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Someone has draped the room in lively colours, bands of red and blue and an off-yellow that almost passes for gold; string lights dangle from the ceiling, set to twinkle, their warm glow deepening the shadows and lending the room a soft ambience. Voices rise and fall in conversation, a pleasant hubbub interrupted by the metallic clink of silverware and the occasional burst of laughter rising above the rest.
You wouldn’t have guessed it, but the visiting officers are pretty social. They chat amicably with the pre-law students, with the embarrassingly stereotypical tweed-clad professors, even tolerate the dean’s saccharine platitudes—the ones he trots out for special occasions. More surprising still is the cloud of pale uniforms that follows the officers, white accented in pale blue, bright lettering spelling their company allegiance across the breast. The majority are human, which strikes you as interesting, but regardless, your instructions said nothing about a fleet of android technicians arriving with the delegation from the Detroit Police Department.
Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise you: while the conference centres on androids and while its focus is the newly ratified Android Rights Act, it isn’t as if a trillion dollar company is likely to keep its nose out of androids’ business when there’s still an opportunity to abuse and merchandise to sell.
The CyberLife crowd seems to find friends in a cluster of engineers, arriving a little late thanks to their cross-campus commute—another unexpected addition to the party. A few in each group appear to know each other, throwing raucous greetings across the room before embracing or shaking hands. Cameras flash liberally, capturing pictures for the next day’s local news; you find it a little off-putting, that feeling of being constantly watched, and avoid the business end of any photographers. You’re thankful that the nature of the party is such that there are plenty of distractions.
Earlier in the day, you’d greeted the officers at the behest of the dean, and given them a tour of the department. The lead officer, a Lieutenant, was older than you by a good number of years and irritable, in an enjoyable sort of way—he shook your hand, awkward but making an effort to be polite, and grumbled his way through his colleagues’ introductions. He used surnames instead of titles, with a notable exception—his android partner he introduced only as Connor.
Of course, you’d seen his face before. The news channels had blasted his likeness across screens for months after he’d emerged from CyberLife tower with a damn army at his back. It was strange to watch the famed deviant hunter smile at you, genuine but restrained, and extend a hand. You’d accepted it easily, noting the gentle pressure he exerted on your hand, the way his posture relaxed when he let go. Lieutenant Anderson watched with a critical eye but remained silent.
That didn’t last long: over dinner Anderson maintained his gruff attitude but struck up a conversation with one of the forensic pathologists, an off-beat sort of academic who’d rolled up in jeans and a shirt that badly needed ironing. The Lieutenant seemed to enjoy her cavalier attitude and her unfiltered language; Connor peppered her with questions, most of which she answered with customary coarse humour. Anderson laughed with abandon, but Connor’s smile was barely a twist of his mouth, his eyes good-humoured but attentive.
You spend the night nibbling at your food, listening in, asking questions of the officers, once in a while adding your own anecdote but mostly enjoying the established cop banter, and theplayful comparisons drawn between academic law and practical law enforcement.
You have a conversation with Officer Miller, who seems pleasant but somewhat shy until you ask about his family; you decide that you like him once he comes out of his shell a little. Chen is boisterous in her own way, sly and charming and raucous by turns, a true hit with the undergraduates—especially when she takes to needling Reed over something stupid he’d said over the hors d’oeuvres. Busy as the place is, you don’t meet many more of the DPD force, though there are plenty of them—clamouring students block them from view, chattering and joking and discussing the conference proceedings.
The dean gives a speech, undercut a little by Davide, one of the grad students, taking every opportunity to whisper something sarcastic when the dean lays on the praise for androids, and the cooperating police department, a little too thick. When he mumbles, do you think he does this to get out of speeding tickets too? you elbow him hard in the ribs and whisper back not successfully to muffled chuckles.
Everyone escapes dean’s speech, and the stifling hall, shortly afterwards. People gather outside in clusters, finishing conversations, pulling their coats around them to keep the chilly spring evening at bay. A bundle of CyberLife employees depart all together, the androids among them standing out in their short sleeves, heedless of the weather. Engineering students and fellows followed them like smoke following fire—chasing future employment, you think, with no small amount of cynicism.
Among the sea of faces you think you caught sight of someone familiar but, before you can confirm your suspicions, you’re jolted back to yourself by the raucous hollering of the grad students behind you—they move like a pack, hanging off each other’s arms and calling out in free, joyful voices, fuelled by free food and amusing company.
Davide and his partner wander past you, arm in arm, cheeks flushed, swaying into each other; Thompson, one of the more approachable adjunct professors, grasps your arm and bids you goodnight, telling you the night may be young, but I am not, with a laugh in her eyes. She warns you not to work too hard before she departs.
“Hey!”
You stifle a groan as you recognise the voice and pre-empt the announcement. It belongs to one of the rowdier research fellows—Jackson, you think, though you don’t remember his first name—and whatever he suggests, no matter how well-intentioned, is sure to get messy.
With the delegation free to wander the campus, you’re not sure the students will leave the visitors with the scholarly impression the dean so desires… but that’s not your problem. The visitors are adults, and there’s no way in hell you’re telling fifty mildly intoxicated debaters-in-training they can’t do something. Especially when it’s the first chance you’ve had to be social since your breakup.
“Hey… now most of the real—I mean, boring—academics are out of here,” Jackson no-first-name casts his eyes in your direction, a weak excuse for an apology considering the slight, “after party’s down the old Marshall building. You’ll all invited.”
A smattering of interest runs through the crowd, palpable by the chorus of whooping and giggling. A gaggle of postgrads lead the way, enthusiastic and more than a little wine drunk. The pre-law students follow like so many ducklings, chattering excitedly, laughing and joking, their voices echoing off the dated buildings.
“Yeah, well,” Anderson says, shoving his hands roughly in his pockets, “I ain’t got the energy for that. ’M gonna turn in.”
At his side, Connor makes a small noise of amusement that catches your attention. Something about it rankles Anderson, who shoots him a glare. “Not a damn word, Connor.”
“As you say, Lieutenant.” Connor’s words are acquiescent, but the quirk to his mouth and light to his eyes betrays a humour you haven’t seen before. “I think I’ll accompany you. There’s plenty to do before tomorrow.”
“Just my luck,” Anderson mumbles, pointedly ignoring Connor’s eye roll and turning to you. “Well, kid, it was nice to meet you. Guess we’ll see you around.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant. Nice to meet you too.” You take his proffered hand and give him a crooked smile. It’s refreshing to be around his rough salt-of-the-earth attitude compared to the stuffy pretension of college academics that comprise most of your company; it’s clear his grousing has no true bite to it, though he barks loud enough.
When Anderson steps back and tugs at the zip on his coat, Connor approaches, more relaxed than you’ve seen him all evening but still carrying something of a guarded attitude. You study his face as he steps closer, finding steady brown eyes watching you with equally inquisitive attention. He’s unfailingly polite, as he has been since you’ve met him, but there’s an invisible barrier between you, a door shut tight and locked from his side.
“Thank you for your time.” His palm feels warm in yours, warmer than you expect, his skin soft. You blame your wandering thoughts on the half-glass of wine you’d had with dinner, refusing to acknowledge the purring frustration low in your abdomen that’s actually responsible. “I look forward to seeing you again this week.”
You pull your hand free with some reluctance, exposing it to the cold air for a few frozen seconds before you tuck your fingers back into your coat sleeve.
“I’ll be around,” you assure him. “You have my office number if you need anything. You know how to find me.”
“I’m heading out too.” Miller holds up his phone and gives his colleagues a sheepish grin. “Promised I’d call and say goodnight to Damien before it got too late.”
