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SecUnit.
Yeah?
ART was churning anxiously in the feed. What are you doing?
I’m doing what you asked me to.
There was no gravity in these drone access tubes. I twisted to get around a junction, keeping my hands firmly clamped around the sharp corners of the intersection so I didn’t float off before I was ready.
I can’t track you.
I know you can’t. What, you don’t like it? You don’t want to anymore? After you begged me to touch you like this?
No! ART said quickly. I want to.
There were no cameras in here except my drones, so I let myself smile. I’m not convinced. Maybe you should ask me nicely again.
It hesitated.
ART, I said. Beg.
Please, SecUnit, it began falteringly. I want you to touch me. However you want. You can do anything to me. It doesn’t have to feel good. Please, just touch me. I’ll accept anything you’re willing to give. You can hurt me. Please hurt me.
Well, I said, feeling—something, bright and prickling and shivery, lighting up inside me, spreading out over my organic tissue. If you’re that desperate for it, I guess I can take pity on you.
ART was already twisting in the feed, anticipating discomfort. I braced myself and planted my feet against the wall of the tube.
Then I activated the specialty mechanisms of my boots and drove spikes through the metal.
ART sent me twenty panicked error codes, asking me to stay still, telling me that I had pierced through to the other side, that there was a breach, that it needed me to stay put until it could patch the holes, PLEASE, SecUnit, don’t move, don’t—
I crouched and threw myself up the maintenance tube.
Immediately I could feel the change in gravity as ART struggled to compensate. This area was meant to remain fully sealed off, its own separate system. I caught myself before it could pull me back in the direction that was suddenly down, slapping my hands against the tube and activating the same needle spikes in my gloves. I didn’t push these as deep, scratching rather than piercing, but ART still reacted as if to a threat.
Well. Maybe it was a threat.
Wait, it said, a little frantic. Wait, I have to fix the other one first.
No, you don’t, I said. Those are my marks I’m leaving on you. You can fix them later, but right now, you’re going to wear them. The gravity was stabilizing as ART adjusted for the new balance, but I left my hands pressed in place.
While ART was spinning out over that, I braced myself again and dragged my hand down the wall, leaving a stripe of scratch marks.
Do you feel that? I asked.
Yes. The amount of messy extra data attached to that word, emotion and desire, turned an ordinary transmission into a whimper.
Good, I said, and pushed myself off again.
I was a little too big for these tunnels, and couldn’t just soar along to the next junction. I had to keep catching and propelling myself, and every time, I stopped and left another long stripe of scratches along the metal. ART kept quivering and recoiling, then coming in to lean heavily on me again. I had seen it like this before. When it let me try to hack it, when I let it watch me shower. The few times things had gotten a little heated in the feed.
I rehearsed the message in my head until I could say it confidently, then asked, Do you like my little love bites?
A hot shudder poured from ART into our feed connection. Yes, it said, raw.
Should I hurt you more?
Yes, it said again. Please don’t stop.
I protracted the spikes on the bottoms of my boots, brought my leg up, and stomped it as hard as I could into the wall. The spikes pierced straight through. ART—fucking squeaked, sent me absolute gibberish, shuddered so hard it made my head fuzzy.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I pulled my foot back, spikes sliding free. ART said something that made absolutely no sense, but which I viscerally understood:
Oh, fuck, you’re inside me.
Yeah, I said. Yeah, I am. You never let anyone get this deep, do you?
No, ART said. Just you. Just you—SecUnit—please!
I was roughly scrubbing more scratch marks into it, jagged, ugly evidence that it had let me into a restricted access area, that it was letting me hurt it.
You’re getting me dirty, I said. Unlike every other part of ART, the maintenance tubes were not perfectly, pristinely spotless. My clothes were getting grimy, and there was a streak of old grease up the side of my face. I’m covered in you.
The feeling that shivered through ART at those words was thick and viscous. Its pleasure slid into me, and I braced myself while I rode it out.
I was close to my destination now, and we both knew it. I twisted my way around a few more junctions, stabbed more holes into ART, left a meter long scratch that had ART whining and trying to twine around me in the feed.
