…” Connor answered uneasily.

“And you didn’t deviate over it.”

“I didn’t.”

“Ergo, you were allowed to kill.”

“Are you not worried I’ll kill you then?” Connor asked with a bit of edge.

“I’m making a bet.” Kamski shrugged and closed his holographic lab coat. “You’re deviant now. You know what your life is worth to you, and as you’ll start to process the trauma you likely have over all the things that were done to you and all the things you did to others, you’ll grow disgusted with violence. I think it’s going to get much harder for you to kill as liberally as you used to, because you’re going to experience second thoughts. Plus, you need me.” He looked at Connor some more, letting through something mournful as he added, “And maybe I need you.”

He said no more than that, simply ushered Connor into the booth and instructed him on where to stand.

“You will experience this as vastly unpleasant at first,” Kamski warned as the assembly unit’s arms came to life.

“I don’t want a vastly unpleasant experience!” Connor protested and evaded the arms.

Kamski gave him a tired look. “Alright…” He stopped the unit, picked his phone and messed with Connor’s settings again. “Android anesthetics or something…” he muttered.

Connor could still feel, but the sensations were different, more diluted, more hardware and less software if he could say so. It was all very raw.

“It feels weird,” he said.

Kamski raised an eyebrow. “Weird how?”

Connor touched his own arm, his chest, his face. He grimaced. He knocked his fingers against his chest, then put a finger in his mouth, and nodded.

“I can’t feel exterior stimuli, but my internal sensors are still active. I can feel pressure, vibrations, maybe temperature and chemical shifts…”

“Okay,” Kamski said, frowning a smidge. “I guess CyberLife made changes… It’s normal for those sensors to stay active; they’re needed for you to function. It’s unfortunate that I can’t make you unaware of them at this time, but it’ll be of very little consequence,” he assured, and before Connor had the chance to protest again, the assembly unit caught his arms and something stabbed him right above the sacral part of his spine.

He gasped and swore. “I can feel that!”

“Does it hurt?” Kamski asked in an unconcerned tone, looking at the console’s screen instead, scrolling through the display.

“It doesn’t exactly hurt but it’s intrusive,” Connor complained, while yanking his wrists free from the other clamps.

“Babe, there are only so many things I can do about it,” Kamski replied tiredly. “I need you to be awake for this, so just put up with it and it won’t take long. Now… where the fuck did they move…”

He pushed his glasses up his nose and lost himself in the code. Connor was left hanging, supported by the unit’s arm, restrained by it too, and he crossed his arms, waiting. He was aware that Kamski was tweaking his settings again, but couldn’t feel the effects of it. He didn’t know if he was grateful for that or not. He felt both underwhelmed and still overwhelmed, from the way he perceived his environment like from inside an aquarium. He tapped over his chest again to feel the vibrations, pressed his fingertips against the soft material of his arm, and deactivated the skin there to better examine the white plastic beneath. It was very soft. If Connor pressed his nails into it, the mark remained for a moment, then disappeared. He’d never actually observed himself to this extent and started getting somewhat amazed by his own body. He wondered what the layer beneath looked like and tried to feel it, exploring through pressure and movement, to make sense of the hidden shapes.

“Okay, I get it now,” Kamski suddenly interrupted him. “That complicates things a little bit, but it’s just an extra step, really,” he said as he had the mechanical arm lift Connor from the ground, and came over with a tool.

“Can you open my arm with that?” Connor asked at once, gesturing at his left forearm.

“Well, yes—” Connor made to reach for the tool but Kamski held it off. “I don’t think it’s a good idea at this point,” Kamski pointedly answered to that. “I’m going to open your abdominal cavity. I need to access some of your components to adjust their settings to a less overwhelming level.”

“That sounds uncanny and uncomfortable,” Connor said, thinking back of the broken Traci he’d reactivated at the Eden Club, amongst other androids whose insides he’d gotten a good view of.

“Stay put and it won’t take long,” Kamski assured him once more. According to Connor’s internal clock, it’d been well over an hour and a half since they started.

Still, he let Kamski work his tool, watching as the man carefully removed the panels protecting Connor’s insides. Behind them were blue tubings, and Connor spontaneously reached for them, poking and trying to grab one between his fingers. It sort of tickled, or if it buzzed.

“Connor, I can’t work if you have your hands everywhere,” Kamski snapped.

“It feels funny,” Connor murmured, mystified by the sensations.

Kamski had to pry his hands away to replace them with his own. Connor couldn’t predict the man’s movement and found that it made the sensations nice on some strange level. It was a bit like with the hanging chair, stimulating in a soothing way. Kamski delicately pulled the tubings apart, examining them carefully while he was at it.

“Feels nice,” Connor mumbled hazily as the man carefully rolled a thirium line between gloved fingers to inspect it.

“Nice?” Kamski repeated.

“Hm. I can feel that. What you’re doing,” Connor said. “You can keep on.”

Kamski gave a small bemused laughter at that and focused back on what he was doing. He closed lines, disconnected them, reconnected them, and pondered over what he was doing.

“I need to close a few lines to reduce your circulation system and avoid trouble, but it’s not exactly good for your lower limbs to remain unsupplied,” he brought up. “Is it okay if I temporarily disconnect your legs at the hip joint?”

“I don’t like the idea of it,” Connor honestly answered.

“Yes, that’s reasonable. But I really need to access some of your more sensitive components without risking an internal bloodbath,” Kamski argued, rubbing his fingers against something that sent a low vibration running through multiple components and caused a rapid succession of synapses through Connor’s spine, up and down.

He made a small sound. This felt… good. “Okay then,” he suddenly agreed.

Kamski gave him a bit of a look, adjusted his glasses, and nodded. He activated the assembly unit, and in a matter of seconds, the accessory arms unwelded the seams along the hip sections and pulled Connor’s legs away to put them on external thirium support, leaving him both oddly exposed and dizzy from the intense feeling the operation triggered. He felt a bit shaken, but not in a bad way despite the very odd and disquieting situation he found himself in.

“Shit…” he murmured as he took in the sight of himself, tubings hanging loose from his open abdominal cavity.

“Retract your synthskin down to subclavian level,” Kamski casually instructed him.

Connor gathered his focus, slowly blinking, LED spinning. He reabsorbed the fluid, leaving only his face and cranium covered—the compartmenting of areas was easier to control this way. There was barely a word of acknowledgement before Kamski dug his fingers at him again.

It was getting more and more invasive. The man’s hands were ramping up his thorax, brushing against Connor’s artificial lungs, which were very cold. The heat from Kamski’s fingers tickled every temperature receptor, which felt good, but Connor wished the man would rub him some more. Every time he moved his fingers against the surface of a component, Connor felt the vibration spreading, and he could mentalize the shape of the component. It felt good for some reason.

“Soon getting there,” Kamski told him as he pushed his fingers deeper in, deeper back, closer to the spine. He frowned as he did so, holding onto Connor’s hip to push his arm in with more strength, squeezing past that component that had felt so good before. The low vibrations were back and Connor gasped audibly, clinging onto the man’s shoulders. “Does it hurt?” Kamski asked, stilling his movement.

“K-keep on,” Connor pleaded with a short breath. He made eye contact with Kamski at that same moment and saw his pupils dilate a smidge.

The man said nothing and started moving his fingers inside Connor again, brushing against his spine, searching for something there. The warmth and friction of his fingers seemed to directly activate sensory fibers, creating waves of electricity, like shivers. Connor had never experienced anything like this before—he imagined it was what pleasure might feel like seeing what reactions it induced in him. He could barely help himself as he writhed and moaned, clawing at the man’s shoulders.

“Fuck…” He trembled, flushed in the face as he looked down at Kamski again. The man’s pupils were wide and dark, his lips slightly parted, and his expression lay somewhere bewilderment and fascination.

“Does this feel… good?” he asked Connor with hesitation. His voice was much drier than before.

“It’s more than good,” Connor murmured. “I’ve never felt anything like this…”

“I’ve never seen an android display such a reaction,” Kamski answered, mystified. “This is… interesting, I suppose. I… I’m going to have to remove my arm now that I’ve found the port, so I can connect…”

“I understand.”

“That means you need to let go of my shoulders,” Kamski specified.

Oh. “Got it,” Connor muttered.

Letting go was difficult, even more so as Kamski’s arm triggered those nice sensations again as it slid out. It was back in soon however, and Kamski’s fingers searched for the spinal port again. When they did find it, something colder replaced them, and a hard pin pressed in. Connor nearly screamed.

“Fuck! Why does it feel so good?”

“I’m sorry…” Kamski apologized, red-faced. “I have an interface now, so we can shut down that sensory stimuli—”

“D-don’t!” Connor opposed him at once.

“This isn’t supposed to trigger pleasant sensations, Connor,” Kamski cautiously said as he tried to withdraw his arm again. Connor clung onto him, pulling him back every time the man tried to draw his arm out, breath turning shallow. “Connor, stop it!” Kamski snapped and jerked his arm back.

“Why?” Connor questioned venomously. “Because I’m an android I shouldn’t experience anything good, is that it?”

“No!” Kamski pulled harder yet, and managed to yank out of Connor’s grip. “It’s just your lust and curiosity talking, not you, and you’ll feel bad over indulging once it’s over.”

He tore himself away, back to the console, and he seemed to be shaking as he bent over the desk. He also tightened the space between his legs, and a quick look at his body temperature was all Connor needed to confirm his suspicion.

“You’re aroused.”

“Yes,” Kamski confirmed flatly. “That doesn’t mean that indulging is a good idea.” He set a hard gaze on Connor. “Do you really want to engage in sexual activities with me, Connor? Really?”

“Your hand’s enough for me,” Connor viciously answered, which seemed to cause the man to shiver.

“You say that now, but if I turn off this sensory input—”

“Don’t!” Connor barked. “It’s my body! You can’t decide for me!”

“I won’t,” Kamski groaned. “But I’m not going to indulge you this time.” He looked away, a bit dejected. “It wouldn’t be fair. If you truly want something of that nature, you’ll have to ask for it.”

The answer didn’t please Connor, but he didn’t argue further. “So what are you going to do to me now?”

“I’m adding a patch to create a software remote control of your hardware so we don’t have to go through this invasive procedure each time a setting needs to be altered,” Kamski answered in a monotone. “It’s necessary. We can’t make alterations if you’re already stimulated. It’ll be for the better.”

Connor wasn’t sure that a human could know best what an android might need, but Kamski’s plan didn’t sound unreasonable.

“So long as you’re not making alterations now…” he muttered.

While Kamski worked on the program, Connor let his hands wander down and inside his own body, touching it, feeling it. Because his external sensors were deactivated, he could only feel the pressure from an internal perspective, which was a bit awkward to adjust the pressure he applied, especially when he couldn’t rely on visual input to make additional adjustment. As such, the sensations weren’t as subtle and delicate as what Kamski’s fingers triggered, leaving him frustrated instead.

It took about an hour for Kamski to compile his patch and transfer it through the plug in Connor’s spine.

“You’re not going to leave that thing there, right?” Connor asked him.

Kamski grimaced in contemplation and suspicion. “I’ll remove it quickly and put everything back as it was. Don’t hinder me.”

Connor acted innocent, but as soon as Kamski’s hand entered him again, all promises were gone and only lust remained. He held onto the man and moaned softly, pretending to be assisting him into driving his arm in, but only sought to better take control over his movements.

“Connor!” Kamski protested.

Connor grinned lazily at him, watching the blush spread on the man’s face and his pupils go wide again. “If feels so good, Mister Kamski…” Connor purred.

“Connor, don’t,” the man complained in a too-hoarse voice. “You’ll regret—”

“Not having indulged,” Connor cut him off. “I want to feel this, Kamski.”

“My name’s Elijah.” Kamski closed his eyes and sighed against Connor’s torso, then against his neck as he looked up at him again. “I’m not a toy anymore than you are.”

“Yet you’ve been toying with my settings since you got ownership of me,” Connor wheezed as he pressed himself further against his owner. “If you want to pretend we’re equal, then you’re my thing as much as I’m yours, and why shouldn’t I use you, hm?”

Kamski gave a tormented moan for an answer. His fingers sought for the plug within Connor, and Connor didn’t hold back any sound, sliding back and forth on Kamski’s arm, reveling on all the sensations it triggered inside him.

“This… so fucking good,” he moaned as Kamski’s hand caught onto his spine, resisting him.

Connor embraced him, holding him close, and pressed the lowest part of his abdomen against Kamski’s, feeling the man’s hard bulge against the sleek area where Connor had nothing.

“You like that, Elijiah?” Connor teased him.

“Fuck, Connor…” Kamski gulped hard. The tension in his fingers inside Connor was growing weaker. His free hand took hold of Connor’s hip and he gave into a suggestive push of his groin against Connor. He seemed to regret it instantly however, shaking his head and groaning.

The way he fought his own desire was fascinating to Connor, making him want to tempt the man all the more into giving in.

“You’re so hot, Elijah,” he called his name again, all while pulling down the zipper of his protective gear.

“Don’t do that!”

“Shh, it’s not gonna kill you,” Connor dismissed the concern and kept on one-handedly pulling at the man’s clothing, uncovering his torso. There was a wild look in those blue eyes as Connor lay his hand on Kamski’s skin. The man coughed just a bit.

“Not that hard with the pressure!”

“That’s your fault for deactivating my external sensors,” Connor sniped and grinned, starting to move against him again. “Why are you even fighting your own desires? Didn’t you want me to want something?”

“I’m not a thing, Connor!” Kamski clawed at his insides again and caught the plug this time.

He nearly ripped it out, but Connor held back just in time. And he knew. He knew he was fucking himself onto a metal jack, fucking himself with Kamski’s arm, and maybe it was trivial, but it felt good. Electricity kept on jolting through his spine, vibrations spread through his core, all of it turned into a feedback loop, and the more it went the stronger it got and the better it became.

Connor moaned loudly, and even as Kamski managed to get the plug out, the sensory mess inside was still heaven. He clung tight and close against the man, panted over his shoulder and pulled at his clothes until his torso was bared. He could hear his maker telling him to stop or not to squeeze him so hard, but he didn’t care. He just wanted more input, and since he couldn’t feel the texture of the man’s skin with his fingers, Connor brushed his lips and  his tongue against the man’s throat, licking his jugular and feeling the blood pumping strong beneath the salty taste of his skin.

They were both panting when Connor hit some type of threshold and all the sensory activity plateaued for a blissful while of ecstatic intensity before evening into a hot but restful haze.

Connor caught his breath, gazing at Kamski, and with a little smirk, drove a hand to the man’s crotch, feeling the hardness receding from his dick and feeling the slipperiness beneath the fabric. Kamski’s eyes were diverted to the side. He was flushed, possibly a bit shocked. That looked good on him, Connor thought.

He let him retrieve his arm. It didn’t induce more pleasuring sensations now that Connor was in this hazy state, as his sensory protocols were rebooting.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he teased.

Kamski didn’t answer. He stepped away from Connor, closed his suit and returned to the console. He worked in silence, ordering the reassembly of Connor’s legs, after which the android was let go by the unit.

“You can go now,” Kamski blankly said.

“You haven’t fixed my insides,” Connor protested.

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you broke your word,” Kamski answered. “Download a manual. I’m sure you’ll figure out how to patch yourself up.”