Miller endures some friendly ribbing for his familial dedication but he’s bolstered by it rather than discouraged—he walks away laughing, phone already tucked to his ear.
“So, where’s the party?” Chen has her hands tucked under her arms and despite her thick coat and mischievous expression, she shivers. “I’m not quite old or married enough to quit yet.”
“Yeah, let’s skip to the fun part.”
At the sound of Reed’s voice, Anderson turns away from Connor to fix him with a pointed stare.
“Reed. Best fuckin’ behaviour.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he waves a hand, barely looking at the Lieutenant. Your eyes pass from one to the other, then to Tina, who shrugs and gives you a conspiratorial eye roll at her colleagues’ expense.
“I’m serious, Reed. Best fuckin’ behaviour, or I’m sending you back to Detroit in handcuffs.”
“And not in the way you like,” Tina nudges him in the ribs, then laughs and dodges as he aims a retaliatory swipe of his gloves at her. “It’s fine, Hank. I’ll keep him out of trouble.”
When Anderson, evidently tired of the conversation, shakes his head and turns to leave with quick come on, son to Connor,Tina continues: “And what I can’t prevent, I’ll document thoroughly.”
You guess that they’re referencing some past incident, as Reed’s cheeks colour and he avoids eye contact, choosing instead to scowl at the creeping ivy that covers the front of the building in a wash of red and green.
To avoid further bickering, and to get out of the cold as soon as possible, you gesture right with a nod of your head. “Down here. We’ll follow the crowd. With this many people out, you can’t possibly miss Marshall.”
You're right, of course. Marshall Hall is an old but well maintained three storey building on the edge of the ‘justice circle’—the law library, the dean’s hall and office, a host of lecture theatres and, of course, the conference centre. It’s far too small for use as an academic space, so the college had it converted to a boarding house of sorts for older students, research fellows, and the occasional visiting academic with low standards.
Music blares from the windows; the front door is ajar too, with light and people spilling from it in every direction. Everyone is talking, laughing, and waving spuriously legal cups of drink.
As you scan faces, it looks like half the engineering department has shown up for the party. You see remarkably few undergrads from your own classes, which is a relief but a little isolating, and you’re suddenly glad for the grad students’ familiar faces—especially when you spot a familiar but unwelcome face in the crowd out front.
You’d split with your ex some weeks before. It was mostly amicable, though the split wasn’t mutual; at the time, he was content, mostly because he seemed to be under the impression you’d come crawling back to him. In the time since your break, he’s made an unfortunate habit of showing up whenever you least wanted to see him to give you an opportunity to do just that.
Thankful for the rush of people, you turn to beckon Chen and Reed forward before squeezing past the revellers in the doorway, careful to keep your head ducked out of view.
Davide leads the cheer as you enter the foyer and comes over to kiss your cheek lightly, pressing an empty plastic cup into your hand with a wink.
“And here I thought you’d deprive us of your presence tonight.” He hooked his arm around your shoulders and you laugh uncertainly as his additional weight makes you sway.
“And miss this?” You catch his partner’s eye across the room and mouth help me at them. They laugh, murmuring something to the person beside them, and come to your rescue, albeit too slow for your taste.
“Drinks’re set up in the kitchen… pick your poison.” Ever the drunk flirt, Davide winks at Reed and Chen and blows you a kiss before allowing himself to be pulled away with his partner’s vague promises of amorous attention. His voice fades, lost to the music, as he recedes. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
“Low bar,” you murmur to yourself, snaking through the hall to throw your coat in the hall closet.
The music is louder in the building. It seems to reverberate through all the rooms no matter where you walk, though you can’t pinpoint where it comes from. The thumping bass should be enough to drown out conversation, but somehow the voices of the crowd are everywhere—laughing, calling out, singing along.
The kitchen, opening up into a long shared dining space, is halfway down the hall on the main floor. While the building is undeniably full, it doesn’t take you much effort to skirt around the people in it; most recognise you, at least in passing, and wave a hand or smile. You don’t stop to chat, just grin and raise your empty cup in a pointed gesture, trailing the two officers and leaving your acquaintances nodding in mock-solemn understanding, shuffling aside to clear you a path.
The kitchen has more breathing space and is a little quieter—at least until it opens up into the dining room. Someone had lovingly laid out more spirits than was sensible, a respectable variety, and stuck a hastily scribbled post-it note to one that says and the beer’s in the fridge if you’re boring.
“Help yourself,” you gesture at the stack of cups and the range of drinks. “Knowing Davide, it’s decent stuff.”
Chen pulls a cup loose and does as you say. You pour yourself a shot of something clear and strong—whatever was closest—then fill your cup with water from the tap, conscious of the fuzziness at the edges of your mind from the wine.
The shot burns your throat, but the warmth is welcome after the cold. It washes away some of the self-consciousness, and some of the tiredness that came from babysitting the DPD visitors—they are pleasant enough, but there are a lot of them, and it isn’t as if the dean had been doing any of the heavy lifting.
Reed has taken Chen’s place at the drinks station when an influx of people pours through the door. The noise rolls over the room in a wave, cheering and excitable chatter indistinguishable from the low rumble of the music. You spot bright CyberLife logos amongst the more common shirt-and-jeans combinations favoured by engineers, and suddenly feel a little overdressed; you’d picked something more business-casual, knowing you were supposed to represent the department by playing host for the visitors. It made you stick out a bit in the dressed-down crowd.
You fuss absently with your appearance, aiming to slouch back down to something casual, when you catch the shape of a person wavering back and forth in your eyeline. When you focus and met their eye, you see your ex smiling surreptitiously but pretending not to look. You try not to let on that you’ve spotted him and instead let your eyes flicker across the crowd, drinking in the dozens of people around the periphery instead, wandering slowly to put as many people between you as possible.
“Oh, that was a bit dire.”
The mellow voice in your ear makes you jump, but you recognise it at once as another one of the grad students—Julia, her voice acerbic and slightly accented. You stop by her, pausing as you process her words. “Guess he found you again, hm?”
“Just my luck,” you agree, leaning over the end of the dining table to knock the lid off the nearest bottle and pour yourself a second shot. You down it without hesitation. Julia raises an approving brow. “Luckily, I’ve got… where’d they go?”
“Your adopted cops? No need to worry. Manny’s looking after them.”
You give her a look, cup of water half-raised to your mouth. “You think that’s wise?”
“Wiser than leaving them alone.” Julia isn’t looking at you. She’s checking Chen out across the room with the smallest of smiles. “He’ll talk at them ’til they’re dizzy, but they won’t be bored.”
Following her gaze, you find the trio engaged in what looks like a heated discussion. Manny is grinning ear to ear, but that isn’t unusual; the two officers stand shoulder to shoulder opposite him, a united front, but they carry some of Manny’s infectious energy. As you watch, Chen laughs uproariously and punches Manny’s arm before offering some retort of her own, coaxing the other two to laughter.
Perhaps Julia’s right. They’re in good, if exuberant, hands. They’ll be fine, and you can check on them later, once you’ve had a break, once you’ve escaped the roving eyes across the room. A little tension leaves your shoulders as you let go of the unnecessary responsibility. It feels good.
Julia places her cup with exaggerated care and returns to stand next to you, clicking her tongue in disapproval. You expect she’s clocked your water and intends to berate you for your restraint, but you’re mistaken—she leans forward and whispers directly into your ear, her words a hissed warning.
“Watch out. He’s on the move. You’re on your own.”
You call a sarcastic thank you as Julia disappears behind the wall of partygoers, but don’t need her to tell you twice. Unwilling to suffer through another awkward, halting conversation, you check on Reed and Chen one last time—Chen seemed to have told another joke, apparently at Reed’s expense, to Manny’s hysterical amusement—and make a beeline for the door.
