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Another fan fiction dump. Hopefully folks liked the first part enough to read the second.
TITLE: "One Degree of Separation" Part 2 of 3
AUTHOR: Laurie E. Smith
FANDOM: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
PAIRING: Professor Hobby/Gigolo Joe
RATING: NC-17 (explicit sexuality, mild violence)
SUMMARY: After David's disappearance, Professor Allen Hobby finds himself at a bit of a loss and takes consolation where he can find it.
WARNINGS: Hobby is a scientist, so some of what follows is dry and technical. Hopefully there's enough juicy stuff to make up for that.
NOTES: I wrote this story after trying to explain slash to someone using the most unlikely pairing I could think of. Then it turned out that the pairing wasn't so unlikely after all.
You can find Part 1, including pictures of Hobby and Joe, here.
***********************
As the doors to the elevator opened at their approach, Joe asked: "Where are we going?"
"A place where we can talk."
The elevator recognized Hobby, and without being asked took them down several levels to the floor where his private suite was located. The lock on Hobby's apartment at the end of the hall clicked quietly as they stepped out of the car, readying the door to open as soon as he touched the latch.
"Lights five," he ordered, triggering the lamp to the left of the couch as well as the soft lights above the stand-alone bar that it faced. He headed straight for the bar with the intention of continuing to anesthetize himself, gesturing Joe toward the couch. "Sit down."
The apartment was on the building's southeast corner. It was very large and had an abundance of tall windows, plus glass doors leading onto a balcony on the south wall, but all windows in the main living area were currently shuttered and had the curtains drawn -- Hobby had been in no mood for the brightness of the rising sun that morning, or for several mornings previous.
In a cabinet under the bar was a lonely bottle of whiskey. Hobby pulled it out and brushed off most of the dust, then poured himself a glass and promptly drank a quarter of it.
Joe, walking toward the couch as instructed, slowed and craned his neck to take in the dark expanse of tastefully rich decor. A flicker of pleasure registered on his face as he scanned the intricately woven tapestry rugs and antique colonial furniture. When he reached the couch and arranged himself in the corner nearest the lamp he ran elegant appreciative fingertips along the wooden armrest, which centuries of use had worn as smooth as silk.
Drink in hand, Hobby came round the front of the bar and leaned back against it to study the mecha who sat neatly cross-legged on his couch and watched him while he studied it -- a mirror reflecting at another mirror, around and around. Masks. He could picture the metal concealed by Joe's flawless skin as clearly as he could imagine the raw bone that lay behind his own weary face.
"Tell me," he said.
Joe turned his head a little to one side. "About...?"
"You know what about." Hobby closed his eyes, feeling the room spin a little: he'd had far too much to drink. He hadn't drunk like this since the dark days immediately after his son had died. His first son. It was a blessed mercy. "David. Tell me about David."
If Joe recognized the raw pain that crept into the orga's voice with the repetition of that beloved name, he didn't show it. "What do you want to know?"
"All the things we didn't think to ask you."
The tilt of Joe's head increased, that little frown knotting his elegant eyebrows once more while the yellow lamplight warmed the right side of his face and lingered in the green pools of his eyes. "Professor Hobby, I've told you everything I know."
"No. No, you haven't. You took care of him, Joe. Why? You're not supposed to do that."
Joe lowered his tinted eyelids a little, which only made his eyes look even brighter. "Without me, David wouldn't have known where to go or what to do."
"So, you stayed with him because he needed you."
"Yes."
"Ah-hah!" Hobby straightened and stabbed a finger at him. "No, Joe, he did not need you. He needed a nanny, or a policeman. You are a lover robot -- what, what possible interest could you have in what happened to a child?"
"David wasn't a child," Joe said in the tone of one politely stating the obvious. "He was a mecha."
"I see. And you took his side, because we all hate you. Because we'll stop at nothing to destroy you." Another swallow of alcohol, this time to push back the tears that such an unfair accusation provoked and to steady his voice. "I loved David! I would never... I..." Something in Joe's silence alerted him to an unspoken question. "Well?"
"If you loved him, why did you send him away? Why did his mother abandon him in the woods?"
"Monica was a mistake," Hobby replied at once. "She was less stable than we'd been led to believe."
Joe said nothing, only regarded him without blinking, and Hobby closed his eyes. The first question was so much harder to answer than the second, now that he knew the consequences of his decisions.
For an instant he wondered why he was answering a mecha's questions at all. Then he decided that these answers were all that he had to offer Joe in return for the unorthodox services he'd provided. After all, he'd been David's guide and guardian on the final night of his life; he had even tried to protect David by persuading him to abandon his quest, with a speech that a sex mecha shouldn't have been capable of giving.
"At Doctor Know's, you said that he'd been built specific, like the rest of you." Hobby emptied his glass and recklessly poured himself another. "You were right -- David was designed to fulfill the need of couples desperate for a child of their own -- but he was so much more than that. David was a mecha of a completely different order, a mecha with a mind..." Another sip of whiskey that burned as keenly as his unshed tears. "A mecha with a heart."
"With a heart?" This time it was polite disbelief.
He glanced down into his drink, ruing the improbable nature of his dream. "We... I thought he was ready. That's how it is with children. No matter how much you love them, you have to let them go, you have to --"
"Throw them out into the world," Joe said with a sudden edge of scorn, "all alone, and let them take their chances?"
Hobby looked up at him, stunned. Mecha didn't interrupt their orga masters. But he knew that Joe was capable of independent thought, and the gleam he saw in the mecha's eyes was quite possibly insubordination.
He shot gracefully to his feet and faced Hobby squarely across the coffee table, his intensity hitting the human's alcohol-heightened senses like a slap in the face. "I know what's going to happen to me," he said.
Hobby straightened where he stood and stared back at him in disbelief. "Do you?"
"I thought you'd have done it by now. But it doesn't matter anyway."
"And why is that?"
"Because David --" The tiny catch in his voice alerted Hobby, because mecha never hesitated, not that way. "David's gone, isn't he? You can't find him?"
