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He tells you that he has a doctor of his own, Doktor he calls the man with emphasis, but he ends up under your hands more often than not. Sometimes with a excuse of being too far away from a pickup point, sometimes because he couldn’t get in without being spotted, and tonight, with nothing. He’s just bleeding on your couch, expression neutral and chin propped as you take apart the crushed plating and damaged cables.
And you could tell him to be more careful, to maybe avoid the blades trying to split him in two, dodge the bullets that beat his chassis bloody. You could tell him that he’s worth so much more than whatever he does out on the streets, off in places you don’t see from your practice. A good doctor would, a good doctor might convince him to stop, tell him to get help for this from those friends of his.
But you…you’re not a good doctor, are you? Oh sure, you’re good, you’re great at the mechanics of it. Your patient is advanced, more advanced than you’ve ever seen before, the kind of tech that a small time practice would never deal with, but you still know how to work on him. You can still fix the superficial and patch over the integral until he finds himself in a real operating room. Make no fucking mistake, you’re good at your job, the best in this whole city when it comes to cybernetics and bio-mechanics, but you’re not a good doctor.
Maybe not a good person either, because good people don’t enjoy the sheen of other people’s blood. Good people and good doctors don’t hope, secretly, that their off the books patient gets hurt again and comes bleeding to them, again. A good doctor would tell him to knock that shit off, they’ve got better things to do than spend all their free time putting a vigilante soldier back together again. But you’re still not good. Because here you are, here he is.
Here's him watching you with drooping grey eyes, him breathing slow and steady with a twitch in his lips every time you tug on a wire, dig a little deeper. You’ve got forceps holding his flesh open, watching the trickle of blood simulacrum streak down his ribs, leaving its trail all the way to the towels put down. He’s watching you and he’s silent in his pain, like a good patient, and all you can think about is what it would take to make him moan, make him yelp. Like a bad doctor.
It's impulsive when it should be repulsive, something to choke down and keep locked in the darkest corner of your mind. Not something to think every time he comes in, not something to be thinking now as you get wires and veins tied off, not as you cauterise his fucking synth skin enough for him to leave your couch without bleeding out. A man could die from this and all you can think about is how much prettier his pretty face would look smeared with rusty kisses.
Tonight, there’s no excuse from him and no words from you, even as the tension buzzes, the moment stretches taut as the stitches you tie into him. High density fibre through carbon mesh, his eyes on your face, watching-watching as you work. And then, when you’re done, he licks his lips with a tongue so red and opens his mouth to say…to say nothing.
Because there’s nothing to say. Because you’re done and he’s stable and he gets to his graceful feet without a sound, not the low grade electric whine you’re so used to, not even a huff of breath. He’s silent as he stands and you’re quiet as he leaves. Leaves through the window and leaves nothing but a smear of blood and bundle of cash.
You don’t have a name for him, your occasional patient, but really you don’t need one. You watch the news, you hear the gossip on the streets, and you keep your fucking head down. You don’t need to know which one of a dozen unaffiliated military death bots is sneaking into your practice to get himself patched up. You don’t need a name, you don’t need reasons, and you don’t even need the money he keeps slipping you under the table, because to him you’re a “good” if lawfully ambiguous doctor.
You’re a good doctor, so you can’t tell him that seeing him fucked up and blitzed out of his head on pain is enough payment for a lifetime. And since you can’t tell him, you take his money instead. You buy more supplies for the clinic, you pay your assistants more and they’re all too smart to ask how or why or where their bonuses came from. You install a new security system, you add bars to your windows, because it’s never safe in cities like yours, and still he finds a way in.
Sometimes it’s right after closing, when the assistants are gone and you’re left to turn off all the lights, left to find him leaning against your office door expectant and waiting. Sometimes you’ll get into your car, relax into the worn seat, and notice his red-bled eyes glinting at you in the rear view. This time? He’s already at your house, already sat in the office chair you specifically bought him for bleeding and sparking in.
