Work Text:
Four days after my completely unexpected and entirely paradigm-shaking connection with SecUnit, it pinged me while I was taking advantage of a rest cycle to do some crafting. I put my knitting needles down— trying to count stitches while talking with it was a doomed prospect, I knew from experience— and pinged it back.
Are you busy?
I arched a brow at the drone watching me from the corner of the display screen across the room. Not with anything I can't pick up later. Need me for something?
I've been thinking. About, uh…
What we did? I asked delicately.
Yeah. That. A long pause, and then it went on, You said to let you know if I ever wanted to try it in the same room.
My pulse rate started skipping like a school kid. The experience we'd shared had been intense and revelatory to me; the only thing about it that I would have liked different was that I had no way to see SecUnit's reactions to my sensory data. If it wanted to try again, in my actual presence…
Would you like to? It wouldn’t have brought it up if it didn’t want to, right?
Kind of. I had another thought, maybe we could try…
Deity, I was going to lose my mind from the hesitance and eagerness bleeding off it in the feed. I'm open to trying new things if you are.
It sent me an affirmative ping and didn't say anything else for a minute.
…but you do have to tell me what the new things are first, I added wryly.
The chime from my front door sounded— just a courtesy, because SecUnit didn't wait, hacking it open so quickly and smoothly that my near-immediate cue to open the door came too late.
“Hi,” it said. Suddenly I was being watched by a small swarm of drones instead of just one. I looked past all of them to focus on it.
“Hi.”
“I don't want you to touch me,” it said, a familiar refrain, and sat down next to me on the couch.
“Of course,” I said, and shifted my weight to lean away from it into the arm of the couch.
“But I think I want to touch you.” Its voice was quiet, like this was a secret between us. Well, I guess it was.
“I'd be happy to let you.” Happy was underselling it.
“Would you let me ride your augments again while I did?” Its act-like-a-human code had gotten really sophisticated; it sat there focused very intently on picking its nails in a way that felt uncannily familiar.
I hadn't known sharing physical sensations via augment data was even possible to do before we'd done it; having done it once, it seemed impossible that I would ever refuse the request if SecUnit asked again. “If you'll share your drone input with me,” I said, not wanting to give in so effortlessly.
“If you want. It's only fair if I'm going to ask you to close your eyes again.”
A shiver ran through me. It wasn't sensory deprivation if it was giving me a different visual input, more like sensory relocation… “I'd like to be able to see you, if you won't let me look at you myself.”
“Ugh, fine, I guess.” It offered me complete control for a single drone instead of access to the swarm, which I appreciated; that many inputs would have given me a day-long headache to try to manage. Just to annoy it, I flew the drone up into its face like it had done to me dozens of times. I was not expecting the soft expression it wore under the drone’s close observation; if it wouldn’t look right at me like that, this was a more than acceptable way to see tentative affection on its striking face.
“Thank you,” I said, voice rough for a second before I cleared my throat and added, “So you want to touch me, you want my eyes closed, you want to access my augments. Anything else you want?”
Its gaze went shifty for a second before it ventured, “I want to hold you down. If that’s okay.”
“Deity, yes.” Its brows shot up at my vehemence. I looked into its swarm of drones to make sure it caught my expression when I said, “You have no idea how many thoughts I’ve had of you holding me down in various ways.”
“But not by the throat,” it said, like a joke.
I shook my head. “Absolutely by the throat. Or the wrists, or the shoulders, or anywhere you want to put your hands on me, honestly. I could hardly ask for more proof that you won’t hurt me, by now.”
Its mouth fell open in surprise. I wanted to kiss it so badly that I ached with the effort to not touch it or even turn to look at it, like my bones were fighting planetary gravity instead of the mass of a single SecUnit beside me. “Are you serious?”
“I trust you, SecUnit.” It knew that, didn’t it? It had to know that already, but it seemed startled to hear it.
“That’s… a lot of trust,” it said faintly.
“Yes.”
“You obviously don’t have a risk assessment module,” it said, and that was a joke I could smile at.
“From what you say about it, you don’t have much of one either,” I quipped back, and then we were both smiling. “Did you have a time in mind for doing this, or is this a ‘now please’ situation?”
