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“You did it. Caine’s really… gone.”
Pomni’s words had a strangely echoless quality to them, as if they’d been spoken in a soundproof room rather than the empty, semi-collapsed circus.
The group looked at each other, unsure what to do next.
“Wait,” Zooble said suddenly, with an air of alarmed realization. “So if we can swear, are all of Caine’s rules offline?”
Thankfully the twilight of their broken environment provided enough darkness for Kinger to remain coherent. “They should be,” he answered thoughtfully. “At the very least, the ones that required active monitoring.”
Zooble nodded, their mismatched eyes narrowing with determination. They reached out and grabbed Gangle’s hand. “Great. Then we’re gonna go have sex.”
“What?” Ragatha yelped.
“What," Jax repeated.
"What!?” Gangle squeaked, loudest of all.
“Do we really have… time, for that?” Pomni asked, glancing around. “Shouldn't we be trying to get out?”
Ragatha collected herself. “What if Caine comes back? We can't afford to miss our chance!”
Zooble flicked their eyes between the others coolly. “Kinger, is Caine coming back?”
“No,” he answered readily. “If he was going to come back without outside intervention, we would already be seeing signs of him rebooting. We may be able to recover him, but not without effort.”
“And is our situation going to get any worse if we do nothing for a few hours?”
“A few hours?” Jax muttered under his breath. “Jeez, how long do you need?”
Kinger looked around in contemplation. “I don't think so,” he answered. “Again, we would already be seeing signs if our environment were that unstable. This place may not hold up forever without Caine, but I would guess we have some time before we need to be really worried.”
“Great,” Zooble said, “then we're gonna go figure out how to have sex. If you're up for it, Gangle.”
“U-um!” she stammered, unable to look anyone but Zooble in the eyes. Her hand tightened around theirs. “Yes. Yes, I want to do that. I-if it doesn't put anyone in danger.”
As the duo turned and began walking away, Jax called after them, “And what are the rest of us supposed to do?”
“I dunno,” Zooble called over their shoulder. “Masturbate, have an orgy—that's kind of between you guys.”
The last thing the pair overheard, after the squawks of indignation, was Kinger saying, “I think I’ll go sit in my pillow fort.”
“Do you really think the three of them will…?” Gangle asked, trailing off, walking arm in arm with them towards the hall of bedrooms.
Zooble shrugged. “Pomni’s smart enough to not let the opportunity pass her by, and there’s no way Jax or Ragatha would let the other one get her all to themself. I figure it’ll either be a threesome, or Pomni’ll skip the drama and just go jerk off.”
Gangle giggled and moved in a little closer. “If she does, I bet Jax and Ragatha will take their frustrations out on each other.”
“Hatesex,” Zooble mused approvingly, still thrilled to be able to say such words again. “Nice.”
By unspoken agreement, they chose Gangle’s room. Zooble’s was nice, but all the toys and kiddy decor felt decidedly wrong for the occasion. It was a rare treasure for the two, to get to feel like the adults they really were. The digital world had a way of robbing them of that.
Or, it used to. The future remained to be seen, and the present glimmered with unexpected possibility.
“So,” Zooble said once the door was closed behind them. Anticipation coiled into tension inside them. Before, there had always been limits as to what was possible. Their sudden absence made them feel almost dizzy. “Where should we start?”
Gangle faced them with a private smile and stepped closer into their personal space. Her hand threaded between their fingers and squeezed reassuringly. “Maybe we can… start with the things we've tried before? And then go from there.”
And just like that, the tension began to melt off of them. Of course they could do this. They were doing it with Gangle, after all.
Their faces tilted downwards toward each other until their foreheads clinked together. Faux kisses, they'd learned, were painfully unsatisfying and silly. But this? Their eyes slipped closed for a moment as they both just… basked. Basked in this, being close to each other, the feelings of safety and connection. To say they breathed together would be far too literal, but when they rested their heads against each other like this, sometimes it did feel like they shared one breath.
Zooble brought a hand up to run it lightly down the spiral of Gangle’s chest, their fingers grazing over each loop the way they might have been able to ghost over the ribs of a human partner. Gangle shivered and sighed, pressing her face into Zooble’s. Her hand, in turn, began to explore Zooble’s chest. Her ribbon splayed over the smooth curve of their shoulder, then wandered to the connection where their wing joined their body. Zooble hummed as she wrapped her hand around the joint, not pulling, just caressing where part met mismatched part.
