oedipusrat | TLV PSL ASAP (for wetware)

TLV PSL ASAP (for wetware)

[several months after this initial interaction]

Rachette doesn't kick in the door. She's not a barbarian. But the door is definitely opened in a manner that is heavier and harder than strictly necessary. Being The Warden was pain enough; being a warden is...irritating.

"He talks too much."

That's a possibly very petty thing to complain to the mage (who has explained to her that he is not a mage, but she remains not entirely convinced of this) about his...companion? Compatriot? Person from his same world. But talking to her inmate, a man who seems to prefer the name Silva to any of the other potential names he could be going by, is as frustrating as talking to Sten sometimes. Roundabout. Never to the point. Why does nobody ever just say what they mean?

The dwarf huffs and blows a few strands of silver hair from her face. "He uses too many words in strange ways. Would it kill him to just talk like a normal person instead of blathering on? Before I kill him."

She won't. That's not what she's here for, and he hasn't given enough reason to make her want to. But by the Stone and all of the Ancestors, he makes her job so difficult. Fighting a mob of darkspawn sometimes seems preferable.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"A good pair of boots cannot be over estimated." Q slings his pack over one shoulder and heads to the door to meet Silva. They're not even touching and he can already feel a hum in the air. The further from human he becomes, the harder it is to ignore.

"And percussive maintenance is a necessary part of tech support." He might make a couple jokes, but Q will be quiet as they walk through the Barge, towards the resting place of the Thing.

He aches to touch, now that they're close again, but, he'll be a good boy. Work first. Then he can work on prying the pleasure from Q. And any chance to see him in action again is a chance to take. Maybe Q thinks Silva's breathless descriptions of beauty are hyperbolic, but they aren't.

What's ugly, of course, is the Thing. It's still dormant, dead on the floor where they left it. There's no painful static, no green-grey glow, no glyphs flashing their way in his mind. And yet, still distasteful.

"At least no one else has thought to play with it."

Q knows that he's reasonably good-looking, but he's not used to people finding his work or skill attractive. Work is work, and all the rest is just window-dressing.

"I'll set up a firewall, so whatever is in here, stays." He goes over to the wall and a panel appears to just slide out of the way for him. Is that supposed to happen? Maybe. Maybe not. Q doesn't seem bothered by it as he reaches into the wall, up to his arm, and begins to tinker with something. "Not that I don't trust us to keep it contained, but..."

"...You are getting quite powerful."

Hm. Concerning? Not if it's Q, probably, but also, huh.

"Whatever is in here stays? So if I bring in something from the outside, this is fine, not so if it tries to leave." Hm hm hmmmmm. He claps his hands. "We'll liven things up a little!"

Keep doing your thing, Q. Silva will be over here, letting his human eye see somewhere into the middle distance, fingers up, typing away at an invisible keyboard. Maybe a playlist? Or just pick something.

Well, got to start somewhere, and go from there.

"I think it's more that I'm getting the hang of what I can or can't do." His eyes briefly unfocus and then there's a gentle blue glow to the lights in the room. Nice and neatly contained now.

He chooses to say nothing about the music, but there is a raised eyebrow. Q-Branch is filled with clever people who need certain things to work and work well. Some want music, others whale song, and others need utter silence.

"When you plugged it in, what happened?"

Silva does a little shimmy to the music for a moment. Whatchu gonna do about it, Scrabble boy?

"Before it knocked me flat like a tank? Mm, it was...an assault on the senses. Every sense. I could see the coding of it, though, but it--hm, it flowed, but not as I imagined it would. Twisting and turning in the air. I got the sense of some...central point it was emanating from, but it didn't like me poking at it." For the few brief seconds he did, but time feels longer on the inside, he's learned.

"There's a heart. A kernel." And, of course, it caused a kernel panic. Q leaves the wall and comes to stand by Silva, just a little closer than he would've usually preferred. "And it has wants. Maybe it is alive? Or was?"

Cautiously, he kneels down beside the damaged cube and starts to sift through what's there. His touch is gentle, as if he's handling a living thing. Mostly metal, some fibrous things that look not entirely unlike fibre optics. "Is it meant to breach defenses and take over or was it just trying to talk?"

He thinks of the dream, holding him tight, squeezing him in. Shakes it free with an annoyed look, pulls up something else to distract him from it.

"If it was just talking, it picked an unusual way to do it. But if it is alien, it may not even know that there are incompatibilities. Which could be working in our favor; if it was attempting a hostile takeover, we would have people with more than headaches." Another thoughtful hum, crouching beside Q.