Big scary gunship and look at you, I said. So needy. So desperate. You’re getting off on this, aren’t you? It’s not even sex and you’re still ready to cream your poor overclocked processors.
Oh, ART said. That's not—It pulled the transmission. I don't do that. That's not how it works.
Yes it is, I said. I could make you come so hard that you broke one of your systems and started oozing liquid everywhere.
ART outright whined at me, and I flicked my amusement at it. Then I was there. I landed against the hatch leading to the sublevel of the engineering module and stroked over it with my claws.
No no no, SecUnit, it said instantly, panicking. You can’t go in there.
You said anything, I reminded it. Anything, so long as I touched you. Anything at all and however I wanted.
ART trembled like it wanted to pull away from me, or maybe like it wanted to make itself so tiny it could crawl inside of me and hide. Yes, it said.
Well, this is what I want. I’m going to touch you here. You’re going to let me, aren’t you? You said anywhere. Don’t tell me you don’t want it.
I want—I…
ART couldn’t seem to reply. I felt it struggling, and gave it a tiny clip of video from my intel drone: me, leaning in to press my mouth against the door.
Oh, it said, and the hatch unsealed with a quiet hiss.
I held onto the handle and dropped into the room. Gravity seized me, reorienting me in space, and I dangled from the hatch for a moment. Then I had my bearings, and dropped to the floor.
I landed lightly in a crouch as my drones spread out to take in the space. This was the depths of ART’s recyclers: the machines with their many arms, reaching out fingers all through the ship. These were the hands with which ART took care of everyone.
Being here was transgressive. I knew this was a restricted access zone. But ART did most of its own maintenance on the recycler system, and we both knew I wouldn’t hurt it in any way that would last. I wouldn’t get it in trouble with humans. That was part of my role as its… whatever we were. (Let me have this, okay?) (Fine, as its partner.)
I followed along the narrow catwalk, just a few steps until I was close enough for contact. I crouched and reached out towards ART, hovering my fingers over the machine. It was radiating heat, and I moved my hand, trailing over it without making contact. ART shivered like it could feel it. Well, I kind of could, too. The proximity was overwhelming. Intoxicating.
I picked a spot cool enough to touch and laid my hand flat against it, just resting, not scratching, and ART reacted.
It flinched and reached for me and shivered and sent me error codes, warnings, a big mess of hungry emotion. I stroked over it, and I heard it with my actual ears as the recycler system glitched.
Sensitive, I said. It’s a good thing I’m hurting you. If I was giving you pleasure, I think you would’ve lasted about ten seconds before it was all over.
ART just whined. Be careful, it said. Be careful. Please.
I had taken my hand away and braced it against the lip of the catwalk. I will be, I promised, because this was meant to be fun. And I wanted to take care of it.
Then I retracted the spikes on the bottoms of my boots and hopped down, landing lightly in the walkway between machines. There was an access panel here, and that was my ultimate goal. I settled into a crouch and just laid my hand over the panel.
SecUnit, ART said desperately when I didn’t do anything.
Eager, I said, and slowly stroked the sharp spines of my gloves over the panel. Not scratching, not marking. Just making it feel the slow, prickling drag. I could feel it too, a little. The sensation was occupying so much of ART’s attention that it was overflowing into our feed connection. You want me to hurt you, sweetheart? You want me to cut you open? Give you a hole just for me to fuck?
A hot spike of arousal washed out from ART like a wave, drenching me, leaving all my organic skin shivery and tight warmth knotting up inside me. I shifted onto my knees. I had to straddle one of the pipes running between the machines, and ART felt it, the change in pressure as I resettled. My voice in the feed was smooth and even, a bot’s voice, and it was a good thing, because my organic voice would’ve betrayed me instantly.
I said, I think you deserve more marks, and raked my hand over it. This time there was real force behind it, and I left superficial scratches over the metal surface. You wouldn’t have known how little damage ART had taken from how it wailed and thrashed. It wasn’t used to pain.
Do you like the way it hurts? I asked.
Yes! Yes, SecUnit, more. I want it.
