Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

One

“I made something for you.”

“Hmm?” Tron dragged his gaze up from the curve of Sam's waist and hips where it liked to linger to find his User looking at him over his shoulder, a smirk on his handsome features. With nothing but the stormy Sea of Simulation behind him, he looked like a User on the brink of a wild, newly created world, making Tron's circuits shiver with adoration. “For me?” Tron asked after a moment of admiration. “You don't need to make anything for me, Sam. Just you being here is a gift.”

Sam's smirk softened and a flush shaded his cheeks. His cool blue eyes flicked down and up, sweeping over Tron with the prickling force of an energy shower, before he turned away, scratching his short hair. “Uh, well, I did anyway. That's why I wanted to come here. To show you.”

Tron nodded. He'd been wondering why Sam had brought them to this little stretch of sandy beach far from any city, with no interesting features apart from the pillars of stone standing in the sea and the white beam of the portal glowing in the distance. It was certainly isolated; a small part of Tron had hoped that Sam merely desired a private moment together away from the business of updating the Grid. “Show me,” he urged, smiling to see this self-conscious facet of Sam's complex and endlessly fascinating personality.

Sam reached back for his identity disk. As Tron watched in growing interest, he summoned the bright spirals of his coding. He pulled a slender, blue-white crystal from his belt and set it within the holographic projection. “I downloaded it before I entered the system,” he explained as the crystal lit up to a brilliant shine. “Just need to install it.”

“What is it?”

“You'll see.” 

Sighing, Tron folded his arms and shifted his weight. After several long microcycles of waiting, though, his impulsive Rinzler codes goaded him into movement. He closed the space between them in three long steps and set his hands on Sam's tempting waist. Ducking his head, he kissed the line of Sam’s neck, closing his eyes to cut off visual input and focus on the sensation of Sam’s warmth under his lips, the flex of muscle under his palms, and the sound of his breath tightening. 

Sam chuckled and tilted his hips to press back against Tron’s larger body. “You want to see this or not?” he complained. 

Tron let his palms skim upward, under Sam’s shirt where he could savour the radiant heat of his bare skin, his thumbs and fingertips tracing the subtle ridges of ribs and muscles–those strange, internal structures that only Users possessed. “I want to see everything,” he murmured in Sam’s ear. 

“Damn,” Sam breathed, squirming in Tron’s arms. “It’s a miracle that I can get anything done around here. You are really, really distracting.”

The admission made Tron’s grip tighten reflexively, joy and desire flaying his circuits. Every reminder that Sam wanted him strengthened his own need far beyond anything he’d ever experienced. Every time Sam came back–not just to the Grid, but came back to Tron–he found himself craving him more and more. He didn’t just want Sam, he couldn’t imagine the Grid or himself without him. 

His fingers dipped down, circling the divot of Sam’s navel before drifting lower to his waistband. Already, he could feel phantom memories of Sam’s flesh hardening in his hands, hear his gasps and deepening groans, see his body stripped of its clothing and opening for Tron’s exploration…

“Okay!” Sam barked, jumping out of Tron’s arms. Tron nearly grabbed him–everything Rinzler in his codes blared an alarm at the loss–but managed to restrain himself. “It’s installed,” he continued, backing away toward the water. “I’m not sure, exactly, how it’s going to look, so just keep an open mind.”

Folding his arms, Tron lifted an expectant brow. “If you make me wait for too long, I’m not going to let you go again.” 

Sam’s flush deepened and he chuckled. “One day I’m going to tell Alan what a beast you turned out to be and he’s going to be shocked.” 

“Are you sure about that? Perhaps there’s more to Alan01 than you’ve seen.” 

A blank expression crossed Sam’s face, then he shook his head and held up a recriminatory finger. “No,” he said shortly. “No. That man is a father to me. I don’t want to look at him and think that he’s secretly as kinky as you are.” 

Tron shrugged. “I had to get it from somewhere.” 

Still shaking his head, Sam continued backing away, until his shoes hit the water’s edge. A jab of concern made Tron follow, ready to pull him back out. The Sea of Simulation–so much of it an impenetrable darkness and chaos–wasn’t a safe place to swim. Programs had been lost to its waves in the past. 