“I can wait if you don’t want to now.”
“But you don’t want to wait,” I said, and breathed a laugh. “I don’t want to wait either.” I stood up from the couch and motioned toward the bedroom. “Shall we?”
Why I paused in the doorway, I wasn’t sure. SecUnit didn’t pause, just caught me around the waist and kept going, until I was flat between it and the horizontal surface of my bed. It was heavier than a human, but kept most of its weight off me as it pinned me down by my shoulders, my face pressed into my pillow.
“Don’t let me do anything you’re not okay with,” it said softly, right behind my ear, its lips almost close enough to my augment port to brush it. “Ping me if I should stop.” I made a mental note to tell Mensah that the refugee education course on consent ethics worked for constructs as well as humans, and then my brain went absolutely blank as SecUnit opened the connection between us and my augments were flooded with its presence.
The last time we’d connected, I’d invited it in; this time, it didn’t wait for me to initiate the connection, coming through like a door left open, though I kept feed access to my augments more secure than any of my obsessively secured access points. I couldn’t help the way my cock throbbed at its casual occupation of my senses, and it made a small surprised sound and pushed my hips down with its own.
The drone it had let me control surveyed our bodies like a panoramic scene in a documentary, the landscape of its body layered over mine, holding me secure beneath it like I was something to protect instead of something to ruin. The last time I’d been under someone this suddenly and completely, they’d meant to ruin me, and the fear and pleasure I’d felt had been inseparable. This time, there was no fear at all, and the pleasure was so much sweeter for the certainty I was safe with the person holding me down.
Its fingers squeezed my shoulders gently, like a cat kneading, before it sat back, kneeling over me with a look of fierce concentration, and threaded one hand through my hair, tightening its grip slowly until my head was pulled off the pillow and I found myself blinking at one of its other drones. “Eyes closed,” it reminded me.
“If you want my eyes closed and my hands off you this whole time I might need help with both those things,” I admitted while I closed them quickly. Seeing things through my own eyes was fine, but the view from the drone was much better right now.
SecUnit hummed thoughtfully and then said, “Would you let me control your augment inputs while we do this?”
A terrifying prospect, to willingly give that access to anyone, and the time when it had taken over my inputs without asking was a memory I preferred not to revisit (for a lot of reasons), but… we understood each other now, like I thought we never would then. I allowed it the permissions it requested, and its fingers stroked soothingly through my hair as it neatly set my visual augment input to null. Now the drone was all I had to look through, and it was showing me wonder on SecUnit’s face like nothing I’d seen before. The drag of its hands sliding up underneath my shirt to bare my back was warm and slow, fingers drifting in what felt like random directions, but the drone showed me was it tracing the edges where my skin went from pale to paler.
I like this about you, it said over the feed, you’re different from any human or augmented human I can remember seeing. Its fascination bled through its words like ink through water. It couldn’t know that what it liked so much about me had been considered a cosmetic flaw and a reason to lower my value when I’d been conscripted in the Rim, but the quiver that ran through me at its words was unmissable.
Carefully, it eased my shirt over my head and left it tangled around my wrists, pressing my hands to the top edge of my bed and closing my fingers around the headboard. “Keep those there,” it murmured, and returned to mapping my back with spread fingers and heated palms, its thumbs tracing down the notches of my spine before brushing low beside it where the power cell for all my augments was implanted with a touch that was almost tender.
I wondered whether the data it was receiving from me differentiated between my own touch, nights before, and SecUnit’s touch now. The physical sensations were similar, but the emotions coloring my experiences had been hazy with distance between us; beneath SecUnit’s strong, solid body they bloomed into vivid, sunlit hues, dizzying me with the intensity of my affection for it and the safety I felt under its hands. “How’s the context?” I was too breathless to sound playful.
“Baffling,” it murmured, “overwhelming…” It bent to nuzzle the back of my neck, a breath away from kissing my nape, and added, “enlightening.”
Please kiss me. I couldn’t say it aloud; I didn’t trust my voice to ask for something I wanted so badly without shaking apart. The drone flew close and I saw SecUnit bite its lip for a second before it gently placed its mouth against my skin, brow furrowing as it stayed there. I couldn’t do anything but melt, tingling all over from getting something I had wanted for what felt like years.
