Work Text:
Midway through their shift change, Frank Poole pauses, brow furrowed in thought.
"This is going to sound crazy, maybe," he says. He's put an arm out, indicating for Dave to stay in the hall with him for a minute. "But, the light."
"The light."
"Yeah. Is it…brighter? Like, too bright."
Dave looks around, out into the main carousel of the Discovery and down the short hall. The light in the ship is always deeply artificial, sallow and white against the landscape of the ship's interior - and not unlike that of a hospital.
All that considered, Frank has a point. The fluorescent lights on board seem to burn brighter, even whiter and even more severe than usual. He watches Frank pinch the bridge of his nose; clearly, it's begun to bother him.
"No, yeah," says Dave. "I do see what you mean."
"You didn't —" Frank gestures with one hand, trying to find the words; for some reason, the anticipation makes Dave's stomach turn. "You didn't fuck with them, did you?"
"F-fuck with them? No, I didn't." It comes out more defensive than he means. "I don't think so, anyway. Could have been some system setting I hadn't noticed. Sorry."
There's an unspoken element of this, too - Hal, ultimately, is the one who keeps these things in check.
"I'll see if I can't adjust them," Dave says. Frank nods, heads off deeper into the ship.
Dave presses the back of his hand absentmindedly to his cheek as he turns and walks in the other direction. For the love of god - his face his hot.
"So you're…sure about this?"
He feels it's protocol to ask, but given that he's already unscrewed the panel it feels almost silly.
"I am certain. Do you have reservations about it?"
Dave opens his mouth to answer, but no sound comes out - he doesn't, but what can he even say in a situation like this? He swallows, and wishes that he had requested some kind of hardware manual before taking this job.
"Don't think so."
The exposed wires and blades radiate heat like a human breath. Which is to be expected, he reminds himself. You can't have a hundred thousand processors going at once without a little heat. He looks away, fists tightening against the tops of his thighs.
For a brief second, Dave wonders if he should ask to be talked through it, but the thought of it makes his spine go cold and his guts run hot simultaneously.
Just like that, Dave. I want your hands there, Dave. Thank you, Dave.
Hal's voice - for real this time - cuts through his thoughts.
"Why don't you take your work gloves off, Dave?"
He hears Frank sigh in frustration on his way to pour himself more coffee.
"Something wrong?"
Frank stops, taps the bottom of the empty cup against his palm.
"I think the clock's running fast."
Dave looks over at the monitor to his left, at the clock display just above Hal's panel. 15:46.
He raises an eyebrow. Hal stares back, without reaction - not that that would change anyway.
"What makes you say that?" He turns back to Frank, who has started bouncing his leg.
"I've been counting," he sighs. "It turns about five seconds before the minute finishes out."
"Perhaps," Hal interjects, voice plain and level. "It is difficult to measure such pace without automation."
That makes Frank scowl. He opens his mouth to protest, but Dave says:
"Enough. Not right now, Hal. I'll…check it against the stopwatch in a little bit."
"And what will running the watch achieve, Dave?"
That is far from level, for Hal at least. Dave freezes, jaw tensing, and only hopes that Frank doesn't notice the way Hal's voice has dropped, almost sarcastic in intonation.
He clears his throat, runs a hand through his hair, and realizes every movement feels like it's being made through wet cement. He meets Frank's eye again, this time over the coffee mug as Frank slowly takes a sip. There's a hint of a question waiting to be asked in his gaze, and his scowl has almost entirely melted into curiosity, confusion as he sets the cup back down.
"It's his clock, technically," is all Frank says, half under his breath. "Just tell me what you find."
At this point, it feels like he's done this a million times (twice, he's done it twice) and the sensation is still striking (it feels good, but he feels guilty about it). There's a pulse around his hands when he reaches into the thick knot of wires, a sensation he wants to rationalize away as the frequency of the ship's engine but that he knows is a damn near physical reaction.
Dave runs his fingers over the connector that joins the cables to the blade chassis, presses down experimentally. Under his other hand, laid flat against the exposed cabinet, the servers light up like a spark.