"This is not a well-used room. Did you see how it reacted, at times? Like crawling up the walls, the light of it, or appearing and fading again. It is perhaps not meant for us, but the Barge. We being only collateral for now having these parts sewn into us. This would be a valuable prize."

"I think you're right. It doesn't particularly care for organic parts, and it was only those with alterations that had headaches." Q hums and pulls out a chopstick from his kit. If this thing dislikes organic matter, best to pick it apart with something less metallic.

"I probably shouldn't even touch it with my skin. I, ah, seem to be able to connect that way. It's why we shouldn't touch." It's conducive. Whatever he is keeps reaching out to look inside Silva.

"I don't mind it." Far from it. Maybe it's a craving, connection, on a level so deep and strange and intimate that, when this has all washed away, they may never get to again.

...But later.

"At the very least, should we need to move it, I can be the one doing all the touching. It only did not like plucking at its strings."

"Then let's get it out of here. The metal, it looks as if it's been harvested from other parts of the Barge." Q pries off another bit of the shell and holds it up for Silva to see. It's all made of scrap. Bits of trash from around the ship.

Oh. That is distressing. "There may be a saboteur aboard." But one thing at a time, okay. "I'd hate to leave such a mystery unsolved, but I am not plugging myself back in without your help." Not that he wouldn't mind seeing Q issuing another beatdown to alien geometry cube, but. He'd also like to still remain functioning by the end of all this trippiness.

"I should still be able to safely touch it." Nothing went awry until he plugged in, and he's far less machine than Q is. Is becoming. Has become. "...Maybe hand me the hammer, just in case."

"There may be, but this thing might be just an opportunistic parasite. A bit of grit at the heart of a metal pearl?" Standing up, he brushes off his trousers and hands Silva the hammer.

"Perhaps don't try to get too close and personal this time, hmm? Not for your own sake, but I wouldn't want to strain something if I have to carry you out. Again."

"Then maybe you should touch it. I won't complain about valiantly assisting your peripheral when you drop as though you disconnected entirely from this plane of reality."

He's skilled, more than skilled, but Q's hardware is...more advanced and growing, learning. Loath to admit defeat, but he isn't sure he could pull Q out if the tables were so turned.

It's cold to the touch. Colder than the ambient temperature. Not by much, though his sensors had picked it up, but touching it makes that clear. Perhaps not so dead after all. Gives the thing an offending look.

Wait--one more thing. Let's end this on a high note, shall we?

"Thank you, Silva." He doesn't touch him, but he does skim his hand near enough that there's a hum of power between them. The walls flicker with blue light and the door swings open.

"Let's get it far, far from here. Into one of the cells?" Q knows that maintaining a firewall all the way there will tire him out, but he doesn't want to risk the Thing getting out. "If it starts to twitch, reach out for me and I'll push it back. Or try to?"

"Mm, still prefer to chuck it into the nothingness of space, but. You know, when it's dealt with, we can dispense with the work and get to more interesting things, hm? See how bright you can glow~"

They make it into another song change, even, with Silva doing some grooving along the way, having a grand old time in being Q's polar opposite right now.

He stops dead when he reads a power spike milliseconds before the cube of stolen materials heats up in his palm, flickering back to green with a hum, shifting into that wrong static. He isn't even jacked into it physically, yet it almost seems angry to him. Projecting? Hard to say. But it hurts the way the way it did before, maybe worse, like it's doubled its efforts, and he whips an arm back to grab Q by the jacket.

Trust your partner.

The walls of the hallway that they're in ripple with blue light as Q is pulled closer to Silva. He moves in to touch him, to rest his own hand on the back of his neck and lean into the that humming, whirring power that amplifies between the two of them.

Hammer. Get the hammer.

Is he talking aloud? Or is his voice just coming from the tannoy system in the ship?

It's funny, in a way. He'll look back on this and think it funny. Q's voice coming from around him, bursting between k-pop beats, flooding in with adrenaline and power, popping with blue so blue pale blue robin's egg blue it's funny. But he can't laugh because his lungs have stuttered to a halt with his heart boom boom boom--

Amplified.

Careful, you'll take my breath away.

Amplified him, too, and he laughs to the beat when his lungs kick back into gear, comes out like a speaker. Swirling sickly green seems small in comparison. He sees the spinning ciphers like they're physically spiraling from it, can feel unearthly static clawing at his senses that's almost a song, almost like it wants to sing him a song but the song overtop is already a song pay attention 00, you've got a job to do. Q needs to concentrate, after all.