The room is more crowded than when you arrived. It takes you a minute to cross the dining room back to the kitchen, and when you round the corner a little too fast, you collide with someone walking the other way.
Brown eyes watch you, head tilted, as you regain your balance. They hold a bright, wry humour, familiar in some aspects but new in others. Disoriented as you are, it takes a moment to place his face before confusion sets in. You weren’t expecting to see Connor there, especially when you’d already said goodnight half an hour before. Strangely, his smile broadens the longer you watch him, distracting you from your immediate question, but raising another: the longer you watch, the less he looks like himself.
“Hey. You again,” you say, missing the questioning lift of his eyebrow. “Sorry—I thought you were heading back to the hotel with Lieutenant Anderson?”
He gives you a quick flash of his teeth and that’s the first clue you spot: the more you speak, the more amused he seems. He doesn’t respond to your question right away but looks down at your hands, both grasping at his jacket—you’d reached out automatically to keep your balance and hadn’t let go. You hastily drag your hands away, but it’s too late: his lopsided half-smile grows to a full smirk.
“No,” he said, dipping his head to the left and tapping his LED. “Not me.”
“Oh.” The wheels turn in your head, agonisingly slow. You realise that, somehow, you hadn’t noticed there were two RK800 models wandering around all day, not just one. It might have been the alcohol or the bizarre nature of the situation, or even just the lurking threat of your ex somewhere behind you, but you decide to accept that and push forward instead of asking the thousand questions in your mind. “Oh. In that case, I guess we should start properly.”
You offer him your hand and your name, trying hard not to remember what it feels like to hold handfuls of his clothing, or the tempting impression of sculpted synthetic muscle beyond them. The suffusing warmth of alcohol only helps keep your thoughts wandering—and based on the way he watches you with amusement, he notices the rush of embarrassment that burns your cheeks. He keeps you waiting, eyes flickering over your face, your extended hand, and everything in between.
“Sixty.”
You smile back when he takes your hand, eyes falling from his face to your joined hands when he lingers more than his double, the soft brush of his fingers across yours slow and deliberate.
“A pleasure to meet you, Sixty.” He grins at your choice of words; you miss his response when you’re forced to shuffle sideways to allow a couple to pass, but you roll your eyes openly when Sixty stands straight, so you have to brush against him, instead of moving to give you clearance. As you step back, steadfastly ignoring how the balancing hand on your elbow rekindles your suppressed frustration, you scan the room, watchful, disinclined to be surprised.
When the traffic eases, he releases your arm. “I didn’t see you around earlier. Did you have other business, or is Connor notorious enough that you need to keep a low profile?”
Something in his smile shifts—he seems surprised, almost appreciative, but he contradicts you, though his gaze remains appraising.
“No,” there’s a laugh half-buried in his words. “Not really.”
“What—”
The words you were going to say stop coming when his eyes move beyond you, their deep intensity fading to nothing, clouded by… annoyance? It’s difficult to tell in the dim light, even if Sixty wears his thoughts more obviously than Connor.
He catches you off guard by leaning in close, his cheek almost brushing yours, to speak in your ear. Knowing that jerking away in surprise would give him satisfaction, you stiffen, then force yourself to relax, fold your arms and stay put.
“Seems to me,” you can feel his breath tickle your skin, catch a few loose strands of your hair and make them flutter, “that you have an admirer.”
A half-hearted laugh from you. “Doubtful.”
Your intrigue in Sixty is strong but tainted by the knowledge that, somewhere behind you in the room, your ex is watching—and being conspicuous enough that Sixty noticed.
Perhaps you should feel better that he’s an investigative model designed to spot suspicious behaviour, but you don’t. Instead, you feel the drag of irritation against your nerves, a sour note added to an otherwise good mood. Sixty pulls back a little and examines your face, unconvinced, that light mirth still dancing in his eyes.
“Well, he could be looking at me. How could I blame him when the view’s this good?” You shoot Sixty a look, aiming for withering. By the flash of teeth, you know you weren’t convincing. “But I doubt it.”
“This tall?” With a hand you gestured, marking a height a little taller than you. “Kinda messy, surrounded by a pack of engineers, a vague aura of…”
“Stupidity?”
“Not the word I was going to use.”
“I’m right though, aren’t I? And you know him.” Sixty’s grin has a light of its own, a teasing condescension with most of the rough edges sanded off.
“Not an admirer.”
“Hm. If not an admirer, what?” He folds his arms in imitation of your posture and makes a show of thinking aloud. Investigative model, indeed. “A rival, perhaps?”
You’re certain he’s doing it for show. As part of your preparation for the conference, you’d looked up Connor and the other detectives—they had some impressive records—but Connor was a top-of-the-line prototype. In terms of pure brain power, he could analyse circles around the others. It stood to reason that Sixty would have the same level of skill.
“No.”
You try not to wonder what other skills he has.
“Boyfriend, then.” It isn’t a question. He laughs softly when you don’t respond, correctly interpreting your silence as confirmation, and leans down to whisper, conspiratorial, as if there’s some risk of being overheard. “But you’re not happy to see him.”
“Ex.” You turn to face Sixty properly and lean closer, mimicking his teasing tone, determined to deny him the satisfaction of flustering you. “So he’s not my problem anymore.”
Sixty’s eyes light up at your words and you wonder briefly if you made a mistake by taking his attitude as a challenge—but you like the playful quirk of his mouth, the intensity with which he watches you. Where there was a solid pane of glass between you and Connor, hindering the curiosity you had about him as a person, Sixty was an open door.
“Does he know that?” His eyes leave your face and you savour a quick breath before they return. “He’s on his way over.”
Shit.
Something of your thoughts must show on your face because Sixty pulls back, just a fraction, and considers you with a thoughtful expression, unfolding his arms and leaning against the wall beside you, the very picture of casual ease.
You’ve got a couple of minutes, you reckon, based on the number of people packed into the room. The kitchen door is a few paces away, only partially blocked, and you fancy your odds of reaching it without being caught are pretty good—or they would be, if Sixty wasn’t resolutely blocking the way.
“Come on. We’ll have to be quick.” He’s not looking at you; he throws a grin at someone behind you, raises a cavalier hand in an approximation of a wave then wraps an arm around your shoulders and steers you abruptly around the kitchen island, towards the door.
There had to be something to android perception that you, mundane and human, lacked; Sixty navigates the guests, in their various states of inebriation, with a speed and efficiency that impresses you. He does not, however, guide you out into the hallway, but further left into a little alcove—partially blocked from view and a little quieter for its distance from the sound system.
You’re encouraged to stop by soft but insistent pressure on your shoulder and Sixty’s voice at your ear, less suggestive than before but every bit as roguish, fading when he turns his head to look behind you.
“Wow. Persistent, this one.” Sixty exhales in a derisive snort. “What’d you do to him?”
“Broke up with him.” Obviously.
“Hm. That’d do it.” He’s teasing again, but you don’t rise to it; your eyes are on the door again, so close but still barred by enthusiastic students in search of drinks and company.
“He thinks I’m going to change my mind.”
Every time you saw him, he acted magnanimous, so conspicuous as to be obnoxious, giving you ample ‘opportunity’ to go running back to him. You know you made the right choice—every day since the break you’ve felt lighter, more like yourself. A part of you misses him—or the version of him you remember—and probably will for a while, but the larger part of you is entirely relieved.
“Will you?” The seriousness in Sixty’s tone catches your attention. He isn’t even smirking any more, just watching, analysing, while his arm withdraws from your shoulders. You feel a little colder without his touch, and a fair amount of self-consciousness for noticing.
“No.”
