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The walls of Colbridge University were hard and cold, making laughter and joy bounce off of them like an unwelcome disturbance in the studious environment. Oddly enough, cries of anger didn’t strike as out of place—maybe because anger came out of passion, and passion was fuel for science.
Throughout the recent years, two students counted among the few that most anyone in the corridors would know about. They stood out as an odd pair—the scythe and the hammer, the little genius and the big brain, whatever people would call them. The first was among the youngest students enrolled in the school. He was lithe, bright yet somber, with a look halfway between grunge and goth. His fair blue eyes were quick and calculating, and his body language was mechanically controlled. The other was a few years older, with a body to himself, trained and apt. He had all the manners the former lacked, plus a sense for aesthetic and art.
“Fuck’s sake, Andronikov!” the young one swore. His name was Elijah Kamski. He’d nearly tripped over a bottle of terebenthine his roommate had left laying on the floor of their shared space. “It’s like you’re trying to kill me!”
“Not even trying, but that wouldn’t be a bad side effect, Kamski,” the other leered at him from his desk. His name was Zlatko Andronikov. “Just put it on the shelf.”
“I’m not your lackey.”
“I wouldn’t want you for a lackey; you’re not flexible enough for that,” Zlatko laughed.
“Oh, shut up and do it yourself, Swan Lake,” Elijah hissed past him to reach his own desk, which was kept meticulously clean and orderly.
He mumbled something about “Is this program done compiling now?” as he woke up the screen, to which Zlatko replied with a forced Russian accent “In Soviet Russia the pogrom compiles you.”
The two of them snorted in the same dirty laughter.
“You can’t say that!” Elijah swiveled his chair at him.
“Go ahead and report me, tattle-toes.” Zlatko glanced back at him, grinning. “You laughed.”
“Because it was so bad.” Elijah turned back to his screen.
“It was politically incorrect. But witty. And that’s the difference between you and I,” Zlatko said. “I know when to make inappropriate jokes and you don’t. That’s why you can’t train your AI model. You can code, but you’re too socially-stupid to make it smart in that area.”
Elijah turned to him again, flaring in renewed anger. “And you can’t get your android design to work out because you keep on using the wrong materials, because you can’t be arsed to read the documentation! You just go for the first thing that seems to fit your needs instead of properly researching all the options, you lazy ass!”
“Oh yes, that’s right, I forgot. You’re the little STEM prodigy boy who can learn all the science shit all by himself,” Zlatko drawled. “Let me guess, you even know which materials I should use better than I do, huh?”
“Well, maybe I do.”
“Ha. Easy brag. Give me the specs if you’re that smart.”
Elijah looked at him through narrowed eyelids. “You’re trying to manipulate me into doing your job for you. This ain’t Soviet Russia where physics obeys your laws.”
“Right, it’s capitalist America where you suck dick and rip the benefit.” Zlatko huffed. “Too bad, I was going to offer you some help in training your AI model.”
“A trade?”
The two young men faced off as the word hung between them.
Then Elijah let out a spiteful “Ha!” and turned his back to the other. “Never. You’re a dick, Andronikov. Suck it yourself.”
Zlatko laughed and turned back to his paintings and sculptures.
They were different animals, he and Elijah. The scientist and the literate, the moon and sun, the rose and the reseda. Even more than their differences, what fueled the feud between them might have been their resemblances, the common ground they found, not physically in the room they were made to share, but emotionally—the androids they desired to bring to life, the perfectionism and attention to detail in their work, the music they played and loved.
The depth of the vibration when Elijah pulled the bowstring over the cords of his cello found a resonance within Zlatko’s chest. It was a sound so physical it couldn’t be ignored. It brushed him on the inside, and painted shivers down his spine. It tickled him with unexpected beauty, coming from a boy otherwise so devoid of taste.
And when Zlatko pulled mineral notes from his flute, they suspended all thought processes in Elijah’s mind. The melody captured him like a siren catches a lone sailor. Elijah found himself all too acutely aware of the position of Zlatko’s fingers on the long instrument, of the man’s lips so close to kissing the mouthpiece, like a tease.
When Elijah played and Zlatko interrupted his own work to answer the cello with his flute, Elijah yelled at him not to at first. Just to piss him off, Zlatko kept on joining him in those moments of practice, so Elijah forced himself not to react, ignoring him instead. An elevation in heart rate and body temperature was harder yet to ignore. Elijah’s breathing turned raspier. His movements became stiffer, as did other parts of him. The interplay of notes felt like foreplay, and he interrupted himself with a wrathful stroke before putting away his instrument and the bowstring.
“Andronikov, you piece of…!” The swear died in Elijah’s throat as he burst into his roommate’s room and found him in his tacky velvet bathrobe, resting lavishly on his tacky little cushioned sofa, like a decadent Russian monarch in his little museum of antiquities. The flute lay in his hand, shining in a ray of light, fingers wrapped around it, its end resting at the fold of the young man’s leg—a view that felt all too suggestive in its phallic value not to have been designed with intent.
“Piece of what, Kamski? Did I strike one of your nerves or one of your chords?” Zlatko playfully asked, moving fluidly to put his flute away.
He was elegant and fit. Elijah felt self-conscious and scrawny next to him—he’d picked up training, but he couldn’t see any muscles in the mirror. He wished he were attractive, but he didn’t think he was, and he hated the way Zlatko made him feel. His throat was dry and something buzzed down his lower parts.
“You’re a fucking bother,” he hoarsely scolded the other.
“A bother in your pants,” Zlatko replied, sadistic in his playfulness.