They'd already discovered, of course, that their bodies lacked designated erogenous zones. The space between Zooble’s legs experienced touch no differently than any other part of their body—not that Caine had ever given them time to really investigate. The bodies he had given them simply weren't designed for sex.
The thing he hadn't been able to adequately plan for, however, was that humanity’s single biggest erogenous zone had absolutely nothing to do with the body. The human mind was really an incredible thing. Capable of eroticizing almost anything, frequently without any input whatsoever from the person themself. Especially when that person had no other outlet for their desire.
From there, all they had to do was get creative.
Zooble twined the ribbon of Gangle’s arm through their fingers, letting it glide silkily between the digits before entwining them again, and Gangle made a noise in the back of her throat. They did it again, this time pulling as they did, and were rewarded with a breathy, “Oh.”
Caine would never have allowed them to get farther than this.
“Closer,” Zooble said, with a low-simmering want in their voice. “I want to be closer to you.”
There was a limit to how close two humans could be. Skin and organs could only press so tightly together before the facts of solid matter began to make their presence known. Gangle had no such limits. As she moved closer, her ribbons wrapped themselves around them. Arms around arms, legs around legs, until their spiraling torso was held close against them. Pressed face to face like this, Zooble huffed out a laugh.
“You know,” they said, “I never really got the appeal of rope bondage before I met you.”
“I did,” Gangle confessed. She tightened her arms, pulling Zooble in closer. “I even practiced a little on myself. It was nice. I’m a little rusty, but I don't think I need to worry about tying too tight or restricting your blood flow.”
“Wait, really?” Zooble asked, feeling oddly breathless at the revelation. “What did you like about it?”
Out of all the things they’d talked about, in all the time they’d known each other, sex was the one subject area they had never been able to truly discuss. In this, Zooble realized, they were still a mystery to each other.
Gangle seemed to find a thrill in it too. She giggled as she realized that for once, she didn't have to talk around the subject. “I think it's really pretty. It’s an art. But the thing people miss is that there's also mental aspects to it. It’s about giving and taking control,” she said. “Here, try to move your arm.”
Zooble tried to raise their arm up to caress her face, but after a brief motion, they found they couldn't move another inch. The ribbon around the limb tightened to hold it completely immobile.
“And also…” she continued, and Zooble’s arms were dragged upwards, over their head.
Zooble gave a startled, delighted laugh before letting themself relax into it. Their arms stayed aloft, supported by something outside of themself.
“Exactly like that,” Gangle told them approvingly, with a steady self assurance that they rarely saw from her. “You can let go because you know I’ve got you.”
“And what do you get out of it?” they asked, just to hear more from this new, confident Gangle.
“Oh, so much,” she said dreamily.
Their hands were brought down gently to settle on her sides. There was a tug on Zooble’s right leg, and when they stepped forward, the left one followed. Then they were slow dancing, swaying gently together in the room’s dim light. In a very literal way, Gangle led, and Zooble followed, allowing themself to be tugged this way and that. They could try to resist, but why would they? They were exactly where they wanted to be.
Gangle rested her mask on Zooble’s shoulder and murmured where their ear would have been, “I like knowing you trust me to take care of you. I know I’m not always the most reliable.”
“You,” Zooble started, but their voice failed them at first. They felt like they could go boneless entirely, and Gangle would keep them upright all by herself. Her ribbons pressed and pulled against every part of them, and warmth seemed to be filling them from the bottoms of their feet to the tips of their horns. They cleared their throat and tried again. “You're one of the best parts about being here. No matter which mask you're wearing.”
Gangle was silent, but the ribbon around their hand squeezed. She had a hard time believing such things, but they knew she tried for their sake.
So, for her sake, they spared her from having to reply directly. “You mentioned that it's an art, too.”
They felt her nod against the side of their head. And then—she didn't pull away exactly, it was more like she wrapped even further around them, and then she was behind them. Her mask rested over their shoulder, and she said, “Look.”
For the first time since they’d started, Zooble became aware again of their surroundings. Gangle had stood them in front of the room’s full-length mirror, and they saw what she meant.