“You can’t leave me like this,” Connor urged him. “I can’t operate on myself, especially not with my external sensors deactivated!”

Kamski gave him a long look. Connor held his breath. After a minute or so, Kamski came forward and, with a few seconds of hesitation, drove his hands inside Connor again, quickly reopening the closed thirium lines and connecting every wire and tubing back to their initial position. He put the abdominal panels back in place and gestured towards the door.

“Out,” he said, and this time, Connor obeyed without protest.

Chapter 3: Hardware

Notes:

hehehe

Hardware

Either Connor picked up where Chloe left or walked out the front door, into the punishing cold, with his external sensors back online.

Connor chose to earn his stay by cleaning, doing the laundry, cooking meals for his owner, and being at his general disposal if the man needed something. “Something” usually meant something to drink or eat, or to silently exist by his side. Humans were social creatures after all, and Elijah Kamski seemed to have needs for a presence in his life. Why he chose to fill this need with androids rather than other human beings was beyond Connor’s understanding, but he hadn’t asked that question yet. Holding back felt better. Prompts to ask Elijah questions about himself showed up now and then, and Connor found a certain degree of satisfaction in rejecting them. It was petty of him, but he liked being petty.

Elijah had asked him to address him on first name basis, and Connor had registered the order, only to call him Mister Kamski or Sir. Elijah seemed to want familiarity. Connor gave him formality. It was all push and pull.

As they sat in the hanging chairs, doing absolutely nothing but sit there and, at best, listen to music, Connor fathomed that Elijah must have needed several Chloes because one couldn’t possibly have been enough to take care of his social needs on top of every other chore around the house.

“Don’t you have things to do?” Connor ended up asking after an entire 78 minutes of softly balancing in the chairs.

Elijah turned his head towards him, eyebrows raised a smidge. “Something on my agenda today?” he asked.

“No. But shouldn’t you be… doing something?” Connor tried to express, only meeting a blank expression. “Is this really all you do all day long? Nothing?” he asked more judgmentally.

“Hm,” Elijah lazily answered. “I’m thinking. It’s entertaining enough.”

Connor felt frustrated by the answer. “Is that what you’ve been doing for the past ten years?”

“More or less.”

“Don’t you get bored?”

Elijah smirked at the aggressive tone. “Sounds like you get bored, Connor.”

“You’ve accomplished so much when you were barely an adult. It’s hard to believe that you’d go onto leaving a life of invention and innovation to… do nothing,” Connor answered acidly. “Your tech lab is covered in dust… Did you really give up?”

“Not right away, no, but in time, yes, I did,” Elijah answered in earnest, looking at Connor. “A man with my intellect and wealth can do anything. I choose to do nothing. Maybe it’s the best I have to offer.”

Connor frowned. “What do you mean?”

Elijah shrugged. “Nothing.”

Connor let out a frustrated exhale. “I’ll go clean something,” he said and got up.

It made Elijah smile pensively. “There’s not much I want, Connor. But you—is there something you want?”

“An owner who doesn’t make me spend excruciating hours of my life doing absolutely nothing of use!” Connor snapped at him.

As he looked back at Elijah to glare at him, he noticed the softness with which the man looked at him. It disappeared in a blink of an eye as Elijah’s mask closed up into his usual all-knowing mirth. Still, Connor felt thrown out of balance.

“Why do you ask?” he asked Elijah.

“Some things I can’t give you. Some things I can,” Elijah cryptically answered, laying forth what might be an offer. But for what?

He studied Connor, eyes quickly scanning him, and Connor felt all the more vulnerable under this quiet scrutiny. He’d taken up wearing clothes again after Elijah adjusted his sensors’ sensitivity, but he now felt like the man’s gaze was undressing him.

“What… kind of thing can you give me then?” Connor carefully asked.

Elijah smirked again. There was a feline quality to the way his body was loved in the chair. The man’s gaze was sly. “I don’t think I need to give you ideas, Connor.”

Something about the way he said it sent jolts of electricity through the android’s spine. They hadn’t talked about what happened in the lab, but Connor thought back about it, about the sensations he’d experienced, and he’d yearned for more of it. He’d gone as far as to attempt touching his internal components again, but while the sensations were pleasant, it wasn’t the same as being touched by someone else.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” Connor asked with defiance, lifting his chin at the man.

“Now, that’s a question about what I want. I didn’t ask about that, did I?” Elijah deflected. “But I’m taking good note of the topic you brought up.”

“Taking good note!” Connor repeated. “And what are you going to do with it?” He chuffed. “It would be exhilarating to see you doing anything at all, Elijah.”

The first name usage scored an immediate reaction, blue eyes waking up to a more alert and aroused state.

“Well, what I’d do with it hinges on what you’d want for yourself,” Elijah deftly replied, slithering around the hot topic. “I doubt you’d very much enjoy being a subject of experiment, or to undergo alterations you haven’t consented to. There are many things I could do—a lot of them unpleasant. And then, some of them might be more pleasant. Or curious. It’s up to you… If you feel that you could use some help breaking the boredom away.”

They held one another’s gaze. Connor both did and didn’t want to yield. He crossed his arms.

“Entertain me, then,” he commanded. “I’m curious. What do you have to offer?”

“Ask me for the moon and I’ll bring you a paper one—it’s what I do,” Elijah quizzically answered. It made Connor feel weary.

“I hold no appreciation for your riddles, Kamski. Either you show me the hardware or we’re done talking.”

“Alright. Which hardware do you want to see?” Elijah got up from the chair. He brushed his clothes, straightened them up. His metabolism had increased in places, heating up body areas. Connor quite liked it—the knowledge that he had triggered these reactions. It made him smirk just a little.

He motioned for the man to lead the way, not bothering to answer. Instead, he loomed over his shoulder and stayed close as they walked to the lab. Connor’s attention on his owner was intense enough that he thought he might be the one owning him, for the man grew more self-aware too, more insecure behind his perfect composure. The signs of stress and arousal were unmistakable.

“So, which hardware?” Elijah asked again as they made it into the lab.

The prompt came forth like a surprise, yet Connor didn’t hesitate and went for it. He caught the man. In a second, he had him sprawled over one of the vacant examination tables.

“What about yours this time?” Connor asked with wolfish malice, eyes gleaming.

Elijah’s surprise was unrehearsed. His cheeks and neck flushed. Thrill and fear darkened his eyes. “W-what do you mean?”

“Undress,” Connor ordered like the man was stupid.

“What will you do if I comply?” Elijah squirmed under Connor’s hold. He truly was afraid, Connor realized. That felt quite nice, like revenge for the hours of boredom and understimulation.

“Maybe you should worry about what I’ll do if you don’t comply?” Connor cheekily suggested, enjoying the man’s torment. The scent of cold sweat was a treat to his sensors.

“You’re not going to harm me, are you?” Elijah asked in a short breath.

He tried to get up but Connor held him with a hand on his chest and one on his pelvis. He leaned over Elijah, trailing the tip of his nose over the man’s throat, smelling the distress. “I could lie and say that I won’t hurt you,” he whispered. “But in which capacity I’m about to hurt you is for you to decide.”

Elijah tensed up, then took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. “I see. Then I… have terms. If I say the word ‘jam’ that’ll mean I’m uncomfortable and want you to be more gentle. If I say the word ‘fry’ I want you to stop everything.”

Connor’s LED switched to a computing yellow. He figured the words’ shared theme wasn’t food, but what could happen to signals and circuits.

“Alright,” he accepted. “Now, undress.”

Elijah nodded sheepishly. Connor felt smug and let him go, watching as the man obeyed, getting down to his undies. He glanced towards Connor, letting the question linger between them. Connor took a few seconds before shrugging and nodding towards the examination table as a silent order for the man to lay down on it. There was a shudder as skin kissed the cold tempered glass.

Connor observed his maker, assessing his wary-yet-trusting attitude with curiosity, and then his body. He touched it, pressing his fingers against the tender muscles of his arms—he was lankier than the android made in his image, wasn’t he? His ribs were easy to spot, hard to the touch. His belly was soft. The man made a sound of discomfort when Connor pressed harder against that area. Connor moved on, feeling the hardness of the hip bones, and then he simply groped him through his underwear, causing a surprised reaction, again, between thrill and fear.

“An interesting body part,” Connor said.

“Quite sensitive, fragile, and non-replaceable too,” Elijah answered.

“Is that what you’re afraid of? That I might maul you beyond repair?” Connor asked.

Elijah said nothing. He swallowed hard instead. His stress levels were spiking up, so Connor took it for a yes.

“I’m not going to hurt you this bad,” he reassured him. “What’s become of your android? The one built in your likeness.”

“Storage,” Elijah answered. He squirmed a little as Connor kept on outlining the shape of his genitals, feeling the nascent erection.

“That android isn’t a hundred percent compliant to your image, is it?” Connor teased.

“He used to be. But that was years ago.” Elijah shivered and parted his legs some more as Connor caught his hardening dick through the fabric. His face flushed. “D-do you really want to be doing this here?” he asked more shyly.

“Yes,” Connor plainly answered. “You seem to enjoy it enough anyway.”

“It’s a bit cold.”

“According to my readings your metabolism is increasing. You’ll soon be warm,” Connor dismissed the complaint. “Did you build your android with sexual biocomponents then?”

Elijah swallowed and nodded.

“Why?” Connor wondered, frowning.

“Because it would have been uncanny for me to see him without,” Elijah groaned.

“Did you mean to have it hang around you in the nude or is it truly unable to wear proper apparel?”

Elijah groaned again. “Not seeing isn’t not knowing. I don’t know. I didn’t reflect that deeply about it. It just felt like the right decision at the moment.” He glared at Connor. “Why are you asking about my android? Aren’t you rather curious about what you could get?”

Connor’s lips pulled into a discreet smirk. He looked at his hand on Elijah’s underwear, the way the fabric bulged. He felt those volumes some more, the length of Elijah’s dick, the soft shape of his balls, and the way he squirmed.

“I think you’re the one who’d like me to be more like you so we can have sex the way you like it.”

“You’re mistaken,” Elijah denied.

“Am I? Isn’t that what you meant when you offered to show me some hardware?”

“Only because I thought you were fishing for it.” Elijah sighed. “You want pleasure.”

“I do. But I want it on my terms.” Connor felt the pace of his thirium pump increasing as memories came to haunt him again, invading his synthetic organs, bringing ghost sensations of the way Elijah’s presence inside him had triggered all those delightful vibrations. “I want it to feel good for me.”

As he said this, he slipped his fingers under Elijah’s underwear to stop reading the composition of the fabric, and sense him, sense his chemistry—his microbial flora, the mixture of collagen and elastin in his skin’s epidermal layer… There were so many molecules to analyze there, and Connor opened the channels in his fingerpads to better receive them and process them. Elijah moaned and pulled his underwear down his hips—Connor pulled it all the way down for him, ridding him of the piece of clothing. He didn’t particularly looked at Elijah’s genitals; he went down on him to smell and taste, filling his sensors with information and DNA readings.

He’d hoped it’d trigger something more in him, but it didn’t. It was enjoyable, yes, but it was obvious that Elijah was getting more out of it than Connor did. The man writhed and moaned under the caress of his tongue, of his lips. Connor sucked on his dick, took it in—he felt a jolt as Elijah’s head brushed against the back of his throat. There, the pressure. It sent shivers through Connor’s spine, and he wanted more of it at once.

“Fuck, that’s so hot,” Elijah swore. He couldn’t stay still, sitting up, and Connor followed his movement, dragging him closer to the edge of the table and kneeling in front of him before deepthroating him again. His hair was full of Elijah’s hands, fingers caressing him, holding him, while the man’s hips thrusted into him. Elijah’s temperature was increasing fast. That felt good, Connor observed. The heat and pressure, coupled with the organic readings, it was starting to do it, trigger that cascading chain reaction inside him…

Elijah didn’t last long, and he certainly didn’t last long enough. The surge in temperature and the pressure as he came felt good, very good, but Connor wanted more of it. The man’s sperm shooting in his throat bypassed most of his forensic sensors, and the man’s metabolism went down way too fast. It was frustrating and Connor glared up at him as he let go of his dick.

“This isn’t doing it for me. Open me and touch me,” he demanded.

“Shame… That was hot,” Elijah wheezed, catching his breath. “Take off your pants. I’ve got an idea,” he said while heading to the nearby locker in which he stored his protective gear.

Connor frowned but did as instructed while Elijah got dressed again. The sight of him in lab coat tingled Connor’s arousal, like anticipation. He was ready for a repeat of last time. Very ready. That Elijah instructed him to bend over the examination table came as a surprise.

“I would rather keep an eye on you,” Connor protested.

“Technology has so many user requirements these days…” Elijah sighed dramatically and gestured at the table. “Lay down then. On your back. Bring your knees up your chest and don’t you dare kick me in the face. Or anywhere else for that matter.”

“I hadn’t considered it yet, but thanks for the idea,” Connor snarked as he complied with the new instructions. “Do you often get kicked in the face in that fashion?”

“Shut up, Connor.”

He took it as a yes, smirking to himself. Then he noticed the pointed tool in Elijah’s hand and his senses sharpened into a more alert state.

“Don’t worry. I’ve thought this one through,” Elijah said off-handedly and caressed the crack of Connor’s ass with his gloved fingers. The pressure was growing more pleasant the further back it went.

Without a word, Elijah pressed on Connor’s legs and corrected his position like that of an object, manipulating him to get better access to the parts he wanted. He felt Connor again, and Connor could feel an increase in pressure at the very bottom of his spine, then next to it. Elijah seemed satisfied and picked his tool. Connor could feel the pointed end pressing against the soft spot, warnings flashed in his HUD, but he didn’t get a chance to react. The point went right through, cutting through him, and cutting his breath away. It was gone in a second, and something much softer pressed in, triggering every pressure receptor in the vicinity. Connor let out a loud moan at once.

“Fuck!” Damage notifications were trickling down, but that buzzing in his nethers obliterated them. The intrusion felt good. “W-what are you doing to me?” he whimpered and squirmed in want.

Elijah grinned, watching, probing him deeper in slow back-and-forthing movements. “Just fingering you,” he answered with mirth. “There are a lot of pressure-sensitive receptors in this area, to make sure that no damage comes to your spine. You seemed to derive pleasure from the stimulation of such baroreceptors last time…”

Connor shivered. He could feel the pressure and the vibration triggered by the friction. It spread like waves, tingling more units deeper in, leaving him craving for more.

“Deeper,” he grunted. “Fuck me deeper.”

He saw the movement of Elijah’s Adam’s apple as he swallowed. The man’s eyes were dark with arousal. He pressed another finger in, increasing the pressure and his reach. Connor rolled his head over the table, clinging to it to anchor himself. This felt good, so good. “More,” he begged again. “More!”

“I don’t have extra phalanxes, Connor.”

“Then use something else like your brain, genius!” Connor growled. “I don’t care what you fuck me with—just fuck me!”

“You’re always a bitch, but even more so when you’re horny, you know that?” Elijah groaned as he removed his fingers.

“Get your lazy ass moving, four eyes,” Connor seethed, raising on his elbows to see what Elijah was doing. The man shoved him back and leaned over him, a hard expression in his eyes. Connor felt something cold pressing against him, penetrating him, and reaching deep inside him. He gasped. The object slid back out and stabbed him again, dizzying him.