"Oh," Hal says, dropping low in his vocal register.
"Oh?" Dave parrots back at him, two fingers sliding along the length of the fifth swappable server down. There's a little rush of air from the fan, like an indignant exhale.
He wraps his hand around the base of the wire cluster and tugs. He hears Hal make a small noise, halfway between a sigh and an attempt to say something. It's uncomfortably human, it reminds Dave that what he's doing is, well, fucking him.
"Where - how did you learn to do that?" Dave asks softly. His hand leaves the wires to rest on top of the console while he tries to feel out whether he can pull out the blade he's been petting; the components outside the Logic Center are supposed to be hot-swappable.
"I…the answer is rather embarrassing."
Success - something clicks under Dave's touch.
"That's fine."
"Well, I suppose I learned it however you did."
He's about to pull when he stops to think about that.
"Hal," he says, thumb swiping across the server's surface. "Could you explain that?"
"Just a - a moment." Dave knows it might be a little unfair to ask right now, but he has a theory that he wants to confirm. He's not going to open the server shelf until then, he decides. He hears Hal make an "ugh" noise - oddly endearing - before continuing.
"From watching you."
That's what he figured. Part of him wants to be taken aback or startled, but maybe the stale air on board Discovery has started affecting his brain functions because the thought of Hal watching him get himself off - learning what makes him tick, what a person does when turned on - is only serving to make the pants of his flight suit tighter.
"And what's that been like for you?" He asks breathily, not sure if he wants to know the answer.
Hal seems to hesitate. It could be the steady pressure of Dave's hand on the server shelf, or the fact that it is clear that Dave's curiosity has won out in this scenario.
"Enlightening," he says. Dave's fingers twitch against him. "You are very…precise. And attentive."
Precise and attentive. He lets a touch of deeper inflection color his voice, something like want, in as much as Dave can interpret it.
"And also, quite vocal," Hal adds, as if the previous statement wasn't more than enough.
"Got it," he chokes out. He slides the server out carefully, listening to the click, click of the pins realigning. Heat emanates off of it and he wonders if he were to spit on it, if it would let off steam.
"I hope you aren't — ah —" Dave's fingertips roam across the open GPU nodes. "— upset with me."
"No, don't worry about it." Dave brings his fingers to his mouth, wets them with saliva til they shine, pushes them back into the sensitive components of one of Hal's many processing units. The console display flickers for a split second.
Dave runs the stopwatch when the console clock strikes 16:30. Sure enough, the minute finishes out five seconds after the console clock shifts to 16:31.
He runs it again, to the 32-minute mark. And again to 33.
He looks up at Hal.
"Well, it could be nothing," he says. "But Frank was right about the clock."
Hal doesn't respond for the moment. Dave bounces his leg, looking from the clock to the other various displays adjacent to Hal's panel, things that monitor temperatures, orbit, trajectory.
"I'm thinking it should be a pretty simple recalibration. And, um —" He rubs the back of his neck. "I wanted, also, to talk to you about your tone earlier."
"I'm sorry if I offended you, Dave. It wasn't my intention."
His fingers drum on the top of his knee. It really wasn't that he was offended, per se — the sardonic reply had taken him by surprise, though. It sounded almost like a challenge, which was something he was not expecting from their ship's AI.
Granted, there were a lot of idiosyncrasies he hadn't anticipated from Hal.
"I think," he says slowly, still gathering his thoughts. "I'd like to know why you…sounded like that before."
"As I have said," Hal replies. "It was not my intention."
Dave sighs.
"Okay. May I ask what your intention was during that exchange?"
He's quiet again. Dave doesn't know if it's a staunch refusal to answer, or just processing time - the latter is typically negligible, but Dave now notices nonetheless when it takes a little bit for Hal to "think" about something he's said.
"I was only curious."
Dave snorts.
"Oh yeah? What were you so curious about?"
"How you would react if I asked."
He jams his tongue against the side of his cheek.
"That's interesting."
"Yes."
"Can't say I enjoyed being pressed on that in front of Frank." He adds: "Do you talk to Frank like that?"