“It’s okay,” Sam said, holding up his disk. “I installed an update.” He continued backpedalling and the water rose higher, lapping at his calves, his knees, his thighs, then his waist. There, he glanced around and muttered to himself, “I guess this is deep enough.” 

“For what?” Tron asked.

Sam flashed a smirk and docked his disk. 

Shimmering white light burst from his disk and travelled down his body, pixel by pixel, transforming his interface from his usual black jacket, shirt, and dark jeans to a tight white suit. For an excited moment, Tron thought that Sam was adopting his siren interface again. Then the light disappeared into the water and Sam collapsed under the surface.

“Sam!” Tron surged toward the white glow where Sam had stood. 

Before he could reach it, though, Sam’s head broke the surface, his hair clumped with water and arms sweeping to keep himself upright. Laughing, he looked down at himself. “I can’t believe this,” he exclaimed. “It was supposed to be an EV suit and it turned me into a fucking mermaid!”

“A what?” Quickly, Tron slogged the last few steps and caught Sam’s elbow. With an arm around his back, he lifted him up to his feet.

Only to discover that Sam no longer had feet. Or legs.

From the waist up, Sam looked very similar to his siren persona, skinned in tight, shimmering white. Brilliant white circuit lights shone down his arms and in curious parallel bands at the sides of his chest. When Tron looked closer, though, the texture of his suit was different from a siren’s, not smooth, but made of tiny, flexible scales. From the waist down, Sam had turned into another creature altogether. His legs had merged into a long, sinuous tail and the tiny scales became larger, almost crystalline in appearance. Only his circuit lights maintained their normal appearance as they travelled down his tail before disappearing into the darkness. 

“Half-human, half-fish,” Sam explained. He hooked an arm around Tron’s shoulders to brace himself and flexed his tail. The tip rose from the water nearby, revealing silvery, fan-like fins and specks of light. “Do you even have fish on the Grid?”

“There is nothing like you on the Grid.” Amazed, Tron stroked the transition from the smooth, pearly scales at Sam’s waist over the swell of his hip to the thicker scales of his tail. There he found two small, lacy fins where the juts of Sam’s hip bones would normally be. He tugged on them, curious.

Sam grabbed his wrist. “Ah!” he gasped breathlessly. “D-don’t do that.”

Startled, Tron snatched his hand back. “Does it hurt?”

“No. No, not exactly.” With a gentle undulation, Sam drew away from him, moving deeper into the water. “I think it… I programmed this interface to function in darkness and enhanced its sense of touch. It, uh, the tail and fins, they're… they're really sensitive.” 

“Is it safe?” Tron shadowed him, increasingly uneasy as the water reached his chest, hampering his ability to move and fight. 

“As safe as anything.” Smiling, Sam leaned back and allowed himself to sink out of view. Tron saw only dim flickers of his circuit lights and felt the motion of the water as he circled and emerged several paces away. “I think it’ll work,” he declared. “I can breathe. Sort of. Or whatever it is we do on the Grid that feels like breathing.” 

Tron stared at him sceptically. “And what have you planned for this new interface?”

Sam drifted closer and wrapped his arms around Tron’s shoulders. When his lean body bumped into him, Tron held him tightly around the waist, anchoring him in place. “You’ve shown me almost everything on the Grid,” he said, his ready smile pulling up the corner of his mouth. “But there’s one place I know you’ve never been.” He turned his head to stare pointedly at the Sea of Simulation. 

A tremble of nervous excitement worked through Tron’s circuits. He had been on the Grid since it was first created, it held no secrets for him. But… he had never thought to look beyond the black surface of the water. “There’s nothing down there,” he said. 

“How do you know?” 

“Because your father never placed anything there.” 

“My father didn’t place the ISOs, either. There’s a lot that he doesn’t know, even here.” Sam’s wet nose and lips nuzzled under Tron’s jaw as he finished, “Let’s go find out what’s down there.”