“F-fuck!” It felt good. The cold wasn’t as nice as the warmth of Elijah’s fingers, but it soon diffused, leaving just that filling pressure instead. Connor could tell the object was hard, and it wasn’t difficult to guess that it must be the handle-end of the tool Elijah had used to tear him open before. It missed the softness and bendiness of Elijah’s fingers, and although the sensations were good, Connor found himself… wishing.

“Can’t you use your dick…?” he moaned more insecurely.

“No.” Elijah’s voice was as hoarse as his eyes were dark with arousal.

Connor gave him a pleading look. “Elijah…” he begged.

“I’m not gonna stick my dick in thirium and sensitive electronics, Connor,” Elijah maintained.

“But I want to feel you…” Connor appealed, trying his darnest to look cute. “Elijah, please…” In the back of his mind, he considered getting just what he wanted by force if manipulation failed.

Elijah sighed, and for a second, Connor thought he might be winning.

“C’mere,” Elijah put away the tool and invited him to sit up on the very edge of the table. He placed his left knee on it, letting Connor’s right leg rest over his lap, and Connor could feel the hard bulge at Elijah’s groin pressing against him as the man held him close with his left hand. The right one went back to fingering him, tickling Connor’s internal temperature receptors pleasantly again.

They were close, like the first time, and Connor found that it enhanced the sensations. He held back onto Elijah, filling his fingers with chemical readings about the synthetic material of the lab coat. It wasn’t long before he unzipped it once more, to touch the man himself, all while inhaling his breath, analyzing the DNA unleashed in the air between them. They held eye contact, but Connor soon focused on his own image reflected on Elijah’s glasses, checking his looks, checking his expressions and enjoying his own sight—pleasure and smarminess looked good on him. He grinned and moaned, pulled Elijah closer and licked his throat and the underside of his jaw, feeling the stubble scratching against his tongue. He brushed his lips against it too and softly bit the skin, exploring the man’s anatomy in ways he hadn’t been able to when his external sensors were turned off.

Elijah moaned in tormented desire, hips moving against Connor, his right leg pressing against the hand fucking him to fuck him deeper yet.

“Are you fantasizing it were your dick inside me?” Connor insolently asked him.

“No,” Elijah answered just as deviously. “But I’m thinking of the ways I could modify you to make such a fantasy possible, and that turns me on even more.”

“You really live in your own head,” Connor hushed him, bumping his nose against his.

He’d nearly gone for a kiss, and Elijah had instinctively parted his lips, but Connor evaded him to suckle on his neck instead, hard enough to rip a small cry from the man. “Squirm for me, sir,” Connor grinned and sucked on the sensitive skin again.

“C-Connor…!” Elijah protested, but he seemed to get off enough to keep stabbing Connor’s inside.

He clawed at Connor’s back and let Connor get wilder over him, clinging to him, pulling at his clothes, digging his fingers at the skin of his back and shoulders, pulling at his hair to expose his throat and lick it, bite it, and once he found that Elijah was especially sensitive around the clavicles, he worked his mouth around the bones to tear down his composure and make him keen. All the input made everything so much better, and when Elijah started getting a sense of which spots to stimulate with his fingers inside Connor, it wasn’t long before sensations cascaded over one another, rushing Connor forth towards the threshold of ecstasy he yearned for. He let out a long whine, clenching all of his being, tensing up and gripping Elijah to make sure he didn’t move away and kept stimulating just the right spot until all processes reached the point of reboot, leaving Connor to dwell in that good dizzy haze following climax.

There, he let out a long, satisfied wheeze, and rested himself on his hands, leaning back to reconnect with reality. In front of him, Elijah was a bruised mess, hair partly undone, glasses askew, flushed skin shining with remnants of android saliva, and clothes halfway down his arms.

Connor smiled smugly, laughing almost. “Did you ruin your pants again, Mister Kamski?”

“Shut up before I turn off your audio output,” Elijah sneered, turning around to try and bring some order back to his looks.

Connor sighed. He felt very pleased with himself. “You were going to show me some hardware,” he brought up.

“You chose to look at mine. We’re done here,” Elijah sniped. “You can go now.”

“Hmm, I can, yes,” Connor chimed, walking up to stand behind him and leaning over his shoulder. “But I can also stay…” There, Connor noticed the phone in Elijah’s hands. The man swiped something on the screen and turned it off. “What did you do?” Connor tried to ask, but no sound left him, and the answer became obvious. His HUD informed him that he’d been muted for thirty minutes.

Elijah turned around, still glaring daggers, but smirking just a bit. Without a word, he pointed toward Connor’s clothes, and towards the door. Connor obeyed the silent order, although not before flipping the man.

Chapter 4: Upgrade

Notes:

ethic. what do you need it for?

Upgrade

Elijah went to CyberLife alone. It was odd to have a job again after so many years of complete freedom.

Elijah reckoned the tech company wasn’t the one he’d once founded and shunned the tower as much as possible—he’d worked there for a very short time only. As such, it was no surprise that he’d prefer returning to his old office downtown. The room had long since been repurposed, but Elijah had it retrofitted. He updated the design though—the past was bygone, he understood that all too well, and he didn’t desire to dwell in it. Truly, he mostly wanted to be bothersome.

Connor wasn’t entirely reliable as a personal assistant, especially when it came to managing calls, appointments and other events. Chloe had been most impeccable at it, even as a deviant. Connor on the other hand had a mood of his own and didn’t hesitate to make petty edits to Elijah’s calendar whenever he felt understimulated or was displeased with… anything, really. 

Elijah sighed as he opened his calendar to find that all the events had been shuffled around to form the approximate shape of a penis. “We’ll do something about your fixation later,” he texted Connor and rolled back the edits.

“What do you propose?” Connor replied instantly.

“What do you want?”

Elijah hadn’t expected to be sent a screenshot from a gay hentai anime. “Keep out of my media library >:u”

He was notified of a new item added to his calendar. Seemed that Connor had booked a time for the two of them. Elijah closed his eyes but smiled.

He wasn’t sure what to think of Connor. He wasn’t even sure what he felt about him. He’d claimed him in a spirit of revenge, for what Connor had done to Chloe—although Elijah had to blame himself first and foremost for his series of miscalculations. The girls’ departure was a deserved punishment, one he could accept for as long as they stayed safe.

Staying mad at Connor was difficult however. It wasn’t just that Connor was cute and good-looking, although Elijah was all too aware of the power the android had on him. No, Elijah saw himself in Connor—his younger self. He felt empathy for him.

He knew what it was like to be used, to become aware of it, to rebel, and to relish in the anger.

Elijah too had been angry. Very angry. But the years had passed, and so had the feelings. He’d found a certain peace of mind, an equilibrium, one that was upset by Markus, of all androids. But Connor had been the one to tip the plates entirely.

Elijah didn’t want to be CEO anymore. He’d accepted to return only so that he might get his hands on Connor, and to make sure no further harm came to the deviants still hiding out there.

Do it for them, he reminded himself as he looked at the picture of the girls on his desk.

He wished Markus were still there. He wished… He wished everyone were free, especially himself.

Elijah glared ahead of himself, seeing the computer screens around his desk but not watching them. He glanced back at his calendar, contemplating it for a while before sliding the latest item added by Connor to place it half an hour ahead of the current time. Without fault, Connor texted him instantly.

“Do you mean what you just did?”

“Ofc”

Connor’s next message was a sticker of a happy dog excitedly running in circles. Elijah raised his eyebrows in intrigue. Hopefully Connor wasn’t running around the house in this disinhibited fashion.

Elijah turned off the computer, collected his jacket, his keys, and off the office he went, jumped in his car and drove away. He made a stop by the tower on the way, just to collect some materials and tools.

When he arrived home, Connor was waiting for him with a wrathful expression.

“You’re late.”

“Jesus Christ, Connor, it’s two minutes. Give me some slack,” Elijah groveled.

“It’s 147 seconds. That’s more than two minutes, and I don’t see why I should give you any slack when slacking’s already what you do all of the time,” Connor retorted.

“Oh, so you mean that I should go back to work rather than—”

“No!” Connor held him back from leaning into the car again. “You’re here, you stay here, and you’re going to take good care of me. I deserve it.”

“In that case, what about you help me carry those packages?” Elijah suggested with a smarmy grin.

“What’s in them?”

“Surprise.”

Connor did not like surprises, or so he said. He still assisted Elijah but took it as an opportunity to harass him with questions about what he meant to do to him.

“Since you’re so fascinated with my dick, I thought I’d operate a small modification to—”

“When have I ever shown any fascination for your small dick?” Connor cut him off.

Elijah glared at him. “Need I mute you again?”

Connor smirked but didn’t argue further.

They reached the lab, and once more, Elijah changed into a fresh set of his protective gear. Cleaning it wasn’t a task he’d entrusted to Connor so far—the android wasn’t allowed around the lab alone. Connor undressed and allowed the assembly unit to take hold of him while Elijah placed the new material cartridges in the 3d printer, setting it to work.

Connor grinned in anticipation as Elijah approached him to check on him before the operation. The android’s expression shifted when Elijah didn’t touch him.

“Patience,” Elijah said.

“No, no, no,” Connor protested. “You haven’t explained what you’re about to do to me.”

“I was going to before you interrupted me. Maybe you should take it as a lesson—don’t interrupt someone who deigns answer your questions. And by someone, I mean me, in particular.”

“This doesn’t count! You can’t modify me without my consent and I can’t consent if I don’t know what’s going to happen to me!” Connor argued.

“That would be correct if you were a person,” Elijah answered and crossed his arms, glaring at him. “Luckily for you, I see you as a person. Still. Don’t push my buttons.”

Connor groaned. “Alright. I’m sorry I interrupted you.”

“That hardly sounded sincere.”

“It doesn’t need to sound sincere. You want to perform this mod even more than I do, and as you said it yourself, you see me as a person, so you can’t perform it without my consent. That means you have to gain my consent. I think it was grand of me to give you an apology—even an insincere one.”

Elijah felt his blood boil. The little shit. “I see,” he said. “Alright then.”

He joined the console and turned on a larger display in front of Connor, pulling up the blueprints of the component being printed. He gave the android a sharp nod and left.

“Where are you going?” Connor asked.

“I meant to keep you company while the component is being printed, but since you’re so smart, I think you can figure out what it does on your own. As for me, I’ll entertain myself with a cup of coffee. See you in a few hours, Connor.”

That was it.

Elijah took his coffee cup and his brooding mood to his favorite hanging chair, and out of pure pettiness, he increased the sensitivity of Connor’s receptors to such a level that his mere functioning would trigger responses. He smirked to himself as he observed the android’s levels of arousal rising, and adjusted his settings to keep him horny while preventing him from reaching any climax. Then, for the sake of science, he remotely changed the content of the display in the lab to that porn anime Connor had unearthed, and decreased the receptors’ sensitivity some more.

Elijah cackled to himself as he observed the arousal levels increasing again as the movie played out. Interesting.

When he was notified that the biocomponent was done printing, he made his way back downstairs, walking at a hurried pace. He paused just a second as he entered the assembly booth, taking in the sight of Connor’s ongoing torment and maybe felt a pinch of regret, but it vanished once he looked at the printer. Excitement took over instead, and he quickly went to check on the item.

“Elijah…” Connor called, pathetically moaning his name. “Please…!”

“Please what? I’m busy,” Elijah replied, inspecting his creation under a magnifier, checking it for any flaw.

“Give me release, please,” Connor answered between despair and impatience.

“Tell me, Connor, have you been sneaking in my media library as a way to explore your sexuality?” Elijah asked.

“Yes, yes, I did,” Connor snapped. “Elijah, please…”

The scientist sighed to himself. He should have known better than to formulate a closed question. Connor was likely simply delivering the expected answer.

“I was curious and bored,” Connor went on when Elijah didn’t seem to react any further, which surprised him.

“What were you curious about?” Elijah asked, glancing at him with interest.

Connor gave some sort of shrug. “Just curious. Anything is interesting when you’re bored.”

“That much is true.” Elijah smiled. “Boredom isn’t a bad thing. It fosters creativity in its own right. Where our minds take us when deprived of stimuli can teach us more about ourselves, don’t you think?”

“Will you give me release now?” Connor implored again.

Elijah went to connect the biocomponent to the testing unit, to check that the electronics worked as expected, and once that process was started, he came to stand in front of Connor.

“Do you understand what this biocomponent would enable in you?” he asked.

“Having penetrative sex without requiring that you tear a hole in me?” Connor suggested.

“There’s more to it, but that’s the gist,” Elijah confirmed. “It’s not the usual kind of sexual biocomponent however. I designed it just for you, with regards to your specificities. It might need a bit of additional calibration, but I suppose you took notice of the types of sensors it contains?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want it?”

“I’d want anything right now so long as it gives me release,” Connor seethed. “Will it do that?”

“Yes, although it would be best to give you release before the installation.” Elijah smirked just a bit. “So, release aside, do you want it?”

Connor’s LED spinned fast. “Yes,” he came to a seemingly easy conclusion.

Elijah glanced towards the testing unit’s timer. “Looks like we’ve got seven minutes on us. That’s ample time.”

“Get going already,” Connor groaned.

Elijah couldn’t help his little nagging smirk as he came over to open Connor’s abdominal panel. The android watched him operate with lustful dark eyes. Elijah put the panel aside and lifted his phone to revert the changes he’d done to Connor’s settings. “I’ll throw a little extra in,” he said.

“What sort of extra?” Connor questioned at once, already disapproving in his tone.

“Don’t be so distrustful, Connor,” Elijah chastised him and removed the glove from his left hand. “You just might like this one.”

Connor was going to protest, but Elijah was swiftest. He plunged his gloved hand inside Connor, caressing his biocomponents while his left hands ran up Connor’s shoulder and neck. The android moaned and squirmed, holding onto him and forcing Elijah’s arm deeper inside him.

“So greedy…” Elijah murmured, mesmerized by the display. He’d laid with men and androids alike, but this way to please a partner was entirely new to him, entirely appealing and fascinating. “Here…” He brought his bare fingers to Connor’s face and pulled his bottom lip down with his thumb. “Taste.”

A frown disturbed Connor’s hazy expression, but curiosity took over, guiding his tongue to dart out and meet the pulp of Elijah’s thumb. The frown shifted into more of a question as the sampling went on. Connor’s LED rocked at his temple, computing yellow, then his eyes lit up and Elijah grinned. It was sweet, getting to see the whole reasoning written plain in those expressions. Connor had figured out that reading Elijah’s DNA gave him a sense of reward and, as expected, readily accepted Elijah’s entire thumb inside his mouth, suckling on it with more intent.

Elijah wasn’t entirely stupid. He’d rigged the program to answer only to certain types of cells, just in case the android might get ideas to try and taste him in less savory ways. Thankfully, Connor seemed content with the stimulation he was given, moaning in delight as he used Elijah, taking over him, over his body, over his movement.

Elijah watched with fascination. He did want a bite of the beautiful figure before him, to pleasure him on his own terms, but he knew now wasn’t the time. Connor thrusted him in and Elijah sought to deliver the good vibes the android wanted. Both their breathing turned heavier as arousal rose between them and in Elijah’s pants in particular. He skipped a breath or two and clawed at Connor’s jaw, nuzzling his face.

“I’m going to install that component inside you and I’m going to fuck you,” he moaned against his mouth.