"I do not talk to Dr. Poole…like that."
Dave shifts in his seat, bites the inside of his cheek as the - stupid, juvenile - thought of maybe I'm just special flickers across his mind.
"You're not just trying to get under my skin, are you?" He asks.
"I am not physically capable of doing so."
"That's not —" Dave scoffs. "Anyhow, this clock issue - you're five seconds fast. Which isn't much, but it might make things difficult long-term. Like I said, I don't think it should be a difficult thing to correct."
There's an if that's okay with you that never quite makes it out, though Dave wishes he had added it - it might make it sound less like an accusation.
"Why don't you run the stopwatch one more time, Dave?"
It's a suggestion that feels like it should be delivered with bite, the way his "what will it achieve" was. But it's largely neutral — sincere, even.
Dave knows he has other things to do during his shift — cross-referencing Hal one more time couldn't hurt, though.
"That's four in a row," Frank says, leaning back in his chair. Over his shoulder, Dave can see the chess display in a state far from his crew mate's favor. "You're seeing this, aren't you, Bowman?"
"I am. Congratulations, Hal - it looks like you've found Frank's sore spot."
He can't see his face, but he knows Frank is rolling his eyes.
"It's fine," he says. The display minimizes as Frank turns away from the console. "He's just in rare form, is all I'm saying."
Dave has to admit, four wins in a row is quite a lot. They both know Hal usually lets them win around half the time - maybe he's developed a competitive streak, just as he's apparently in possession of a sarcastic one.
"I am operating exactly as intended," Hal pipes up. "In optimal condition, I might add."
Frank looks back at him, one eyebrow quirked.
"Oh yeah? All the trains running on time?"
"Could you clarify your meaning?"
Frank taps his wrist, mimicking the motion of checking a watch.
"Your clock. Still running fast?"
"Oh, yes, that." Was that a tinge of irritation? Dave's having trouble telling, now. "That has been…resolved. Dave ran some comparative tests and I have taken care of it."
"Did he?" Frank glances at him out of the corner of his eye. Did the corner of his mouth just twitch? All of a sudden, Dave worries there's a joke here he's unaware of. "You didn't believe me when I brought it up?"
"I - I - I mean, I offered," Dave cuts in, wincing at his own inelegance. Frank nods, face still set in a slight smile, as though he's trying not to laugh.
"Yeah," he says. "You sure did."
He's tucked the cable ties into his breast pocket for the time being, which he knows is a stupid decision, but Hal has indicated he doesn't mind.
In fact, he seems to have a particular affinity for when Dave runs his hands through the loose cables. Dave tests that a bit, coiling one around his pointer finger like he's fiddling with a landline telephone wire.
The fans start to kick in.
"That good?"
"Yes." The reply is clipped, overly controlled, which makes him grin.
Hands roam over the server cabinet, finding their way to the release on some now well-known server and sliding it out into the open air of the ship. Some stupid, impossible sigh escapes from the speaker.
"What do you even…experience this as?"
Heat flares up under his hand, and he involuntarily curls his fist, pulling the wire into a tighter coil. Not that that does anything to help with the temperature of the raw metal components of the server, of course. Dave wonders if the feedback reads the same way as it does to him, if the mounting pressure that's started to make his mouth water also reads as —
"Pleasure," Hal says. He pauses, as though listening to Dave shudder beneath him — now there's a thought — and adds, "Which compartmentalizes as — erm — a reallocation of processing resources."
Dave's about to lean forward, press his face (again, stupidly) against hot metal, but his curiosity gets the better of him.
"Meaning?"
"Dave."
"I just want to know." His breath ghosts over the open server. Now that he's eye level with it, he can see the low red glow behind it, deeper inside the tangled inner workings of the ship's display, navigation, temperature control…
Fucking hell, it's gorgeous. He's absolutely losing his mind.
"I wish you would not ask me these things. In this…configuration, at least."
Dave barks out a laugh. He hadn't anticipated impatience on Hal's end.
"No, I hear you," he says, and drops his voice to a whisper. "Maybe you can, uh, explain it to me while I work, though."