Tron tilted his head up to allow Sam access and groaned as he sucked on the terminal on the side of his neck. He clenched reflexively on Sam’s waist, fighting the urge to drag him back to shore and fulfil the promises his mouth was making. 

“It might be dangerous,” he managed to utter.

“Mmm,” Sam hummed. “Even better.” 

“I might not be able to protect you with a new interface.” 

“I don’t need you to protect me.”

“I hate when you say that.”

Sam smiled against his skin and wove his fingers through his hair. “I don’t keep you around for protection. You’re more than that.” 

As always, Sam’s explanation triggered little confusions in Tron’s codes. Tron was a protector, but Sam… didn’t want that? He didn’t want the one function for which Tron was intended? Even stranger, the illogic should have left him at a loss, but instead it… it filled him with a sense of peace. Acceptance. So much of himself had been warped by Clu’s rectification, so much of himself was no longer the Tron who had first stepped foot on the Grid, that Sam’s affection toward all of those parts helped to ease the pain of knowing he had become a twisted version of himself. Whatever he was, whoever he was, Sam wanted him.

“If it’s too dangerous, we’ll return to the surface,” Tron said.

“Sure.” Sam’s lips moved to Tron’s ear to nip at the lobe. “May I update your interface?”

Tron jerked a nod and ducked his head so Sam could retrieve his disks, shivering at the intimacy as he pulled them free. He held Sam closely as he conjured Tron’s coding and skimmed through the convoluted lines of information with astounding ease. In moments, he had set his crystalline download in place and begun to install it. 

“I wonder what you’re going to look like,” he said thoughtfully, searching Tron’s face before gazing down at the water. “Hot, probably.”

“So long as I can fight.”

“You’ll always find a way to fight, no matter what your interface is.”

Huffing a laugh, Tron decided to take advantage of their proximity to draw Sam closer, cradle his cheek with one careful hand, and meet his lips with his own. He lapped at the seam of his mouth and groaned when Sam granted him access to his sparking heat and met him with the slick twist of his tongue and nipping teeth. The pressure ratcheted down through his core circuitry, lighting him up with desire. 

The download dimmed and Sam pulled away with a parting bite to Tron’s bottom lip. “It’s ready whenever you are,” he said roughly, passing Tron’s disks into his hands. He fluttered backward, leaving Tron suddenly cold.

Tron regarded his disks, wondering just what Sam was dragging him into. 

Whatever it was, he was eager to find out.

Chapter Text

Two

Sam watched hungrily as Tron reached back to dock his disks. Transforming himself into a fluttery, siren-esque mermaid had been startling, but now that he'd gotten used to the idea, he really, really wanted to see what Tron would look like. The program was already sex on legs, chances were fucking good that he'd be just as gorgeous with fins. 

Tron’s faintly glowing blue eyes met Sam’s blatant stare and the flicker of red in their depths made Sam shiver; he knew, now, that this activation of Tron’s latent Rinzler coding meant that Tron wanted him as badly as Sam did. For a moment, he considered calling off this little experiment and tackling Tron on the beach, but the allure of merman Tron called him insistently. 

Tron’s disks clicked into place and a wash of pixels swept over his shoulders and down his body. Unlike Sam, who had been taken off guard by the sudden loss of his legs, Tron sank, but managed to keep his head and shoulders above the water with slow, powerful strokes of his arms. The changes to his interface were subtle; his black armour became somehow tighter and sleeker, and Sam thought he detected an iridescent blue sheen, as though he was coated in oil.

“Show me your tail,” Sam demanded.

Tron chuckled and leaned back, his arms scudding, and his massive fish tail rose from the depths like a sea serpent, black and glistening, dotted with blue lights and etched in circuitry down its length.

“I think it's bigger than mine,” Sam realized, annoyed. “Why is yours bigger than mine?!”

Tron’s smirk became distinctly smug. “Perhaps because I'm built for battle, the interface structured itself for my function.”

“What the hell does it think my function is?” Sam wondered, looking down at his own slender white tail where it gently undulated to keep him afloat. 

“I have some ideas,” Tron said slyly, sliding through the water to get behind him. His tail brushed against Sam’s and his breath caught. “I… I see what you mean. There are far more sensors in this tail than there need to be.”

