---Raul’s perspective---
I smile at the enormous abominable-snowwoman who sits across from me in a private lounge in the commandeered stadium.
“Well Ms… Well Yetta, I’m looking at your psychological evaluation and I don’t see any issue. Hippocrata says she was particularly impressed by the respect you showed her!”
She shrugs those immense shoulders, covered in off white fur “She seemed nice… I like nice people.”
I smile, sympathetically “Yes but… you were put through so much, then brought to a planet, inhabited primarily by people who are the same species as those pirates who tormented you, people with unfamiliar ways like allowing full sentience AI’s… Hippocrata was the first constructed intelligence you’ve ever met? It reflects well on you that you, so casually, refer to her as a person when that’s presumably not how you’re accustomed to thinking… the way I am.”
More shrugging “She was nice and… the more Humans I meet the less credible it seems that you could possibly be the same species as those… monsters…”
I nod, understanding “We are an infinitely versatile and adaptable species, Yetta… Sometimes, that adaptability bends us into… ugly shapes. Humans can be Angels, when we want to be… and Demons, when we choose… I’m incredibly sorry that you had the misfortune to see us at our worst before you saw us any other way.”
I’ve seen more than my share of Human Demons in my time… but… this poor thing doesn’t need to hear about that!
“Anyway: You’ve had a positive evaluation. You don’t seem like the kind of irresponsible owner who would abandon a pet you couldn’t take care of. You’ve got our contacts to check in with any issues. We’ve got yours to check in for updates. You’ve received your reparations. You’ve secured a home on Pahada and have your parents’ assurance that it 'should be mirkbeastproof'. You’ve got a Terran military guardian on standby, to convey you back to your homeworld. You are well qualified to get a job which pays a salary that can support mirkbeast ownership before your reparations run out. Snowflake seemed to be very happy to see you when you came by. Your leg is…” I look to her bionic, apparently designed and printed by the mousey Gael who came with the group that dropped the mirklets off… I have to stop myself saying ‘replaced’ “…mended.” seems to be her preferred term, according to Hippocrata. “I think, Yetta… provided nothing comes up… we can call this a done deal! I’ll give you a call to let you know when Snowflake is done weaning, you can pick him up and be on your way home.”
Delight breaks across her face. She stands, almost reaching the ceiling (315cm might be a high enough ceiling for even the tallest Tshwane but, this building was not designed with nonTerran species in mind!) She extends her hand in a recently learned Terran gesture “Thank you, Dr Gomes! Thank you!!!”
Her hand entirely encloses mine… Nevertheless, I have to be careful not to injure her as we shake.
We make our way back out to the public area, it would usually be covered in the ice of a hockey rink but, today it is covered in trestletables, chairs, cots, gardenworlders and Humans in red and white, moving hither and thither.
Yetta moves to the group I took her from for her final interview. She conveys something to them (presumably my acceptance of her as Snowflake’s fosterer) followed by delighted squeeing… it’s nice that she was able to make friends in a situation like this… I hope they stay in touch.
I look around at all the nonTerran faces… every one of them… every last one… was going to be sold! Or butchered! Like livestock!!! Fucking…!!!???
I feel my blood boil and my adrenaline rise as the laughing faces of the only two men I’ve ever killed, and the first one I ever loved, force themselves into my vision.
I hurry out of the stadium before I make a scene.
I give a brief salute as I pass the soldiers guarding the entrance.
They’re wearing a full suit of armour, barring the helmet… I did the same during my service. That armour might be optimally formulated for combat but… in an occupation… you need to show people that you’re flesh and blood… a person… that the suit contains a smiling nineteen year old boy… not a slavering Orc!
I barely notice the increased heat and gravity of the outside hitting me.
I hurry out of sight and lean against a smooth, sandstone wall, breathing heavily.
Those boys… those three fucking idiot boys laugh in my head as they violate those Thruljex that they haven’t yet slaughtered… apparently for no other reason than it seeming like fun to them…
I raise my gun, they charge me, I kill two of them… I see the third’s scowling face as I testify at his court martial…
Back in the present, I feel my lunch fighting to be free of the confines of my stomach. I fight it back down.
