Chapter Text
We were 'playing' again.
I don't really know why Gurathin called it that, except I guess it covered a range of sex and not-sex activities. I liked that ambiguity. Sometimes I changed my mind halfway through.
Gurathin had never made a 'thing' of it.
I liked that.
It was one of the things that had made me not want to try any… activities before.
Sex mattered, a lot, to humans. What if I started and then I wanted to stop? What if they wanted something different to what I wanted? I obviously wasn't worried that anyone would do anything without my permission. I have guns in my arms. But things being awkward was bad enough…
I hated it when humans got upset.
Gurathin didn't get upset.
Not as long as I stayed within the parameters we'd discussed, which I always would. Obviously.
I hadn't ever touched his sex parts. He hadn't ever produced any fluids, apart from tears and sweat. Looking at him now, standing in front of me, eyes fixed on the wall behind me, and wearing so many layers that only his hands and his face were visible, I thought that I maybe wouldn't mind so much if there were other fluids involved…
As long as they didn't touch me, obviously.
I think it was because he wouldn't say anything if it didn't happen.
I liked that.
Parameters? I sent.
His eyes flicked towards me reflexively, and then away again like he couldn't help himself.
Same as before, he answered. Two hours.
Red lines?
Ratthi had suggested that question. I think that my (heavily redacted) description of last time freaked him out enough that he had some additional suggestions.
No physical pain, he answered, quickly. There was a pause. And don't leave me alone.
I frowned.
He carried on quickly.
I mean if you leave. If you want to… I saw the movement of his throat as he swallowed. If you're done, give me back everything. Don't…
He trailed off, but I got it. I wouldn't have just left him tied up or something, but I guessed that technically wasn't a parameter we'd discussed before.
I stepped up to him, because I felt like it, and wrapped my fingers around his throat. Not hard. Not restricting him at all. But because I liked the way he deliberately looked away from me. I liked the little shuddery breath he took, and I liked the way the muscles in his neck felt as he swallowed beneath my hand.
"I won't leave you," I said out loud. And then I turned off his vision augments and watched as his artificial eyes powered down, and the pupils constricted. "Anything else?"
His mouth twitched. "Don't let anyone else in?"
"Of course not," I said, and then without thinking about it, I leaned close to his ear. "You're mine."
I don't know why I said it, I'm pretty sure it was from Lineages of the Sun. That and the thought of anyone else witnessing this was mortifying.
bIt did make him shiver beneath my fingers, so I was counting it as a win.
I'm going to hardwire to you, I sent, which gave him a chance to say no.
I wasn't going to cut him off from the feed today, and I wanted to be able to feel what he was feeling, to make sure I did this right. I could always disconnect if there was going to be fluids.
"Ok," he said quietly.
"No talking." I tightened my grip just slightly. Enough that he would feel the pressure.
He did one of those shivers again. I really liked that.
I sent across instructions in the feed. A 'halt' ping he could send me if he wanted to. He answered with an acknowledgement ping.
Good, I sent, as I connected the hardwire, and got the tail end of a pleasant tingle of nerves.
I suddenly wanted to touch him, to make him feel that tingle again.
I stepped close. Pressed my hand against the hardness of his sex part. He made one of those cut off noises again. I saved it to my permanent memory. I could feel the hard length of him beneath my palm as I tightened my grip. He was pressing into my hand, hips rolling automatically.
No moving, I sent. He groaned but stilled. Good.
Just shifting my hand was enough to get his breathing to pick up. I knew humans were sensitive there, but I didn't really realise just how sensitive.
I could feel it through the feed, building through his nerves.
I kind of wanted to test that now.
I flipped my hand around, so that the heel of my hand was pressed against his sex part, and my fingers were stretched between his legs. He squeaked and rose almost automatically onto his toes.
Interesting.
I stepped backwards and he came easily. One hand on his throat and the other between his legs, and he went exactly where I put him.
"I could just lead you around like this," I said. I felt his dick twitch. "You like that idea. Perhaps I will. Strip you naked and lead you around the station."
I felt a flicker of anxiety across our connection. But it was almost drowned out by the wave of heat that centred where my hand was. He did like that idea.
It was technically within the parameters of our agreement — I had promised not to let anyone in, not that I wouldn't take him out — but I got the feeling that he liked the idea of it more than the reality, and that he would tap out if I tried.
(Plus, I was pretty sure we'd get picked up immediately by Security, and then I'd have to listen to Mensah talk to me about consent, and involving other people in our games and I was pretty sure I'd spontaneously combust.)
I didn't want to involve anyone else anyway.
But it was fun to play with the idea.
I let him go. Let him sway, off-balance. His head turned automatically to follow where I was walking. I clicked my tongue, grabbed him by the jaw and forced him back into position. "You stay where I put you."