Trying to keep his voice steady while shocks still ran up and down his entirely new anatomy, Sam explained, “It's for if we need to navigate by feel instead of sight.” 

“I see.” Slowly, Tron’s tail returned, nudging behind Sam as though he wanted to spoon. His arms closed in and his black-gloved hands glided up Sam’s pale belly, tickling the two strips of light running from Sam's collarbones to his pelvic fins. “I would like to navigate you by feel. I think your interface is tapping into some leftover siren coding. It's very nice.”

“So you're built to kick ass and I'm built to–” Sam cut off as Tron’s tail coiled around his own, making him shudder and squirm. 

“You're a User,” Tron reminded him, low and smooth. “You're built for no one but yourself. I just want to enjoy you.”

“Well,” Sam squeaked, and cleared his throat. “That does help me feel slightly better.” 

“I can make you feel much better if you let me.”

Tron’s flirtation hit as hard as his disks, making Sam’s face burn and stomach tense with arousal. He allowed his weight to fall back against Tron's broad chest, having learned that he could trust in the program's immense strength. He reached behind him, one hand burying in Tron’s hair to hold his head steady as he twisted to find his lips, the other squeezing Tron’s scaly hip.

Tron moaned into his mouth and the sound vibrated through their bodies, melting whatever was left of Sam’s bones. Tron had this way of acting like every touch was divine, like Sam just had to look at him and he was already driven to the edge. If he'd been human, the intense desire would have been suspicious, but Tron had nothing to gain from it. He didn't need Sam's money or influence, he already stood as a watchdog over the rest of the system leaders. No, his reactions were all sincere, so honest and hungry and addicting that sometimes Sam couldn't bear to leave him and return to the outer world.

“Let's go,” he managed to murmur, pulling away just enough to speak. “Or I'm going to fuck you on this beach and we'll never see anything.”

“We'll see each other,” Tron countered. He massaged the ridge of scales where Sam's dick would be. “Do these interfaces have inputs and outputs?”

Rocking his hips against the pressure, Sam couldn't quite remember. “Uh… maybe? All programs do, right? It's just a… a question of compatibility?”

“I want to find out.”

Laughing breathlessly, Sam disentangled himself from Tron’s wandering hands and put some space between them. “Later. I want to get under the waves and see what's down there before we lose the chance.”

“You tease me, my User,” Tron sighed, but he allowed Sam to slip out of his grasp. 

With a parting smile, Sam rolled backward and plunged beneath the waves. 

He still didn't know what, exactly, the Sea of Simulation actually was. Kevin's explanations had been lacking, giving Sam the impression that Kevin had thrown a bunch of garbage code together and placed it between the Grid's programs and the Portal. He'd described a kind of primordial medium, not a substance and not just energy, but a crackling, humming mix of the two. It seethed with wild potential and had, long ago, allowed for the spontaneous appearance of the ISOs. 

Driving Sam to wonder: What else could be hiding in its unknown depths? What else had come into existence outside the control of the Users?

The water itself shared some few properties with water in the outside world. It ebbed and flowed, supporting Sam’s body. It blocked the light, almost immediately limiting Sam’s vision. Although it wasn’t cold and didn’t feel wet, it made his skin shiver: perhaps some latent energy within its particles. When he tried to breathe it in, it filled his throat and lungs with sparkles, but he didn't feel like he would drown. And the sound it made wasn't the lapping and splashing that Sam expected, but a kind of humming, crackling sound, like an old monitor. It would take some getting used to.

At least his body became accustomed to it within moments. Even as his mind reeled from the discordance between expectation and reality, his new interface cut easily through the water, twisting and undulating to propel him far more quickly than his human legs could ever hope to achieve. He followed the sandy bottom, swimming deeper. The darkness closed in, limiting his vision to blurred shadows; even the bright white glow of his circuit lights could barely penetrate the gloom. 