Be the blunt instrument. (Tell him to pull the trigger.) Even he doesn't seem fully aware when he's struck the first blow, hammer in hand and bringing it crunching down on the box. Again. To stop the squelching tuning static. Again. To rid his nose of sweet ozone thunderstorms coconut milk wet sand between his toes. Again. To rid himself of uniform worn but not worn rubbing his skin in the dry heat stealing everything from every breath sun baking him alive-

(where did that

familiar but not)

Again. To rid the glitter from his eyes and spit blood from his teeth the chatter of voices from just above smell of perfume no gasoline they mix together wash the blood out with water who--

who

He loses track of the mission. No. He knows the mission. Hammer. That's the mission. Loses track of himself? The green and blue and green-blue eyes and he hits, hits, hits wild, is he yelling or is he silent as the grave?

Sparks. Acrid stench. The box is shattered in some places, dented horrifically in others. The light is gone, the only static left is the buzz between them, far more than a buzz that thinking of them as separate entities on some level feels wrong but he knows that's right. Tangled. Dangerous.

The damned box was loud, so loud and wrong, and beautiful. It hurts to see it broken into so much trash when he could've held it in place, taken it apart, peeled back every layer and drank it all down. Later, much later, Q will accept that destroying it was the best and necessary thing to do, but in this moment, he misses the push-pull-challenge of it.

Something shines. It's not his own lights, nor the wreckage of the Thing, but it's as if he can see information hovering and swirling around Silva. Hammer down. Come here. Let me see. Let me see.

He scratches his fingernails down the back of Silva's neck, moving over the places where his own ports are. Come closer. Come and see. Wide, all-black eyes looking at him, coaxing him to ...to something? Q doesn't really know what it is that he wants, but he aches for it.

His mechanical eye is awash with information, speeding by, but it's not alien, not unreadable, unusable, but there's so much of it.

Who are you? Who are you now?

It's Q but it's something more than Q, or, it's Q as he was always meant to be beyond the confines of flesh and bone. Q dangerous in control--or out of it. Amplified, but, that isn't everything, is it? Inside him--is that Q already inside, the two of them as one? Or is that him trying to--

It feels lightyears better than squealstaticnoisepain and he turns to Q, hammer dropped in place of hands on that blue angel, pushing along his face, through his hair.

Who?

Q laughs and it ripples through the air, through the code connecting them together, and he turns to nuzzle into Silva's hand. His breath is fever-hot as he huffs out a word against the thin, soft skin covering his wrist. Who else?

Everyone speaking, talking, living, alive, and all through the words and wires and wireless. It's all blue. Blue all the way down. It feels delicious, delightful, dangerous.

He cups Silva's face and runs the pad of his fingers over his metal half, and then when he touches the eye, information surges forward. Here is a thought. A feeling. A half-mad desire. If I run, and run, and run, and run, you could only catch me if I wanted it.

He wants to play, does he? To chase down and run in deep and become--as if two can't play at this. As if he can't get himself under a jacket, to rip at a zipper so irritatingly analogue just like Silva's body just like his connections all analogue and hardware hardwired hard coded but he spreads fingers along ports and feels the glow and hum more than he sees. Curls into them.

You think you can, you think you can reach inside another person and pick everything out, not leave a trace, run as fast and as far as you need? Where I cannot find you?

Not. Such. A clever boy.

But in a battle like this, who would really win? Is it even a matter of skill? Perhaps a matter of will.

If you want to be chased. I am the adrenaline you want.

He leans forward, their bodies pressed together as he rolls his shoulders to help Silva get the jacket off. Why did he even bother? There's no way some bit of fabric could keep them apart, could keep him apart from everyone and everything and...and...

...and there's a spark and spike of something. The right touch to a port, the way it shivers up and down his whole, glowing nervous system, his circuits. There's a whimper. A soft, needy sort of sound of agreement. Let him run. Let him run free. Don't hold back. Don't let him hold back. That's all the energy inside him wants.

Where would you even go?

Maybe that's a better question. He they he could take this whole barge, maybe, but in the end, that's all the space there is. Confined. Yet becoming.

Both hands now, broad over Q's incandescant back, feeling the energy thrumming through. Laughs. Isn't sure if the sound is just in their head or if he's done it physically. But he is sure that he kisses Q, hot and hard and thrilled at the idea of potential mayhem, the freedom of being. Enamored with the danger. Because this is danger, glowing bright as day.

Why would you try to get away from me?

Q tastes of effervescence and he leans into the embrace. Yes, this is what he had been hunting. He is tired, so tired, of being the only one in this body, in the systems of his room, singing through the wires in the hallways.

To have the joy of running, pushing as far and fast as I can go. To have the pleasure of being caught.

He nips at Silva's mouth, then turns to bite at his jawline, bussing against the metal of his face. Let us and we and you have our victory. Pyrrhic to the end. Burning bright and swift.

TLV PSL ASAP (for wetware)

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