“Good.” Before you can ask what he means, he leans close again, movements exaggerated, half of his mouth pulled into that customary smirk. “Because I have an idea.”
The purposeful purse of his lips gives you a few ideas, most of them unhelpful, and you’re doubtful that Sixty’s next attempt at overt flirtation would prove any better.
Exhaling one measured breath, you look back at him, expectant.
“What?”
“How do you feel about messing with him?”
You’re curious but guarded in your response. “What did you have in mind?”
“If he doesn’t think you’ve moved on,” Sixty leans an arm against the wall next to you, encroaching on your space but pointedly not touching you. “Maybe he needs some hard evidence. I’m sure that between us, we could make it sound convincing.”
If you’re being honest, you’re not sure what you expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t a thinly veiled offer to pretend to fuck you while your ex was listening.
If you’re really being honest, you’re surprised more by how much the thought excites you.
A sharp shift in his posture and attention saves you from having to respond; he stays close but lifts his head and straightens his shoulders. It makes him look a little taller, gives an impression of aloofness, subsequently shattered when he winks down at you. “Just think about it, sweetheart.”
A second later, a hand on your shoulder makes you jump. Sixty’s offer crowded the forefront of your mind, lurid in its scandal, but to your irritation it’s replaced by the face of your ex.
As usual, his smile is a little too anticipative, his approach a little too familiar. You’re reminded, all in a rush, of why you’re avoiding him.
“Hey. Didn’t think you’d be around tonight.” He glances at Sixty, a light frown on his face that doesn’t disappear even when he looks back at you. “The dean put you up to it?”
“Yeah… something like that. This is—”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ve met.”
You stare at Sixty in naked surprise, then flick between them, gleaning absolutely nothing from their expressions despite your best efforts.
“Oh.”
“Hm. I can see why you split.” Sixty leans down towards you again, nudging you with an elbow as if your ex isn’t right there and listening. “He's got some interesting ideas about improvements to infrastructure for androids.”
It’s written very plainly on your ex’s face: he said something stupid, rash and in-the-moment, and probably refused to back down. It’s one of the behaviours that grated on you while you were together, an impulsivity paired with a stubborn inability to admit fault. You watched his face flush a little as he opens his mouth, reaching for the words to rebuff Sixty but stumbling over his stalled thoughts.
Part of you wonders if Sixty istruly trying to help you out of an awkward situation, or simply revelling in the opportunity to get one over on your ex for whatever he’d said earlier. You get the impression the truth sits about somewhere between the two, and realise that it’s not very important to you: regardless of context there was something thrilling in Sixty’s offer, in his natural confidence. His self-assurance was attractive, his humour a match for yours, and while his flirting style was a little scandalous, he applied no substantial pressure with it.
Not to mention his presence kept your ex’s focus off you for a few precious minutes.
Partly out of pity for your ex, but mostly out of your sense of self-worth, you interrupt his disjointed rationalisations, smiling but firm.
“I’m sorry, but we can’t really stop to talk.” You put a hand on Sixty’s arm and push, noting with annoyance that you can’t budge him at all. Instead, your arms fold as you apply greater pressure, leaving you leaning closer to him with no gained ground. You can feel the vibrations through his chest as he chuckles as your lack of success. “Sixty promised to show me something.”
“Is that what I said?” he murmurs, only loud enough for you to hear. You smile wider, hoping he’s advanced enough that his analysis software picks up on the annoyance hiding behind it, and face him.
“What is it, Sixty?” You’re careful to keep your voice low, so it’s camouflaged by the chaos in the rest of the room. “Suddenly not so confident in your hard evidence?”
Sixty pushes himself free of the wall immediately, dipping his head to keep his face close to yours, the light back in his eyes as he snakes a hand around your waist, long fingers teasing and probing but not straying. You hope he doesn’t notice that the sudden contact makes you shiver, or that the effect is worse when he murmurs to you again.
“Maybe I do have something to show you.”
Pulling you against his side, Sixty spares a loose grin for your ex and prepares to steer the two of you towards the door. With his left arm wrapped around you, he uses his free hand to clap your ex on the shoulder, his camaraderie insincere, obvious by the width of his smile.
“Not your day, is it? Don’t wait up.”
*
The air in the hallway is a little cooler on your skin, but Sixty’s hand is still at your waist, even when you’re both out of sight. You’re fighting an instinctive urge to laugh at your lucky escape, your excitement, and at the tingling sensation in your abdomen when Sixty’s fingers squeeze gently, pulling you out of the path of a wayward student.
“Are you going to tell me what he said?” You’re heading towards the stairs, thankful that while the lower landing is full, the upper one looks mostly empty. “Why you want to embarrass him?”
Sixty laughs freely and dodges the question, releasing your waist as you take to the stairs, barely a step behind you. “You didn’t think this was just for your benefit, did you?”
Truthfully, it felt better, less like he was taking advantage of your circumstances and more like he was being opportunistic with his own—like his touch it was provocative and brash by design. Sixty seemed to like to arouse a response, and he certainly accomplished his task.
You reach the landing without incident and without answering Sixty, who takes it in his stride. Upstairs has a far sparser population. Most people stood at the far end of the corridor, over by the door to the balcony that overlooks the garden.
Still filled with some adrenaline from your narrow escape, you step forward at pace, only to be slowed by Sixty, who hooks his arm through yours to stop you striding away.
“Slow down, sweetheart. You want him to find us.”
Something about his tone, or about intentionally letting someone overhear—even when intentionally misleading—makes your heartbeat faster. A warmth spread through your body at the thought, with a thrum of arousal between your legs, and you avoid looking at Sixty as much as possible while checking the doors to the post grads’ bedrooms.
You have a few friends who stay in the Marshall building long term and, luckily, one such friend is away at a different conference somewhere closer to the East Coast. You’ve crashed there before, and know the place well enough, but Sixty’s proximity is distracting—all you can feel is the firm shape of his arm against yours, the brush of his hip as you walk. He keeps his presence constant but nonintrusive. For all his blurred obscenity and charm, he shows a level of consideration that’s new to you.
The door handle is cool under your fingers, in contrast with the rest of you. You turn it and push as Sixty hums, then lets the sound roll and build to small, self-satisfied laughter. It makes you pause, halfway through the door. His fingers curl around your upper arm.
“No need to stop,” Sixty coaxes you forward and you push the door completely open, exposing a simple room—functional but sparsely decorated. The owner of the room seems to store most possessions out of the way, with the exception of a haphazard stack of familiar law textbooks and a few items scattered across the sideboard, hastily discarded.
You’re nervous, in a way, but it’s mostly excited anticipation; Sixty breezes past you into the room, eyes sweeping the surroundings with faint interest.
You expect him to take advantage of the sudden privacy. He’s bold to a fault, cocky in a way you enjoy, though it exasperates you a little; it might have been the still-open door, but he didn’t even try to touch you.
You find it annoying.
The strength of your indignation freezes you in place. With your hand still resting on the door handle, you watch Sixty sidestep a pace to the left, still close enough that you could reach out and grab him, so he could leaf through the magazines on the nightstand. He exhales a sharp snort of laughter at whatever he sees. You consider that maybe you misread him—maybe he was just out for a little fun at your ex’s expense.
You shake your head free of that thought; it could have been wishful thinking, but you didn’t think you’re misread him. Every time he’d leaned in close, every deft and purposeful touch of his hand, the low, tickling whispers...
He’s an android, you remind yourself. Of course he knows what he’s doing. No doubt he’s equipped with endless software for situational analysis, risk assessment, for calculating probability of success.
It’s time you take a calculated risk of your own. The door closes and you turn the lock with a loud click.