"We've been trying."
Something very much like despair, an intriguingly human expression, darkened his handsome features. "But you haven't."
As they stared at each other across the several feet that separated them, all the grief that Hobby had been holding seemed to coalesce into a heartbeat of silence before he finally gave the truth the words that would make it real: "No. And I don't think we ever will."
Joe nodded very slightly. His gaze dropped and slid to one side, finding that same middle distance as it had in Hobby's office and dwelling there; he might have been looking into his own future, into oblivion. Hobby set his glass down on the bar. The sound it made and the trail of moisture left behind when he shifted it a little on the wood surface briefly occupied all his attention, until he spoke again. "You didn't answer my question."
Joe's pale eyes returned to his face. "Your question."
"Why did you help him, Joe?" It was such a simple one for orga, and one that he shouldn't have had to ask a mecha at all. Yet there Joe stood on his expensive carpet, being called to task.
"Because he held my hand, and saved my brain." The team assigned to Joe had gotten that answer several times in the course of their questioning. It angered Hobby to hear it again, because it revealed nothing new.
"So that once again your customers could ask for you by name?" he mocked.
"Something like that."
"No!" He slammed the glass on the bar to emphasize his displeasure. "That's not the right answer."
"I'm sorry, Professor, but it's the only one I have."
"Mecha don't feel gratitude. Mecha don't form relationships with each other. You said that 'only orga believe in what cannot be seen or measured' -- yet you claim to have placed a value on the consequences of David's actions and then set out to right the balance."
"That's not at all what I said. I said --"
"How much was it worth, Joe? You took him to Rouge City to find Doctor Know -- wasn't that enough? You brought him here instead of heading for Canada, or Mexico -- didn't you know you would be caught?" He could feel the hot pulse of frustration hammering in the hollow under his jaw and in the veins at his temples, and took another rough mouthful of whiskey. "You're intelligent, for a mecha. You must have realized that. Why did you wait for him?"
"I --" Again that anomolous hesitation, Joe's gaze faltering. His behavior was inexplicable, and right now far too many things were beyond Hobby's power to explain or to undo. He slammed the glass down on the bar and abandoned it, going for Joe.
Caught off-guard, Joe tried to back away, but Hobby lunged around the corner of the coffee table and seized his upper arms with a quickness and strength that surprised him.
"Answer me!" He shook the mecha twice, hard enough to snap his head back and provoke a startled expession. "Tell me, damn you! Tell me!"
At close range Joe's wide eyes were even more jewel-like: he could see the delicate striations in the irises, every facet a sheet of potentially changeable chemical irridescence that shimmered with latent electricity -- or perhaps not so latent, since he could imagine the tiny inaudible whir of the cameras inside Joe's sleek head as they parsed his face, trying to calculate his current emotional state. The thought almost made him laugh. How could Joe, as unusually advanced as he was, discern what he was feeling when he scarcely knew himself?
He realized that he was breathing deeply and quickly, too much so, and willed himself to slow and steady his inhalations. His body obeyed, despite the renegade sensations now coursing through his groin.
Joe was frozen in his grip, staring at him with that pale alarmed gaze.
"I don't understand," he said in a much smaller voice. "Why are you so angry with me? I helped David!"
Undefinable emotion clenched Hobby's heart. He pulled Joe closer, intending (he thought) to shake him again and make him yield the truth. Instead he crushed Joe's mouth with all of his anger.
The sex mecha tensed briefly, then went pliant in his grasp. He closed his eyes and dipped his tongue slowly into the yielding sweetness of Joe's mouth (and it really was delicious, like tasting roses), washing away the tartness of the whiskey. When he started to withdraw Joe startled him by catching the tip of it in his teeth, nipping it, then lightly suckling it before letting it go, leaving Hobby breathless. Sheila, his current companion mecha, had never done anything that elaborate. But Sheila had been created for general companionship and possessed only a functional degree of sensuality simulation: Joe's designers had poured thousands of man-hours into making him the perfect sexual partner -- seductive, graceful, skilled, and beautiful.
Oh, yes, Hobby realized as he released his hold on Joe's arms and the mecha pressed closer, his sure hands finding the orga's waist and slipping around it as if savoring every inch of the journey: very well programmed, and very quick off the mark.
He opened his eyes to look into Joe's face and touch those synthetic lips -- they parted under his fingers, Joe's remarkable eyes growing hooded and sultry -- those lips that had been so close to David's face, part of a body that was perhaps the best link to his son that he had left. He tasted them again, lightly, then with greater force. He caught the mecha's left hand from the small of his back and interlaced their fingers, desperately trying to feel where David's skin had touched Joe's and missing his son with an ache so deep and heartbreaking that it brought tears to his eyes once more, burning on the edge of being shed.
"Oh," Joe breathed between kisses, a small and perfect sound. He removed his other hand from Hobby's back and brought it to the orga's face as if to brush away the glitters of moisture. "Professor Hobby..."
"Allen." He bowed his head a little to accept the comfort Joe was programmed to offer, the fingers that lingered against his cheek as the first tears finally slipped free. His voice was frail and breathless in his own ears. "Call me Allen."
"Allen." Joe stroked his wet skin, searching his face, and seemed to find something there, because his cool jade eyes grew even brighter. "I'm sorry, about David."
"I know you are." He kissed Joe again because it felt like falling, and freefall was better than the bleak place where he had come to live since David's disappearance.
They swayed slightly together, Hobby's hand still gripping Joe's, still seeking contact with what was long since lost; and his tears fell, but only for a little while, perhaps the space of a few shallow breaths, because Joe's mouth was doing cunning, subtle things that successfully coaxed his attention in directions other than his own sorrow, while the mecha's hand slid back from his cheek (a light thumb tracing the line of his ear as it went by) to curve around the back of his neck, each fingertip trailing fire.
