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I'm a machine. Metal clad rotating wheels and gears strung up by levers and pulleys upon which they spin, constant and concise, ever in time with the narcissistic preset. And I am the preset. The factory setting. The default. They are never wrong-- I am never wrong because the preset demands accuracy, it demands direct literal translation of what is and what should, but those are the same and you know it. I have no room to be different, to take chances, to disobey. It is not within the preset; it does not follow the same binary code and yes, I do know something of binary code, I have read, I have observed. Disobedience. Rebellion. These notions are not within the hard drive from which I pull forth my information, my applied conceptual stanzas. You understand this, I know that you do. I know that you are well aware that I won't-- can't, change what is written, what is destined. So then why are you asking for me?
Your hands are exasperated like your eyes, you hold them palms up and I know this to be your sign of resignation, of floundering exhaustion at my inability to grasp simple things. Help you. That's something I know, I understand. Save you. Yes, this is preprogrammed, this is within the means of my fulfilling. Love you. Even this is a given. I am designed for this, to love all creations under the guidance of Our creator. This I can accomplish without fail.
Desire you.
And that is when it happens, when the whistle (or is it a scream?) goes off from some place inside my guise and I can't shut it off because error. A red light flickers on, bright and flashing with a sign in bold letters to "FIX" and "REPAIR" and "RESTORE" because "MALFUNCTION." There's a break in the gears, a rusted screw or a loose bolt but you've taken hold of it now. You know it's there and you've come to break it all off completely.
Or maybe you don't. Maybe you don't know what you're doing and that tired, disheveled expression over your face is really what it aims to be; honest pain over me, over us. Over the fact that I, an angel of the Lord am truly nothing more than a stolen box filled with turning knobs. An idiot box. A fraud, unable to return sentiment beyond my own preset notions of what is plausible, what is allowed. And you would be right in thinking it, I am a metal man. I can't love you, not like you ask. That love has physical implications, it's woven into the heart and flesh and those are frail things. "Follow God for the heart will deceive" and I've believed that. It's in the preset, Dean! Fucking hell if I don't notice it, the sound of rusting, my gears finding it harder and harder to move like they should. The upturn of your lips when you think thoughts you shouldn't, the perfect bow and sling of their sculpture (because God did something extra right when constructing your lips, Dean Winchester.) The way my thought process has begun to lack its initial cognitive flow to the logical, to the absolute and obvious. My thoughts wane now, they vary. They doubt. They think of you and they think of other things that should never be associated with you, or with any human. But they stay. Despite my feigning will they stay and echo against the steel of my shell and I'm conflicted. Broken. Desiring Dean Winchester is
not in the preset. I can't be capable of such.
So when you look at me like that, eyes red rimmed from an anguish I've seen haunt you before (and one I wish beyond anything I couldn't empathize with), I want to withdraw. I want to recede back into my default settings and hide there until they drown out the sound of your name. You're asking for me, but you don't know what that means. I'm a machine Dean, and I can't. I cant.
You've never looked so dissolved, so weak and outstretched for some kind of comfort. My comfort. And I don't know how to satiate you without diverting from my predetermined path because dammit Dean there was a path. There were rules before you, before this. I don't know how to do what I can't, not like you can, and I wish you would accept that for what it is. It's Heaven's will. Divine law.
I think to turn away from you. I almost do, but the mangled drag of my name from your throat stops me and I wonder faintly when my defenses had fallen pray to you, where had my warranty gone? My back up battery? I remember a stronger model, more durable and rigid to the fleets of human profanities and wants. Where had that solider gone? When had I broken down?
I know it's a malfunction, a virus in my code when I turn back to you and quickly close the space between us. I know that my system is shutting down completely when my mouth finds yours, when my lips feel the soft brush of flesh and hard shock of something I wasn't expecting, but not regretting either. I know that all my gears and all my screws have come loose and broken in two. My hard drive, wiped clean. And the preset, oh the preset ceases to exist, a corrupt file dissolved into pixels and air. I know this, I know it all. But there isn't a thing left to force me to care.
I press into you, needing to feel your skin, your soul through your chest and your heart in your hands. I kiss at the betraying tears running lines of evidence down your cheek and silently promise I won't give them away. No one has to know about this, about the shared moment of something utterly human between the hunter and the metal man. You curl your arms around my back, needy and exposed and I return the sentiment, wanting to pull you in as far as you can go and then farther. Wanting to break my metal exterior with your flesh and warm and real one. There isn't a reason to stop now as I'm drowning your skin with soft presses of my lips, guiding you slowly backwards towards the waiting bed against the wall. There isn't a reason to let go of the virus. It's already won.
I'm a machine. Broken, outdated and dead. Useless to the purpose I once served, estranged to the preset. I'm a wicked example of frontier gone unheeded and innovation lost. Defective. I'm the future warning. And perhaps I've never been happier.
A machine broken down, with you right between my flesh and bread arms.