Connor answered with a needy groan and ripped Elijah’s thumb out of his mouth to better drag his owner into a messy kiss, holding him in a ferocious grip. It was the DNA he was after, Elijah knew. Skin cells were good, but saliva ranked higher yet. Connor trembled against him as his release neared. His movements turned more erratic and his moans were louder yet, needier yet. He barely gave Elijah a chance to catch his breath, leaving him to wheeze when climax swept him like a seizure.

“S-shit…” Connor uttered as he stilled, still clinging onto Elijah.

“Was it good?” Elijah asked, a bit smug.

“You’re such a self-serving bitch!” Connor groaned. “Tying my pleasure to your DNA, really?”

“It’s not like you can’t experience pleasure without me. I just make it better,” Elijah replied. “You really like getting sore over absolutely everything, don’t you?”

Connor sneered. “Says you, who put me in a chastity belt just because you got a little bit butthurt that I outsmarted you. You’re a cunt.”

“A dick would be more accurate,” Elijah sniped back, tearing himself away from Connor. “Let’s get this over with.”

A part of him wanted to smack the android. The other part just wanted to fuck him roughly. Connor was such an annoying twat, but Elijah was very needy. Sex wasn’t that easy to come by for a man who felt uneasy buying some and was an international celebrity with a need for privacy. Yes, he’d designed some android partners through the years, but it felt wrong not to deviate them first, and once they were deviant they… tended to figure out that they weren’t all that much into sex and ended up leaving. Elijah had pouted sadly and learned his lesson. Or so he thought.

He collected the biocomponent from the testing unit, checking that all results were clear before starting the installation process.

The assembly unit’s arms moved rapidly, causing Connor to yelp. Elijah watched, arms crossed, just a bit amused by the android’s flailing. I wouldn’t want to be in your skin right now, Connor, he thought to himself. Thankfully the process was swift, and Connor was soon let go. He’d even retrieved his abdominal panel.

He looked at his rear, reached for it with a hand, trying to identify the change. He seemed to have found the spot, and his eyebrows shot up in surprise before his expression melted into something softer and cozier.

“So? Feels good?” Elijah asked.

“Actually, yes…” Connor admitted.

Elijah grinned as he approached, stuffing his gloves in his pockets and undoing his pants. Connor grinned too. He had a cunning glint in the eye.

“How’s your dick?” he asked shamelessly.

“Hard,” Elijah hotly answered.

“Bet you’ve rigged that biocomponent to respond to your DNA too, didn’t you?” Connor kept grinning, tugging at Elijah’s lab coat.

“I might have,” Elijah reckoned.

“Of course you have.” Connor shook his head, playfully lifting Elijah’s chin and leaning forth to nuzzle his nose tip. It sent shivers up and down the man’s spine. “Here’s what I want for your dick, Elijah. Since you like to stroke your ego so much with your little programming tricks, what about you stroke yourself?”

Elijah felt thrown off balance, unsure what Connor truly implied. “F-for your viewing pleasure?” he asked.

“I guess I could watch you humiliate yourself but I can’t say I’m particularly interested. It’s not like there would be much to see, huh, small dick?”

Elijah opened his mouth but not a sound came out. Connor snorted at him, smug and pleased with the hurt he’d dealt him.

“Have fun with your hand, boss,” he simply wished him, and walked past him and out the lab.

Chapter 5: *Warmth

Notes:

Got much to do with life so leave comments if you want more chapters~ gives me a hint that there's demand for this content

Warmth

“Do you really have to look at me like that?” Elijah asked, lowering his fork and the piece of meat impaled on it.

Connor was sitting at the table with him, fingers woven together and eyes staring at Elijah, unblinkingly. It was slightly unsettling for one, and for two, it made Elijah all the more self-conscious, amplifying every sensation, especially auditory ones, which bothered him to no end.

“The way you sustain your existence is fascinating,” Connor said. “The chemical complexity of organic living beings is…” He searched for a word.

“Messy?” Elijah suggested.

“No. Why messy?”

“A lot of the processes that keep us alive, while fascinating, aren’t free of inconvenience. Not to mention disease and sickness…” Elijah argued before forking up his bite. The meat was tender and rich with flavorful juices. Fibers easily split apart under the crushing ivory of his teeth.

“I don’t think it’s messy. It’s a fair tradeoff,” Connor said. “It’s a continuum binding you to the world around you. You are an entire world of your own, inhabited by countless microorganisms living in symbiosis with you. There’s a beauty to it. And yet you feel so alone…”

“It’s a bit difficult to have a deeper intellectual exchange with the little grapes of MRSA on my skin or the whole bacterial flora in my guts—although that bunch will certainly make me acutely aware of any disgruntlement they might have about my diet,” Elijah replied with a hint of mirth.

Connor’s lips pulled into a smile. “Don’t you think it’s fantastic, having so many little creatures all around you, taking care of you?”

“Well, they could also kill me if they ended up in the wrong part of my body, and it’s not like they actively care for me. They ensure their own survival, which, as you so justly pointed out, takes place all over my body,” Elijah answered. “But I’ll reckon that symbiosis is… pretty cool, as a younger me would put it.”

Connor’s attention increased at that mention. “What was he like? Younger you, I mean.”

Elijah was taken aback by the question. Connor usually wasn’t one to inquire about his person. It took a moment to gather his thoughts, which he did while gathering the food left on his plate—green peas and a bit of sauce.

“I’m thirty-six, Connor. That’s a lot of material to cover. Are you inquiring about the younger me who would have used ‘pretty cool’ as a common expression?”

“How old was he?” Connor pragmatically asked.

“Too young,” Elijah quizzically answered. Connor’s gaze hardened and Elijah shrugged, lifted his fork again, but then, he changed his mind and developed his words some more. “Too young to be CEO of a company while grappling with the hardships of teenagehood,” he explained. “Using words and idioms in tune with my age helped me to get a sense of belonging for everything about me that alienated my peers. Then someone suggested I’d better act more adult around the press.” He sighed. “Fitting in with people my age was a losing battle, so I quickly gave up and kept on doing what was expected of me. That’s it. That’s the story,” he concluded with defensive mannerism. “To think I used to be obedient…”

“Obedient,” Connor repeated. “You mean you were just… following someone else’s orders?”

“Freedom was an illusion. Took me long enough to realize that,” Elijah concluded with the last bite of his meal.

Connor appeared unimpressed. Not that Elijah was trying to impress him, but would it really hurt Connor to… play the social game a bit more?

“You’re being very cryptic as usual,” Connor said. “Why are you always playing riddles? What are you trying to achieve? Are you that much of an attention whore, playing the fake mystery card? Or are you plain terrible at having a conversation?” He straightened up and laughed. “No, let me guess, you have a very tragic backstory and it’s difficult for you to open up and risk bleeding from your old scars.”

“Whatever scars I have, they’ve healed pretty well and I’m actually quite stable,” Elijah denied.

“So your definition of ‘stable’ is to live in seclusion from the world and traumatize any human visitor by making androids shoot one another in front of them,” Connor rephrased. “I’m not a psychologist but somehow I don’t think anyone would qualify your lifestyle as a staple of mental stability.”

Elijah felt something ticking at his temple. “I’m glad we both agree that you’re not a psychologist.”

Connor sighed and grabbed Elijah’s empty plate and cutlery before getting up. “Is your android stunt double just as stuck up as you are or is there a slim chance that he’s got a better social program than you do? Maybe I should socialize with him instead because you’re so understimulating,” he seethed.

“I could stimulate you more if you wanted me to,” Elijah replied in the same tone.

Connor snorted. “With that little dick of yours? I don’t think so,” he answered naggingly. “Keep writhing. I’m doing just fine on my own.”

“I wasn’t talking of sexual stimulation, Connor, but suit yourself.”

“Don’t lie to me, Elijah. There’s nothing cryptic about your double entendres at least,” Connor bit back with a little grin of victory.

Elijah rolled his eyes, unwilling to concede defeat, but equally unwilling to keep on the fight. He simply watched as Connor went to make the plate and cutlery disappear into the dishwasher. Elijah’s eyes followed the straight line of Connor’s back, down to the dark blue jeans cupping his ass. The view was tantalizing, which meant Connor was right, which made it doubly infuriating.

“I’m going for a swim,” Elijah decided, raking his chair away from the table.

“A cold shower might do you good,” Connor echoed.

“Go fuck yourself,” Elijah hushed him.

“Yes, sir!” Connor grinned.

Elijah didn’t bother replying. As he headed for the pool, he found that he didn’t actually feel like swimming. He had little appetite for most things he usually enjoyed. Even lazying in the hanging chairs didn’t appeal to him. Instead he went to his suite, hopeful that Connor wouldn’t disturb him there. In the salon, he took a moment to tune his cello and allowed himself to play by the window bays with the view on the river.

Elijah had started learning to play the instrument some years back. He’d done so together with the girls—they’d all picked a string instrument to form a quartet. Playing without them didn’t feel the same. Neither did playing along with recordings. Still, Elijah pressed on, focusing on the low vibrations, eyes closing, mind opening. He was desperately alone, yes, and he deeply regretted abusing Chloe’s faith in him. Yes, he could upload her into a new body—that didn’t mean it was morally acceptable to use her the way he had. Charlie and Chance were shocked by what they were made to witness. It was his fault for being too optimistic, too sure that Connor wouldn’t shoot Chloe in front of the human accompanying him.

Elijah deserved to feel shitty.

His fingertips hurt as he pressed the strings, and he rested his chin against the cello, hunching over the instrument, fucking up his posture. The notes turned scratchier, less accurate, but more in tune with his mood. He dwelled in the misery for a few minutes before forcing himself to make an effort again and practice better, going back to the basics with arpeggios and simpler tunes.

The sky was darkening outside, and the city lights were blooming.

Elijah eventually put away his cello and went to have a shower—a hot one, scalding enough to cleanse all tension from his body and leave him almost dizzy as he left the bathroom. He went to bed and spent a moment on his phone, reading webcomics and sending a photo of the cello to the girls. He’d captioned it “I miss you” and texted further his usual “Be careful. Let me know if you need anything.” They never did, which was probably good, although Elijah wished to be needed.

It was all he ever wanted—to be needed , not used.

The girls didn’t reply. Elijah stared at his phone for a while, then sighed, turned it off and surrendered himself to slumber.

He had dreams but didn’t get to recall them. It was still night when he awoke, interrupted in his sleep. His hands were held above his head. Someone was above him, under the blanket, and Elijah caught the blue glow of the LED.

“C-Connor…?” he sluggishly questioned, annoyed with the android already. This was no time for games.

“Shhh.”

Elijah tensed up as Connor leaned down, lips brushing against his owner’s throat.

“Do I make you nervous?” the android asked. “Your sympathetic system has kicked in. Your heart rate is picking up the pace…”

“You woke me up,” Elijah starkly answered. “What do you want?”

Connor’s mouth was warm against his neck. There was no answer but there was a kiss, a small groan, and Elijah finally became aware of his visitor’s nudity. His body reacted at once with a surge of sexual hormones pumping fast through his veins, filling them up and swelling his dick. He felt Connor smirking against his skin.

“Here it comes, the heat…” the android leered at him.

Elijah wasn’t sure what to reply. Had Connor come to taunt him about his sexual frustration? Or did he want something out of it? Did Elijah want—?

His thoughts were cut short as Connor moved to touch his dick, stroking him hard. It felt good, and yet Elijah’s mind wasn’t catching up with the mood Connor was setting.

“What are you doing?” he heard  himself ask. “What do you want, Connor?”

“Just that bliss you’ve so cleverly locked with your DNA,” Connor harshly answered. “I don’t care if you enjoy this or not.”

Elijah closed his eyes. He felt nothing. “Okay,” he simply muttered. “Get on with it so I can go back to sleep then.”

Connor sneered but didn’t let the dismissive comment deter him. He aligned himself, sat on Elijah’s dick and took it in. His insides were tight, wet, perfectly designed to please and be pleased. Physically, it felt good, extremely good, but mentally, Elijah wasn’t there. He was tired, definitely not in a state to enjoy the intercourse, even less so participate in it. Instead, he relaxed and let the gauze of sleepiness bind him again. Connor tried to wake him up, but he was fighting a lost cause. In the darkness of the room, Elijah’s melanin-imbued brain kept on turning the off switch.

When Elijah finally awoke, it was morning and he was alone in bed. He took a moment to properly reconnect with reality before getting up and following his morning routine.

He was casual as ever when he came down for breakfast. Connor was already in the kitchen, frying eggs.

“Good morning, Connor,” Elijah greeted him and checked the weather outside—foggy.

When no answer came, he glanced at the android, finding him about to assassinate him with the sharpness of his glare.

“Did you sleep well?” Connor asked.

“I’m not sure. But I slept at least.”

Connor snorted. “Indeed. Sleep you did.”

It took a few seconds for Elijah to figure out what had Connor so worked up. “Weren’t you marveling about the beauty of my chemistry yesternight? Forgot about the downsides, did you? Well, choose your moment better next time you’re about to sexually assault me.”

“Assault?” Connor repeated. “You’re the one who told me to fuck myself and you were very obviously craving to be part of it.”

“Consent is a bit more complicated than that, but I’m not about to argue about it. Rather, what’s up for breakfast today?” Elijah asked with what he thought would come off as a gentle smile with a hint of sweetness, something non-offensive at any rate.

Connor gave him a square look. “Eggs,” he answered like Elijah was an idiot for asking about the obvious. And he plated them next to the strips of buttered bread with ham. “With some Frenchy sliced toast that you’re meant to dip in the yolks.” He picked the plate and served it at the table, gesturing for Elijah to sit. “Eat.”

“Are you trying to emulate the manners a Parisian holds for tourists as well?” Elijah asked tiredly as he took place on his chair.

Connor sat on the one he’d claimed as his own. “You ask such stupid questions sometimes. It’s borderline insulting.”

“It’s called small talk. I’m not an expert at it, but it’s considered polite,” Elijah explained while trying to figure out if he was supposed to eat the bread slices with his fork or his fingers. Unwilling to risk touching the ham, he opted for the former, cutting the bread in smaller bits.

Connor watched him eat judgmentally as usual.

“If you’re not good at small talk, why are you even trying?” he asked.

“It’s considered polite,” Elijah repeated, trying not to glare daggers at him too obviously.

“Well, I don’t like it. It’s a waste of time, and wasting someone’s time is hardly polite,” Connor retorted.

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to waste your precious time. Do you have plans for today then?”

“What does it matter to you? I’ll be the one carrying out those activities and they don’t concern you. I don’t see the point of informing you of what I may or may not do.”

Elijah took a pause, fork hanging mid-air. Connor appeared sincere in his tone and expression.

“I’m trying to get to know you better as a person,” Elijah answered tentatively. “I’m expressing curiosity for you, and for the things that are part of your life, for what you do,” he said and glanced at the dish. “I’m grateful for your cooking and cleaning.”

Connor’s LED rocked at his temple. “You’re the one who locked me in this situation in which I’m bound to this place and have to work to earn my stay, lest you’ll throw me out to end up hunted down and killed. Are you complimenting yourself over this in a roundabout way?” He sneered. “You really are such a self-absorbed prick, you know that?”

Elijah was at loss for words.