He had never been with a male, orga or mecha, in his life, so the contours of Joe's back -- slim and muscular through the lightweight material of the jumpsuit -- were new to his experience in the context of passion. So was the touch of another erection yearning against his (the little noises Joe made as they pressed close indicating that 'yearning' was indeed the operative term), and the thrill of erotic heat each movement provoked confounded him at first; he heard himself making soft snorting sounds of surprise with every little nudge of Joe's hips, and was vaguely ashamed of his own candor... not that it would make any difference to a lover robot, who wasn't judging his performance as a human partner would.
All that mattered to Joe was making him happy, and the mecha's sighs and murmurs indicated that he was perceiving the signs of his own success in that endeavor. Hobby found his vocalizations pleasing, even while recognizing their function in Joe's behavioral profile, because Joe had a lovely voice whose throaty quality was erotic in its own right.
"Tell me," he whispered, pulling away from Joe's mouth and looking down at their joined bodies, intrigued by the sight of male against male, "tell me what you want me to do with you."
"I want you to use me." No hesitation, only the slightest vibratto inflection, a simulation of perfect passion. Joe's eyes held his with smouldering intensity as those strong, elegant fingers caressed the back of his neck. "I want you to remember every desire you've ever had, every fantasy you've ever wanted to fulfill, and then I want you to tell me how to make them come true."
That was the proper answer. "Very good, Joe."
"Shall I undress for you?"
He released his death-grip on Joe's left hand to touch the mecha's waist. The body sculpture was uncanny: its shapes felt disarmingly human, all the way up over the ribs to the clean shape of the shoulderblade rising from tight, toned muscle.
"Yes," he decided.
Joe kissed him again, light and lingering, then reluctantly slipped his hands from the orga's body and took a step back. Only then did Hobby realize how unsteady he had become, because he stumbled forward, only to have the mecha catch him -- one hand on his shoulder, the other against his chest.
"Easy," Joe cautioned with a considerably less smoulder.
"I'm all right."
"You're sure?" He took his hands away, watching, but Hobby remained upright.
"I'm fine."
"Good." The sexual purr surged back into his voice, along with the saucy gleam in his eyes. "Because in a few minutes," he promised, toeing off his shoes and unsnapping the closure at his throat, "you're going to feel better than you ever imagined possible."
So Hobby watched, bemused, while he opened the jumpsuit to the waist and shrugged his slim shoulders free, slipping it down his body and finally stepping out of it with the easy grace of someone who has disrobed for appreciative observers a thousand times -- and more. The actual number was 9,738, not counting Hobby himself (9,739, then), too many faces and names to picture, stories of loneliness and hunger forming tangental intersections across an existance that focused human desire like a lense yet really knew nothing of the appetites it served.
But a shadow had dimmed his brilliant eyes when he heard that the search for David had failed... therefore the clarity of the lense was somehow flawed. That was all right, because Hobby was feeling a little bit flawed himself at the moment: unsure of his own clarity, of what he was seeing and why, or even of his own motivation. He only knew that he ached in every dimension, and that this mecha's touch somehow soothed him.
Of course Joe was naked underneath the jumpsuit, and had produced a full erection. Hobby regarded it with almost clinical detachment. It was well designed and aesthetically pleasing, but the sight of it did not increase his arousal: the thought of being back in Joe's arms, on the other hand, made his heart pound noticably faster. What did that prove about the nature of his desire -- except, perhaps, that he was willing to accept closeness to David by proxy? That he was desperate enough to do anything, including jumping the tracks on an entire lifetime of sexual behavior, to ease the pain of his loss for even a moment?
It didn't matter, because Joe was taking his left hand and moving past him, walking slowly backwards and drawing him gently toward the darkened door that led to his bedroom. There was no trace of a shadow in those shining eyes now as they effortlessly commanded his gaze. The irony of the situation did not escape Hobby. He had decreed that David was to return to him 'with a faerie hand in hand', and his son had done exactly that, for Joe was indeed inhumanly lovely, impossibly slim and graceful and flawless. When Joe smiled at him, he almost smiled in return.
He followed the pull of the mecha's hand from his world into what seemed like another entirely: cool darkness where the light of a half-full moon spilled across his neatly made bed, and where Joe, lying back in that pool of otherworldly radiance, broke its glow into lithe patterns -- a smooth sculpted chest, the lean stomach of a dancer, the sweep of that elegant erection across his slim hip -- that Hobby found marvelously, irrationally pleasing. So he followed the tug of Joe's hand once more and let himself sink down on top of them, into the strength of Joe's slender arms winding around him like vines up the sides of an old building, and bent his mouth to the painted lips that were already open and rising to invite his kiss.
Now that they were lying down, every part of the mecha's body -- his mouth, his skillful hands, his right leg twining around the back of Hobby's thigh to hold him close, the caressing thrusts of his hips and the slow surging arch of his flexible spine -- was involved in the task of utterly enthralling his orga partner's senses. The sweet friction of erection against erection was far more intense with Hobby's full weight behind it, and Joe was shameless in pulling him closer still: no woman had ever touched him with such bold certainty.
The concentration of such singular purpose was so compelling that Hobby, even as he felt himself rapidly drowning in the intensity of their encounter, willingly let himself go, giving up the thing that most defined him to himself in every aspect of his life: his control of all the variables, his intellectual mastery. This had nothing to do with intellect. This was raw emotion -- lost, desperate, passionate feeling, an arena where Joe, by specific design, was the expert in potential and realization. It was an area that Hobby had never paid much attention to in the course of his carefully defined life.
Closing his eyes (mouth pressed so sweetly against mouth), he felt Joe's hands adoring him through his clothing -- cardigan and shirt and undershirt and sensible khaki pants, his own fully-dressed state somehow making Joe's complete nakedness more thrilling -- with gliding patterns of exquisite tension and release, set to a rythym that he couldn't quite grasp mentally but whose patterns his body seemed to recognize and crave. When one of those hands slipped up the back of his sweater he heard himself groan out loud and was surprised by the sudden shudder that wracked his body, his back arching. Joe made a small pleased sound and ran a cool unhurried fingertip up and down his spine through the thin layers of cloth that remained, turning the shudder into a long shiver of helpless arousal.