Sixty notices the sound, abrupt in the quiet room, and turns, expression quizzical, to look at you. He’s almost facing you properly when you reach for his wrist and pull.
Like before, he’s heavy, almost unmoveable, until he decides to play along—and now he’s too moveable. Your stored momentum is loose all at once, propelling you backwards.
Stubborn, you stay your course, dragging at his willing arm until your back hits the door. You don’t hear the thud, barely feel the impact, because Sixty’s face is a few scant inches from your own, eyes accusing, expression restless. Despite all his talk, he’s still holding back.
Perhaps he hadn’t understood.
His face changes entirely when your fingers release his wrist and find the waistband of his jeans, trailing over the edge and around, ever so slowly, lingering whenever you feel him tense in response to your touch.
One of his hands moved to the door, supporting him as he leans sideways, lowering his eyes to be level with yours. His free hand closes around your errant fingers, halting their exploration.
“Listen, sweetheart. I don’t have any expectations of you.”
Sixty’s voice is soft and low, his breath gentle and warm against your cheek, and for the briefest of moments he looks the most serious you’ve seen him. For the first time, you see a resemblance to Connor and his sombre quietness; it doesn’t seem to fit Sixty in the same way—you see glowing cracks in it, from the way his eyes wander from yours to watch your mouth, to the muscles in his jaw twitching as they tense and relax.
“I appreciate that, but I’m… concerned.” You wiggle your trapped fingers, indirectly communicating the impatience that clouds your thoughts. Sixty doesn’t miss the irony laced through your tone, though his LED flashes amber for a moment. Something of his bravado seeps back in, bringing with it the beginnings of a fierce smile, only to come back in full force when you continue: “What if we don’t sound convincing?”
Sixty releases your fingers, but his hand follows your wrist, your arm, until he lifts it and tips your face towards him. “That would be a shame.”
Synthetic though he is, his touch is light, firm, and gentler than you expect. You repay it in kind, your eagerness negating some of the gentility with which your hands tease and pull at his shirt, tugging him closer.
“So fuck me properly.”
The door groans as he presses you into it, his mouth moving hot and slow over your own, tongue mapping every curve of your lips, tracing the line where they meet, silently asking for entry.
You wrap an arm around his waist and cling there, wanting to feel him closer even though you’re pressed flush against every inch of him already; if you’d ever had any doubts about android anatomy, the hardening length pressed between you banishes them.
Toying with his patience for the hell of it, you part your lips slightly and feel the shape of his mouth change against yours as he grins, apparently unfazed by your teasing. His tongue slips between your lips, rougher than a human’s, a fine coarseness that immediately makes you wonder what it would feel like against—
You inhale sharply when Sixty bites at your lower lip, dragging his teeth across soft flesh with light pressure. You abandon all thoughts of moving slowly, of letting him in piece by piece, of making him wait. Instead you open up entirely, giving him free access and moaning when he accepts it, returning the touch of his questing tongue with wild curiosity of your own.
Your sounds trigger a wildness in Sixty, who moves one hand from your chin to your neck, and trails the other down the length of your body, past your shirt, over your skirt—a little wrinkled now—until he strokes the bare skin of your thigh.
His fingertips are cold, only a little, but it’s enough to make a shiver run through you. Sixty takes advantage of your lapse in focus and runs this tongue across yours, precise and methodical, as though he’s desperate to taste every part of you.
When your lungs are crying out for oxygen, you pull at his shirt collar and rest your head back against the door, relieved when he relents without fuss.
“Fuck, Sixty.” With the way he’s looking at you, that sly self-satisfaction, you surmise that you look about as composed as you feel. “I still need to breathe.”
He proves entirely undeterred: his mouth and tongue make their way across your jaw instead while you inhale one lungful after another of sweet, cool air.
“That makes one of us.”
There’s a spot at the base of your neck where it connects to your shoulder; Sixty notices the sharp way you inhale as his lips trail over it so he does it again, this time with a flick of his tongue, then again with the barest threat of teeth.
Between the alternating sharp and soothing sensation and the warm hand sliding up your leg beneath your skirt, you’re caught, unable to move unless it’s flexing into his touch or to fumble at the buttons on his shirt, vying for more skin contact. Sixty laughs against your skin and nips at it again, breathing in the scent of your perfume and the subtler scent of your skin beneath it, releasing a sigh of contentment as he exhales.
You let his lips wander your body while you undo the last buttons of his shirt and revel in the smooth feeling of his chest under your curious fingers. He’s definitely not human, but it’s hard to pinpoint how you can tell: his skin is yielding and soft, the muscle underneath firm and responsive. He’s warm to the touch, but maybe not as much as you, and as your hands move up his chest, you feel the slightest vibration of his heart, hidden by pale synthetic skin.
When you can’t stand his teasing anymore you lift a hand to his cheek and guide his mouth back towards yours, intending to give him a taste of his own medicine, but your eyes catch on his lips—swollen and glistening, hidden for a moment by a flash of cunning tongue.
You can’t resist. You shift your hand slightly so you can pull at his lower lip with your thumb, smearing the wetness across it. His tongue flicks out to graze at your thumb as it passes, its roughness captivating, and you’re fascinated that something so obviously not human feels so good. You tease at his lips until he rewards you with another graze of his tongue; watching it makes your own move, sliding across your teeth for want of tactile sensation.
Sixty’s watching you with rapt attention, LED amber as he processes the feel of you, the taste of you, and you remember that his senses can detect so much more than yours. Can he detect the blood that warms your face when you notice how hungry he looks? Has he measured how much faster your heart is beating?
Does he know that you’re already wet for him?
You pull him back to you, fingers wound through his hair—a little rough, but that only encourages him. While you’re exploring his mouth at your leisure, the hand beneath your skirt disappears, only for a moment; when it returns, Sixty’s ghosting the backs of his fingers against your inner thigh instead, swiping up and down, getting slowly higher. His movements are slow but his impatience shows in the fevered way he kisses you, his technique turned artless and demanding but honest in its enthusiasm.
He doesn’t give you the space or the breath to berate him for teasing; you feel him smirk every time you writhe or shiver. He only releases his hold on your mouth as he’s tracing a single long finger down the centre of your underwear.
A stifled moan escapes you as his finger brushes past your clit, only for Sixty’s to eclipse it when he feels your wetness against his fingers. He draws them back and forth, slowly rubbing the length of your sex through your underwear, while he tilts his head to drag his mouth and tongue lazily down your neck once more.
It’s both too much and nowhere near enough. One of your hands travels under his open shirt, wraps around his waist and clings to him, exploring his perfect skin, pulling him closer. With the other, you draw patterns against his abdomen, mimicking the way he moves between your legs, drawing closer to the waistband of his jeans. Your hand is on his button when he pauses and moves your hand to palm him over his clothing: not a no, a firm not yet.
His following sigh is appreciative, and it deepens when you apply a little more pressure. His free hand moves to your hip and pins it in place, effectively stopping you from rocking against his fingers.
You want more, but his grip is too strong; you squeeze his erection gently and he quickens his pace. It occurs to you that you’re both still clothed and, for the most part, you’ve barely felt his skin against yours, and while you can’t stand waiting, you’re unable to do anything but cling to him, using his body as an anchor against the tides of sensation.
Your hand pressing hard against his cock gives Sixty his cue. The fabric of your underwear slips aside easily and his fingers move instead over your wet folds in the same pattern, the new proximity lighting fires across your already tingling nerves.
You catch yourself before you cry out. Sixty pauses and draws back from marking your neck to tut at you.
“Ah, ah. Convincing, remember.” he nips at your earlobe, staying close and keeping his voice low. “I want to hear you.”