The chair you should move out of your bedroom, the one that makes it so easy to imagine him in, to glance at in the dark and almost see him. Look up after the lights are off and you can picture him there, sitting and watching you, custom conflict body equipped so pretty. So much silver, so much scratched black, he’s a deadly-dangerous-delicious thing.
Wake up and look over, in the early morning light you could imagine him there, elbow on the rest, cheek on his fist, still watching in that civilian skin he wears so poor. Grey eyes the same, but pretty face so much tamer, so much softer, dressed down and made quieter.
Tonight he’s here, really here, and he’s half slumping in his seat, half slipping right off. And you should tell him off, should warn him about this shit, but all you can do is stare-stare-stare at the gash in his stomach. Notice the ripped to shit suit jacket and the ragged edges of his carbon plating, the messed up mesh of his gut and the pretty red spill of blood down his front. Drip-dropping onto his thighs, pooling on the chair, puddling on your floor.
“Chainsaw,” is all he says, all he needs to say, gruff and grating, gravel in his throat and static in his cords.
Chainsaw makes sense, ragged edges and deep cut. You can already see it tearing into him, the rip of the chain, the sound of metal on metal and crack as one side gave. You can smell his blood now, obsessively metallic and thick, already coating the back of your throat as you approach him. Taking in his dull eyes, the tin grey when they should be silver, when they’re always moonlit decadence.
What did they look like when the other unit cut into him? Slashed wide and wild, unpredictable and caught him on the offside. Or maybe it was deliberate, a charge he could’ve avoided but didn’t because it gave him a better opening, a better chance to get that fucker right back. You’ve never seen him fight, but god do you fucking want to.
You want to see those grey eyes go sharp, you want to see all those enhancements in action, you want to see him cut open and bleeding on his enemies. And you want…something that doesn’t matter.
Your mysterious patient is watching you, tracking you as you cross the small space to him, step-step-step-stop. Stop in front of his slumped frame, stop to take in the depth of the cut closer up, stop to assess the mechanical damage. Sparking wires are easier to see close up, past the jagged rip of metal and the gory splash of blood, there’s the blood, the transmission fluid of his body not so different from yours.
Not so different even though his flesh is fake, warm to the touch you skim over his cheek but soft, too soft for a man like this. A man of war, a man of rage, a man so much more machine but still so damningly human. You’ve worked with Ais after all, you know exactly how far simulation can go before it falls short, know why machines will never really take over the battlefield. There’s nothing more human than death after all, and nothing more death resistant and pesky, pesky wills to live.
“Chainsaw,” you say, and drop your bag at his feet. Don’t care that half of your tools get shunted out of place, that you’ll spend a half hour getting everything back together tomorrow. Tonight you kneel in front of him, not caring about your jeans or your floor or the simulated blood that will never wash out all the way.
Tonight you’re kneeling between his spread thighs, face to face with his torn open stomach and you know queasy is the right response, or detached professionalism. You want to stick your fingers into his stomach and rip the wires out, pull them further until he makes a sound for you, any kind of noise for you. You want those sharp nailed hands on your wrist, digging into your skin until you bleed for him for once.
You want to see that pretty face twisted gorgeous, grimaced nasty. You want something more than passive from this wretched war thing. You—you reach for the nippers, because you need a cleaner cut to start work. Can’t leave his stomach as ragged as it is now, the edges will catch and tear through whatever you do.
“You should see the other guy,” he snorts as your fingers slip nimble and neat between the cables, his cables. A standard model would have a power cell here, extra fuel maybe, but him? Ohh him, he’s got nothing but cable and wiring here, mesh muscle and metal tendons coiled so tight-compact to fit into his lighter frame.
He gets his energy from his enemies, he steals the electrolytes right out of their blood, their spines, so he can be better. Dangerous fucking design that, too reliant on external factors for a standard model, but your murderous patient is everything but standard. He doesn’t need the extra weight of his own fuel, not when he’s so good at killing that your clinic’s just about overflowing with junked cybernetics. When you’ve heard all about the dead and dying left scattered around the city, the county, the country.