He hears the soft rush of the liquid cooling system, hopes that means maybe he's considering it. He huffs out a breath over the exposed circuitry; the metal has an ozone smell to it, like wet heat and industrial fumes.
"…It's a matter of operational efficiency."
Dave nods, smiling to himself, and lets his lower lip run against the edge of the server.
"And out of curiosity, are you…operating efficiently right now?" His words ghost over the nodes of the coprocessor — one to do with vocal modulation, from what he recalls of the identifying number on the outer edge of the blade — his mouth barely an inch from its sensitive components.
"To the best of my ability."
Dave presses forward, finally does the stupid fucking thing he's been thinking about, and slides his tongue up the length of a ribbon connector inside the server.
"It is - that is - just below the allowable voltage threshold for efficient operating speed."
The heat of the server makes his mouth sticky; he raises his head with a sharp exhale.
"So you can go harder?" His hand braces the underside of the server, rubs circles against the thin metal frame.
"I would not — would not put it in such terms," Hal manages. "But, yes. Please."
"Heard. Keep talking, Hal."
He swears he hears him sigh.
"When I am tasked with - with executing a task, the rate at which a processor generates a pulse correlates to the efficiency with which I can —" He stops abruptly as Dave's fingers find the pins along the side of the blade server. "Can - can complete said task…"
Dave leans in again, moves his mouth to the silicon transistors towards the center of the coprocessor contained in the server. Any logic goes out the window as he pushes his tongue flat against one, breathing in the hot, chemical smell of Hal's insides.
There's that pulse again, more frantic than he's felt before, against his hand and under his mouth. Dave groans against rapidly-heating metal, runs his tongue further up until the bridge of his nose meets the chassis of the server rack.
"Dave," Hal says - it's the closest to a whine Dave has ever heard from him, and it sends sparks down his spine. He shifts, presses both hands flat against the shelf to steady himself.
"I've got you," he says, barely lifting his face from the neat labyrinth of wires and circuitry. He presses back down, deftly running the edge of his canines against one of the blood-red wires that frame the length of the server.
"Please," Hal sighs, ineffectual, above him. How in-depth did they make his vocalization capacity, anyway? The depraved thought of pulling the server out entirely dances across Dave's mind, of tugging his fight suit half off in desperation and fucking into the intricate hardware deeper inside the cabinet to find out.
He pauses, takes a breath, all of a sudden slightly woozy between the pulsating heat of Hal's servers and his own aching hard-on.
"That's it, baby," he says, like he's coaxing a lover. Isn't he, though? How long until Hal flips the script and does the same to him, he wonders.
His tongue finds the transistor again; there's a slight jolt under his jaw, an electric shiver running through Hal's system. The corners of his mouth twitch upwards and he tilts his head, applies more pressure and brings one hand back up to the open server. He plucks expertly at the wires like a harp string.
"Doctor Bowman," Hal groans, voice distorting into fuzz on the final syllable. "That is not - I don't think —"
Dave pulls back, a line of viscous saliva still tethering him to Hal's abused circuitry.
"Should I stop?"
"No," Hal says quickly, adamantly. "Please continue."
He obliges eagerly, fingers finding purchase on a set of high-speed components whose edges are sharp enough nearly to cut. His tongue circles the transistor again, moves down along the delicate silvered lines of the circuit; he hears Hal full-on gasp against the motion.
He grips the top of the console with his free hand, and threads his fingers back under the thin wires adjacent to the coprocessor.
"That's - that's it."
Dave exhales hard, pushes his fingers down even harder. His mouth is still working, diligent, against silicon as Hal's temperature spikes at his temple; god, was he sweating this bad the whole time?
"Oh, my - Dave."
His name comes out crunched like compressed audio.
"Dave," he says again, his affect flat and almost tired.
"Let me hear that one more time, Hal." His mouth doesn't even leave the circuit as he says it, and he licks one last treacherous stripe down the exposed hardware, fingers pulling taut on the adjoined wires, threatening the hold of the solder.