The hand withdrew, apparently content (for the moment) merely to suggest closer contact; but Hobby found he had far less patience. He pushed himself out of Joe's embrace and sat up, hastily tugging the cardigan over his head -- he didn't trust his fingers with the buttons -- and tossing it to one side. He knew that his hair, or what was left of it, was sticking out in all directions, but he didn't care, because now when he lay down again he could feel the heat of Joe's body through his shirt, so electric that it actually seemed to burn his skin.
Joe smiled, a playful gleam of approval in his eyes. As the orga settled back into his arms he smoothed the flyaway strands of hair, then cupped the back of Hobby's neck and drew him down once more. The mecha's mouth was unlike anything he had ever experienced: tender yet firm, yielding to his groping kisses, then skillfully drawing him even deeper -- sucking at his lower lip, biting it a little, then coaxing him in with the flicker and friction of tongue against tongue until they were devouring each other with an intensity that left him hardly able to breathe. And when he had to come up for air those remarkable lips were never idle: they were applied to his throat lightly, or with delicious suction, or with an adventurous edge of teeth, or teasingly under the line of his jaw and chin, as if reminding him that they were still there and only awaiting his attention. There were no awkward pauses for Joe, no hesitations, only an extensive library of sexual techniques to be applied in patterns of inspired improvisation.
And he was good at his work, making Hobby tremble with a delirious excitement that rose from some previously untapped source deep within his body and abounded joyously through every vein, every heartbeat, every breath; no embrace had ever felt so real. Perhaps it was because he was intoxicated. He had never had sex with Caroline, or anyone else, while he was drunk -- in most respects his life had been as staid and sensible as the stereotype of the scientist would lead one to believe.
Joe broke the rules. He probably always had. Joe was breaking him apart with beauty and sensuality, and with the mystery that they shared -- the one that separated them by a single degree, the piece of their lives that was mutually missing. The loss that no one else in the world could understand so well, ameliorated for a brief span of minutes by the heat of body against body in the dark.
It couldn't last. But for now it felt like forever, and Hobby was glad to lose himself in the illusion.
When one of Joe's hands finally slipped between their bodies to take hold of him through his pants the sensation that erupted through his body was almost a convulsion. He cried out, an exclamation that Joe soothed with lingering caresses of his ripe mouth.
"I want to taste you," he breathed, glancing down while stroking the object of his simulated desire, then raising his bright eyes to Hobby's face. Hobby looked down at him in what was very nearly confusion. "Will you let me, Allen? Please?"
Perhaps it was intoxication -- or perhaps the moment was so mesmerizing simply because Joe was amazingly, perfectly, intensely hot, made for sex and so very eager to be used. And possibly, Hobby thought vaguely as his erection (seemingly of its own accord) thrust itself into the palm of Joe's hand, he had recognized this cathartic encounter as a possible outcome -- and it was what had possessed him of the notion to bring Joe here in the first place. The human mind worked in mysterious ways.
So he nodded, looking down at Joe's beautiful face but seeing much deeper, layer upon layer of intricacies and inhumanities right down to the nuclear fire that fueled the very pulse of the machine. In that respect he had no illusions at all, and wanted none.
Joe looked pleased and drew him down for another lingering kiss (a shared sigh, that delicious taste of roses) before rolling them both over and sitting up to straddle his partner's thighs. For a moment he simply gazed down at the hapless orga, the quality of his smile altering -- it struck Hobby that he was enjoying the power inversion of their relative positions -- while he ran slow savoring hands down the older man's chest and belly to the front of his sensible dress pants, which he opened with practiced ease.
Hobby's erection reared up from its prison, still constrained by his boxers. For a moment Joe studied its outline appreciatively, running one finger up its side from the base to the exposed tip that peeked out above the waistband (Hobby couldn't remember the last time he'd been so long and so hard, alcohol or not) before drawing the front of the boxers all the way down to the orga's perenium. The elasticity of the waistband pushed his testicles up and presented them prominently for Joe's servicing, an achingly brazen detail that Hobby would never have dreamed of himself, but one that he welcomed shamelessly.
It occurred to him that he was going to have a lot of regretting to do in the morning. Then Joe took hold of him again, and for a few slow heavenly strokes of that knowing hand Hobby found himself suspended once more, in freefall, closing his eyes and gripping Joe's smooth cool knees and aware of nothing else except the pleasure zones where their bodies intersected.
When the mecha slid down between his legs -- smoothly oiled and supple as a cat -- and bent to his task, Hobby trembled once more. Sheila had performed fellatio on him many times, but this... this was a whole different order of magnitude. This was like having his soul drawn out of him by infinite languid degrees as Joe thoroughly stimulated every aching inch of him, from tip to testicles, to a pitch of fevered intensity that threatened to annihilate thought itself.
He heard his own rising groans, rough unseemly sounds he would never have imagined himself uttering before but could not suppress now, as he reached down to take hold of Joe's sleek head. His hips started moving of their own accord, pushing his gathered testicles higher into Joe's caressing hand while that wondrous mouth purred against his hot wet flesh and welcomed him in again, and again, and again: licking, sucking, teasing him with gentle nips that made him emit soft little cries he scarcely recognized as his own. In the delicious rythym of alternating delicacy and intensity in Joe's caresses, time rapidly ceased to have meaning.
Suddenly the mecha plunged downward, swallowing his entire length and working it with a suction that threatened to pull his hips right up off the bed and made him yell with helpless pleasure -- but when he started to thrust toward orgasm Joe abruptly drew back and slowed his ministrations. Incredulous, he pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked down at the lover robot, who met his gaze and slowly released the head of his penis from its delightful haven.
"From the front or from behind?" he asked once his mouth had slipped free.
In his state of drunkeness and sudden blinding arousal, it took Hobby a couple of seconds to parse that sentence, and even then it confused him. "I... what?"