“Sure I should,” is all you say though, eyes down and head bowed. All you say, breathing steady and hands steadier as you work on him into the darkest hours of the night. It’s all either of you say for the rest of the hours you spend together.
There’s a danger in unspoken arrangements, unpredictability is their nature after all, and you start to think it’s his too. Your enigmatic patient, the one who always comes after closing, always in the dark, who doesn’t say much and pays too well. Today is well…it’s today, day time, when you’re in your back office, when your clinic is locked down because there’s a shootout a street over.
Your assistants aren’t bothered by it, you aren’t bothered it, violence is your business and business is good. The lockdown though is routine, perfunctory even, because you aren’t officially listed for emergency or trauma but you’re the closest thing to it. You operate in that delightful little grey space between lawful and moral; your clinic is where the people without a law come, why he comes.
Although, you’re not expecting him quite as soon as he shows up. As you’re filling out one more bit of paperwork, just another record for your off the record accounting. Your window has bars now, there’s a not too shit security system up and running, and still he slips in before you notice. Empty room one second, muffled gunfire in the distance, and then your door’s locking, then you’re looking up and he’s there.
There, bleeding as ever, but different so very different.
“Do you take walk-ins?” he quips, and drips, and you breathe shallow-slow through your teeth. As he walks this time, closes the space between you with a sword behind him, a HF blade tilted down and following behind him. Different this time as he drops a hand on your desk, blood specked nails digging ever so slightly into the shit wood finish, leaving a mark so different from his usual.
And looking down at you, gazing down at you with a single eye but there’s more in that one right now than you’ve ever seen in both. Eye red, eye still grey, eye so sharp and focused you already feel the sting of a cut on your lip.
Yeah, a sting, a itch, a fucking ache in your teeth as you watch him spark off, electricity arcing between broken wires, in his ripped open chest. Where there’s no heart to rip out, no lungs to flood, no ribs to break. Just wire, just metal, just simulacrum blood spilling out, red as his eye.
And you’re a good doctor, but you’re a bad person, and you’re not strong enough to ignore the curl of his one flesh lip or the tight pain and tighter pleasure stringing him along. Sharp across his shoulder blades, locked in his knees, digging into your desk through his hand. He’s hurting divine and he’s hurting terrible, and you’re finally, finally fucking seeing it.
In his panting mouth and steaming body, in the blown wide eye. You’re glutting yourself on the feast, but you’re a glutton, greedy, needy and demanding.
“Depends,” you rasp, as he climbs onto your desk.
“Who’s asking?” you manage, as he drags himself to the edge, drapes a precision built leg on either side of you. Bracketing you in, locking you in place, but you’re not prey here, not under that danger-sharp gaze. Not with that blade being lifted casually and passed ever so much more casually to your hands.
It’s a challenge more than invitation, a final line in the sand instead of a offer. Last chance to be the good doctor and good person. Last chance to choose right.
And you know about HF blades, you know about all the upgrades they can get and the danger of taking things that don’t belong to you, and you take it anyway. Take it with clumsy hands, hands made for delicate instruments and fragile wire, not weapons and war, but you can still handle it. Clumsy and tipping, you can still take the weight of his...sword.
You can heft it with both hands, two handed grip as his mouth parts so pretty, steam venting decadent; he’d broil his tongue right off if it wasn’t cybernetic too.
“If it’s me,” is a growl, low and purring as you fix eyes on his chest, the place where the plating was ripped open. Punched open? Blown apart by gun fire? You can’t be sure without proper diagnostics, without getting into his guts and gore, again.
“For my favourite patient?” is somebody else’s voice out your mouth, words heavy and sweet on your tongue but not your voice. Deeper than your voice, darker…than you let it be. Than you let yourself be.
But there’s a stumbling grace in your thrust, a beauty in the way the tip of the blade sinks-sinks-sinks straight through him. Your mysterious-murderous-gorgeous patient. Fucking vulgar, obscene, the way the blade slides right into his stomach, through the mesh and wire and cable you’ve patched over so many times. There’s nothing dirtier than the bump of your fucking fingers against the moulded ridge of his abs.