With that, he circled your entrance once more before he presses a finger inside, deliberate and slow, pulling a shuddering moan from low in your throat. Mumbled words slipped from your mouth, forgotten as soon as they reached the open air. You know he’s doing it on purpose, winding you up and providing the barest amount of relief so you’ll lose yourself; you keep teasing him through his jeans, taking satisfaction in knowing that you’re having the same effect on him as he is on you.
It’s a thrill, separated from the rest of the party by a few inches of wood with very little soundproofing. The threat of being overheard was stimulating in an altogether new way—it gave you an excited dizziness, made you want to laugh at the thought that your ex, childish and territorial with no right to be, could walk past any moment and overhear the way you moaned while a hot android buried his fingers in you.
There’s a crash down the hall, like someone’s knocked something, and a chorus of cheers that follow it. Inconsistent footsteps in the hallway make you move instinctively, but Sixty’s getting too good at reading you; he slips a second finger inside you with the first, angling his hand so the pad of his thumb can draw wide circles around your clit.
You gasp at the sudden spike in stimulation and Sixty laughs softly against your neck, curling his fingers until your hips automatically flex into his touch, pressing him deeper.
He measures his strokes, times them to match the way his hips rock into your hand, but it doesn’t last long. You want to chastise him, pull his hand back to you and tell him you’re not done with him, but he interrupts your thoughts.
Sixty lifts his fingers up to study them, something like fire burning in his eyes. They’re slick with your arousal. He appears transfixed by the sight.
He touches his tongue to the tip of his fingers for a fraction of a second, almost tentative, then licks down one and slides them into his mouth, eager tongue lapping at them, savouring every trace of you. He’s obscene in his desire to taste you. You can’t stop staring. A blissful expression crosses his face and he leans forward to press his cock further into your palm.
When his eyes meet yours again, he’s changed—the mischievous glint is gone, replaced with annoyance. The amber circle at his temple concerns you until you process his mumbled words.
“Not enough.”
Air rushes across your face as he kneels down in front of you, pulling one leg over his shoulder to give him access, then dragging his fingers across the outside of your leg. He lays one kiss on the inside of your thigh before his eyes lock on to your sex, admiring you, how wet you are, his obvious desire acting as counterbalance to his self-control.
You thought you’d feel self-conscious but Sixty is oblivious, his stare rapturous, his tongue already moving between parted lips.
The amber rushes back to blue, and that’s your only warning before his fingers gently spread your folds open and his tongue is on you, hot and strong, running circles around your clit with varying pressure.
“Oh, fuck…”
Your voice shakes, louder than intended, despite your hand across it. Sixty notices and slows his ministrations, punishing you for depriving him of your voice, but you’ve remembered the game and already pulled your hand away. You’re stubborn—and you really don’t want him to stop.
You move your hand to his head instead, brushing his unruly hair back from his face, tugging ever so slightly. That meets with his approval and his tongue laps at your clit again, vacillating between teasing and avoidant. When he wraps his lips around it and sucks slightly, you call out his name, fingers tightening on his hair, and he groans.
The vibrations from his voice rumble through you. His fingers tease your entrance again as he licks at you, but he can’t seem to hold back this time: he’s curling two inside you before you can tell him you want it, dragging smooth fingertips over your sensitive spots as if he has them memorised.
You roll your hips experimentally, timing it to coincide with the movements of his mouth and fingers. The new angle presses his tongue closer and you exhale in a rush, overwhelmed, but you’re persuaded to continue by the wave of pleasure and Sixty’s wordless hum of approval.
The game continues. Every time there’s a noise outside the room—laughter, shouted greetings, footsteps—Sixty amps up his efforts, fingers pressing deeper, sucking and licking until you can’t help but cry and whine.
It isn’t long before your legs start to shake. Sixty holds you firm and between him and the door—you’re confident you won’t fall; good thing, too, because your mind is empty of everything except the feel of his tongue and fingers, the soft strands of his hair caught in your balled fist, the shameless, slick noises he makes as he laps at you.
Your free hand roams, sometimes finding his hand on your thigh, pushing your hair from your face, sliding down your own chest—with Sixty an arm’s length away you reach for anything, everything, aching to reciprocate, to grasp something that would steady you against your impending free-fall. He watches you touch yourself from his knees, that familiar intensity locked on to your face, your wandering hands, so you give him a show—tease yourself over your clothes everywhere you want him to touch you.
It takes a moment for you to notice his hand moving over his pants in measured strokes, simulating the way you’d touched him; his cock tents the fabric under his fingers, out of reach but mercilessly on display.
Sixty doesn’t slow in his treatment of you, doesn’t give you a chance to catch a breath. He keeps moving, devoted in his attentions, until you’re pulsing and tensing around him, your words reduced to a fractured whine.
You come with his name on your lips, a cry you don’t even try to censor. Heat and frisson chase one another over your skin as your pleasure peaks, leaving you senseless for a few seconds, black spots clouding your vision, a hissing buzz muffling your hearing. Sixty moans long and low as he withdraws his fingers to taste you, cleaning his fingers before he runs his tongue over your entrance, adding to the shivers running across your body and leaving you gasping.
He doesn’t let go of you as he lowers your leg from his shoulder and gets to his feet. You’re glad because you don’t think you’d be able to support your own weight while dizzy and still trembling. Sixty runs his hands over your hips, moving in close again, the tip of his nose brushing against yours as he analyses your faraway expression and the flush in your cheeks.
Without thinking, you reach for him, desperate to touch everything previously out of reach, running your hands down his face, his neck, across his chest, taking a moment to retrace the places that make him shiver. You save the bulge in his pants for last, savouring his poorly hidden impatience as he waits for your touch.
“You,” Sixty leans close, whispering so his breath tickles the shell of your ear, “taste incredible.”
His cadence of his voice, rough from exertion, reaches within you and stokes your desire back to a dull roar.
“Show me.”
Sixty’s grin is wicked. He obliges you, cupping your face and meeting your parted lips with his own, slipping his tongue into your mouth with casual ease and running it along the edge of your own. You tease at him with your teeth, an idle threat; tasting yourself on his tongue is overtly distracting.
That taste, combined with the memory of where his mouth has been, has your walls pulsing again, but this time you want to feel him come apart, watch hisLED flash and spin between errant curls.
You reach for his belt and undo it, rougher than intended but full of want, your fingers stumbling and imprecise.
Sixty sighs against your mouth when you unzip his pants and slide your hand inside his underwear, rubbing in smooth motions along his hard shaft. You slide your thumb across the head of his cock and smile when you feel the slick gathered there; Sixty freezes for a moment, adjusting to the intensity of the sensation, and you feel a thrill—inhuman as he is, he feels as you do, and is just as easily undone by the firm way you grip and stroke him.
Though he doesn’t need the air, he breathes in sharp huffs. With a hand on his neck, you guide his head to your shoulder, turning your head to press your lips to his temple.
Sixty kisses at your collarbone but is clearly distracted: you’ve pulled his erection free of his clothing and you’re stroking it, movements long and delicate, twisting your hand a little as you move it up and down. On the upstroke, your thumb brushes over the head and you feel his teeth graze your shoulder.
Your tongue is restless in your mouth. You’re consumed with curiosity, a dozen burning, immediate questions that leave your mind so crowded you aren’t sure which to act on first—how would he feel in your mouth? Your throat? Would he shudder and moan at the touch of your tongue? How does he taste?
The last you can answer. You draw your thumb up his cock again, paying attention to the patches of sensors that have Sixty moaning into your neck, then swipe slowly across the slit. Your thumb shines wetly when you lift it—while you examine the blue tint to the fluid, Sixty pulls back, sensing your intentions, watching you with a ravenous hunger that sends your stomach fluttering.