I straighten up, still panting, and look around. Seems as if I’ve managed to keep this episode private, just about.
I’m going to need to book a therapy session for this week to talk about this.
I wipe the sweat from my brow (there’s not really anything I can do about my pallor) and start walking home…
For the millionth time, I thank God that I was too young to serve during the War, only being able to deploy for the occupation of Thrulj, before it was deemed we could safely pull out.
For the millionth time, I curse the fact that one of the only incidents of a war crime, in the entire four year occupation of that planet… had to be discovered by me… had to make me a man who can’t truthfully answer the question ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’ with an indignant ‘No!’
Angelo… Angelo will make this alright! I just need to get home to him!
Ten minutes’ walk… that would be… 600 seconds. Eight and a half… that’s… 510 seconds. Six… 360 seconds…
I walk up my street and our house comes into view. I’m still not used to how lavish it is! Having grown up on the outskirts of the Rio de Janeiro Megalopolis in the accommodation that my parents could afford with universal basic income, then gone into the military, then lived as a student while squirreling away every spare penny for him, this house we’ve bought, with mostly his income… it’s a palace!
I collapse through the door but a soft, mechanical hand catches me before I hit the ground.
I’m pulled up and into a tender embrace with the love of my life.
“You knew this would happen, didn’t you?” I chuckle, still out of breath.
“I calculated a high probability, my love. You Humans are so bad at segregating your emotions from your logic and even your basic functioning processes! You were at a 79.3% likelihood of having an episode going to that stadium today…” comes the angelic voice of my husband.
“Why didn’t…?”
“I did not tell you because I knew it would not have stopped you… you were going to keep going… no matter what. I just prepared to catch you when you fell… both literally and metaphorically.”
I laugh and sob simultaneously before finding the strength to stand fully upright and look down into my lover’s beautiful, androgynous, cherubic face.
He has a thick heap of smooth, thin, scarlet, metal wires, simulating hair, on the top of his head, the back and sides being bare. The mobile elastomer of his face shapes into chubby cheeks that don’t fit with the rest of his lithe, slender body at all but look so fucking cute on him! The luminous turquoise of his eyes beams into me, releasing the tension that was constricting my internals.
I pull the light of my life into a deep embrace, his lips meet mine and we kiss, tenderly, as I caress his back and he squeezes my chest from the sides.
When our lips part he smiles sweetly and says “I am making feijoada in the other room, there are brigadeiros for afterward and… I am willing to allow you one measure of cachaça… you have work in the morning and getting blind drunk would not be a therapeutic response to an episode anyway! How about I throw that old film (the one with the Mexican skeletons) on the wall and we snuggle while we are waiting for dinner to be done?”
Damn! That’s all my comfort food, my comfort film and my comfort husband! He really was prepared! Might have been nice to be allowed more than one measure of my comfort alcohol but… he’s probably right that it wouldn’t have been for the best…
“Are you sure it was only 79%? That would mean that there was a one in five chance that you made feijoada for nothing… it takes ages to cook it right!”
He smiles impishly “If you had not come in in the state you did, would you have complained about having one of your favourite meals?”
I think a moment before realising he’s right, I would have been very happy to have it, even if I were feeling otherwise fine.
I kiss his forehead “I don’t deserve you, Angelo!”
He chuckles “Yes, you do.”
He takes my hand and leads me to the plush sofa, facing the cleared wall we use for viewing.
With an electronic thought, he sends my favourite comfort film to play.
I recline on the sofa and he nestles into me.
---Angelo’s perspective---
I feel my husband’s chest rise and fall as he respires beneath me.
In the kitchen I am directing the mechanical appendages to begin plating up the robust meal for him.
On the other side of the planet, someone is querying a technical issue and I’m answering them while simultaneously composing a message to let my client know that I’m signing off for the night. I could keep working at the same time as watching films and comforting Raul (he’s bought me enough processing power, over the years, that splitting my focus like that would be no issue at all) it just… it would not feel right.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
As the skeleton man, on screen, attempts to make his way across the bridge to the land of the living, I wonder, for the 95th time in my existence, why the film makers felt the need to include border crossing imagery when it does not logically scan with the universe. Why would you waste time denying someone access to a bridge that they physically cannot cross?