"Me."
TO BE CONTINUED
TITLE: "One Degree of Separation" Part 2 of 3
AUTHOR: Laurie E. Smith
FANDOM: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
PAIRING: Professor Hobby/Gigolo Joe
RATING: NC-17 (explicit sexuality, mild violence)
SUMMARY: After David's disappearance, Professor Allen Hobby finds himself at a bit of a loss and takes consolation where he can find it.
WARNINGS: Hobby is a scientist, so some of what follows is dry and technical. Hopefully there's enough juicy stuff to make up for that.
NOTES: I wrote this story after trying to explain slash to someone using the most unlikely pairing I could think of. Then it turned out that the pairing wasn't so unlikely after all.
You can find Part 1, including pictures of Hobby and Joe, here.
***********************
As the doors to the elevator opened at their approach, Joe asked: "Where are we going?"
"A place where we can talk."
The elevator recognized Hobby, and without being asked took them down several levels to the floor where his private suite was located. The lock on Hobby's apartment at the end of the hall clicked quietly as they stepped out of the car, readying the door to open as soon as he touched the latch.
"Lights five," he ordered, triggering the lamp to the left of the couch as well as the soft lights above the stand-alone bar that it faced. He headed straight for the bar with the intention of continuing to anesthetize himself, gesturing Joe toward the couch. "Sit down."
The apartment was on the building's southeast corner. It was very large and had an abundance of tall windows, plus glass doors leading onto a balcony on the south wall, but all windows in the main living area were currently shuttered and had the curtains drawn -- Hobby had been in no mood for the brightness of the rising sun that morning, or for several mornings previous.
In a cabinet under the bar was a lonely bottle of whiskey. Hobby pulled it out and brushed off most of the dust, then poured himself a glass and promptly drank a quarter of it.
Joe, walking toward the couch as instructed, slowed and craned his neck to take in the dark expanse of tastefully rich decor. A flicker of pleasure registered on his face as he scanned the intricately woven tapestry rugs and antique colonial furniture. When he reached the couch and arranged himself in the corner nearest the lamp he ran elegant appreciative fingertips along the wooden armrest, which centuries of use had worn as smooth as silk.
Drink in hand, Hobby came round the front of the bar and leaned back against it to study the mecha who sat neatly cross-legged on his couch and watched him while he studied it -- a mirror reflecting at another mirror, around and around. Masks. He could picture the metal concealed by Joe's flawless skin as clearly as he could imagine the raw bone that lay behind his own weary face.
"Tell me," he said.
Joe turned his head a little to one side. "About...?"
"You know what about." Hobby closed his eyes, feeling the room spin a little: he'd had far too much to drink. He hadn't drunk like this since the dark days immediately after his son had died. His first son. It was a blessed mercy. "David. Tell me about David."
If Joe recognized the raw pain that crept into the orga's voice with the repetition of that beloved name, he didn't show it. "What do you want to know?"
"All the things we didn't think to ask you."
The tilt of Joe's head increased, that little frown knotting his elegant eyebrows once more while the yellow lamplight warmed the right side of his face and lingered in the green pools of his eyes. "Professor Hobby, I've told you everything I know."
"No. No, you haven't. You took care of him, Joe. Why? You're not supposed to do that."
Joe lowered his tinted eyelids a little, which only made his eyes look even brighter. "Without me, David wouldn't have known where to go or what to do."
"So, you stayed with him because he needed you."
"Yes."
"Ah-hah!" Hobby straightened and stabbed a finger at him. "No, Joe, he did not need you. He needed a nanny, or a policeman. You are a lover robot -- what, what possible interest could you have in what happened to a child?"
"David wasn't a child," Joe said in the tone of one politely stating the obvious. "He was a mecha."
"I see. And you took his side, because we all hate you. Because we'll stop at nothing to destroy you." Another swallow of alcohol, this time to push back the tears that such an unfair accusation provoked and to steady his voice. "I loved David! I would never... I..." Something in Joe's silence alerted him to an unspoken question. "Well?"
"If you loved him, why did you send him away? Why did his mother abandon him in the woods?"
"Monica was a mistake," Hobby replied at once. "She was less stable than we'd been led to believe."
Joe said nothing, only regarded him without blinking, and Hobby closed his eyes. The first question was so much harder to answer than the second, now that he knew the consequences of his decisions.
For an instant he wondered why he was answering a mecha's questions at all. Then he decided that these answers were all that he had to offer Joe in return for the unorthodox services he'd provided. After all, he'd been David's guide and guardian on the final night of his life; he had even tried to protect David by persuading him to abandon his quest, with a speech that a sex mecha shouldn't have been capable of giving.
"At Doctor Know's, you said that he'd been built specific, like the rest of you." Hobby emptied his glass and recklessly poured himself another. "You were right -- David was designed to fulfill the need of couples desperate for a child of their own -- but he was so much more than that. David was a mecha of a completely different order, a mecha with a mind..." Another sip of whiskey that burned as keenly as his unshed tears. "A mecha with a heart."
"With a heart?" This time it was polite disbelief.
He glanced down into his drink, ruing the improbable nature of his dream. "We... I thought he was ready. That's how it is with children. No matter how much you love them, you have to let them go, you have to --"
"Throw them out into the world," Joe said with a sudden edge of scorn, "all alone, and let them take their chances?"
Hobby looked up at him, stunned. Mecha didn't interrupt their orga masters. But he knew that Joe was capable of independent thought, and the gleam he saw in the mecha's eyes was quite possibly insubordination.
He shot gracefully to his feet and faced Hobby squarely across the coffee table, his intensity hitting the human's alcohol-heightened senses like a slap in the face. "I know what's going to happen to me," he said.
Hobby straightened where he stood and stared back at him in disbelief. "Do you?"
"I thought you'd have done it by now. But it doesn't matter anyway."
"And why is that?"
"Because David --" The tiny catch in his voice alerted Hobby, because mecha never hesitated, not that way. "David's gone, isn't he? You can't find him?"