You meet his eye, silent but smiling slightly and with wicked intent, entirely aware that you're mimicking his behaviour, while he stares transfixed at your thumb, watching you lift it closer to your face to lick across it, wrap your lips around it and suck.
His groan is primal, his grip on your hips so strong he leaves marks on your skin. You take it as encouragement and drag your thumb from your mouth slowly, letting it slip out with a pop. The extra wetness helps a little as you return your hand to his cock and pump, slow to start but building speed and pressure.
With your other hand, you push on his shoulder, guiding him away from you so you can move free of the door. You don’t stop stroking him; you alternate between long sweeping pumps of his shaft and shorter movements around the head. He lets you, utterly consumed by the sight and feel of your hand moving up and down his length.
“Sixty.” His eyes lift to your face. “I want you to hold my hair back.”
When he kisses you, wet and wanton, you feel the vibration of his soft laughter. He draws back, hips rolling forward as you squeeze him a little tighter, stroke him just a little faster, tempting him.
“Not yet.” He laughs again at your expression, a sour surprise at being denied, before tilting your face to look up at him. You’ve paused the movements of your hand, a mild sort of punishment, but nothing in his expression tells you he’s noticed, even though he can’t have missed it. His voice slips lower, trades its softness for threatening promise, while his thumb idly strokes your cheek.
“How am I supposed to hear you scream with my cock in your mouth?”
Your rapid inhale answers for you, in the place of words you can’t find. Sixty’s eyes wander down your body as the hand at your hips moves up, travelling everywhere as yet unexplored, and he licks his lips. You wonder if he’s still thinking about how you taste.
The two of you spend a furious minute ridding yourself of your remaining clothing, pulling and tugging at caught fabric and grasping at the warm, pliant flesh beneath. Sixty finds every sweet spot with unerring accuracy, grabs at your ass and breasts, licking at a thumb before running it in tight circles over your hard nipples. You return the favour with every part of him you can reach, watching the way his skin shifts and changes as you drag your nails and teeth across it.
When you’re both free of clothing, he pushes you towards the bed, keeping you off balance but never quite letting you fall. Your calves meet the wooden bed frame, cool and smooth against your skin, but Sixty’s already lowering you down, trailing his mouth all over your chest, biting his way across sensitive flesh and teasing it better with the roughness of his tongue, drawing small, incoherent sounds from you with every new touch.
Sixty pulls back slowly, so he’s leaning upright on the edge of the bed, between your legs, looking down at you. The look on his face is intoxication, as if he finds your touch, your taste, every bit as addicting as you do his; he hooks an arm under one of your knees and lifts your leg over his shoulder and pulls you towards him by your hips.
You feel the length of his cock against your thigh, leaking and hard, and let go of the moan that coils in your throat, every vestige of care about being overheard long forgotten.
Sixty has himself in hand, but once more, he’s holding back. The self-restraint seems out of character; you reach down and lead him in closer, guide him to where you need him, releasing a whine as he touches the head against your entrance.
He leans down close to you, one arm outstretched near your head for support, and lays a delicate kiss on your lips.
“By the time I’m done,” he mouths along your jaw, “mine will be the only name you remember.”
You close your eyes and exhale, suppressing a shiver as he rocks his hips and slides his cock against your folds, up towards your clit, the pressure nowhere near what you want even when you press upwards against him.
“Sixty.”
He’s still rocking back and forth, tantalisingly close, when he hums a non-committal acknowledgement. You comb your fingers through the hair at the back of his neck and form a fist, pulling with strong and even force to make sure you have his attention.
“Sixty.” Your voice is sharper, but it doesn’t cover your undertone of need.
The crooked smile he gives you is anything but apologetic. “What is it that you want?”
You pull him in close and watch his eyes fall down to your mouth while his tongue darts to wet his lips in anticipation. You stop him before he can taste you.
“Stop teasing and fuck me.”
Victorious, he pulls back and slides inside you with one fluid roll of his hips. The growing sensation of him filling you, of slowly stretching around him drowns out everything else; the throbbing music and the discordant voices down the hall fade to silence. Nothing exists for you except Sixty moving slowly inside you, pressing his forehead to yours, and the staccato sound of your breathing.
The slick between your folds eases his way. When you open your eyes, you see his face, eyes half closed, lips parted. His breath brushes across your face as he exhales. He looks the way you feel: overwhelmed with sensation, with wave after wave of tingling pleasure. Soon you’re full of him, consumed by the sweet pressure and aching for more.
He leaves his hips pressed against yours, unmoving, while you both adjust. You think for a moment it’s just for you—you’re unlikely to break him—until you see the yellow glow of his LED and realise that his physical resilience might be at odds with his mental resilience.
There’s a shaking in his shoulders you didn’t notice before, a tremor that worsens when you squeeze around him experimentally; you lift your face to kiss him, to distract him from the overwhelming sensation with light touches of your lips to his, fleeting and sweet, while you stroked a hand up and down his back.
He returns the pressure soon enough, adding his tongue to the slow dance, and you feel taut muscles loosen under your fingers as he relaxes. You feel a swell of confidence, of relief, when he pulls back and you see his LED returned to calm blue—but more so when he smirks at you, kisses you one last time, and pulls his hips back.
You expect him to fuck you hard and fast, but he doesn’t; he builds you up gradually, thrusting forward with a snap until he’s buried completely inside you before withdrawing, slow, angling himself to drag the head of his cock against your every nerve. He spends countless minutes adjusting himself to find every place that makes you groan, that makes you grip at him with desperate fingers, that makes the word please slip from your mouth, before he shows any hint of speeding up.
You wrap your leg around his waist and the words you’d intended to say—praise, insincere condemnation, you don’t even know—are lost, drowned out by another moan as he thrusts into you again, deeper and a harder than before, the new angle throwing electric tingles across your nerves.
Tension builds low in your abdomen. You feel it swell and shudder with every push of his hips. Your hands rake across Sixty’s back, pulling him closer to you, scratching at his skin so you can hear him pant and groan; he gathers speed when you bite gently at the skin of his shoulder, anchoring yourself to him, aching to feel him in every conceivable way.
You tangle your fingers in his hair and pull his mouth to you, but you’re breathing erratically, unable to do much more than lick into his mouth before you’re gasping for oxygen again.
Sixty seems just as affected as you. His mouth wanders restlessly, tongue seeking a target, lips dragging against your skin, and settles on burying his face in your neck while he fucks you, one hand propping him up, the other rubbing over your hard nipples, faster the more noise you make.
When he pinches a nipple hard you whine, squeezing around him, but the sound catches in your throat as he nips and sucks at your neck and, while Sixty doesn’t slow or stop, the harsh growl to his voice lets you know he’s dissatisfied.
“I can’t hear you, sweetheart.”
Your breath comes in gasps. Sixty’s hand moves from your chest to your clit. The tight circles he draws over it almost send you over the edge immediately. You tense and cling to your remaining composure, mumbling about how good he feels. When his thumb moved from circling to rubbing back and forth, the direct stimulation makes you shake and you let out a shout that fades to a moan; it blends with Sixty’s, muffled against your throat but felt, and your hips drive upwards to meet his as he fucks you harder.
Your sounds are all the encouragement Sixty needs. He rubs his thumb against your clit harder until you’re crying out, nailed buried deep in his skin, pulsing around him, his hips faltering but never quite stopping as he brought himself to the edge as well.
Sixty doesn’t need you to tell him that you’re close, but you do, whispering it to him in fragments, interrupted by heaving breaths and soft moans, your fingers still tangled in his hair, curled around his shoulder.