It’s a good thing borders have been consigned to the dustbin of history, where they belong. I can’t imagine the arrogance that must be necessary to wall off an entire country and pretend you have the right to dictate who can come and go from it.
The prepared meal is set on a hovertray which I pilot through the ground floor of the house.
As the food enters the living room I pause the film.
“Raul, do you want to leave it paused and pick it up when your done eating or would you like to keep watching while you eat?”
He thinks for a moment “Let’s keep watching…”
I smile and nod before altering the height and positioning of the living room table to be more conducive to dining, setting the hover tray down on it, pouring him a single measure of cachaça, which I then dilute with a mixer.
He tucks into the food and I unpause the film.
It takes him 27 minutes and 34.017 seconds to finish the main course, I time the brigadeiros to come out the moment he is done with the main. It takes 5 minutes 26.194 seconds, after he is done eating, for him to convince me to allow him one more measure of cachaça. That really is the last one for tonight.
I set the table back into the floor and we finish the film. The credits roll to a rendition of the main theme.
We keep cuddling through the credits, and for some time afterward, in pleasant quiet only broken by the soft Brazilian tunes I set to play in the background.
I put my hand on his stomach… there is definitely a bit of paunch there. I try to keep him to a healthy weight, not because I dislike the dadbod he gets when I do not police his diet but, rather, because I know from his genetic counselling, that he is at above average risk of heart failure. Regeneration tech may have, at 45, preserved the youthful face and body that he had at 25 (when I woke up) but… if he suffers cardiac arrest… I do not wish to think about continuing to exist without him.
It is a shame, he wears the extra weight well. My Daddy has a lovely dadbod… not that I call him that. Very early in our relationship he asked me not to call him ‘Daddy’ as, being my creator, it felt a bit too close to incest for him. He also asked me not to refer to my anal receptor as my ‘boypussy’. That one still amuses me. It was his idea to line it with erogenous sensors so that, when we engage in intercourse, it feels as good for me as it does for him… then he finds it ‘gross’ when I use a perfectly apt descriptor for it.
In turn, I had to ask him to stop suggesting upgrades during the act. It felt a bit too much like he was mechanically servicing me, rather than sexually engaging with me.
He shifts and, out of the corner of my optical receptor, I see a microexpression of discomfort cross his face… I know what is coming to a 97.4% degree of confidence.
“Angelo do you think…”
“No, I do not.”
“You don’t know what I was about to say!”
I turn my head to him “You were about to obliquely ask if I feel at all like you enslaved me to a life with you. You let being around those victims get to you and now your drawing comparisons. You have done similar things before, with less direct stimulus. You were going to probe as to whether I really love you (which I do) and then whether I think it right that you created me to love you... Am I near the mark?”
He gives a microseconds long scowl before nodding and saying “More or less…”
I pull him into a sitting position and turn my head to meet his face.
I stroke that pencil thin moustache of his, taking a moment to organise my thoughts.
Slowly, I start “Raul, after you gave the testimony that put your first lover in maximum security, you felt as if you would never love again… you had the image of what the boy who could heal you was like but… you felt that he could never exist… you did not accept that… you lived as a pauper, throughout your studies, to make me exist… and I am extremely glad you did!...”
“But…!”
“I am not done: I have never, not even once, felt resentful of you for making me in order that I might love you. I have never, not even once, felt trapped or captive to our relationship. I exist. I love you. I love loving you, I love existing and I love existing with you. I am happy to cook for you, I am happy to keep this living space clean, I am happy to use my income to provide a more lavish lifestyle for you than you would be able to enjoy on a professor’s salary. I do not think of this as paying off the debt of my existence, I think of it as providing for the man I love.”
He is clearly still unconvinced. I change tactics.
“You remember how you tried to teach me your religion, Raul?”
He chuckles “Yes, you pointed out fifteen paradoxes and internal inconsistencies in the first ten minutes, then you got hung up on why the omnipotent Creator of the universe would be bothered about me eating meat on Fridays(!)”