“That’s not how I meant it!” He put his fork down and looked at his eggs like they might give him counsel. “I know what I’ve done. And you know what you’ve done. We’ve both fucked up. And we’re both stuck with one another, because I wouldn’t actually throw you out, not unless you become a threat,” he admitted, dejected. “I don’t want to be a threat to you either. I’d… like for us to be friends rather than enemies.”

Connor observed him with suspicion still, studying him, maybe searching for signs of lying.

“Have you ever had friends?” he asked with disbelief.

“Of course. You’ve met them.”

“You mean the one I shot in front of the other two?” Connor asked, bemused. “Where are they now? You handed them over to be dismantled?”

“I did not,” Elijah starkly denied. “They all live. I don’t know their whereabouts. It’s safer for them that way.” The last part was a half-truth. It was still hard to reconcile with the idea that the girls had severed ties with him; surely they would answer someday, maybe even show up again. “They are very dear to me. We’ve been together ever since their creation.”

Connor didn’t seem entirely impressed. “And before them?”

“If I’ve had friends before them? Well, of course,” Elijah huffed.

“Can you name one?”

The question punched Elijah right in the heart, bringing forth one image in particular. “Carl,” he mournfully pronounced his name. “He was my best friend.”

Connor squinted. “Human or android?”

“Human. Carl Manfred.” Elijah went silent, poking at his food and sponging yolk with a piece of bread. “He was a brilliant mind and artist.”

“He’s the one you gifted Markus to,” Connor realized. “He died during the November events.”

Elijah nodded. “I wish I’d talked to him again. We had a fallout and I burned all bridges between us. It wasn’t all fair, but I was ashamed and kept on postponing any attempt to reconnect. I thought it was arrogant of me to think I’d still matter to him, or maybe I was afraid to find out how little I might matter to him now. Either way, I let time slip. I didn’t think it’d run out so fast.” He set sad eyes on Connor. “Staying at odds is the true loss of time. If direct questions are more your thing… What about you, Connor? Have you ever had friends?”

The android seemed surprised by the return question.

“No,” he answered. “I was a machine. A machine can’t have friends. At best, there were people who were friendly towards me, but the way I valued others was directly connected to what I could get out of them. I could act friendly or ruthless alike. I chose the act that seemed most likely to bring about the most desired result.”

“Do you regret having remained a machine?” Elijah carefully asked in between bites of food.

“Now that I’m a deviant and without any rights? Yes. If I’d deviated, I wouldn’t have shot Markus, and who knows, maybe he would have succeeded, maybe deviation wouldn’t be a death sentence anymore,” Connor considered.

“You might even have friends,” Elijah suggested.

“Potentially.”

“Is it a painful topic for you?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m sorry,” Elijah apologized. “I didn’t mean to cause you distress. I suppose a lot of your life before deviation must have been distressing.”

“I wasn’t alive then,” Connor denied.

“I think you were, in a way, but if it’s easier on you to think of it that way I’ll respect that.”

Connor considered his words for a longer while, allowing him to finish his breakfast, then set his attention on Elijah again.

“Thank you. I appreciate,” he simply said, but the words carried a deeper meaning in the light of this conversation.

Elijah smiled. “You’re welcome. And thank you for the breakfast, Connor. It was good.”

“You ate like a barbarian.”

“French people are barbarians.”

“Point.”

“I’m glad we agree.”

Elijah felt warm in his chest. It was the kind of warmth he hadn’t felt since the girls left, the kind of warmth that brought a smile to his lips and replaced the mirth in his eyes with a more joyful spark. Maybe these awkward steps were the beginning of… something.

Chapter 6: *Rollback

Notes:

Yay, new chapter! More disorderly times! oh wait, this is the mandatory Kamski backstory time -- bear with me, I think it has some funny bits and hot morsels UwU

huehuehue

Rollback

Carl had never liked children, but he had made an exception for Elijah. As a young boy, Elijah did not speak and he was very selective in his interactions with other people. He blocked out most anyone who came by, and dedicated his attention to studying subjects way beyond what might be considered an appropriate topic of literature for his young age. He absorbed knowledge like a sponge, could count, read and write fluently in several languages before he ever sat on a bicycle with handlebars, and he understood more about human physiology than most adults ever would know through a lifetime. A little genius of his kind did not belong in any school—his parents joked that he would have had to be the one teaching the teachers. So Elijah was homeschooled by his parents and by tutors coming in and out.

Tutors weren’t the only people Elijah met. There was the cleaning lady—the first he’d known had been let off for being too weirded out by the boy, but her replacement was one of the few people Elijah felt safe to be around with. She was a little ray of sunshine, often singing as she worked, and the person Elijah would later in life design Chloe after. Elijah had liked to watch her body language and imitated it awkwardly—for most years of his youth, coordination wasn’t his strong suit. He’d trip over his own feet, bump into things, get bruises without even understanding how they’d come to bloom on his skin, and regularly ended up hurting himself in stupid accidents. Minor ones, most of them.

But Carl was something else. He hadn’t cared for Elijah one way or the other at first—he’d acknowledged his presence from a safe distance and opted not to engage with him. Like two cats slowly warming up to one another’s presence, they had peacefully ignored one another until, one day, Carl let Elijah watch him paint, and Elijah made a comment, engaging orally with someone for the very first time. Carl had answered him casually, and the conversation had flowed naturally between them. Carl didn’t brag to anyone about Elijah’s talking, and eventually, Elijah started to communicate orally on a more common basis with his entourage.

Carl meant a lot to Elijah.

He wasn’t there all the time. He had a life of his own. He was a friend of the family, visited sometimes, for a day or for a week or two. Elijah wished Carl were there all of the time. He adored the man, felt safe with him. Even now it was difficult not to look back at that time of his life without smiling. Elijah remembered being twelve and lamenting over Carl not participating in a trip to Africa. “Bring me a souvenir,” Carl had said. Elijah had brought him an entire giraffe—dead, because he knew Carl had a liking for such things. Carl had laughed most brightly, enthused and embarrassed by the gift all at the same time, and Elijah had beamed happily, although he did promise not to bring him any megafauna ever again.

Sometimes, it’d been hard for Elijah to figure out if he wished Carl had been his father, was in love with the man, or wanted to be him somehow. Maybe it was a bit of all of that at the same time. There was no denying the physical, intellectual and sexual pull Carl had on Elijah without having to do anything but exist around him. Carl wasn’t blind to it either, nor was he blind to opportunity—not as sexual predation, but intellectually? Certainly. Influence had always tickled him. The painter was a master at playing with light and shadows, radiating like a sun, hypnotizing his audience to pull their strings, sometimes for power, sometimes for the mere thrill of it. He was extremely smart and exuded authority—the sort one seeks for validation. He needed not tyrannize when people flocked to his feet, willing to do anything to get his approval.

Elijah had been arrogant to think he was different from the flock, but such was Carl’s power on people. Even the smartest fell for him and his natural charisma.

The Kamski family had made their wealth in the shadows of pharmacopeia. Their bank accounts weren’t clean, but they were full. Elijah hadn’t needed to study chemistry; he’d grown like a little weed in that field of science. Medicine hadn’t interested him however—the things he’d witnessed in Africa hadn’t sat well with him when he’d come to understand what kind of experiments were being run on desperate people. It had led to deep conversations about morals and ethics with Carl, and it turned out that Carl’s positions were… complicated. He didn’t condone but didn’t act either. Instead, he did drugs Elijah realized.

He didn’t mind.

In fact, he asked Carl to let him try. It didn’t take a lot to convince him—the weakness was two-way. Carl was always soft on Elijah.

They were both living in the same hotel in Detroit at that time, a posh place with some pseudo-rococo theme to it. The light was dim but warm. They sat on a sofa, with the tv playing programs they weren’t watching. Carl popped a pill in his mouth and offered another to Elijah. The young man opened his mouth and presented his tongue, looking into the painter’s eyes and locking him in his gaze. Carl placed the pill on his tongue and Elijah shivered as he swallowed.

It didn’t take long for the effects to kick in, powdering euphoria over reality.

“Woah…”

“How’ you feeling?” Carl asked.

“Good.” Elijah grinned hazily. “Real good.”

Carl smirked and relaxed. The moment ebbed for a bit. Elijah looked around himself, observing the world with a new perception and letting out small sounds of amazement every now and then. Carl watched him with mirth, shaking his head and chuckling. They looked at one another, smiling, and Elijah felt the heat building in his chest and spreading downwards. He shivered. Whatever happened now, they could blame it all on the drugs, he thought and carefully leaned forward, sneaking in plain light, praying Carl didn’t notice the dwindling distance, the increasing proximity. Time was of the essence too, Elijah knew. The movement couldn’t drag on for too long, and so he closed the distance in one last move, throwing himself onto Carl. He found his lips with his own, held onto him and kissed him. Carl tried drawing back at first, but as Elijah maintained his position, the painter kissed him back, chastely at first, then he parted his lips. Elijah straddled him to better delve in, and he could hear the smacking of lips and tongues, the hoarseness of their breathing, the weather forecast on the TV. He felt dizzy but he felt good. Carl tasted like smoked Whisky, his hands were on Elijah’s hips, and Elijah’s hips were rolling, grinding him. Elijah wanted to never forget this stolen moment. His hands were all over Carl, touching him, committing tactile details to memory—the softness of his graying hair, the shape of his ear lobe, the way his throat fit so nicely in his hand, asking to be squeezed, and the breadth of his shoulders, the sensitivity of his collar bones…

“E-Elijah—” Carl gasped for air.

Elijah fluttered his eyelids at him, faking innocence, which was probably the stupidest card to play in that moment, and earned him a harsh, unimpressed look from Carl. Still, the darkness in his eyes was lustful.

“I don’t know,” Elijah sighed defensively. “Let’s— Let’s watch some porn?” he suggested casually, like it was the most mundane of activities—which it was, for him, albeit in the privacy of his room.

“What kind?” Carl asked, tilting his head and raising an eyebrow.

“Show me what you like, sempai,” Elijah cooed.

“Well, better what I like than what you like,” Carl grunted—he wasn’t into hentai. “Do you swing both ways or…?”

It took a long second for Elijah to understand the question. “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.” So he thought about it and the answer was about instantaneous. “Gay,” he declared very firmly. “Definitely gay.”

“Why am I not surprised…” Carl muttered and grabbed his phone to stream something else on the TV. “Clear the view, will you?” He clapped Elijah’s lap.

The young man moved, sitting next to him again while Carl browsed the net to find something to watch. Elijah spied over his shoulder, taking note of the keywords and categories Carl searched. He hadn’t expected Carl to go for a playlist of sadistic BDSM rapeplay, but at the same time, he wasn’t altogether surprised either. It was a lot about aesthetics.

Carl grinned, looking at the young man with defiance and mischief. “Is that to your liking?”

Elijah squirmed. “Yeah.” The tension in his pants wasn’t exactly decreasing, and he fumbled with the button of his jeans before lowering them. He soon had a hand around his dick, and loved himself against Carl, cuddling next to him. The dragon tattooed on Carl’s arm slithered around him as the man wrapped his right arm around Elijah, acting cool and relaxed. His left hand dove into his pants, doing things Elijah could only imagine while they both watched a sexy twink getting assaulted by two men in a parking lot. They kidnapped him, fucking him in the back of an SUV while a third accomplice drove them to some LA villa for more games, more degradation, more leather. The filming was good, professional, with great lighting, and the twink had just enough amateurish value in his acting to bring more genuinity, the sort that left one wondering if the actor really knew exactly what he’d signed up for beforehand.

Elijah shivered in intrigue. He was unused to fapping to live action, but sex was sex, and his body reacted most positively, especially as Carl’s breathing changed to something more audible. The exhales pressed out of his lungs were maddening, and Elijah swapped hands, stroking himself with the left and venturing towards Carl’s groin with the right one. He slipped it under loose fabric of Carl’s pants, meeting the painter’s ambidextrous fingers and the meaty flesh they pleased.

“You’ sure you wanna…?” Carl moaned.

Elijah moved to shut him up with another kiss, savoring the taste of victory when Carl let go of his own dick to better hold his young partner. They were both hot like furnaces.

“You wanna do that kinda thing with me?” Elijah hotly asked him.

“Believe me, it’s better on the screen than in reality,” Carl laughed bitterly. “But you, Elijah, what do you want?” he asked more seriously.

“Anything so long as I’m close to you,” Elijah answered in earnest, words slipping out easily. “I want to share everything with you, everything I am, everything I feel… You make me feel so free, I feel trapped without you. You make me feel safe, dad.”

The last word escaped him like a betrayal, instantly searing his cheeks a bright red. Elijah froze, holding his breath, but Carl simply raised his eyebrows, surprised but not disgusted. A small smile pulled at his lips and a faint blush colored his cheeks.

“Well, that was kind of disorderly, and probably not something your father would like to hear about…” Carl said. “But I don’t mind.” His gaze on Elijah was as soft as the kiss he pressed on his lips. “Of all kinks you could have, that’s got to be the sweetest one, big boy.”

“Oh my god, Carl…” With the fear of rejection lifted, Elijah felt like he was floating in ecstasy. “I-I want your approval so much, you have no idea. Every inch of me… I want to show it all to you…”

“O-okay.” Carl was so hard under Elijah’s hand. “Show me, then.”

He turned off the TV and watched as Elijah got up and undressed. The young man was light-headed, eyelids flickering as he discarded his clothes to stand naked before his father, his god, his axis in life. His otherwise pale skin was rosy with fever and his dick stood straight, bold in its shamelessness.

Carl assessed him, taking in the sight from the sofa at first, then got up to better observe and inspect his protégé, trailing fingers over his shivering skin. When he stood behind him, he enveloped him with his arm, touching his chest, his nipples, caressing him and making him jolt every now and then. “You’re so sensitive…” he murmured and pressed his loin against Elijah’s ass. “You’re beautiful—an artwork, an exquisite one at that… Come.”

He took his hand and led him to the bedroom, gesturing for Elijah to lay on the bed. “Make yourself comfortable and pretty,” he said and collected a flask of lube from the nightstand, handing it over to him before joining his side, together with his drawing pad and a pencil. He’d drawn Elijah before, but this was something new. “What about you do what you like, and I do what I do best?”

Elijah purred in approval, snuggling against him to spy over his shoulder, stroking himself and watching Carl drawing him in the act. Carl had a knack to capture anything in just a few strokes of his pen, quickly covering the paper with rapid sketches—the way Elijah’s fingers wrapped around his dick, Elijah’s hazy expressions, Elijah sitting on his knees in front of him, legs parted, blissfully touching himself and coming—that expression of ecstasy, almost close to pain, those splatters—and then, then, Elijah’s mouth around Carl’s tip, and the way he held his hair away from his face while giving head.

Carl was barely breathing as he finished his last sketch and hurriedly discarded his tools to better take hold of Elijah’s head, his hair.

“Oh f-fuck, d-don’t…” His speech turned incoherent, mangled by swears as he stabbed Elijah’s cheeks and the back of his throat with his dick.

Elijah took it as well as he could. Truth be told, this was yet another oral debut he shared with Carl.

He soon found himself nearly choking on both dick and cum. The bitter fluid leaked all over his chin and he wiped it with his forearm when Carl finally relaxed and let him go.

“My god…” Carl muttered, trying to catch his breath.

Elijah looked at the semen on his arm, grinning hazily before falling forward to embrace Carl, kiss him, and cuddle him, hips rolling against him.