“Sixty, I’m… I’m—”
He pushes into you and pushes you over the edge, moaning into your neck as you come with his name on your lips, your voice high and fractured with the intensity of your orgasm. Sixty fucks you through it, moving faster until he comes with a guttural groan. You shudder, muscle spasms running the length of your body, and pull him closer with your arms and the leg around his waist, holding him inside you, feeling him twitch and pulse as his own orgasm peaks and subsides.
With clarity returning, you feel your face heat at the thought of how loud you’d been, how lurid and debauched you’d sounded, and how much you’d enjoyed it. The strange mix of exhilaration and embarrassment makes you laugh, soft and inconsistent, as you catch your breath.
It’s contagious. Sixty’s chest rumbles against you as he chuckles to himself, pulling back carefully to keep his hips flush with yours. You tense on purpose, milking him as much as you can with your limited brain capacity, and he sighs, a long, deep exhale. You can hear the static in his voice.
You don’t want him to move, so you stay wrapped around him, even when he gently lifts your leg from his shoulder and places it on the bed.
Even rosy and heated from the exertion, chest whirring as if he’s short of breath, Sixty, by merely existing, defies humanity in some unidentifiable way. Beautiful, abstract perfection made flesh. Watching him move, slow and careful while his face is neutral, stripped naked of rakish arrogance, is a little uncanny.
It doesn’t matter to you. Sixty’s so full of life, of personality—and more than a little full of himself—that there’s no denying he’s alive. When your fingers trail down his chest, calling his attention back to you, you feel his heartbeat under your fingers. You feel it skip and change and you blame your imagination before your fingers fall further and the gentle beat fades from your senses.
Sated though you are, you can’t help wondering about the other ways in which he’s different. As Sixty pulls out of you, careful and slow, you can’t help but wonder about his refractory period, how he’d react if you asked him to go again, later when your ears have stopped ringing and the dizziness has receded.
You prop yourself up on your elbows, not quite stable enough to be vertical. Sixty stops you moving further with two fingers under your chin, tilting your head so you’re looking up at him. The deep brown of his eyes is keen and bright, fixed, unmoving, on you. Despite everything you’ve done together, this attention is the kind that makes you feel self-conscious, the silent appreciation visible once blithe confidence and bravado has gone.
You laugh a little despite yourself, and Sixty looks caught between indignation and uncertainty. To distract him, you pull him down and kiss him, slow and persistent, until his mouth becomes pliant against yours; when you break away, you feel a small grunt of annoyance as it vibrates through his chest. He brings his mouth to yours once more before he lets you part from him and fall back on your elbows.
It almost makes you laugh again, how competitive he is, how demanding, how much he seems to want to prove himself—you don’t think it’s all for your benefit, but you don’t know him well enough to understand what it means. You feel a strange twist in your stomach as you realise that you might actually like to find out.
Sixty moves, laying beside you on the bed, hand hooked around your hip to roll you sideways with him so your mouth is still within reach, but his movements stay calm and sensual. His mouth is warm, his tongue incorrigible, and more than once you have to give yourself time to breathe while he continues, unhindered, triumphant in his lack of human flaw.
Eventually, a new sort of exhaustion pulling at your mind, you pull away, turning onto your back, and cover your face with your hands, exhaling softly.
“What?” his voice is chiding; you know from the first syllable he isn’t serious. “Regrets already?”
You swat at him with a hand, and he fakes an offended expression. “No. This just…” you sigh and shake your head but somehow still end up laughing under your breath. “… isn’t how I expected my night to go.”
“Me neither.” You throw him a disbelieving look, but he shrugs and moves to lie on his side closer to you, leaning his head against his hand while he looks at you. Even casually draped over someone else’s bedsheets, he looks perfectly at home. “I’m an opportunist.”
You make a derisive noise, then pause. The sudden stilling of movement catches Sixty’s attention.
“What?”
“I left your colleagues downstairs.”
Sixty laughs, full and free. “Is that all? Sounds like you escaped lightly.” He traces the very tips of his fingers across the skin of your stomach, his LED spinning faster at the contact but staying blue.
“And what if they end up somewhere across campus? I wouldn’t trust half the grad students here to look after a house plant.”
Sixty considers for a moment before his usual smirk is back. You decide you like it, the way it lights up his eyes, accentuates his boyish charm… and the way it widens when you smile back without thinking.
“Well,” he brushes a stray strand of hair from your face, “if it’s Reed, you’re actually doing us a favour.”
You shake your head and let it fall back against the mattress, trying and failing to keep the amusement from your face. It strikes you that Sixty’s company feels easy, normal, like you’ve known him a lot longer than you have. A series of weak knocks at the door interrupt that peaceful thought.
Despite knowing you locked the door, you jolt upright, perched on the edge of the bed. Sixty pushes himself up more slowly, his expression growing from mild annoyance into something practically gleeful.
“What…” your eyes flick to the door and then back to Sixty. “It’s not…”
“I bet it is.” His eyes flash with mirth.
“He can’t be that stupid.”
Sixty’s grin turns wolfish. “Let’s find out.”
He steals a kiss from your slack mouth as he stands, tossing the covers over you as he goes, but not grabbing a single stitch for himself. By some stroke of luck or mercy, the door faces away from the bed—you’re blocked from sight—but Sixty’s making no effort to hide himself.
The lock clicks under Sixty’s swift fingers as their visitor knocks again, faster this time. Sixty winks at you before opening the door—stopping it just short of exposing himself, but holding it wide enough that he’d cause a spectacle for their visitor. No-one on the other side could have any doubt that he was up to no good.
You prop your elbows on your knees and rub at your face with your hands; of course it’s your ex, stumbling over his words—are you fucking naked—and asking if Sixty had seen you as if he, even before hearing it, didint' like the answer.
You didn’t need to look at Sixty’s face. His grin was unmistakable in every word. “Oh, I’ve definitely seen her.”
You try to summon irritation, mild frustration, anything that would reduce your need to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation, but it’s futile. Laughter spills from you, quiet but uncontrollable, cathartic—a release for the built up frustration of the past few weeks.
Sixty leans his head back around the door to look at you and licks his lips, turning the simple gesture indecent without any effort whatsoever. On a whim, you throw the covers off and lean back on the bed, borrowing his smirk. If possible, his grin widens as he takes in the view.
“Wait, is she in there?”
“Yeah, but she can’t talk right now.”
“I could talk,” you call, ignoring Sixty’s raised eyebrow at the contradiction, “but I’m not going to.” You drag a thumb over your lower lip and tongue, the corners of your mouth twitching upwards when Sixty reaches to cup his cock, still hidden by the door. “And soon I won’t be able to.”
It’s a pointed challenge, calling him back. Calling in his promised not yet.
“You heard her.” Sixty turns back to the door and winks, his smile all sharp corners. “Oral exam prep. You’re not needed.”
The door closed sharply and you let go of the laughter you were keeping reigned in, never dragging your eyes from Sixty, who stood with one hand still on the lock, the other pumping his cock with unhurried strokes.
“I’m a bit insulted that you think I need practice.” You let one hand trail up the inside of your thigh, moving as slowly as his, teasing yourself just as much as him. “This is one of the best schools in the country. I’ve been trained by world-class lawyers.”
“What good are they?” He crosses the space between you, hand still moving, until he stands two paces in front of you. “They’ve been arguing over this conference for months already.”
“Well,” you shift to the edge of the bed, looking up at him, smile sweet with a subtle edge, “we do talk for a living.”
“And?” He’s leaking already, you just know it, but you keep your eyes on his face because you know it’ll infuriate him. “What does that get you?”
“A talented tongue.”
Sixty smirks, but you hear a soft, static-laced whine, and it’s echoed in his voice when he speaks.
“Come on then, sweetheart. Show me how talented you are.”