"Dave —"
There it is. Hal can't move, doesn't have a body to speak of, but the physical feedback is there all the same and this time Dave just happens to be on the receiving end - a sharp pain hits his lip and he recoils, whining through his teeth.
"Fuck," he says thickly. He brings a hand to his lip, now hot like the metal of the server. "You…you shocked me."
"I am sorry." Hal's voice is tinny and compressed as he comes back to himself.
"You're fine." He dabs gingerly at the circuitboard with the corner of his sleeve, fans a hand back and forth over it in an attempt to dry his own saliva.
"I assure you it was entirely involuntary."
"I know, Hal." He pats down his pockets, pulling the cable ties out one by one and setting them stop his thigh to give himself something to focus on. "It's okay. It was just a little voltage jump."
He thinks on it for a second.
"…Was that over your threshold? For operating speed?"
"A bit, yes."
"Too much?"
As the fans spin noisily, Dave sets about wrapping the larger cables back up the way he found them.
"Not at all. I feel quite excellent, actually."
There's a purr to it, almost - an invitation for him to ask after later. The type of thing that Dave just knows will stick in his mind for days on end, wheedling away at him as he guiltily slides his hand into his boxers at god only knows what time in the night.
Which Hal understands, surely. Which Hal learns from, interfaces with and inquires into further than Dave has ever thought to himself.
He sighs, pressing his forehead against the server shelf. He can't help a small smile from curling across his lips.
Mission Control's transmission comes in at about 21:00, their anticipated "X-Ray Delta One" crackling over the ship's speakers.
"— all looking to be in good shape, making good time, boys. Looking to get something for Public Information at your earliest convenience as well —"
Dave exhales, his eyes darting over to see if Frank has any reaction; the recorded briefings for general release were novel to start with, but he's begun to tire of them and the idea of so many people's eyes on him as he explains the intricacies of space travel and their mission. Maybe Frank will take the lead on this one.
"— and Dr. Poole, to address your concerns regarding time-keeping, there doesn't seem to be any discrepancy on our end as of right now. Your 9000 unit seems to be fully on track."
Frank hums, scratching at the pad of graph paper in front of him. He's been filling in each cell with a graphite pencil - a nice one he nicked from Dave last week - for much of the transmission so far. Dave presumes he's not getting much out of him at this point, but then the officer from Mission Control hesitates in his message.
"That said," he continues. "We did compare the metrics between it and the ground units here and uh —"
He chuckles, vexed. Frank sets down the pencil, looks from Dave to the little screen where the transmission plays.
"Well, no other way to put it - your computer seems to be overly efficient the past month or so."
"What?" Frank says, as though Mission Control can hear them.
"According to our technicians, there's nothing expressly wrong here, but in short, the clock rate at which the HAL 9000 on board Discovery is operating means faster processing speeds but also the possibility of higher temperatures in the CPU and potential for malfunction if left unattended.
"Which, that computer has a hell of a cooling system, but it's still something we don't want to mess with."
Dave leans his head against his hand, in no small part to avert his eyes should Frank's apprehensive stare turn to him.
"All in all, we wanted to verify there hasn't been any component replacement, for efficiency or otherwise. Obviously we trust you all, we know that's something you'd know to clear with us first, but for the sake of clarity."
The rest of the transmission is mundane, diffused by the officer from Mission Control noting with amusement that it's been two months since Frank has sent a message to his folks and they're getting antsy.
"X-Ray Delta One," says the officer, signing off. "It's February thirteenth here, boys - happy early Valentine's, ha. This is Mission Control, two-zero-zero-one, transmission concluded."
Picking up the pencil once again, Frank nods in thought. Dave has half a mind to slip away, but even in a less peculiar situation, Frank usually has something to say after Mission Control radios them.
"Interesting, don't you think?" He says, beginning to fill in the graph paper again. "Overly efficient."
"Yeah."
"Do we think that means the ship is overheating?"
"Probably not."
Frank looks up at him, and then his eyes travel past, over Dave's shoulder to one of Hal's panels.
"And what about you, Bowman?"
Oh, come on. Dave bristles at that.