"We've been trying."
Something very much like despair, an intriguingly human expression, darkened his handsome features. "But you haven't."
As they stared at each other across the several feet that separated them, all the grief that Hobby had been holding seemed to coalesce into a heartbeat of silence before he finally gave the truth the words that would make it real: "No. And I don't think we ever will."
Joe nodded very slightly. His gaze dropped and slid to one side, finding that same middle distance as it had in Hobby's office and dwelling there; he might have been looking into his own future, into oblivion. Hobby set his glass down on the bar. The sound it made and the trail of moisture left behind when he shifted it a little on the wood surface briefly occupied all his attention, until he spoke again. "You didn't answer my question."
Joe's pale eyes returned to his face. "Your question."
"Why did you help him, Joe?" It was such a simple one for orga, and one that he shouldn't have had to ask a mecha at all. Yet there Joe stood on his expensive carpet, being called to task.
"Because he held my hand, and saved my brain." The team assigned to Joe had gotten that answer several times in the course of their questioning. It angered Hobby to hear it again, because it revealed nothing new.
"So that once again your customers could ask for you by name?" he mocked.
"Something like that."
"No!" He slammed the glass on the bar to emphasize his displeasure. "That's not the right answer."
"I'm sorry, Professor, but it's the only one I have."
"Mecha don't feel gratitude. Mecha don't form relationships with each other. You said that 'only orga believe in what cannot be seen or measured' -- yet you claim to have placed a value on the consequences of David's actions and then set out to right the balance."
"That's not at all what I said. I said --"
"How much was it worth, Joe? You took him to Rouge City to find Doctor Know -- wasn't that enough? You brought him here instead of heading for Canada, or Mexico -- didn't you know you would be caught?" He could feel the hot pulse of frustration hammering in the hollow under his jaw and in the veins at his temples, and took another rough mouthful of whiskey. "You're intelligent, for a mecha. You must have realized that. Why did you wait for him?"
"I --" Again that anomolous hesitation, Joe's gaze faltering. His behavior was inexplicable, and right now far too many things were beyond Hobby's power to explain or to undo. He slammed the glass down on the bar and abandoned it, going for Joe.
Caught off-guard, Joe tried to back away, but Hobby lunged around the corner of the coffee table and seized his upper arms with a quickness and strength that surprised him.
"Answer me!" He shook the mecha twice, hard enough to snap his head back and provoke a startled expession. "Tell me, damn you! Tell me!"
At close range Joe's wide eyes were even more jewel-like: he could see the delicate striations in the irises, every facet a sheet of potentially changeable chemical irridescence that shimmered with latent electricity -- or perhaps not so latent, since he could imagine the tiny inaudible whir of the cameras inside Joe's sleek head as they parsed his face, trying to calculate his current emotional state. The thought almost made him laugh. How could Joe, as unusually advanced as he was, discern what he was feeling when he scarcely knew himself?
He realized that he was breathing deeply and quickly, too much so, and willed himself to slow and steady his inhalations. His body obeyed, despite the renegade sensations now coursing through his groin.
Joe was frozen in his grip, staring at him with that pale alarmed gaze.
"I don't understand," he said in a much smaller voice. "Why are you so angry with me? I helped David!"
Undefinable emotion clenched Hobby's heart. He pulled Joe closer, intending (he thought) to shake him again and make him yield the truth. Instead he crushed Joe's mouth with all of his anger.
The sex mecha tensed briefly, then went pliant in his grasp. He closed his eyes and dipped his tongue slowly into the yielding sweetness of Joe's mouth (and it really was delicious, like tasting roses), washing away the tartness of the whiskey. When he started to withdraw Joe startled him by catching the tip of it in his teeth, nipping it, then lightly suckling it before letting it go, leaving Hobby breathless. Sheila, his current companion mecha, had never done anything that elaborate. But Sheila had been created for general companionship and possessed only a functional degree of sensuality simulation: Joe's designers had poured thousands of man-hours into making him the perfect sexual partner -- seductive, graceful, skilled, and beautiful.
Oh, yes, Hobby realized as he released his hold on Joe's arms and the mecha pressed closer, his sure hands finding the orga's waist and slipping around it as if savoring every inch of the journey: very well programmed, and very quick off the mark.
He opened his eyes to look into Joe's face and touch those synthetic lips -- they parted under his fingers, Joe's remarkable eyes growing hooded and sultry -- those lips that had been so close to David's face, part of a body that was perhaps the best link to his son that he had left. He tasted them again, lightly, then with greater force. He caught the mecha's left hand from the small of his back and interlaced their fingers, desperately trying to feel where David's skin had touched Joe's and missing his son with an ache so deep and heartbreaking that it brought tears to his eyes once more, burning on the edge of being shed.
"Oh," Joe breathed between kisses, a small and perfect sound. He removed his other hand from Hobby's back and brought it to the orga's face as if to brush away the glitters of moisture. "Professor Hobby..."
"Allen." He bowed his head a little to accept the comfort Joe was programmed to offer, the fingers that lingered against his cheek as the first tears finally slipped free. His voice was frail and breathless in his own ears. "Call me Allen."
"Allen." Joe stroked his wet skin, searching his face, and seemed to find something there, because his cool jade eyes grew even brighter. "I'm sorry, about David."
"I know you are." He kissed Joe again because it felt like falling, and freefall was better than the bleak place where he had come to live since David's disappearance.
They swayed slightly together, Hobby's hand still gripping Joe's, still seeking contact with what was long since lost; and his tears fell, but only for a little while, perhaps the space of a few shallow breaths, because Joe's mouth was doing cunning, subtle things that successfully coaxed his attention in directions other than his own sorrow, while the mecha's hand slid back from his cheek (a light thumb tracing the line of his ear as it went by) to curve around the back of his neck, each fingertip trailing fire.