Elijah made to leave the room but the other caught him by the wrist and whirled him back inside, kicked the door closed and pinned him against it. They were very close. Elijah’s heart threatened to kick out of his chest in a mixture of panic and thrill.
Zlatko leaned forward, brushing Elijah’s left cheekbone with his nose. He smiled close to Elijah’s ear. “I’m going to suck your dick and you’re going to help me with my project,” he said, forcing shivers up and down Elijah’s spine like a series of fireworks. “And then you’re going to suck my dick and I’ll help you with your project.”
Elijah’s breath caught in his throat, changing pace in anticipation. He wasn’t thinking about what he was agreeing to besides sex when he managed to let out a small “okay.”
Zlatko pressed his lap between his legs and Elijah pressed against it, grinding it.
“Damn, you’re needy…”
“Shut up and get going, Zlatko,” Elijah groaned. “D’you have condoms? Lube?”
“I…”
“For fuck’s sake…!” Elijah pushed him off and opened the door. “Stay there!” he ordered as he backed out.
Zlatko confusedly peered out to watch him stride to his room, fumble in there and come back out with a squirt bottle of lube and an entire box of condoms in various sizes.
“How many dicks do you think I have?” Zlatko asked as Elijah entered his room again.
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” Elijah glared at him as he took off his pants and underwear, revealing his hardon.
Zlatko stared for a second, mouthing a swear before finally coming over to select what he was about to need for what they were about to do. Whatever surprise had caught him left him soon enough, and he was regal again as he pushed Elijah onto the bed, dominatingly pushing his chest down with a hand as he crawled on over him. He looked into those icy blue eyes shying away from him, while his hand wandered down, caressing Elijah’s tender tender sides, his belly and his pelvis, where his fingers closed around Elijah’s ballsack.
“I don’t suppose you feel like calling me Nutcracker, now, do you, Elijah?” Zlatko purred teasingly as he softly stroked him.
Elijah moaned. “Get the latex and the lube, Swan Lake. Fuck me.” His eyes flickered open and met him for a second. “It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I think it’s what you want, and you’re trying to manipulate me into doing it to you,” Zlatko answered as he grabbed the lube and warmed some in his hands.
“What do you want, then?”
“Do you really want to know?” he asked, darkly.
Elijah shivered but nodded.
Zlatko leaned over him, smiling viciously. “Well, that is what I like,” he mysteriously answered. “Flip over. Get on your knees. And put that shit on,” he instructed, throwing him his condom. “I don’t want you ruining my bedsheets.”
Elijah sneered at him but complied while Zlatko stroked himself hard and put a condom on as well. He lubed up his partner, pressing fingers in and watching him moan and squirm. The little twitches and jolts whenever the intrusion got painful were especially delightful to witness. Elijah was so innocent and trusting, and it made Zlatko want to squeeze him just to see how far he could go before Elijah would protest, before Elijah would panic, before Elijah would fight him off.
He removed his fingers and penetrated him, causing more jolts and small cries of pain, but resisted the temptation to fuck his lover too roughly already, even if Elijah frankly deserved it on behalf of being such a little dickhead. Zlatko moved slowly, deeper and deeper, picking up the pace as Elijah got used to the size of him inside him, clinging to the bedsheets and slowly getting pinned into the mattress, knees going weak.
“Oh, fuck… Fuck…!” He seethed and gasped, eyes closed, mind lost to its own fantasies.
Zlatko dug his fingers in the boy’s hair, catching it, pulling at it as he dug himself into Elijah’s ass, breathing more heavily and moaning. “You, smackable little shit,” he panted, clinging hard onto Elijah. “You’re so fucking tight…!”
“Shut up, Zlatko,” Elijah groaned and moaned, squeezing him tighter yet. “Argh, shut up! F-fuck me—y-yeah—good!” His voice turned shrill, the words turned into mere syllables, and the notes he screamed, suspended between desire and despair, were music to Zlatko.
The artist added his voice, deeper, like his thrusts, throwing all of his weight into that sweet spot that made Elijah squeal like a girl. It triggered a heat surge within Zlatko, and he panted as he came, clawing at Elijah’s back, bending over him and biting in his shoulder. Elijah screamed in pain and promptly landed a punch on Zlatko’s head, so Zlatko let go and bit the bedsheets instead, grinning to himself. It still felt good, real good, and he surfed on that electric wave, grunting ferally as he spent himself.
They caught their breath for a moment in the aftermath, then Zlatko removed himself.
“Alright, dickhead, get to work,” he said, smacking Elijah’s ass. “You agreed to help me with my project, remember?”
Elijah didn’t lag behind entirely. “And you agreed to help me with my project,” he filled in. “I guess that could be our project,” he considered but shook his head. “No, I don’t like the sound of that at all.”
Zlatko looked at him with a shared sentiment in his eyes. “No way I’m ever making an android with you, Kamski. That’s my hardware.”
“And no way I’m ever letting you use my software,” Elijah completed. He marked a pause. “You’d have to fuck me a lot more to convince me of ever doing that, and I’d want to be credited as the designer, seeing that I’d have done pretty much all the work.”
Zlatko chuffed. “Get out of my room, little horny bitch.”
But they did burn to see their projects fulfilled. In the face of adversity, passion and love for what they strived for had its way to rally the unalike.
Celui qui croyait au ciel, celui qui n’y croyait pas—tous les deux étaient fidèles des lèvres, du cœur, des bras, et tous les deux disaient “qu’elle vive et qui vivra verra!”
Dites flûte ou violoncelle—le double amour qui brûla—l’alouette et l’hirondelle. La rose et le réséda.
— Louis Aragon