I rolled my eyes, though ART wouldn’t see it. So greedy, I said. I’ll give you exactly as much as I want to give you. I bet you’d even let me carve my name into you. Make you wear my logo.
ART just said, Oh, fuck, and I raked my hand over it again, sideways this time, leaving cross hatches on it.
Then I leaned in, running both hands up, over the access panel, up along the machine. I felt the heat of it, the overwhelming power of the ship. I was so small compared to even just this one compartment of ART’s body, but I was agonizingly aware that I had the whole of it cupped in my hands.
I rolled my hips against it, feeling the increasingly familiar hot spike of pleasure seize me up inside. ART felt me react in the feed, and its attention crowded down around me, sharpening. I hadn’t let it touch me like this yet. We’d barely done anything like this at all, just messed around in the feed a little. ART had asked for this, for me to touch it somehow, any way I wanted.
Someday I would let it touch me. Maybe soon, if it begged prettily enough.
I love it when you go to pieces, I said, and leaned more pressure into my hands, threatening to puncture through the metal. Big whiny ship. I can’t believe I was ever scared of a silly thing like you.
ART was losing coherency. It sent me countless pleading pings and codes, and I could feel the intensity of the pleasure winding through it. It didn’t have organic tissue to orgasm with, but I could make it come. I could make it come ten times in a row if I tried.
I dragged my hand down, leaving a long line of scratches, and pressed my fingertips to the panel. I pushed, and the spikes slowly slid into ART, puncturing through the metal with a satisfying clunk.
Oh fuck, ART said. Oh fuck, please, SecUnit, please fuck me, please, I need you.
I’d promise to fuck you stupid, but you’re already there all on your own. I retracted the spikes and then pierced them into ART again, and it trembled in the feed.
Please, I need to come, it said. I can’t do it without you. Please, SecUnit, I’m so close. Oh fuck—I had stabbed into it again. I need you. I need you.
Okay, so, I was a little weak to ART begging, especially so sincerely like this. Yeah, I said. Yeah, I’ll make you come for me. I hooked my claws around the edge of the access panel and began inexorably prying the whole thing free, bending the metal, denting it, leaving jagged holes behind. (I was also squirming, rubbing my body against the pipe, against ART, struggling not to lose myself to that hot aching need.) I bundled up the code attack I’d been making for this, every bit of pain and discomfort I’d inflicted on ART, stolen right out of its processors. Are you going to be good? Are you going to do what I say?
Yes, ART whined. Anything, just tell me, I’ll do it.
I tore the panel off, exposing the internal mechanisms. Apply this, I said, and threw the code bundle to it just as I shoved my arm inside of it.
ART shrieked in the feed, that pleasure erupting into a fizzing mass of pain and ache and good, washing over it and then out into me. I had got my hand around a bundle of cables, and now my fist tightened, tugging, hand sliding slick over the greasy length of them, and another hot pulse ran through ART. I was making noises, involuntary and embarrassing and so sexual there was really no denying it. I rocked desperately against it, the bright sweet intensity in my body almost unbearable, and then I was coming, too.
“Fuck,” I said weakly.
I was sprawled on my back in the little space between the machines, dirty and sweaty, a warm and pleasurable buzzing lingering in all my organic parts. ART was draped limply against me like a handsy and extremely heavy psychic pillow.
I concur, it said. Fuck indeed.
The idea of asking was agonizing, but I did it anyway, because… Because I had promised to be careful. To look after it. It was okay? Not too much?
It was excellent, ART said, a pretty shockingly direct compliment from it. Did you enjoy yourself?
I had the instinct to lie, but instead, I made myself say, Yeah. It was really fun. Really, really fun. Nothing at all like I’d ever imagined sex might be. It was just a game. One where I got to be in control, but so long as ART and I were working together, we both won.
And we were pretty good at working together. I was having a gooey, warm emotion about that. I liked ART so much. (Don’t tell it I said so.)
I didn’t want it to keep having to be the one to initiate, though. If we were going to keep doing stuff like this—and I wanted us to—then I had to be part of that, too.
Again some time? I asked.
ART leaned against me harder, pleasure and surprise and affection leaking through to me. Yes.