Work Text:
“Stay calm,” Gurathin whispered. “It'll be okay, you have my word.” He was making an effort, so I wouldn't hold it against him (too much) that he was misapplying the quote.
“Yes, Captain,” I said. The skimpy silver NavBot outfit left too much of me bare, but the way Gurathin's gaze kept flicking between my shoulders and my legs made it worth the exposure. His cool hands on my bare skin made me flinch, but I sent him a status:continue ping before he could react to my reaction. “I am unsure how to proceed.”
“Trust me,” he said, linking his arm through mine to perform the gesture of love shared by Captain Hossein and NavBot. Considering how long we'd been physically involved by now, this gesture that had seemed so intimate the first time I'd experienced the storyline felt oddly chaste, but it still sent a warm tingle through my organics to do it with him. With our foreheads together, I could feel his breath on my cheek. I wanted to kiss him. I would not break character so quickly, though. “Is this all right?” Hossein's words; Gurathin's hesitance, his desire to enact this scene for my sake.
“This is satisfactory.” NavBot's words; I wanted to say this is not enough and then show him what would really be satisfactory, but half the point of this scenario was to slow me down. I had been pushy about the amount of touching I wanted recently— a side effect of having enough dopamine to feel good for the first time in my life, induced and maintained in great part by the intimacy I shared with Gurathin— and playing the part of NavBot at the start of its relationship with Hossein meant I wouldn't have the words to ask for or the initiative to begin anything that my captain didn't introduce first. Not that working on his timeline was anything like denial, simply a pace I wouldn’t have chosen myself.
“I'd like to exceed satisfactory,” he murmured. I could hear the amusement in his voice, his laughing disdain for the dialogue he deemed cheesy, but he didn't break character either as we withdrew from the gesture. “Tell me something, NavBot… What do you dream about?”
“Space,” I said, “the distance between stars, the gravity of Sanctuary Moon and how it feels different from every other planet…” His hand settled on my waist where the silver uniform left it bare, and my voice processor hitched slightly at the feel of his fingers against my skin. “How stars die, how quasars sing, how to leave home and find it again.” I was still working on that last part. Leaving, I knew how to do; finding home again had led me not just to Preservation but to Mensah's couch, to Ratthi's lab, to Gurathin's arms. So many ways to come home that I had never expected. I hadn't thought acting out my favorite show could be another way.
“If anyone knows how to find home, it’s you.” He spoke it in a whisper, like he meant it too much to deliver it like a quotation.
“It is my purpose.” I thought I knew what my purpose was. I thought I knew what I wanted my purpose to be. It’s been strange to realize that what I was meant for and what I want to be are so similar and yet not the same thing at all. My function felt more correct as protect my humans than protect my clients— clients put the distance of a contract between us, a level of remove that had long been obliterated when it came to PresAux and to the man in my arms.
“It’s a noble purpose,” he said. “To bring us all safely home.” NavBot had its way of keeping its crew safe; I liked my way better, protecting them with my wits and my weapons and my body. Gurathin’s fingers gently traced my upper arm where I’d been wounded during the rush to escape TranRollinHyfa, no scar left there but his memory sharper than my own of the cycles aboard the gunship and immediately after it.
“What do you dream about, Captain?” In the show, Hossein never got to answer the question, interrupted by a red alert alarm blaring that pulled them apart. In this room, I curled my hand in the red scarf around Gurathin’s throat, held him in place. I needed to know how he would answer.
“I dream about you,” he said simply. I knew this was true; I liked to hardwire to him while he slept, had seen myself in his dreams in a hundred different roles: not only as lover and protector but as co-conspirator, as damsel in distress, as integral component of his systems, as companion in moments of peace and safety. “I— can’t keep this up,” he sighed, caught my face between his hands, and kissed me like Hossein and NavBot never did on screen, his mouth on mine, warm and familiar and the first part of what I wanted so badly after he went through the trouble of dressing up to act this out with me. “Sorry, Murderbot, I can’t resist you,” he murmured against my mouth.
“Good, I don’t want you to resist me,” I said, and swept him up in my arms— NavBot could have to its captain, but never did; NavBot wasn’t here, only me and my augmented human: the only one I could imagine making love with, not like they did on screen but like only we did, tangled up in each other’s processors as we touched each other’s bodies. When I set him down on our bed, he gazed up at me with that silly lovestruck expression that made my performance reliability tick upward every time.
“Leave the costume on,” he said, and slid his hands up under the skirt to caress my thighs.
“Not if you’re going to get fluids on it,” I said breathlessly, and made no move to remove it. I put my fingers in the hair he’d teased into an approximation of the captain’s fluffy look after saving one last image of him before I ruined the effort he’d put into dressing up for me. Captain Hossein was bold and daring and reckless and not who I loved; Gurathin was brave and wily and determined and held my heart in his hands with reverence. Every piece of his costume I removed revealed more of the man I loved so deeply: the scars around his embedded augments, the pale dappling that beautifully marked his skin, the flush that crept down his chest as I undid his clothing with my hands and undid him with my mouth.