I felt another wave of heat through our connection, pooling deep in his stomach.
(I felt like there would definitely be fluids today.)
I stripped him out of his clothes quickly, until he was completely naked and stood silent and unmoving in front of me. I suddenly didn't have a clue what I was doing.
Going back to where I was before seemed like a good place to start.
He flinched as my hand wrapped around his throat again. I shushed him, but was more gentle when I put my hand back between his legs. I lifted him back up onto his toes. The pressure on his sex parts made a muscle in his jaw twitch, and another flood of anxious heat flood through him.
It was a weird mushy emotion that I couldn't read properly.
I think there was some level of fear involved, instinct probably, at having a SecUnit's hand cupping over his sensitive parts…
He was… letting me do it anyway…
I had an emotion about that. I was pretty sure it bled over into the feed too, because I got an answering press of warmth back from Gurathin.
I just held him there for a minute, because I wanted him to get his balance. (And because it kind of felt nice.)
I had had a plan the last time I did this. I wanted to test the limits of what he'd allow me to do. I'd turned all of his augments off, and he'd let me. And then? Well, he'd looked sort of… soft, laying there.
Pale skin and dark hair and tear tracks.
I'd wanted to touch him. Without him touching me. I hadn't thought about it. I hadn't needed to. Gurathin couldn't see me do it. He couldn't talk to me about it. He couldn't judge me for it. He was just there. Mine.
To do what I wanted with.
Maybe I ought to just do what I wanted now?
I wanted… To look at him. Like I did with my cameras. But at all of him.
I released him gently. He wobbled just a little and then stayed exactly where I'd been holding him, on his toes. His feet arched in a way mine didn't. Toes splayed slightly, keeping his balance. There was a tiny tremor in the taut muscle in one of his calves, clearly defined with the stretch.
The skin on his feet was pale, like the skin on his hands. An uneven line around his ankles.
I had a fleeting urge to touch him, so I did. I cupped a hand around the back of his knee, ran a finger up the arch of his foot.
He shuddered. Made a questioning noise.
"Shhhh," I hushed him. "Stay still for me."
I rose to my feet, trailing my fingers up his thighs, and up onto the soft flesh around his waist and at the base of his stomach. I wasn't soft anywhere. I liked it, pinching it gently. I got a flicker of something unpleasant through the connection. An unhappy kind of sour feeling.
Gurathin didn't like that.
I didn't understand why.
There were deep striations up his sides, and up the inside of his thighs, some silvery-white and some darker. They felt silky to run my fingers up. Pretty. Like the variations of his skin tone.
None of the characters in my media looked like him.
I understood enough now to know that it was fake. Makeup and clothing and clever cameras. What I didn't understand was why when humans were so interesting. Why try to make them look like constructs?
I ran my hands over his stomach again. Over the smattering of dark hair, and then over the space where his sharp ribs gave way to the squishy flesh on his sides.
I got that unhappy feeling again. I still didn't understand it.
"You're very soft," I said. It didn't help. Gurathin hadn't moved, but I could see the way his expression had closed off, his jaw tight. Not floating and distant like he had been before.
Just… tense…
I ran my hands over him again. Ghosting over his sex parts until they seemed like they were getting with the programme again.
"Soft, pretty human," I said, stupidly.
(Look, I was never very good at talking. That wasn't going to change now.)
He seemed to like it though. Something warm and embarrassed swept through him, and his sex parts twitched a hello beneath my hand too.
I held him there until he settled again, anxiety trickling away.
You like it when I call you pretty, I sent. He replied with an acknowledgement, but I wanted to hear him. You can answer properly.
I'm not.
I'm not sure I realised it was possible to sound so quiet in the feed.
I thought about it, stroking over his stomach and down the sides of his thighs as I did. Over the silvery stripes, and the solid bone of his hip.
Why? I asked.
Another uncomfortable feeling bloomed across our connection, and without thinking about it, I started petting at him, trying to soothe whatever it was that was making him unhappy. I didn't want him to be unhappy.
I wanted him soft and relaxed.
I got old, he answered eventually. Not that I was 'pretty' when I was young.
I didn't think that that was all of it, but there was a glaring red flag in his tone that said 'Leave it alone', and I didn't want our play to be over yet.
Not when all I'd managed to do was make him unhappy… again…
I considered my next plan. I wanted to make him feel good.
I knew that I could tie him up. Take away his hearing along with his sight. He'd cry and squirm and maybe get hard… But I didn't want him to cry. Not now.
"You're pretty," I said again, so I could feel the mushy emotions coming off him in the feed again.
Mixed. Complicated.
Gurathin was always complicated.
"I want to tie you up and look at you."
Saying it made me realised just how much I wanted to do that, actually. The little spark of interested heat in his gut convinced me.
