1 . Name: ZiGraves @ 2013-01-22 10:00

Engie/Robot smut, reposted from my tumblr for you discerning sorts wise enough to avoid that dread den of iniquity.

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He always used to wonder what it was people saw when they lusted for each other. He’s heard all sorts waxing poetic about soft skin and round buttocks and big, shining eyes, or about this particular scent or that particular taste.

He’s been around people long enough not to have any remaining illusions that a person could somehow be fragrant after a long, sweaty day. Between the farm back in Texas and the fights here at Bigrock, people are as a rule fiercely unpleasant to be around after any kind of exertion.

But that’s people, isn’t it?

People are disappointing. Inconstant in the worst ways, reliable only in the ways you’d never want them to be. There’s nothing pure or consistent about them, not like the clean mental sweep of an elegant mathematical solution to a practical problem.

It’s not that he doesn’t like people - he’s good friends with the other survivors, and he’s pen pals with an Engineer over one of the other bases. He does like people. Just doesn’t like to be stuck around them too much, and certainly doesn’t like them enough to want to get closer than three feet away if he can help it.

The robots were a revelation. Broken things, only half-finished with no actual finesse, but a lot of potential. One of the BLU Engineers defected to go build the things, apparently, but it’s all mass produced and there’s no craftsmanship. Still. They’re a start. Look a bit like people, talk a bit like people, only they don’t talk nearly so much. They don’t sweat or smell, or slap you on the back and send you nose-first into the ground, either.

When resources allow, he’s been tinkering with them. Having a look at the limited positronics and upgrading them, replacing them, testing them for the point where the Carrier’s control is usurped by his own. They’re late, late nights he’s been working, drunk on the scent of electric-fried ozone and the taste of metal in the air. In the mornings, he’s glad of the goggles that hide his red-rimmed, blue-bagged eyes.

Everything he learns, as he takes the machines to bits and back again, he can apply in the field. He can aim for weak points, he can disable them faster than almost anyone. It seems a pity to do it, but there’s no good in getting killed just because the enemy makes more pleasant company than your friends do.

In the Faraday-latticed workshop, he’s getting steadily better. The limbs, replaced and modified, are becoming cleaner and lighter. The clunking, rattling, tincan-men are turning into graceful objects of sculpted steel. Every new part is hammered and welded by hand, not pressed out on some Carrier’s automated factory floor. The machines are labours of art and love.

They’re beautiful. They speak seldom, but when they do it’s useful. Practical. He’s worked out how to equip them with the necessary skills to perform their own mathematical experiments and the results have surpassed his hopes by far. They’re poetic, in the solutions they find to stubborn, ugly problems.

And still he works late, late into the nights. When his hands are busy he find himself holding spare tools between his teeth, and the cool of the metal, the taste of it, the electric-spark smell of the air is almost too much at times. He feels drunk with it. He finds his hands playing across newly forged limbs just for the feel of them, not even checking for faults but just appreciating how well turned they are.

One of them reacts, just a little, just now and then. An artefact of the learning algorithms, picking up from observation. Sharp steel fingertips follow his own, scratching a faint pathway along the polished metal and leaving traces of movement that make him hunger in a way he’s not sure he should try to define.

Half-distracted by a problem their combined minds haven’t even begun to approach, his artificial arm idly wanders up a robotic torso, back down, along the leg, passing the short gap to his own knee and up, and it’s followed. The jolt of realisation stills his hand and the machine rests there, its hand inches behind his own, fingertips just cresting past the kneecap, strong and cool even through the fabric of his overalls.

When he moves his hand a little further up again, it follows. And again, and again, in fits and starts until the machine is leaning over him, against him, and he’s not sure how he taught it to do this. Its fingers move up over their own accord, disregarding his guiding hand, outline his jaw and find their way to his lips.

His habit of holding any spare part in his teeth when his hands are busy and pockets are full. The learning algorithm. His tongue sweeps across almost involuntarily and he shudders. Oil and steel, the taste of it, the scent of it. Its optics glow soft in the harsh light of the workshop and its steel carapace is perfectly, perfectly smooth. He sees it watching him, feels the fingertips press just a little further in, just a little more of a taste.

The moan is unexpected, out before he realises he’s made the noise, but when the robot mimics him the sound goes down through his spine in a crackle of fire.

He can’t help arching up toward it, feeling the inhuman strength in that semi-rigid frame and his arms wrap around it of their own accord. Its own spine is armoured with overlapping plates that protrude ever so slightly between the polished expanse of wide shoulderblades. Each segment of armour moves under his hands, the thing’s back flexing and adjusting to match his movement as he grinds up against it.

It’s far too hard to decide what to do, whether to close his eyes or keep watching, whether to move or see what the robot’s creative algorithms could have come up with.

The machine follows his lead. Its sophisticated vocal centres translate every little sound he makes and throw them back in its own unique voice. There’s another of those firebolts down through his nerves when it turns its volume down low and whispers its way through the problem he’d been working on, heat pooling as it guides him to solutions he’d never have looked at. The part of his brain still sharp and awake counters back with further impediments to every solution, half-slurred past steel fingers hot as body and blood still between his lips.

Back and forth, radio static whisper and husky, hungry murmur. The solution pushes him over the edge and for a moment all he can see is white, all he can taste is metal, his mind is laid out like one of his own circuitboards and it’s gorgeous, beautiful, the elegant solution to the ugly problem. He comes down from the high, clutching the machine and cursing his shaking, human body. The machine stays where it is, hands on him. No scent of sweat or sticky fluids to mar its surface.

He understands a little, what it is that people wax poetic about, but he still doesn’t want to be within three feet of people. There’s better out there. He’s tried it. He’s refining it. Becoming it.