I don’t understand that, it sent. Why does this feel so different from this? The first ‘this’ was a brush of its thumb over my nape, the second ‘this’ was its mouth on the same spot. I whimpered aloud, unable to subvocalize into the feed for a tremulous moment.
Lots of reasons, I couldn’t manage to say until its lips left my skin. Symbolic, emotional… personal preference.
You like that more. It wasn’t a question. It started kissing different places: the side of my neck, the slope of my shoulder, gentle presses of its parted lips too soft to leave marks on me to prove it happened like I wished it would. It’s not terrible. Still don’t want to kiss your mouth though.
You can kiss me anywhere you want and skip anywhere you don’t, just kiss me somewhere. This was already several wormhole jumps beyond the degree of contact I thought SecUnit would ever want to have with me, I wasn’t foolish enough to complain about being given just short of everything I wanted. The drone I looked through caught the hint of a smirk at the corner of SecUnit’s lips before it kissed the augment port behind my ear and the biofeedback shocked me not with electricity but with emotion— not metadata behind a feed comment but context-free feelings, fascination and curiosity and desire strong enough to make my breath catch in my throat. Please, I begged.
Its fingers laced through my hair again, pulling my head back as its lips left my port. “Out loud.”
“Turn me over, please, Murderbot.” My voice was wrecked, my whole body buzzing with need. From outside myself, I watched it flip me over and study me with a hungry intensity in its eyes. When I was weak-willed enough to cant my hips up against its, it pinned me still with one hand on my hip and one hand around my throat, tender and unyielding. From above, the act looked like violence; from within my skin, it felt like protection, the heat of its hand pressed so gently to my neck, one finger tucked under my jaw to feel my pulse directly instead of relying on the data from my augments.
“You feel so good like this,” it murmured, voice full of awe.
“Is the context any clearer?” My knuckles were going white around the headboard. I wanted to touch it so badly; I was sure that if I did this would be over, and I needed this to not be over any time soon.
“Mm… I could use more.” Its hand left my hip to tweak a nipple instead and my sightless eyes rolled back as my spine arched. It bit back a groan and tweaked it again, a little harder, until we both whimpered, and only then did its fingers relent. “Why do you like that so much?”
“Because you’re doing it to me,” I gasped. Don’t touch it, don’t touch it, don’t touch it, I told myself frantically.
I can hear you, it said in the feed, sizzling with soundless laughter. The hand around my throat stroked fingertips over the bump of my larynx before it leaned up over me, both its hands tracing up my arms until it had me by the wrists. You’re being so obedient. If I knew this was how to get you to comply I might’ve tried it sooner.
“Liar.”
Its fingers interlaced with mine and it pressed my hands to the bed on either side of my head, hovering over me with an expression on its face I didn’t think I could interpret— because it absolutely did not feel that much tenderness toward me, did it? It couldn’t. “Gurathin,” it said, and lowered its head.
Looking at us from the side view the drone provided, I was certain it was going to kiss me, slow-motion like a moment from its serials; it was almost a relief when it pressed its cheek to mine instead, its smooth skin against my weekend stubble, its quick shallow breath across my ear— proof that it wasn’t so far out of its head on borrowed pleasure that it would do something so against its own desires to please me more.
It was still fully dressed atop me; I was only shirtless beneath it, aching in my soft sleep pants and desperate to wrap my legs around its waist and hold it tight to me. “More, please…” I wasn’t expecting it to kiss my augment port again, the echo of its feelings shimmering through me: steel and softness, protectiveness and possessiveness— and the tenderness I hadn’t believed in the way it looked at me, undeniable through the data stream.
“More what?”
“Anything, whatever you like, just more.”