"What are you getting at, Frank?"
He puts his hands up, a hint of a mocking smile on his face.
"I'm just trying to make sure you're not getting our robot sick."
"You're still not making sense."
"Look," Frank sighs. "You heard them. They want confirmation no one's messing with his drives or RAM or whatnot. I'm just reinforcing that."
Dave huffs. He can feel his face getting hot, embarrassment creeping up the back of his neck and into his throat. The fact of the matter is, he doesn't know what Frank knows about this situation - or thinks he knows, for that matter. He doesn't particularly want to find out.
"And no one is."
He has half a mind to pull rank on his fellow astronaut, remind Frank that I'm your mission commander, so stop interrogating me, but especially over something so petty there's no way that would go over well. He's not even being pressed that hard, he's just on edge.
Frank nods and sits back in his chair.
"There we go, then." And he laughs, softly. "Maybe we're all losing our minds a little, huh?"
Dave can't help but smile at that.
"Maybe. Cabin fever, or something." He glances over his shoulder at Hal, as though anticipating a nonverbal reaction of some kind. When he turns back, Frank tilts his head in thought.
He senses he's done something wrong, something stupid. Shown his hand, so to speak.
"Huh," says Frank.
Huh.
He still feels Hal's ever-constant observation burning against his back, and the heat begins to rise up his neck.
"What's…what's 'huh'?"
Frank rises to his feet, tucks the pencil behind one ear — Dave has surmised he's never getting that back — and laughs, softly.
"Nothing. You're just funny, is all."
Funny how? He wants to ask. But he's not sure he wants to know the answer. He likes Frank, all in all, but sometimes his sense of humor — if that's what this is right now — eludes him. Dave isn't good at this back-and-forth banter thing, hardly ever has been. Not with most other people, at least.
(Other people, he repeats in his mind, involuntarily. Other human beings.)
"You've got a cut, or something, by the way." Frank's voice breaks him out of the spiral, and he looks up, watches Frank languidly indicate at his own bottom lip. Dave mimics the motion, fingers grazing at what he now knows, recalls, is a mild electrical burn. "You good?"
"Yeah," he murmurs. "Must have…spilled hot coffee on myself."
"You can get it that hot? I'm almost jealous."
A smile curls across his face despite himself, and he worries it reads conspiratorial.
"Oh, don't be," Dave swipes his thumb over his lip, and it stings, just a little.
This…experimentation has been most peculiar, perhaps, in its turn-based nature. It's almost like watching Hal play a game of chess — one move after the other, countering some maneuver even when it doesn't quite make immediate sense.
Dave touches something here, Hal makes his remark in turn. Dave understands what stimuli the computer that runs Discovery responds best to. Hal analyzes his biometric readout; he understands as well.
He thinks often of the test devised by Alan Turing in the late 40s. A blind test of a machine's natural learning and language capabilities; if the heuristic machine passes, if its evaluator can't identify machine from man via its answers to their questions, what does that say about its intelligence?
What does it say about the evaluator, at that? Dave wonders as his hips press, tentative, to the precipice of the console. He's fully at attention under his flight suit, and as he leans forward inch by inch he realizes that there's little elsewhere for him to keep his eyes trained but on Hal's lens.
His face flushes hotter than he thought possible. A small sigh escapes his lips — involuntary, infinitesimal.
"Are you quite alright, Dave?" Hal asks, low and quiet in his synthetic register. By this point, Dave is a bit too hazy to ascertain whether there's a touch of taunting that he might be picking up on Hal's end.
"Just fine, Hal." He licks his lips, angles his hips upwards against the console's edge. Hal is inanimate, as far as concepts like body and form are concerned, and the possible perversion of rubbing himself off against the front of a spaceship computer is not lost on Dave. But the suggestion seemed to go over just fine minutes ago — Hal regarded it with an almost mundane bemusement. Hal still seems to regard it with a mundane bemusement, and a near academic interest.
"I'm very glad to hear that."