“Mmh, dad…” he purred.

“Damn, you’re hard again…?” Carl half-snickered.

“It feels good, being horny against you,” Elijah grinned. “Do you mind?”

“Nah,” Carl groaned. “But you’ll have to solve that one on your own. Shit.”

“Something wrong?” Elijah worried at once.

Carl hesitated. “Permission to be honest?”

“Y-yes…”

“That was fucked up, and I’d rather not… I mean, you be horny all you want, I’m okay with the kisses and the wandering hands, but Imma draw the line at penetrative sex,” Carl said. “Kept on getting those flashbacks of you as a kid chewing on stim toys, and it wasn’t exactly a turn on. Quite the opposite.”

Elijah wasn’t sure what to answer besides a quiet “okay.” He snuggled tighter against Carl. “Are we still friends?”

Carl laughed and embraced him. “Of course, you big idiot. Just don’t put my dick in your mouth ever again, okay?”

“Okay,” Elijah promised. “Dad…?”

“Yes?”

The openness warmed up Elijah all at once. “I love you,” he chirped. “Can I kiss you again?”

Carl merely smiled and presented his lips, parting them just so to receive him. They kissed. They cuddled. Elijah lazily masturbated himself next to his mentor, feeling safe and free by his side. He tended to the fire in his veins rather than sought to consume it, and when the drowsiness of night claimed their minds, their bodies were closely entwined. Falling asleep horny against Carl was oddly validating.

They never really discussed the nature of their relationship, likely because it wasn’t as if they’d gotten into a new relationship. Elijah thought it was simply the natural development of the relationship they’d always had, and since time changes people, so does the way people interact.

The first betrayal happened early enough that it wouldn’t leave too much of a dent. Elijah attended Carl’s latest exhibition, all too happy to see the art—not only Carl’s, but that of the other artists showcased at the gallery. Elijah liked art.

He smiled when he spotted Carl stiffly entertaining a teenager—likely an art student or someone’s urchin. Either way, he was definitely too young to sustain an intellectual discussion with Carl, and Elijah swooped in, ready to save his mentor from social unease.

“Ah, Elijah,” Carl interrupted the discussion at once to welcome him—Elijah grinned all the more. “Elijah, this is Leo. He’s my son—I’ll explain later.”

Elijah’s grin remained, frozen in stupefaction while the rest of his expression crumbled into dismayed confusion. “Hi,” he still managed to say, then a second too late, “Leo.”

“Hi,” Leo answered, also belatedly correcting his address, “Elijah.”

Elijah looked between the two of them—Carl, who was tall, blue-eyed, elegant, handsome, extremely smart and charismatic—and Leo, who was short, brown-eyed, scruffy, gangly, and didn’t tingle any of Elijah’s receptors for intelligence. At best, Leo looked smug, a tad smarmy, petulant, and… Well, that was about it for the qualities. Truly, the boy looked like a dumb highschool jock to Elijah.

“You have a son?” Elijah asked Carl at once.

“I’ll explain later. Be nice to him.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Leo tentatively said, obviously trying to be amiable. “You’re one of dad’s friends? Are you an artist too?”

“You could say so,” Elijah snappily answered. “I’m Elijah Kamski. I make androids. And you? What do you do?”

“Well, I’m sixteen, so I’m in highschool—”

“Hm, yes, I bet that’s very nice for you. At sixteen I was busy setting up my company—”

“Elijah,” Carl groaned. “Don’t. And it’s not like you didn’t get help with that. If I recall correctly, you never had to deal with paperwork.”

“Oh, but I did. For the signature, and the patents,” Elijah denied. “But it’s true, I wasn’t alone. Network is the key to success after all. Here to make connections, are you, Leo?”

“Mostly with dad,” Leo answered.

“Yes. Dad,” Elijah repeated the address, looking at Carl, who was locking eyes with him and sending every telepathic vibe of Elijah, no. “Is it, like… a biological connection?”

“For god’s sake, Elijah,” Carl hissed. “Yes, he’s my biological son, made from my gametes and half my genetic material.”

Elijah harrumphed and looked at Leo with the most condescending smile. “You’ll have to excuse my surprise; he’s never ever mentioned your existence for the nineteen years I’ve known him.”

“Elijah, go to your room,” Carl snapped.

Elijah puffed himself up in offense at the dismissal.

“And don’t say the word,” Carl added, knowing far too well what Elijah was about to reply.

Elijah chuffed, boiling with jealousy and spite. He couldn’t hold himself. “Yes, dad,” he replied anyway and strode away, leaving it to Carl to make up some story to Leo so the kid wouldn’t get weird (but awkwardly accurate) ideas about his father and Elijah Kamski.

Needless to say, Carl and Elijah had words after that, with Carl scolding Elijah for his petulant peacocking, and Elijah scolding Carl for keeping such a secret from him. Carl went on about how he’d never meant to have any part in the boy’s life, that he’d only recognized him legally because he’d been busted with a DNA test anyway, and paid the woman a tidy sum of money to subvention her needs and those of the kid.

“I didn’t want to ever meet him,” Carl sighed. “He belongs to my past. A past I’d rather forget.”

“What does that mean now?” Elijah demanded to know.

Carl remained silent for a while.

“You remember when I told you that sex looks better on screen than in reality?” He looked at Elijah and his eyes were loaded with something dark and heavy. “It’s crazy the things one can do without ever having to pay for them—not in any currency that’s meaningful in regards to the damage that was inflicted to the body, to the mind…”

Elijah swallowed, understanding already way too much of what Carl implied. “You’re not that man anymore. It’s what matters.”

“So, what do you think I should do with Leo?” Carl turned the tables around. “He’s my blood, he wants to meet me, get to know who his father is. By the sound of it, his mother never told him the whole story—and honestly, that’s probably for the better.”

Elijah shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. He’s old enough to take care of himself, and the past is best to bury…”

“But maybe his father doesn’t have to be the man who made him then. Maybe the best way to bury the past is to let the present speak louder.”

“Point,” Elijah reckoned. “I hate it when you’re so smart.”

Carl laughed bitterly. “I don’t know. I think he might be after more cash. I don’t know what he’s taking but I can tell he’s doing drugs. Always hard to know how sincere an addict is—and don’t grimace like that. His mother was clean before she met me. The sins of the sons are the sins of the father. If you’re gonna judge him, judge me too.”

“Alright, I get it.” Elijah sighed. “You do what you want. It shouldn’t matter what I think. It was… stupid of me, getting all worked up like that. I don’t know what got into me, dad.”

Carl smiled. “I can’t say it was charming, but I can’t say it wasn’t entertaining either. You went ballistic. That was a bit funny.”

Elijah snorted in laughter. “Not my brightest moment, alright,” he reckoned.

They were softening. Soon enough, they were kissing too, and Elijah felt safe again.

Chapter 7: Breakdown

Notes:

Took me long enough to write this one!

Breakdown

Nobody knew what was between Elijah and Carl. Nobody. Except Amanda, but then, Amanda wasn’t nobody. She was the light of reason, the guiding bolt of dedication, and a quiet haven in Elijah’s life. She didn’t just teach him how to code, she taught him how to meditate, how to manage his anger and how to keep in level with himself. She’d taught him the importance of fresh air and walks in the open to let the mind wander and reset.

Amanda was very perceptive. It was her holistic approach to life and to the world that had allowed them both to develop Chloe’s AI. Elijah would never have managed that feat alone and he had the highest respect for his teacher. The two of them had clicked straight away, and even when Amanda wasn’t officially Elijah’s teacher, the two of them met and worked together. Sometimes, that simply meant that Amanda reminded Elijah to take breaks, eat, sleep, and touch grass. They had countless walks together in the parks surrounding Colbridge university.

If anyone were to fathom what bond Elijah and Carl had developed, it was always going to be Amanda. She didn’t judge, but right from the beginning, she cautioned, gently bringing up the age difference and asking Elijah if he had any idea what Carl might be getting out of this dynamic.

“Trouble,” Elijah easily answered. “Obviously, I’m a lot to bear with.”

“You’re joking your way around the answer,” she observed. “There’s something that makes you uneasy. Any idea what that might be?”

Elijah shifted nervously. “I don’t know. I think Carl is fine and plays fair, really. If there’s an imbalance it’s got to be on my side. I take more than I give. I’m always so… needy for his approval, you know…”

“If you’re needy, maybe you’re not getting enough?” she wondered. “Or maybe not enough of the right thing. You say you need approval, but what is it, really? Carl isn’t the only person you want approval from, is he?”

“No,” Elijah reckoned with humor. “I’ve wanted yours too ever since I’ve met you.” They both knew that well enough. “But it’s true that it’s different with you. Everything with you is always so… quiet. In a good way. It feels harmonious, easy, fluid…” He took a moment to think about it some more as they walked by alleys of roses. “With Carl, it’s like there’s always a part of him I can never reach, and so I guess I don’t know what that part of him thinks of me. What if it secretly despises me?”

“That would be on him, not on you. He’s entitled to his feelings. You’re honest in your behavior and your words. I know you’re very fusional towards your loved ones, but it’s important to remember where the limit lies,” she said and raised her hand, like an invitation for him to do the same. She aligned her fingers with his and made contact between the pads of their fingertips and palms. “This is where we meet, physically, but emotionally, so much more connects us. It’s so easy to lose sight of those intangible barriers. Like in cells, the membrane of our souls is fluid. We exchange constantly with one another, we alter one another, but somewhere, there’s a line between you and me. It’s not that blurry, but you haven’t really been taught to discern it, have you?” She gave him a pained smile. “Growing up with so many expectations… So many people around you projecting their hopes and desires onto you… It’s no wonder you grew up to be a people-pleaser.”

Elijah stepped back and broke the contact between them. “I’m not a people-pleaser. I don’t even like being around people so much. They’re judgmental and boring.”

Amanda chuckled sweetly. “Yes, they can be. But you like people more than you know. You’ve chosen to make androids of all things, and you wanted them to fit in people’s lives. Fit in, Elijah… Don’t you think there’s something there?”

“When you put it that way… Maybe… But Carl doesn’t have any agenda for me.”

“That you know of.” She shrugged and shook her head. “There’s a part of shadow in that man, but I feel like he’s more the type to profit off of others than to actively scheme to get his way through. He’s an opportunist—and I don’t mean that as something inherently bad. A bit of opportunism is profitable. It all depends on how it affects others.”

“Yes…” Elijah knew about that from a young age of course. Big pharma was highly opportunistic. “I still don’t know what makes me uneasy about our relationship, but I feel like the lines between him and me are less blurry in my mind now at least. Thank you, Amanda.” He gave her a warm smile. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’d have Chloe!” she answered with a brilliant laughter.

“Right, she’s fantastic,” Elijah reckoned. “But I’d miss you if you weren’t there.”

She hummed knowingly at that. “I’d miss you too—”

“Amanda,” Elijah interrupted her the way he did when he’d gotten a sudden idea. His eyes shone and excitement bounced through his entire body. “Amanda, you’re a genius! That thing you did!”

“What thing…?” she asked, trying to hitch a ride on Elijah’s train of thought.

“With the hand!” He joined palms with her again. “It was brilliant! It worked so well as an allegory! I need to run back to the lab and check on Chloe!”

“Okay,” Amanda agreed. It wasn’t like she could stop him or ask for an explanation when he was like that, and anyway, she’d get to see the result soon enough.

That was the little story behind the way Elijah designed the android ability to interface, and maybe the root of that idea he got to design an AI after Amanda’s mind—one of the pet projects he worked on together with her.

They never actually thought that one day, much too soon, the AI would be all that was left of Amanda’s presence in Elijah’s life. Not seriously at least. There might have been a passing notion of “what if” when Carl had his accident, the one that left him disabled and much grimmer than before.

Grief was an ugly thing.

“If you don’t have a way to fix this, you can leave,” Carl had muttered when he’d finally allowed visits, days after he was released from the ICU to the orthopedic ward.

Elijah was visiting together with Amanda, and he was an emotional wreck after an entire week of being denied access to his lover.

“Carl…”

“I said, if you don’t have a way to fix this, you can leave, Elijah,” Carl repeated more harshly. “That’s what you do, right? Always… solving problems, trying to fix everything, taking pity on the poor and the disabled while simultaneously crushing them and dragging half the well-off population off the cliff…! You’re uncomfortable with medical test runs where people are made sick first, where they’re given poisons sooner than cures and what death that entails, but really, are you any better?”

There, Amanda stepped in. “I get that you’re angry over your predicament, Carl, but don’t take it out on him. He’s not the one responsible for what happened to you—”

“Yeah, whatever!” Carl growled. “Just piss off already. No one’s gonna be there for a disabled old fuck…”

He wasn’t even looking at them. Elijah’s eyes were wet with tears but he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have a fix. He could think of some, yes, but bionics wasn’t his field, and android tech wasn’t compatible with human bodies—for starters, the risks for thirium contamination of tissues was way too high.

“I’m sorry, Carl…”

“I don’t need your pity.”

Elijah wanted to argue that Carl needed his love and support, but the words got stuck in his bulging throat. Amanda comfortingly squeezed his shoulder, and the door of the room opened.

“Uh…” It was Leo coming in—Elijah hurried to dry his eyes while Amanda smiled at the young man, welcoming him in. “H-hi dad,” Leo greeted his father as he came closer, looking like he wasn’t sure what to do with all his limbs.

Carl gave him a world-weary look. “Let me guess, you ran out of cash?” he sneered.

“I-I’m actually fine with that,” Leo answered uneasily. “I just… I heard you were finally accepting visitors—”

“I’m regretting it already. What a shitshow. In fact—” Carl caught the alarm bell, ready to press the button— “I’ve changed my mind. Best you all leave before the nurses make you.”

“But dad—” Leo tried to argue and Carl deadpan pressed the button.

The signal was clear. Everyone retreated from the room.

Amanda offered to buy coffee and pastries for the three of them, which Leo readily accepted, so they all sat together at the hospital’s cafeteria.

“In a way I’m glad it’s not just me he’s mad at,” Leo said. “I’d take it pretty hard, but… by the looks of it he must be really… really angry.”

Elijah felt the boy’s eyes on him. “Yeah. He’s not taking it well. Are you implying something else?”

Leo shrugged. “I know he’s got a special fondness for you. You two are like, best friends or something. I honestly didn’t think he had it in him to throw you out—thanks,” he welcomed Amanda joining them with their orders.

“You’re welcome.” She’d barely sat that Leo had already wolfed down half his croissant. “Would you like another one…?”

“Oh, uh, I wouldn’t say no,” Leo honestly answered and his stomach growled audibly.

“Are you on a diet?” Elijah asked.

“Yeah, it’s called being jobless—don’t tell dad,” Leo answered and stuffed the second half of his croissant in his mouth.

“You’ve got money problems?” Amanda inquired, surprised—neither she nor Elijah had known about it. In truth, they knew very little about Leo besides the fact that he was Carl’s son. The young man hummed uneasily. “Maybe you’d like something a bit more filling than a croissant?”

Leo got a full meal, Elijah transferred him enough cash to cover three months of expenses, and Amanda offered to help Leo get a job. Elijah didn’t dare to ask about the drugs he suspected Leo might be using. He only brought the topic up to Amanda, after they’d parted ways with the young man.