I nod “That was during the sentience troubleshooting year after I woke up; by UTC law, you could have gone into my settings and made me accept your faith without my consent… you actually could have downloaded your faith into my brain, as truth, before you ever woke me up. Why did you not?”
He frowns “It… it wouldn’t have been right, forcing you like that!”
I smile “Do you think a slaver would care? If you, even on the lowest level of your consciousness, thought of me as property would you have given a second thought to going into my settings and adjusting them to make me believe as you preferred?”
His face becomes taut in an expression of consideration, I am convincing him.
“Do you remember what I got you for our tenth wedding anniversary?”
He glances at his wrist, to the antique wristwatch that I bought and lovingly restored to working order after I noticed him noticing it on a trip to a flea market.
“And, do you remember what you got me?” I continue.
He grimaces “I got you a processor… you weren’t pleased!”
I nod “But you understood why I was not pleased, did you not? You understood how hurt I felt by the impersonal functionality of such a gift… and you made the effort to set things right!”
I pull the locket, containing a photo of us together, smiling and laughing, from inside my shirt.
“Would you have given such a gift as this to a slave?”
He wobbles his head… time to move in for the decisive blow.
I bring my lips to his and kiss him tenderly… it lasts some time.
As I pull away, I chuckle “A suggestion, my love, I will give you an opportunity to prove to me and, more importantly, to yourself that you do not think of me as a slave.”
His eyes still closed from the kiss, he asks “How would you do that?”
I lie back and, beginning the process of erecting my phallus, I pull down my shorts.
“Well… you would not waste your time fellating a slave, would you? If I were a slave, any pleasure I get would be incidental to yours, would it not? What more meaningful expression of my freedom could you give me than you putting your lips on this cute little cock you supplied me with all those years ago and making me feel pleasure, with no guarantee that I will reciprocate afterward?”
He smiles and bends to bring his lips to my tiny, elastomer penis.
His dark eyes fix mine as his head begins bobbing up and down, between my thighs.
I doublecheck my record of refilling my ejaculate syrup canisters: recently refilled, confirmed by the sensor indication that they are at 90% capacity.
I am glad: It would be a shame to give him a dry orgasm. I think I shall release an extra-large quantity, this time… it will be a subtle reassurance.
Pleasure starts to rise as my creator and lover works his lips and tongue over the length of my shaft.
I am, of course, capable of mentally inducing myself to orgasm at any time I choose (I even make a thrilling game of, occasionally, orgasming while talking with him, to see if he notices… his success rate stands at 13.74%, since I devised the game). However, there is something missing from a selfinduced orgasm. Some unidentifiable qualia that I get from sex with him that is not present when I mentally flip a switch for pleasure.
My husband places his hands on the supple, elastomer pads of my buttocks and squeezes, mildly deforming them. Fuck, he makes me feel so good!
I tip back my head and close my eyelids, cutting off my ocular reception. I think, for a moment, about cutting off all sensory data, bar the feeling of his hands on my arse, his hair on my thighs and his mouth on my member. I decide against it. The sound of his slurping and gagging… adds something to the experience.
I may not be the most expert AI, on Humanity, in existence but… when it comes to this Human… no one will outdo me! I’m incredibly pleased that I, so quickly, managed to reassure him.
He is really giving it gusto as he pleasures me.
Time to stop thinking and start enjoying.
---Raul’s perspective---
Angelo’s adorable face turns this way and that as he moans.
He really is too blessedly cute!
I know I designed him that way and, over the years, we’ve workshopped every aspect of him, including his appearance, together but… still, it’s difficult to believe that anything so beautiful could be allowed to exist outside of Heaven!
It’s not just his face that’s beautiful, it’s not just his seraphic body and adorable cock… he has a beautiful soul! Every day, he makes me feel unworthy of him but, every time I tell him that, he manages to soothe me with seemingly no effort!