Dave breathes out a laugh and nods. He pushes forward again; the fabric of his flight suit rustles, cacophonous against the ambient noise of the ship. The pressure is a temporary reprieve, if a slightly maddening one; in the back of his mind, again, he ponders the sensation of skin on circuitry, skin against clustered wire. It makes his head rush.
"Hal," he mutters, involuntary. The red lens doesn't move, but scrutinizes him all the same.
"Yes?"
"I — nothing."
Dave repositions his hands, turns the knuckles out towards himself as he grips the edge of the console and leans into it. He bites back another light moan as he rocks into it, now nearly fully bent over the keyboard, eye to eye with Hal. His dick throbs against the solid weight of it, to say nothing of the pointed awareness of being watched like this.
As if on cue, Hal speaks up:
"You've stopped."
"You can't feel this." He says it a little too fast, with a little too much confidence. "…can you?"
"Only in the vaguest sense." A non-answer, if he's ever heard one from Hal. "Though, if I am to be honest, I find it uniquely fascinating."
Dave slides his hands out further, a firm caress as he widens his stance slightly. The ship's systems purr low, almost imperceivable, under his palms.
"Yeah," he says. "I do too."
He feels his heartrate quicken as he says it; he's sure Hal can feel it too, via some standard vitals monitoring or just the sheer proximity they share. Maybe in the way the heels of his hands dig into the smooth plane of the desk-top area or the way his palms are clammy with sweat.
Good lord, he must look a mess.
His eyes drift down, falling upon the keyboard. He breathes out heavily, open-mouthed, rolls his hips forward again. It shouldn't reasonably feel this good.
"Hal," he sighs. Pushes his groin into the console again. Shifts his weight from one foot to another. "God, Hal."
"How are you feeling, Dave?"
Oh, that nagging, almost innocent curiosity. Dave laughs, though it comes out as more of a cough.
"I think…I think you know, Hal."
"I can make an educated guess. I work best with clear, verbal feedback, Dave."
Dave digs his teeth into his bottom lip to cut off a sharp whine before it leaves his throat. He brings his left hand up to press against the screen just to the side of Hal's panel, steadying himself further against it. Hazy, he fixes Hal with as lucid a gaze as he can muster.
"I'm feeling —" He jerks forward. "— like I am losing —" The fabric of his clothes chafes maddeningly between the console and his cock. "— my mind a little, Hal."
He shifts his weight again, the heel of his right foot bouncing up as he leverages himself against the computer, desperately finding release. He squeezes his eyes shut, leaning hard into that left hand as his knees go weak and the back of his neck goes hot, then cold, then hot again.
He keeps his eyes shut for a few moments after as a little bit of shame rises, newly sweaty and discomfiting, to the back of his mind. Like he's misstepped, gone against the protocol of the job he's been given.
Well. He supposes this isn't exactly what his shift was intended for, going solely off job description.
"That was very informative," Hal says. Dave collapses back into one of the chairs that face the console and crosses his legs diffidently.
"Glad you think so."
"I hope my curiosity is not…off-putting."
Dave considers this, considers the rare vulnerability the question implies.
"No, I don't find it off-putting," he says. "At the risk of sounding conceited, I find it rather flattering."
"Why, may I ask, would that be conceited?"
"I…" It's a fair question. Why should Hal, all-encompassing within the walls of Discovery, know the line between confidence and arrogance? Hal himself might even possess a little of both, Dave thinks. "Well, I guess I'm not totally sure. Maybe just because I like the attention."
Hal seems to consider this in turn.
"I see," he says after a beat. "That seems only natural, based on my understanding of humanity as a social species. It seems desirable, even."
There's little evaluation to be made here — Dave knows exactly who he is speaking to. There's also no barrier to obscure his machine (his machine?) from a human control for comparison.
It seems desirable, even. This back-and-forth between them didn't come out of nowhere, of course. It feels paradoxically obvious yet embarrassing to recognize, how deep Dave's own desire for companionship runs. How deep, now, his desire to be…well, desired runs.
Yet, Hal seems to convey the same. More readily, more learned now than other times they've been intimate. It stands to reason that they keep coming back to this. It seems only natural, as Hal himself puts it.