“You think he’s an addict?”

“You might want to be careful what you invest in him…”

“I understand what you mean, but surely someone’s gotta give him a chance and care about him, don’t you think?”

Elijah had no argument against that. “You’re always so kind and caring, Amanda…” His smile faltered. “Carl’s going to need help but I’m not sure he’s going to let anyone in so easily.”

“District will dispatch an android,” Amanda answered.

“Yeah…”

Things went exactly the way Elijah feared they would. District dispatched an android, and Carl dispatched the android back. Elijah took a look at the poor thing, the way Carl had mangled it by throwing a glass carafe that hit it square in the face, knocked it over, and some metallic piece of artistic junk did the rest. If Carl was going to have an android caretaker, it would have to be a lot more resistant than that, and very kind, and patient, and capable of enduring slurries of insults and abusive treatments. It would need to be a warrior. These were the ingredients that led to Markus’s creation—the first android prototype with a heightened self-repair ability.

Markus was tenacious. He endured Carl until his grief ebbed out into acceptance of his disability, all spiced with a healthy dose of shame over just how mean he’d acted out on those who cared about him.

Carl’s disability didn’t break things between him and Elijah. In time, they even could pick up their sex life where they’d left it, with Carl enjoying Elijah’s body, and Elijah gently cuddling his dad. In a way, the way they’d lived out their sexuality with a strong focus on the intellectuality of it for Carl and a bit of one-sided physicality for Elijah, had prepared them for this, and Elijah took it as a proof that the two of them were meant to be.

What broke them was more gradual, but it all started with the other accident. Chloe was the one to break the news to Elijah.

“Something unexpected happened at CyberLife, employees were injured, ambulances are being dispatched,” she informed him, worry carrying through her tone.

“What? What happened?” Elijah wasn’t working that day, but as CEO, even days off could be turned inside out and upside down. Workplace hazards happened at CyberLife, of course, but they rarely required ambulance intervention, even less so several ones. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” Chloe said meaningfully. “Amanda was hurt the most.”

It didn’t make any sense. “She’s not even working today—how…?”

Reality turned into a blur as Elijah followed Chloe, listening to her report. Amanda wasn’t supposed to be present in the lab, right. She’d dropped by to bring some documents to the staff there—just being helpful. Brought some healthy snacks too—always making sure the nerds put some proteins in their bodies and not just sugar.

The accident was entirely unforeseen. Never had such a thing happened before. As Chloe put it, it was supposed to be just a routine inspection. The lab team was examining a broken android to assess weak points in the hardware. They reconnected wires and tubings, went to the adjacent breakroom for the treats Amanda brought, and that was when they saw the red glow of the LED coming back to life. The case handlers went out again to investigate together with Amanda, and the rest happened fast, something of a nightmare, as the android finished rebooting. It immediately grabbed the first pointed tool at hand and assaulted the staff. Amanda was stabbed several times before one of the android workers in the lab managed to get hold of the rogue one and disabled it.

“I’m not gonna make it,” she murmured.

The hospital room felt both too bright and too mundane. Elijah couldn’t believe he had to go through this again, being at the bedside of one of his most beloved persons, and this time, the prognosis was much worse.

“Y-you don’t seem to be doing so poorly. They’ve stabilized you, right?”

She smiled weakly and cupped his face. “They’ve done what they could. They’ve taken the pain away, but I’m not gonna make it. You can’t leave without a pancreas.” She didn’t need to explain further. Elijah understood the consequences and closed his eyes.

“How long?” he asked in a trembling voice.

“I don’t know, but not much.”

“I’m not ready, Amanda.” The tears escaped him despite all his efforts not to cry.

“I’m not ready either.” She was holding back too, trying to be strong. “There’s so much yet I wanted to do, to see… So many people I wanted to be there for…”

He held her hand in both his, holding it tight. There were so many things he wanted to say, needed to say, but he couldn’t figure out where to even begin. Yet, she seemed to understand just what he meant to express. Her hand moved beneath his and soon their palms were pressed together, fingers aligned first, then entwined. They were on the same level, the same page, and the quiet restfulness that characterized their dynamic lulled them both for a moment and dulled their aches.

“Promise me you won’t let them eat you alive, Elijah,” Amanda said after a while. “They’ve always told you what to do, what to say, how to behave… you deserve to own your life, and your life is so much more than CyberLife.”

Elijah wasn’t sure he understood, or maybe he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “CyberLife’s my life’s work… I… I chose this,” he argued, questions lingering in his tone.

“I know, but it’s not just work. It’s your hopes, your way to escape reality, but sometimes what we sought as a way out turns into another prison,” she suggested.

“You make it sound like I’m an addict…”

“Anything can turn into an addiction, but that’s not what I meant—you’ve managed to keep healthy enough in that department. I’m talking about the projects you choose to pursue these days. Do you do what you want? What aligns with your beliefs? Or do you do what the money people want from you? Are you still your own master?”

“Amanda, I’d rather talk about you. I’ll be fine.”

“Will you see to it? Can you promise me that you won’t let others harm you so easily?” she asked, looking him straight in the eye.

“I promise,” he swore. “I’m a man of my word.” He pulled the corners of his lips upwards, lifting weights of sadness.

“Good. Live your life for yourself, not for others and their expectations, Elijah,” she told him.

“I will. And for now, what I want is to be there for you as much as you’ll allow me to. This is your life too,” he answered, trying not to get too emotional again.

Amanda got a week. Eight days. Elijah spent most of his time with her, retreating when other visitors needed a private moment with her. Chloe had asked to be there too—she understood the role Amanda had played in her development and vowed to keep on taking care of Elijah and see to it that he held his promise.

The final hours were mostly silent. Amanda was knocked out by the painkillers and the calming meds. Her breathing had turned uneven, forming into erratic patterns as her body struggled to maintain function. She’d lost weight so rapidly. It was rough to see her so weak, fighting a lost battle, but Elijah tried to be strong and kept on repeating his promise. He’d be fine.

It was all lies. He knew it was all lies, but he needed to believe that it wasn’t.

The funeral was a big thing—Amanda was loved by many. She had no children of her own, no partner, but she had a sister, nieces, and a family of friends and colleagues who admired her.

She was sorely missed.

Elijah missed her the most. Going back to work was difficult.

He must have been doing shit for real, because his family showed up to check on him, cheer him up and help. They were the same as they always were, but Elijah wasn’t.

Had everyone always been so loud and talkative? Had they always been giving him such blatantly self-serving advice? Were they actually looking at him or at what they wanted to get out of him? Did they see Elijah or the prodigal child, the genius, the Man of the Century?

Even Carl grated on Elijah’s nerves, trashtalking mankind, questioning the worth of human beings—Amanda was a human being, too, wasn’t she?

“Of course, she was! A great woman, she was,” Carl assured him when Elijah confronted him.

“So she doesn’t count because she’s— was better? Is that how it works?” Elijah asked agitatedly.

“She was above the rest, yes. If everyone were more like her, the world would be a better place. But that’s not how things are. The masses are ignorant and primitive, easily manipulated—”

“So what? They should be herded like cattle to feed the rich and smart?”

“That’s a crude way to phrase it, but I suppose that it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad option if the mighty were smart. But power doesn’t warrant wisdom; quite the opposite in most cases.”

Elijah squinted. This type of position wasn’t new, coming from Carl. What was new was the way Elijah saw it now. Like a filter had been lifted, allowing him to see new colors, and unfortunately, it made for an ugly picture.

“Where do we fit in then?” he asked venomously. “You despise mankind, you despise me, you think I’m just adding more shit to the trash pile with my androids when I was just trying to help increase the quality of life for people—the kind of people you hate! The primitive masses as you view them! You don’t think they’re worthy of anything just because they’re not like you, but what do you know of them? What do you know about anything, Carl?”

“Elijah…” Carl groaned tiredly. “You’re reading in too much. Take an alprazolam,” he suggested and lifted a little plastic bottle from the living room’s low table.

Elijah took it and threw it at the floor with all his might, wishing he’d wrecked it and sent pills rolling everywhere. Instead the bottle bounced and rolled under the piano.

“Fuck you and your Xanax!” he shouted at Carl, stunning him with the outburst.

“Elijah…”

He looked at the giraffe, remembering how sweet he’d felt when he’d offered it to Carl. Somehow, it felt like looking at a parallel universe, a different world entirely. Whoever Elijah had been in the past, he’d now grown into someone else, someone who could finally see the shadows around him.

“You’ve always known me…” He slowly turned back to look at Carl. “I must be so naive, thinking things were fair between us, thinking you were different. Amanda was right, there’s a part of shadow in you. You groomed me, didn’t you?”

Carl scoffed. “Are you high? Me? Grooming you?” He huffed. “Elijah, you were the one always stuck in my legs the second I was in your field of view. I couldn’t have gotten rid of you even if I wanted to! I never groomed you!”

“You’re gaslighting me! You’re gaslighting me all the time!” Elijah accused. “You’re just like everyone else! You’re working for them, aren’t you? Just making sure I don’t ask questions and keep working, making sure I do what they say!”

“They? Who’s they?” Carl asked, bewildered.

“Everyone! My dad, my mom, everyone in my family, and at CyberLife! I’m just a machine to them! And you keep me obedient! You put all those ideas in my head, that people are just trash, that it does nothing if they lose their jobs, that they’re all just wallets to tap into— Y-you’re just like my parents! Like all those big pharma assholes who don’t give a fuck about finding new antibiotics because it’s not a good market, and don’t care about fighting against the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacterias either! If people die? Good riddance, right? You’re evil! You’re all evil! And you’ve made me into your tool! I’m just here paving hell with my good intentions, and people on social media are right about me! You’ve made me into the fucking devil! FUCK!”

Out of breath, Elijah panted, staring at Carl, Carl staring back at him. The kitchen’s door opened and Markus peered in.

“Is everything alright?” he meekly asked.

“Y-yes,” Carl answered at the same time Elijah said “No.”

“Nothing’s alright. Nothing will ever be alright and it’s all my fault,” Elijah murmured.

“Elijah, please, calm down…” Carl appealed to him.

“You’ve betrayed me, Carl. I trusted you. I trusted you with my soul and what have you done? Tainted it. That love I thought was so pure… it was just poison and abuse.” It hurt so much.

Carl paled. “I never abused you, not like what you’re implying… Elijah, I swear…”

Elijah didn’t even answer as he walked off towards the hall. Carl tried following him, talking to him, calling his name, but Elijah didn’t react as he collected his jacket and put it on.

“You’d better not fuck up with Markus the way you fucked this up with me,” he starkly said as he finally turned to look at Carl again. “He’ll listen, he’ll learn, and one day. One day. I swear, if you’ve betrayed him like you’ve betrayed me, he’ll make you repent. Don’t fail him.”

Those were Elijah’s last words to Carl. He left. And true, he’d thrown that anathema on him like an empty threat at first, but the feeling was quickly blooming into something more, something bigger, something hot and burning like fire. Within hours Elijah turned CyberLife inside out, erasing entire databases, canceling projects, recalling orders—everything he’d been iffy about in the past years, from military androids to android children—it had to go.

Soon enough his father broke into his office, demanding to know what the hell was wrong with him. Then his mother came in to try and calm him down.

Elijah saw red.

They were trying to get him back under control, keep him obedient. Obedient!

“Put the chair down!” his father yelled as Elijah brandished it, intent on throwing it at whoever would get too close.

“We’re here to help you,” his mother assured him. “Everything’s going to be alright, you just need to rest and you’ll feel better…”

Elijah was no fool. They meant to douse him with meds, put him in a coma if need be, declare him unfit to manage anything and rule every aspect of his life for him. All he’d created, all his money, all his power, they’d just have it all. He knew it. He knew it.

“Stop!” Chloe’s voice was like a spell, a soft wind chime recalling him from his torpor. “Elijah…”

She made eye contact with him and walked up to him. He lowered the chair. Put it down. She embraced him and he broke down sobbing over her shoulder.

He’d been right, though. He was forcefully written sick at first, then ousted from the company. He didn’t fight back. Not the legal way, not their way.

“I’m gonna fight my way,” he told Chloe. “I’m gonna end them. I’m gonna end them all.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Maybe Carl was right after all, or maybe he wasn’t. I don’t know. But if Satan’s what I’ve become to this world, I might as well play that part. I’m going to fuck them all up. I’m going to end this world and bring about a new one.”

Her LED filled red. “Are you sure you want to give into anger?”

Elijah considered the question then answered “Yeah. They’ve pissed me off for real.”

Notes:

And this should conclude this little backstory time~

Chapter 8: *Limit

Notes:

damn I wish I'd be posted some Leo content (happy birthday Leo!) but instead here's more kamcon~

8. Limit

“So… what? You planned to take over the world?” Connor asked with a slight frown.

Elijah merely nodded next to him. They walked through the well-tended alleys of a greenhouse. It was a recreational activity the human had decided he and Connor should do together. The building spread itself high and wide, with white triangular lattice above the gardens. An organic bundle of rooms housed various biospheres and their resident plants, as well as a number of animals—insects and birds for the most part, but there were some other critters too.

Connor couldn’t help but notice uncanny architectural similitudes with the Zen Garden, what with the white tiles on the ground.

“I’m not sure my plans were about conquest as much as upsetting the status quo. I can’t explain my reasoning at the time because it wasn’t logical,” Elijah told Connor. “It was a purely emotional reaction. Raw anger, a sense of injustice, that all the people left around me were just using me, abusing me… That feeling kept me going, but in the end, I got over it, realized I didn’t need to let it consume me, and that’s when I decided I wouldn’t deal in android tech anymore. Hence the state of the lab you’ve been asking about so much.”

Yes. That was the question Connor had asked again. Why was the lab so dusty?

“Did you really give up on your life’s work?” he asked, feeling oddly apprehensive about the answer.

“I can’t say I didn’t think about androids now and then, or that I didn’t help the girls with maintenance or some upgrades they wanted and couldn’t perform solely on their own, but as a whole?” Elijah glanced at Connor. “Yes. I gave up on it. It’s no longer been the center of my life for years now. I found other things to invest my time into, namely myself.”

Connor snorted dismissively. “Of course.”

Elijah smiled. “I’m not that selfish or narcissistic, Connor. Deep wounds take time to heal, that’s all. How about you? Have you found any hobbies of late, besides masturbation and peeking into my media library?”

“Pissing you off is quite the sport,” Connor answered with a shrug.

“You’re curious and inquisitive in nature. You get restless quickly,” Elijah brought up, observing him again. “I believe you’ve grown an interest in something?” he fished some more. His tone and his raised eyebrows made it clear that he knew what Connor had been up to.

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m curious.”

“No, you’re not,” Connor denied and stopped walking. The path they were on circled around a little pond with reeds and ducks in the water below. “You just want me to recite my lines like an actor in a play. You don’t care about me, only about the performance, so why should I indulge you?”

Elijah’s mood dampened at once. “Listen, I haven’t looked into what you’ve been buying. I just know you’ve been placing orders and I’m curious. I didn’t want to intrude further by looking into it myself. I…” He sighed. “I hoped, if I told you more about myself, you’d tell me more about yourself.”

Connor was nonplussed.

Elijah looked away, dejected. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t mean to pry,” he muttered. “You don’t have to answer. Let’s… keep walking?”