I resent the commands from before — No moving, no talking — and got my equipment ready. I'd done a lot of research last time, because I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do.
What that meant, though, was that I had a pretty good idea of what I could do safely.
I grabbed the wide padded cuffs that I'd used before, and the heavy, reinforced rope. Then I thought about it, and grabbed some of the floaty lengths of coloured fabric as well. I'd got them because I'd liked how smooth and soft they felt against my hands. Hopefully Gurathin would like them too… Not that he would see them for a while.
I had been keeping an eye on him through my drones, and he'd been very, very good while I had my back turned, staying absolutely still.
I stroked over his stomach again, not giving him any warning, and saving his startled squawk to my permanent storage.
I caught his wrist and fastened the cuff around it, pulling it snug but not tight. I did the same with his other wrist. Gurathin's emotional metadata had settled with the familiar restraints.
Something about that made me sad, even though I was the one doing it.
I liked securing him… I didn't like that he felt more comfortable being restrained than he did being called pretty.
I put that in my 'think about later' box too, and strung the rope through the two cuffs, and then through one of the structural beams on the ceiling. I pulled at it until his wrists tugged forwards and up, knocking him a little off balance, and pulling him back onto his toes.
Looking at him, I knew immediately that this had been a good idea.
The stretch did something to the muscles in his abdomen, pulling them taut until I could see the plane of them under his ribs.
I took a second to settle into his nerves and make sure I wasn't hurting him. I wanted the stretch to be there, and the slight strain in his muscles, but I didn't want him to actually be in a stress position, or for his wrists to be carrying all his weight.
I adjusted the tension and stepped back to look at my work.
It had been a good idea.
With his arms pulled above his head, the softness of his chest and sides was accentuated next to his ribs and muscles.
There was a deep v around his pelvis and sex parts, and then the silky skin on the inside of his thighs.
I grabbed another cuff, and secured it around his left ankle. Then I took the rope and did the same as I had before, tugging his ankle off the ground too.
He made a little shocked noise in the back of his throat, and had to hop to keep his centre of gravity over his other foot, but I also felt the swoop of his stomach, and the spike of adrenaline, before that too got swallowed up into the general swampy feeling.
I pulled his leg back until the strain in his thighs was uncomfortable but not painful.
He was still putting most of his weight through his right foot, rather than his shoulders. I wouldn't be able to keep him like this for very long, but a few minutes would let him sink a little further.
He was just starting to feel fuzzy in the feed. Little notes of strain settling into his shoulders and feet. That drifting feeling that I didn't understand, but that he seemed to enjoy.
Endorphins, I supposed.
I looked his over again, reviewing anything I wanted to change. I liked the arched shape of his body. The way his toes were pointed.
I didn't like the way his hands were limp, liked he'd been captured, like he was in distress, so I reached up, and curled his fingers up around the rope above his, so that he was holding on.
He let me position him, and just stayed there.
Oh, I really, really liked that…
I let that feeling flood through our connection, let him know how happy I was with him, how much I was enjoying him. His brain was definitely mushy, but I got an answering soupy warm feeling.
I set a timer for four minutes in my feed, and scooped up some of the silky fabric. I started with a dark green that I thought would look nice against his skin. Folded it into a strip and then wrapped it around his waist, above the V of his hips. I tied it loosely so that the ends of the fabric draped around his raised leg.
I faffed with it for a few moments, until it sat in an aesthetically pleasing way, and then grabbed another one and tied it in a loose spiral down his arms, letting it flow down his back.
I picked up one more, smaller, and tied it in a bow around his neck. I made sure that it was tight, not restricting his breathing, but enough to feel it.
His breathing quickened for a few moments, as instinctual panic spiked, restraints around his neck, immobilising his limbs. Caught and trapped like prey.
He swallowed, throat bobbing around the around the green fabric and making him feel it even more.
I watched as he fought it, fought to keep still against it. And then the adrenaline response burst, and a deep flood of more endorphins washed over him. His breathing and his heartrate went slow, and his wordless thoughts felt goopy through the feed.
I petted at his side, and he pressed back into my hand, like one of Mensah's cats.
I kept petting at him, while I spent the remainder of my timer cataloguing him.
I moved myself and my drones around him, capturing images.
The way the silky green, flowed around him, and made the contrast with the pale patches of his skin stand out even more. The way the the bright silvery stripes caught the light differently. The way his hands and his black fingernails clasped around the rope.
I sent them to him, captioned 'pretty', and felt as his mushy brain passed over them. Probably he couldn't appreciate them at the moment. (They were actually pretty good. Maybe I should take up photography… Mensah kept saying I needed a hobby that wasn't work.) I would resend them to him later.
I stroked over his side again, and let him enjoy the final few moments before my timer ticked out, and I would let him down.