Red ribbons crisscrossed over their body in an intricate pattern, lovingly wrapped over every curve, every line, every mismatched part. Somehow, under the ribbon’s glossy shine, Zooble thought they could see themself how Gangle saw them. Not an ugly assortment of mismatched children’s toys, but a person. A collection of shapes and textures that made up the physical form of someone real, whole, and loved.
“Oh,” they breathed, and that was all they could say to the sight in front of them. In horror, they realized that if their body was capable of crying, they would already be doing so.
But Gangle could cry enough for the two of them. Tears gathered in her eyes, and she smiled at them in the mirror. “You like it?”
“I—Gangle, I love it. Thank you.”
They couldn't exactly hug her in this position, so they tried to approximate it by tensing against the ties around them, hoping Gangle would feel it and know how grateful she was.
Except, when they did—Gangle’s breath hitched.
Zooble paused.
Then they did it again.
Gangle let out a breathy sigh. “Zooble… sorry, it’s, I can feel that everywhere. All at once. It's…”
“Yeah?” they said, their mind already racing with possibilities. They wanted to make her feel good, too. They tensed their arms, feeling the way the ribbons tightened against them, then ran their hands down their chest. “It’s good?”
Gangle shivered all over, and Zooble felt it. They knew the answer before she said it. “It's really good.”
“It’s good for me too,” they said, slipping a finger underneath one of the ribbons and stroking along its length. “I can feel the different parts of you all over me. Do you feel full?”
“Oh,” she whimpered, in a voice that warmed Zooble all over. “Don't say it like that, like you're…”
“Like I’m inside of you?” they asked lowly, their voice like warm honey. “Like I’m filling you up?”
“N-not fair,” she whined. “I haven't… you know, in years. You can't just say stuff like that to me.”
Zooble was giddy, ecstatic with the realization that they could do this, really do this. Maybe, if they did it just right, they could even…
They took a few shaky steps toward the bed and—couldn't push her onto it, exactly, but could do a reasonable facsimile of it. They ended up crouched on their hands and knees, with Gangle mostly underneath them. “But you feel so good wrapped around me,” they told her. “I want to tell you all about it. I can feel your legs shaking around mine. I want to tangle my hand up in you and pull.”
“Oh,” Gangle gasped. “Oh, please, please do. Fill me up, tie me in knots, just please keep touching me. I think I could actually—!”
Zooble needed no further encouragement. They reached into the spiral of Gangle’s torso, threaded their fingers though every loop they could grasp, and pulled. They flexed every limb against the ribbons that were suddenly pulled so taut they would have been painful in any other body, and a stream of words fell from them without conscious thought. “God you're so fucking beautiful, you’re doing so good, so good for me, can't believe how lucky I am—”
And the answering mantra, “Fuck, fuck just like that, perfect so perfect you're so, please I’m so close I’m—”
Gangle’s voice rose in a wordless wail as her ribbons tightened so much Zooble feared they would break in half, and they thought they could die right then and not regret a single thing. When it passed, Gangle slumped against the bed, her limbs unspooling from Zooble and sprawling flat over the mattress. She exhaled all the breath in her nonexistent lungs, and the two of them just stared at each other, chests heaving with exertion.
“Oh my god,” Zooble said, voicing what they were both thinking.
“Oh my god,” Gangle repeated, still breathless. “That was—oh my god. Zooble. I need to press my face against your face.”
“Right away, your highness,” they agreed. They collapsed down beside her, and true to her word, Gangle nuzzled against them like an especially affectionate cat. “So I guess you liked it?”
Satiny red hands grasped their shoulders and shook them for emphasis. “I can cum, Zooble!! We can cum!” She gasped and shook them harder. Her voice rose in a squeak, “I need to make you cum! Oh, god, I’m such a bad girlfriend, I didn't even make you cum, I’m so sorry!”
Zooble chuckled and put their hands over hers, gently putting a pause on the shaking. “How about we take a nap first? I hate to say it, but I’m all fucked out.” They thought about this for a second. “Actually, I love to say it. Fuck, I’m so glad I can say fuck again. Fuck!”
Gangle giggled and settled down to rest her head against their chest. “Piss!” she suggested.
“Ass!”
“Tits!”
And if it took a long time for their giggling to subside into sleep, well, no one was around to see it.