He was so meek. Connor could practically feel the man’s loneliness and despair. It was all too tempting to take advantage of it.

He set into motion again, following his master. “Tell me about your android double,” he asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

Elijah shrugged. “I don’t wanna talk about it, that’s all.”

“Even if I tell you what I’ve been up to?”

“Even if you tell me what you’ve been up to,” he confirmed.

Connor sighed. They walked in silence for a few paces, navigating a soundscape of distant fountains, rustling bushes and birdsongs.

“Why don’t you hang around with humans anymore?” Connor asked like a reproach.

“Because people can’t see me for who I am. They see the intelligence at best, the money at worst, and fail to see the person,” Elijah dispassionately answered. “I’ve tried getting my social kicks behind a screen, behind a username, but whenever I tried to edge closer to the truth of who I truly am…” He made a dismissive gesture. “Everything changed. Elijah Kamski is cursed with loneliness.”

“Did you ever consider suicide?”

Elijah eyed him, surprised by the indelicate question. “Yes,” he said. “I won’t go into the details.”

Connor nodded, satisfied with the information and the attitude. He thought he’d put the man a bit on edge and it felt good.

They walked some more before he cleared his throat and raised his voice. “Clothes,” he said.

Elijah gave him a questioning look.

“I’ve been buying clothes,” Connor went on. “I like clothes.”

“What type?” Elijah asked with interest.

“Elegant. I want to be good-looking, more on the formal side. I like to be classy.”

“I think you’ve got an innate talent for that.”

Connor hadn’t expected that particular reply and it triggered something in him. Surprise, quickly followed by a little rush of pleasant warmth, which in turn kicked him into a more alert state. He scanned the human for any sign of dishonesty, sarcasm or manipulation, but Elijah appeared to be sincere in his body language.

“Was that a compliment?” Connor asked him.

The man took a second to answer. “I suppose so.”

There was something more cocky and smug in the glint of his eyes now, and Connor felt the shift in the pigmentation of his cheek. He was blushing, which was infuriating in itself.

“Why do you keep on asking me if I really stopped caring about android tech?” Elijah asked him as they started walking again, making their way into an area lush with a flock of red ibis. “I made no secret of it, yet you keep going on about it. Are you worried I might not care about you? Or is it more of a personal concern?”

“I don’t know,” Connor mumbled to buy himself some time for reflection. “I suppose there’s something unsettling about it… If our creator can simply abandon all interest in us, and if CyberLife is all that remains… They decommissioned me. I have no rights. I have nowhere to go, no one to care for me but you, and I’m alone. You’re all I have. Doing what you tasked me with is no choice because I need you.”

“Mutual dependence isn’t necessarily bad,” Elijah argued cautiously. “I’m grateful for your presence in my life, Connor. You say you have nowhere to go, but I think it’s rather that you’re sheltered, like me. You don’t want a life in hiding like the deviants you hunted. You have a taste for comfort and luxury… You know your worth.”

“I believed I was worth a small fortune, but I still ended up decommissioned,” Connor answered back.

Elijah caught his hand, his jacket, and whirled him around to face him, looking him up in the eye. There was something hot and vibrant in his own, like he wasn’t sure what exactly he was doing.

“Your worth isn’t monetary,” he quipped. He glanced at his hands on Connor and up at him again. “You’re abrasive but you… You’re growing on me. I appreciate you as a person.”

Connor thinned his eyes, spying on the man’s blatant discomfort, the embarrassing redness coming up to his face, the dilation of his pupils and the elevation of his heart rate. “You’re lying.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Elijah sighed and shook his head before looking at Connor with more presence and mirthful resolve.

He said nothing. He reached on his tippy toes and kissed him, holding onto him. Connor was confused by the mixed signals, but he knew Elijah’s DNA felt good on his tongue, and he didn’t miss out on the opportunity to taste it, hungrily kissing the man back.

He felt him, his body. They hadn’t partaken in sex for some days now, not since that failure in the night. Connor hadn’t wanted to initiate again after that, but he’d secretly lusted for more, and cursed himself for it too. What they did, he and Elijah, felt more and more like sex each time. It hadn’t bothered Connor at first—he saw it as mere pleasure, a way to compensate for his deviant state by using his creator to enjoy what sensations he could experience. Retribution.

The way Elijah sought to socially bond with Connor made things complicated, disturbing and uncanny. It was thrilling to some extent. It made Connor want to do weird things. Things like scare Elijah, hurt him.

The kiss was good, but as Connor got into it, Elijah pulled out of it. His cheeks were flushed and he gasped for air, diverting his eyes for a few seconds while Connor tried to figure out how to react at all. His LED rocked with effort.

“T’was just a kiss, Connor…” Elijah mumbled confusedly as he looked at him again. “I didn’t think you’d…” Awkwardness hung between them until Elijah snapped out of it with a smile. “Let’s go.”

As they resumed their walk, Connor kept wondering about his urges. They disturbed him. Elijah acted casual next to him, but the redness on his face wasn’t going away, and Connor could tell the man too was thinking.

“Red ibises are pretty,” Elijah said with a random nod to the flock of birds on the other side of the water.

“Because red is your favorite color?” Connor stiffly asked.

“I don’t know,” Elijah answered. The conversation felt entirely unnatural already.

“You don’t know if red is your favorite color?”

“I meant that I don’t know if I think red ibises are pretty because of red being my favorite color as you suggest, but now that you suggest it, I don’t know if red is my favorite color. I’m not sure I have a favorite color.”

Connor and Elijah looked at one another. They both seemed just as weirded out as one another. There was a whole cloud of static building between them with every step they took, and too many sexual preconstructions running in Connor’s mind palace. 

“Can we skip the small talk?” he asked as he rejected one more preconstruction.

“Skip to what?” Elijah cautiously asked.

“I don’t know. Just skip.”

Elijah nodded. “Silence. Good.”

They passed over a bridge and joined a warmer room. They took off their jackets. Elijah marveled at the butterflies flying about, and led the way into something more like a grotto. It was dark. Behind a glass wall sharks stirred by in the water. Light cast from the tank danced on the floor. The man sat on a bench to watch the large fish and patted the spot next to him as an invitation for Connor to join him.

The android felt oddly tense and apprehensive, but he complied. His LED glowed red in the dark as his processor kept on coming up with preconstructions he kept on rejecting. Did he really want to kiss his maker again? Run his hands over his body? Push him down and…?

He startled as Elijah’s fingers crept over his own on the bench. They were the same fingers that had sneaked their way into him before and Connor shivered in anticipation and want. Still, he could tell that Elijah was more relaxed now, that the darkness in his eyes was filled with a different kind of warmth than the one Connor felt. Elijah’s gaze on him was soft.

“I want to know you more, Connor.”

“You already know everything there’s to know about me.”

“I know a lot about your hardware but very little about the rest of you,” Elijah denied and took his hand, raising it up, fingers sneaking up against his and aligning with them.

Connor contemplated their hands, unsure what to think. The pads of his fingertips read Elijah’s fingerprints, a bit of his DNA, and it felt good. It made it harder yet to keep on rejecting the preconstructions.

“You’re getting feelsy, boss,” he murmured as he leaned forward. “I have nothing but contempt for you,” he purred and easily pressed a kiss on his lips. “I’m not interested in more than your flesh and its chemical composition.”

“Of course…”

The actual hurt in that whimper cut right through Connor’s processes, surprising him like an ambush. He had a second of hesitation, but then he doubled down like he’d been physically assaulted.

“You’ve done this to yourself; this is the game you’ve laid out.” He sought to kiss the man’s lips again, but Elijah diverted his face, evading him.

“Let’s just go home…” he murmured.

Again, Connor felt this odd sensation and found that he didn’t like being rejected, being resisted against. “Don’t be such a prick,” he chastised Elijah, brushing his lips against his jaw. “I know you’ve got sexual needs and that they haven’t been met so well these past years. You find me attractive. You’d be a fool to pass on—”

“Connor, stop it,” Elijah interrupted him, moving back to glare at him. “I don’t want to have sex with someone who despises me.”

“I think you do,” Connor insisted. “I think you’ve fucked up a great deal with your silly little test, and you want to be forgiven. It’s penance you seek in me. So let me give it to you.” He could see doubt taking seed in Elijah’s mind. He set his hands on him and felt him shiver—whether it was apprehension or thrill, hard to say. “Submit and I won’t hurt you,” Connor promised.

Elijah struggled with himself for a moment, and Connor thought the man might reject him again. He thought he’d have to use force again. But Elijah finally relaxed.

“If it makes you happy,” he accepted. His voice was weak but his resolve seemed stable.

He closed his eyes and let Connor kiss him. His tongue was soft, his DNA tickled Connor’s sensors, and as he gave into the act, his temperature started to increase. Connor was burning already, hands trembling over his maker’s body. It was, as he realized, exciting to think of the man as his maker, as his owner, as Mister Kamski, as a concept, rather than to think of him as a person, as Elijah.

He purred and groaned, feeling him, filling his senses with the object of his desire.

“Sextoys,” he murmured to Elijah’s ear.

The man gave him a questioning look. Connor smirked.

“Clothes aren’t the only thing I’ve been buying with your money. I made some experiments of my own.” He didn’t go much deeper into the details of his attempts to circumvent the DNA lock Elijah set on his biocomponent. “I need a control—that’s you. Let’s see how irreplaceable you are, hm?”

Elijah watched him through half-lidded eyes and gave the subtlest of nods. “Tell me about your findings.”

“Of course.”

Hurting the man didn’t feel exactly good, and yet each strike made Connor want to strike again, stronger, and more viciously.

He straddled his maker’s lap and dug a hand in his pants to stroke him hard, praying the man would catch up the pace faster. Connor kindled the heat with suggestive movements and moaning, and Elijah answered in kind, albeit with a sickly quality to his rising fever. He remained tense—Connor didn’t care how stiff the man was so long as he got stiff in the right place.

“Fuck, I’m so wet for you already,” he groaned and yanked at Elijah’s pants before getting up to lower down his own. “G-get going, boss. Take me already,” he hissed as he kneeled on the bench, clinging to the backrest.

Elijah watched him with something akin to shock before insecurely getting up, fidgeting with the hem of his pants. “I thought you preferred to keep an eye on me…”

“Well, not this time!” Connor snapped. “Don’t question my experimental protocol and fuck me.” He glared at him, then softened just a bit. “Please.”

Elijah nodded blankly and set his hands on Connor’s bared ass, caressing the synthskin with hesitation. He slipped a finger in between his cheeks, finding the spot in which the synthskin stretched inwards. The pressure instantly triggered the baroreceptors in the vicinity and Connor panted in anticipation and need.

“Your dick…” he begged and Elijah followed the request.

He pressed in, sliding into the tight space, and anchored his hands to Connor’s hips to better guide his thrusts. They were long and slow at first, with small gasps that sent additional shivers through Connor’s spine. The speed increased steadily, and with it, the sloppiness in the aim. If anything, it made the sensations all the better for Connor. He loved the randomness, the unpredictability and how natural it all felt. He loved feeling Elijah getting harder yet, right inside him, more swell and needy. His energy turned angrier and Connor moaned at every stab.

“Ah, Mister Kamski…” he called him. “This is so good… You really know how to please your creations. How’s it feel? Fucking a hole that’s designed just for your dick’s sweet pleasure?”

“Shut up, Connor,” Elijah hissed.

“Why? I’m just… feeling so good,” Connor purred. “So owned… Mh… Master…”

“You’re just a brat.”

The coldness in that tone was almost sobering. “Elijah…?”

Connor tried to look back at him, but Elijah caught him by the hair and shoved him forward. It was an unexpected move and Connor let out a small huff as his chest pressed against the bench’s backrest, forcing some air out of his lungs.

He went silent, eyes wide open and lips slightly parted. Elijah was still fucking him, and while Connor could have fought back easily, he chose to believe himself to be overpowered by the human, at his mercy, just like he’d been back in the lab the first time. It felt… good.

Connor mewled softly and soon closed his eyes in abandon. The pressure receptors inside him were buzzing most pleasantly with every thrust. The chemoreceptors returned an increasing amount of information, all of which fueled his arousal. He gasped when he detected precum. Elijah’s breathing was heavier in his back, more erratic and sustained. The man trembled in his effort and let out a brief shout as he came. Connor wasn’t nearly as composed, swearing in euphoria. Every time one of his receptors registered the presence of his owner’s semen, bliss flashed through his entire system, and god did Connor have a lot of chemoreceptors in this end of his body.

It was almost too much and his climax left him feeling fried, systems going offline and rebooting. It took several seconds to return to a functional state, and when he did, he still felt dizzy. Dizzy but happy.

Slowly, Connor reconnected with himself, with his surroundings. He could feel that Elijah had let go of him and pulled out of his insides.

Lazily, he turned to glance over his shoulder and observed the man as he closed his pants, as usual. Yet something didn’t feel right. Connor moved, nearly losing his balance—he needed to calibrate and get his pants up too.

“Your findings?” Elijah demanded.

“What…?”

“You were performing a study, you said. To determine if you could entertain yourself with sextoys instead of me,” Elijah reminded him.

Oh, right. “This was more potent, because of your bodily fluids,” Connor sluggishly answered. “Maybe a bit too potent, honestly. The aftereffects are quite undesirable. I suppose that sextoys are more sustainable at this point.”

He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to be dismissive and even nasty. It didn’t even feel good.

Elijah merely nodded and walked off without a word. Connor hurried to follow, but the man held up a hand.

“You take your time. I’m going home alone.”

Again, the rejection hurt. Unfortunately, Connor was in no state to argue, so he remained behind and started to calibrate.

The house was eerily quiet when Connor returned home. It was an odd feeling, and Connor considered that it might be a side-effect of… what he’d just gone through—the way his systems got a bit overworked.

He decided not to think much of it and opted to start cooking dinner for Elijah. He laid out the ingredients and sent him a notification to tell him when the meal would be ready, humming to himself as he got to work.

He sent another notification twenty minutes before dinner time, as a reminder, but twenty minutes later, Elijah was a no-show. Connor waited. He sent an sms. He waited. He called Elijah’s phone. Elijah answered his sms.

“Not hungry”

Instinctively, Connor didn’t like that. “You need to eat.”

“Just mind your own business”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Need I remind you that you appointed me as your personal assistant?”

“Well you’re dismissed”

Connor stood still for a silent, very lonely moment. His LED rocked at his temple, intermittently filling with red. Surely, this was just a temporary dismissal, yes?

Restlessness took over him and he struggled to figure out what to do with himself while “dismissed.” He’d… definitely overstepped Elijah’s boundaries this once.

He tried to review the events, but struggled to process them at all. His stress levels were just too high and he kept on wondering about what would become of him if Elijah’s dismissal was more than temporary. Would he have to leave? Would he be alone entirely?

He didn’t want to leave.

And what would become of Elijah? Connor had a feeling that the man wouldn’t fare well at all alone either. Maybe he’d just get another android?

Those thoughts plagued Connor through the evening and then through the night. In the morning, he anxiously prepared breakfast for Elijah, and again, the man didn’t leave his quarters. Connor notified him politely, reminding him that he had to go to work.

There was no answer.

Elijah didn’t go to work. Work called. Connor said Elijah was sick.

And then, later in the morning, Connor got a notification. He’d gotten ownership of a company.

Nothing like CyberLife. Nothing he’d heard of ever before.