He had never been with a male, orga or mecha, in his life, so the contours of Joe's back -- slim and muscular through the lightweight material of the jumpsuit -- were new to his experience in the context of passion. So was the touch of another erection yearning against his (the little noises Joe made as they pressed close indicating that 'yearning' was indeed the operative term), and the thrill of erotic heat each movement provoked confounded him at first; he heard himself making soft snorting sounds of surprise with every little nudge of Joe's hips, and was vaguely ashamed of his own candor... not that it would make any difference to a lover robot, who wasn't judging his performance as a human partner would.
All that mattered to Joe was making him happy, and the mecha's sighs and murmurs indicated that he was perceiving the signs of his own success in that endeavor. Hobby found his vocalizations pleasing, even while recognizing their function in Joe's behavioral profile, because Joe had a lovely voice whose throaty quality was erotic in its own right.
"Tell me," he whispered, pulling away from Joe's mouth and looking down at their joined bodies, intrigued by the sight of male against male, "tell me what you want me to do with you."
"I want you to use me." No hesitation, only the slightest vibratto inflection, a simulation of perfect passion. Joe's eyes held his with smouldering intensity as those strong, elegant fingers caressed the back of his neck. "I want you to remember every desire you've ever had, every fantasy you've ever wanted to fulfill, and then I want you to tell me how to make them come true."
That was the proper answer. "Very good, Joe."
"Shall I undress for you?"
He released his death-grip on Joe's left hand to touch the mecha's waist. The body sculpture was uncanny: its shapes felt disarmingly human, all the way up over the ribs to the clean shape of the shoulderblade rising from tight, toned muscle.
"Yes," he decided.
Joe kissed him again, light and lingering, then reluctantly slipped his hands from the orga's body and took a step back. Only then did Hobby realize how unsteady he had become, because he stumbled forward, only to have the mecha catch him -- one hand on his shoulder, the other against his chest.
"Easy," Joe cautioned with a considerably less smoulder.
"I'm all right."
"You're sure?" He took his hands away, watching, but Hobby remained upright.
"I'm fine."
"Good." The sexual purr surged back into his voice, along with the saucy gleam in his eyes. "Because in a few minutes," he promised, toeing off his shoes and unsnapping the closure at his throat, "you're going to feel better than you ever imagined possible."
So Hobby watched, bemused, while he opened the jumpsuit to the waist and shrugged his slim shoulders free, slipping it down his body and finally stepping out of it with the easy grace of someone who has disrobed for appreciative observers a thousand times -- and more. The actual number was 9,738, not counting Hobby himself (9,739, then), too many faces and names to picture, stories of loneliness and hunger forming tangental intersections across an existance that focused human desire like a lense yet really knew nothing of the appetites it served.
But a shadow had dimmed his brilliant eyes when he heard that the search for David had failed... therefore the clarity of the lense was somehow flawed. That was all right, because Hobby was feeling a little bit flawed himself at the moment: unsure of his own clarity, of what he was seeing and why, or even of his own motivation. He only knew that he ached in every dimension, and that this mecha's touch somehow soothed him.
Of course Joe was naked underneath the jumpsuit, and had produced a full erection. Hobby regarded it with almost clinical detachment. It was well designed and aesthetically pleasing, but the sight of it did not increase his arousal: the thought of being back in Joe's arms, on the other hand, made his heart pound noticably faster. What did that prove about the nature of his desire -- except, perhaps, that he was willing to accept closeness to David by proxy? That he was desperate enough to do anything, including jumping the tracks on an entire lifetime of sexual behavior, to ease the pain of his loss for even a moment?
It didn't matter, because Joe was taking his left hand and moving past him, walking slowly backwards and drawing him gently toward the darkened door that led to his bedroom. There was no trace of a shadow in those shining eyes now as they effortlessly commanded his gaze. The irony of the situation did not escape Hobby. He had decreed that David was to return to him 'with a faerie hand in hand', and his son had done exactly that, for Joe was indeed inhumanly lovely, impossibly slim and graceful and flawless. When Joe smiled at him, he almost smiled in return.
He followed the pull of the mecha's hand from his world into what seemed like another entirely: cool darkness where the light of a half-full moon spilled across his neatly made bed, and where Joe, lying back in that pool of otherworldly radiance, broke its glow into lithe patterns -- a smooth sculpted chest, the lean stomach of a dancer, the sweep of that elegant erection across his slim hip -- that Hobby found marvelously, irrationally pleasing. So he followed the tug of Joe's hand once more and let himself sink down on top of them, into the strength of Joe's slender arms winding around him like vines up the sides of an old building, and bent his mouth to the painted lips that were already open and rising to invite his kiss.
Now that they were lying down, every part of the mecha's body -- his mouth, his skillful hands, his right leg twining around the back of Hobby's thigh to hold him close, the caressing thrusts of his hips and the slow surging arch of his flexible spine -- was involved in the task of utterly enthralling his orga partner's senses. The sweet friction of erection against erection was far more intense with Hobby's full weight behind it, and Joe was shameless in pulling him closer still: no woman had ever touched him with such bold certainty.
The concentration of such singular purpose was so compelling that Hobby, even as he felt himself rapidly drowning in the intensity of their encounter, willingly let himself go, giving up the thing that most defined him to himself in every aspect of his life: his control of all the variables, his intellectual mastery. This had nothing to do with intellect. This was raw emotion -- lost, desperate, passionate feeling, an arena where Joe, by specific design, was the expert in potential and realization. It was an area that Hobby had never paid much attention to in the course of his carefully defined life.
Closing his eyes (mouth pressed so sweetly against mouth), he felt Joe's hands adoring him through his clothing -- cardigan and shirt and undershirt and sensible khaki pants, his own fully-dressed state somehow making Joe's complete nakedness more thrilling -- with gliding patterns of exquisite tension and release, set to a rythym that he couldn't quite grasp mentally but whose patterns his body seemed to recognize and crave. When one of those hands slipped up the back of his sweater he heard himself groan out loud and was surprised by the sudden shudder that wracked his body, his back arching. Joe made a small pleased sound and ran a cool unhurried fingertip up and down his spine through the thin layers of cloth that remained, turning the shudder into a long shiver of helpless arousal.