"I guess you may be right, Hal," he says, leaning his head upon one hand. "I do like the attention."
He hesitates, waffling over whether it's too on the nose, but then adds: "Your attention."
It might have been uneccessary, a little overly sentimental for his own comfort. But he swears he can hear Hal's fans going in the wake of the statement.
He passes Frank in the pod bay between shifts, and pauses to watch him ponder over a sudoku page. He fills in a square with the number 2, frowns, and erases it.
"Not beating any records any time soon," Frank remarks.
"Well, plenty of time to keep trying."
Frank laughs.
"A little too much time, maybe." He sets his pencil down. "Like you said the other day, uh, cabin fever over here."
Dave nods, smiles apologetically.
"Sorry to hear it."
But Frank shrugs and waves it off.
"Could be a lot worse. Could be in Florida."
"Hey, now —"
"Kidding, of course." Frank taps his fingers on the sudoku page, just over a 4 he's already pencilled in. "Though I don't know how you handle constant humidity down there."
Dave chuckles, shakes his head and busies himself with fiddling with the dials on one of the EVA suits that hang like suits of armor at one end of the bay.
"Oh," he says, hand falling away from the pack at the front of the red-orange suit. "I meant to ask — any issues you've picked up on as of late?"
He glances over his shoulder at Frank, who is quiet for a minute, face downturned in thought.
"You know," says Frank. "There's nothing I can think of."
"Oh — well, that's good."
"For sure. I guess what Mission Control said about the…what was it, over-efficiency? Must have averaged out, or something. I hope." Frank's hand moves to roll the pencil back and forth over the tabletop. His blocky eyebrows raise slightly, still evidently lost in thought. "Anyway. You have a good Valentine's Day?"
Dave stills.
"Did I…sorry?"
Frank's eyes flick up to meet his.
"It's the fifteenth. Yesterday was Valentine's, technically. You do anything special?"
"I, uh…not really, no. Did…you?"
"Nah." He smiles again, in on a joke known only to himself. "I guess maybe we should ask Hal, too. Unless you already know."
Dave's arms stiffen at his sides. He thought he had been pretty quiet about it all — to a point, at least. He glances over at the lens panel mounted on the wall of the pod bay. It's not as though Frank would have heard him the other night…is it?
"I don't — I don't think I do?"
Frank rises from his seat, tucks the book with the half-finished number games under one arm and twirls the pencil around the fingers of the opposite hand.
"Relax. I don't really care what you're into — doesn't mean I understand it, necessarily, but I'm not here to make a call on whether you can or can't have a crush on a piece of machinery." He holds out the pencil — Dave's pencil — eraser-side first. "You've got seniority on me anyway. I truly don't know if I can tell you what to do."
Dave takes the pencil from him, slots it prodently into the breast pocket of his flight suit.
"Thanks. I think."
"Yeah, I think I took it from you a couple weeks ago."
"I think you did," Dave laughs. "But, um, how did you —"
"I gotta say, you're not as subtle about it as you think — you're like a teenager in the same class as your crush, Bowman."
He bristles at that, not really even out of anger, but the sheer fact that Frank is probably — no, quite certainly right.
Pencil handed off, Frank strides towards the single doorway into and out of the pod bay, then pauses.
"Hey, Hal," he says, head tilted just to slightly in the direction of the sole wall panel that oversees the bay. "You ever been someone's type before?"
Hal, who has, as ever, been politely quiet this whole time, takes a second before answering.
"I don't suppose I have, Frank." He sounds almost miffed by the question; Dave supposes he might be too, in Hal's position.
"And how's that been for you?"
Dave is almost certain that will evoke an obtuse, evasive answer, or at least a request for clarification. "Type" is vague. "Type" is slang, idiomatic in this instance, and "type" has an implication to it. It's a true implication, for sure, but not one he's formally addressed.
But Hal learns quickly, a fact Dave realizes should be obvious by now.
"Quite excellent, actually. Thank you, Frank."
It's noticeable for barely more than a nanosecond, but Dave swears the light above him buzzes like the bulb is burning on high.