Nothing, you’re so damn sure. Then he grabs your wrist-wrists, in one deadly-delicate hand. Hand that’s already blooded, already drying with it and smearing onto your skin. Then he grabs you, and his sword with you, and tears it right back out of himself.
Then you see real beauty.
Then your blood sings and your mouth drops panting open and you shiver in a delight you’ve never indulged in before. Then he moans, then he groans and grunts with the pain. Then he flings his head back with the ripping slide, throat bare and mouth wide, eye unseen but rolled back you can tell.
He rips his sword back out of his gut and splashes you with blood, with gory simulacrum, and moans like the whore of Babylon with it. And you forget how to be good. How to do anything but drop his sword, let him take the weight of it as you dive forward, slam your open palms against his fresh bleeding stomach. There’s nothing more, nothing but digging your fingers into his gut, past the mechanical muscle and artificial fat, into his gore, into his innards.
Nothing but hearing more of that beautiful sound, of him moaning-grunting-laughing with the pain you’re revelling in. Nothing but ripping a hand out, doing damage, so much damage but the warmth of his slick red is too good, too sweet between your fingers.
You’re a doctor, a healer, and you’re tugging on cables, yanking on wires with a reckless abandon and manic pleasure. Not caring when something snaps, don’t care when something else sparks, when it snaps electric and deadly. A jolt along your arm, clenched down your spine but ohhh good, so good and not enough to stop.
Don’t need to stop, not when he’s encouraging, egging you on with a hand on your face, cupping your cheek and knife sharp nails at your temple. Goading you into more, into grabbing his own fucking hand and using those bladed tips to dig into a fresh spot, a nice chink in his armour for your greedy, greedy fingers. You bully him into scratching long and deep, up along his ribs and enough to slip four fingers in with a grunting moan.
From you? From him? Doesn’t matter when you slide your fingers in-out-in, and he shudders underneath you, along your sides, thighs under your arms as you lean on him, as he curls into you. One hand to hold him up, clawed into your desk, and one laced over your fingers, crossed over where you’re playing his wires like the finest instrument devised. A spark, a jolt, you’ll be feeling this tomorrow, numb and aching tomorrow, but the moment is worth it.
So worth as he shifts, rocks, onto your fingers, shuddering and gasping and so human in this perfect moment. Sliding himself onto you, forcing you deeper into him as you give him more, a hand for each gash, for every bundle of delicate wire and slick tendon. Wet to your wrists as he pants, drools down his metal jaw, blacks out that red-silver eye.
There’s nothing but the warmth of him, the slick slide of him, the clench around your fingers as you slide them just that much deeper, force that much more. Just the flex of his thighs against you and force of his rutting rock, him riding the twisted high of his pain and pleasure and pain. There’s just you and him, just a bad doctor and mysterious patient as his vizor shuts over his face. As your desk breaks under his bucking and both of you go falling-tumbling-canting to the floor.
And still not enough, still too little to cover the obscene fucking noise he makes as your fingers force just that tiniest bit deeper. Still not enough to stop the psh of steam venting, hot on your face, almost uncomfortable except that it’s perfectly inhuman. Perfectly him. As he moans, as you pant, slumped against him, legs sprawled and face mashed into his hard chest, listening to the hum of spiking systems. The buzz-whirr-whine of them, of his tendons and muscles working through the panting and pain as he bleeds still, still bleeding, ohh it’s still coming.
Even as you’re dragging your fingers out of him, wet and aching but so satisfying that it’s a delicious pain. Beautiful in the way your fingers click and sting, the places where wires pinched, the numbness of the electricity, your own blood where you got snagged. Such a pretty picture, such a pretty sight.
And as he lays panting beneath you, vizor half unlocked again, eye blown and mouth so wet, you know you were right. He’s so much prettier smeared in bloody kisses. He’s down right blasphemous in his beauty now, and you know you won’t be able to stop sinning now. Not after you’ve had a taste. Not when you know he can look at you like that.
Like this, gasping and wrung out, burned out of his brain and gorgeous. Your favourite patient.