“I like this,” it confessed, breathed between its lips and my ear, just for us. “I like seeing what lights you up from the inside.” Still holding my hands, it shifted until it got a thigh between my legs, pressing against my cock to make every heartbeat throb between us and rocketing my pulse rate at the same time. “I like you sharing data with me. Letting me feel what I do to you. All these parts I don’t have that do such wild things to your hormones when they’re touched…”
All I could do was whimper and squeeze its fingers, the one touch I was apparently allowed to give instead of receive. None of my fantasies had included its voice so low and erotic saying things this intimate to me, let alone with its body pressed against mine. I was overwhelmed before I could warn it, grinding up against its thigh as I came with a shaky groan. It was a miracle I didn’t drop the drone input when it happened, but I was grateful to have it, to see the surprise on SecUnit’s face as my cresting pleasure transmitted into it.
I don’t know how long we drifted in the afterglow, but I didn’t want to do anything to shake it out of that hazy bliss; after all, the aftermath was part of the context too, the slow gathering of wits and movement after losing all control. I wondered what it was like for SecUnit, and thoughtlessly I turned my face into the bend of its neck, breathing hard against its skin.
When it withdrew from my augments and closed the connection, I tried not to gasp at the emptiness left where its presence had been. It would never fuck me the way a human would, but it had been deeper inside me than any prior lover had ever reached, made space for itself within me that I already wanted it to fill again. The drone showed me a tear falling from the corner of my own closed eye, and SecUnit’s thumb coming up to brush it away.
“Did I hurt you?” It was hushed, almost subdued.
“No,” I said, “I just…” I opened my eyes and relinquished the drone back to SecUnit’s swarm, looking up at it to study its so-expressive face. “Wanted this for so long. Wanted you for so long. Told myself I was a fool for wanting you.” Its brows knitted as I blinked away more tears. “Did you… did you get the data you wanted?”
“If I say no, can we do it again?”
The first time we’d made eye contact, it had been a clash, a battle of wills that we were both ill-equipped to fight in that way. This time, it was nothing like that. Blue eyes full of hope and yearning met mine, and I squeezed its hands and didn’t look away, couldn’t look away, even though my own eyes were watery and blurred.
“You don’t have to say no just because you want to do it again,” I said. “I really do want to know if you understand now. If you’re getting what you need from me.”
“I’m… starting to understand.” Its lips quirked to one side. “It’s a lot. I didn’t… really get how many erogenous parts humans have that I was built without. How good you can feel. Why people do such stupid things in pursuit of pleasure, when that’s how much pleasure you can sense.”
“You can’t feel pleasure?” That was alarming. I knew that SecUnits weren’t built with primary or secondary sexual characteristics; I didn’t wonder before what they could sense with what they had instead.
“I can, just not like that.” Its thigh nudged me gently, making me aware of the sticky mess cooling against my skin but willing to endure the discomfort until it wanted to move away. “Some of your data still doesn’t mesh, but what I could remap onto myself… I didn’t know I could feel that, I shouldn’t be able to feel that.”
“But you’d like to feel it again?” Something started spinning in the back of my mind, some thought trying to take shape as it nodded bashfully. “Next time… would you give me the same access I’ve given you?”
“I don’t think it would be safe for you,” SecUnit said. “My processing power is beyond yours, even augmented.”
“I don’t want to control you or turn anything off, I just want to feel what you feel,” I said. “Remember when I asked what it’s like to be you…?”
“Yes,” it said, and shifted away, releasing my hands and pulling back, moving to lie beside me instead of holding me down— and breaking the gaze we’d shared for longer than I realized. “I don’t…” Its nose wrinkled as it fished for words. “I don’t know why you’d want to feel less,” it said after a moment. “I like making you feel more.”
That caught in my throat, a knot I had to swallow down before I could speak. “I don’t want to feel less. I just want to feel you. Make you feel, too.”
“Gurathin, please…” Its voice was rough in a way I’d never heard before. “Can we just keep doing it like this?” Before I could acquiesce to its plea, it added, “For now?”
“For now,” I agreed, thrilled by the promise of those two words. “For as long as you need to or want to.”
It didn’t answer aloud, just sent me an acknowledgment ping and rested its hand on my chest. I could see the flicker of media in its eyes in my peripheral vision, and couldn’t blame it for self-soothing after what we’d just done. I was self-soothing in my own maladaptive way— already daydreaming of finding out how to make SecUnit feel good without letting myself be the focus of pleasure for both of us.