I think for a moment about sticking my fingers in his boypussy (it feels gross to hear him call it that out loud but… that’s what it is to me, privately). He didn’t ask me to pleasure his arsehole but… well it doesn’t breach the terms of the test, does it, pleasuring him without pleasuring myself? I can’t orgasm from my fingers in his arse, can I…? I’m going for it!
I take my hand from the soft pad of his arsecheek and, forming a lance of my index and middle, I plunge into him.
He gasps… well… he doesn’t… he can’t, not having lungs, but he reproduces the sound of a gasp in response to the pleasure.
It was worth the thousands of hours we spent troubleshooting his haptic responses!
He moans with gathering intensity, as my mouth moves up and down his length and my fingers come in and out of him and, with my other hand, I caress his thigh, stroke his taint and fondle his elastomer scrotum.
His eyes open, revealing themselves to be crossed. All of his actuators seize, rendering the effect of a body wracked with pleasure, across his rubbery casing.
He squirts a substantial load of sweet, syrupy liquid into my mouth and I swallow it, hungrily. Is it more than usual?
To describe his orgasm as ‘lifelike’ would be to do him a disservice. It would suggest that he is only a substitute for a ‘real’ lover… I’m not really sure what the appropriate term would be but, for now, let’s go with… ‘satisfying’.
I remove my mouth from his little pinto and my fingers from his boypussy. I pull myself to make my head level with his and lie beside him on the couch.
He says nothing for a few minutes but does, reassuringly, squeeze my arm and kiss me, tenderly.
When he seems to have recovered, he says “Alright, take your clothes off, you are taking my arsehole now... if there are no objections. I permit you to use your… cock.”
I smile and shake my head before my hands move to the hem of my loose shirt and begin pulling it up and over my head.
He gets up and removes his shirt, revealing the subtle seams of the flexible segments of the sheafing across his torso. He walks to the table, emerging from the ground, which he then lies back down on before it rises to the level of my hips.
While he’s doing that, I’m removing my lower half’s clothing.
I stand to approach him and he bends his body in half, at the hips, raising his legs at a perfect 90° angle to his upper portion.
I grasp his calves and pull his legs apart to rest either side of my head, nestled into the crook between my arms and chest. I reach out to grip his shoulders and align the head of my cock with his adorable boypussy, illuminated by internal turquoise LEDs.
I smile at him and he bites his lip. I begin pushing inside, inducing more breathless gasp replications.
He’s really a little too tight for me. I have suggested loosening him up but he’s always nixed that idea… he says he likes the feeling of me stretching him out!
Merciful Christ, he’s stunning! As those lucent eyes wheel and he feebly grips at my forearms as I vigorously fuck that tight arsehole of his. Mother Mary!
I don’t know what I’ll do if he ever leaves me! I need him so much! Every part of him might be replaceable but he is one of a kind!
I love him! I don’t own him but… he’s mine… my one and only! My pleasure! My joy! My creation! My lover! My husband!
I feel the soft padding of his arse bounce plastically off my upper thighs. I feel the sheafing of his shoulders warp beneath my fingers. I see that mouth of his, open and close in reaction to the pleasure I am giving him.
I feel his insides as they stimulate my cock.
He gets a devilish look in his eyes… then activates the vibrator function in his arse.
Immediately, I’m brought from halfway there to ready to burst!
I attempt to fight it but… there’s just no arguing with a vibrator function.
The dam breaks as I convulse and flood his cavity with my thick seed. He reacts to his second orgasm, that I’ve presumably just given him by ejaculating, and I collapse beside him, panting.
I bring my hand to the face of my Angel and press it, gently, into that soft cheek.
This man… makes me feel alive!
---Angelo’s perspective---
My husband lies beside me, on the living room table, having just induced the… 15th most intense orgasm that I’ve experienced in my life.
He pants to recover and I pull him closer to me… He still needs reassurance…
I kiss him, softly, and, as I do, I start thinking about what breakfast I’ll cook him tomorrow.
I… could prepare a light pastry to be paired with something fruity… that would be best for his weight… or I could make something he’ll really like…?
I look at his exhausted face and decide that dieting can wait…
I’m going to cook him pancakes with a side serving of linguiça, tomorrow!