The hand withdrew, apparently content (for the moment) merely to suggest closer contact; but Hobby found he had far less patience. He pushed himself out of Joe's embrace and sat up, hastily tugging the cardigan over his head -- he didn't trust his fingers with the buttons -- and tossing it to one side. He knew that his hair, or what was left of it, was sticking out in all directions, but he didn't care, because now when he lay down again he could feel the heat of Joe's body through his shirt, so electric that it actually seemed to burn his skin.
Joe smiled, a playful gleam of approval in his eyes. As the orga settled back into his arms he smoothed the flyaway strands of hair, then cupped the back of Hobby's neck and drew him down once more. The mecha's mouth was unlike anything he had ever experienced: tender yet firm, yielding to his groping kisses, then skillfully drawing him even deeper -- sucking at his lower lip, biting it a little, then coaxing him in with the flicker and friction of tongue against tongue until they were devouring each other with an intensity that left him hardly able to breathe. And when he had to come up for air those remarkable lips were never idle: they were applied to his throat lightly, or with delicious suction, or with an adventurous edge of teeth, or teasingly under the line of his jaw and chin, as if reminding him that they were still there and only awaiting his attention. There were no awkward pauses for Joe, no hesitations, only an extensive library of sexual techniques to be applied in patterns of inspired improvisation.
And he was good at his work, making Hobby tremble with a delirious excitement that rose from some previously untapped source deep within his body and abounded joyously through every vein, every heartbeat, every breath; no embrace had ever felt so real. Perhaps it was because he was intoxicated. He had never had sex with Caroline, or anyone else, while he was drunk -- in most respects his life had been as staid and sensible as the stereotype of the scientist would lead one to believe.
Joe broke the rules. He probably always had. Joe was breaking him apart with beauty and sensuality, and with the mystery that they shared -- the one that separated them by a single degree, the piece of their lives that was mutually missing. The loss that no one else in the world could understand so well, ameliorated for a brief span of minutes by the heat of body against body in the dark.
It couldn't last. But for now it felt like forever, and Hobby was glad to lose himself in the illusion.
When one of Joe's hands finally slipped between their bodies to take hold of him through his pants the sensation that erupted through his body was almost a convulsion. He cried out, an exclamation that Joe soothed with lingering caresses of his ripe mouth.
"I want to taste you," he breathed, glancing down while stroking the object of his simulated desire, then raising his bright eyes to Hobby's face. Hobby looked down at him in what was very nearly confusion. "Will you let me, Allen? Please?"
Perhaps it was intoxication -- or perhaps the moment was so mesmerizing simply because Joe was amazingly, perfectly, intensely hot, made for sex and so very eager to be used. And possibly, Hobby thought vaguely as his erection (seemingly of its own accord) thrust itself into the palm of Joe's hand, he had recognized this cathartic encounter as a possible outcome -- and it was what had possessed him of the notion to bring Joe here in the first place. The human mind worked in mysterious ways.
So he nodded, looking down at Joe's beautiful face but seeing much deeper, layer upon layer of intricacies and inhumanities right down to the nuclear fire that fueled the very pulse of the machine. In that respect he had no illusions at all, and wanted none.
Joe looked pleased and drew him down for another lingering kiss (a shared sigh, that delicious taste of roses) before rolling them both over and sitting up to straddle his partner's thighs. For a moment he simply gazed down at the hapless orga, the quality of his smile altering -- it struck Hobby that he was enjoying the power inversion of their relative positions -- while he ran slow savoring hands down the older man's chest and belly to the front of his sensible dress pants, which he opened with practiced ease.
Hobby's erection reared up from its prison, still constrained by his boxers. For a moment Joe studied its outline appreciatively, running one finger up its side from the base to the exposed tip that peeked out above the waistband (Hobby couldn't remember the last time he'd been so long and so hard, alcohol or not) before drawing the front of the boxers all the way down to the orga's perenium. The elasticity of the waistband pushed his testicles up and presented them prominently for Joe's servicing, an achingly brazen detail that Hobby would never have dreamed of himself, but one that he welcomed shamelessly.
It occurred to him that he was going to have a lot of regretting to do in the morning. Then Joe took hold of him again, and for a few slow heavenly strokes of that knowing hand Hobby found himself suspended once more, in freefall, closing his eyes and gripping Joe's smooth cool knees and aware of nothing else except the pleasure zones where their bodies intersected.
When the mecha slid down between his legs -- smoothly oiled and supple as a cat -- and bent to his task, Hobby trembled once more. Sheila had performed fellatio on him many times, but this... this was a whole different order of magnitude. This was like having his soul drawn out of him by infinite languid degrees as Joe thoroughly stimulated every aching inch of him, from tip to testicles, to a pitch of fevered intensity that threatened to annihilate thought itself.
He heard his own rising groans, rough unseemly sounds he would never have imagined himself uttering before but could not suppress now, as he reached down to take hold of Joe's sleek head. His hips started moving of their own accord, pushing his gathered testicles higher into Joe's caressing hand while that wondrous mouth purred against his hot wet flesh and welcomed him in again, and again, and again: licking, sucking, teasing him with gentle nips that made him emit soft little cries he scarcely recognized as his own. In the delicious rythym of alternating delicacy and intensity in Joe's caresses, time rapidly ceased to have meaning.
Suddenly the mecha plunged downward, swallowing his entire length and working it with a suction that threatened to pull his hips right up off the bed and made him yell with helpless pleasure -- but when he started to thrust toward orgasm Joe abruptly drew back and slowed his ministrations. Incredulous, he pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked down at the lover robot, who met his gaze and slowly released the head of his penis from its delightful haven.
"From the front or from behind?" he asked once his mouth had slipped free.
In his state of drunkeness and sudden blinding arousal, it took Hobby a couple of seconds to parse that sentence, and even then it confused him. "I... what?"
"Me."
TO BE CONTINUED
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