Something made his tail tingle; glancing back, he saw Tron’s circuit lights gleam faintly where he swam close to Sam’s flank. Curious, Sam came to a stop so he could close his eyes and focus on the new sensory information collected by his updated interface. Immediately, he felt the presence of something large moving beside him, churning the water. It was like he was lying beside Tron in bed, but instead of simply sensing the shifting of the mattress, he could sense the contours of his head and face, the movements of his arms and hands. 

The side of his face prickled a moment before Tron palmed his cheek. “Are you all right?” Tron asked, his voice warbling amongst the background static. 

Sam leaned into the touch and stroked up Tron’s arm to his shoulder, keeping his eyes closed to savour the sensation. “I'm fine,” he assured the worried program after following his shoulder and neck to his face. There he paused, his thumb tracing his strong jaw. “Just getting used to these new senses.”

“Mmm.” Tron’s thoughtful hum vibrated up Sam’s arm. “Please continue.”

Chuckling, Sam pulled away again. “I'm not going to give up that easily.”

“I assure you, nothing about you is easy.” Even with his eyes closed, Sam could hear Tron’s smile.

He led them on, swimming over a desert of rippling sand. After a time, the flow of the water changed, feeling more solid, and he discovered why when he encountered a gritty wall of stone. Following its gradual curve, he decided that it was one of the pillars jutting up from the sea: a clump of solid code amongst the shifting currents of the Sea. Past it, he found another. And then another. It was a cluster of stone pillars. 

Amongst the cluster, the water churned and eddied, as though the stone here was uneven, perhaps broken. Before he could investigate it further, a pale light in the distance caught his attention. He fluttered away from the cluster of pillars, heading deeper into the Sea. 

The pale illumination gradually increased, revealing a vertical beam of light in the black. It emanated from the seafloor and disappeared far above, likely becoming one of the pillars of light that cut through the Grid's sky. As they approached, Sam watched with interest as the place where the light met the sand seemed to boil, releasing bubbles of liquid energy to float away.

“Any idea what that is?” Sam asked, drawing nearer and poking one of the bubbles. His finger passed in and out of it without resistance.

“The light itself seems to be generating energy,” Tron said.

Smiling at Tron’s flummoxed expression, Sam added, “Did you know about this?” 

“No.”

“Then my gift worked.” Carefully, Sam caught a fist-sized bubble between his white-gloved hands. “You've seen something new.”

“I'm always learning new things with you--Sam!” Even as Tron barked a warning, he grabbed Sam’s arm and jerked him away from something. 

Startled, Sam finally saw it: a slender, eel-like creature so dark that he could barely see it. The size of his arm, it twisted through the water and swam through the bubble Sam had been holding. As it passed through the energy, a delicate filigree of circuits brightened down the length of its long body and the energy vanished. The little creature flickered away, heading toward the next bubble.

“Holy shit,” Sam murmured. “Do you know what that is?”

Beside him, still holding Sam’s arm, Tron shook his head.

“I think it's eating. I think it's another spontaneous organism!” Sam pulled out of Tron’s grip and followed the thing, fascinated. “It wasn't just the ISOs that came out of the sea–” He cut off when a current shifted against him, alerting him to the movements of something far larger than the little eel. He glanced at Tron, wondering if the program had moved away without Sam noticing, but he was hovering in the same place. “Did you feel that?” he asked.

“Feel what?”

Sam spun slowly in place, his senses straining, but nothing else happened. “Nothing, I guess,” he finally muttered. “Maybe these sensors are making me jumpy.” He flicked his tail and followed the little eel-like energy eater as it moved from bubble to bubble. “I can't believe this,” he said softly, watching it glow and darken. “This place gets crazier every time I visit. Are there more of them? Do they reproduce?”

Another current tickled over his hypersensitive scales. He ignored it. Entranced by the creature, he reached out to touch it. 

Tron grabbed his wrist an instant before something black lashed out from the surrounding darkness and snapped around the little eel. For a moment, Sam thought it was another eel, then he realized that it was an extremity of something far larger. As it tangled with the eel, a series of lights flashed brightly up its length, revealing that the tentacle led up to a mass of writhing arms as large as a human. The mass briefly glowed with the blue white of pure energy and then went dark, obscuring its body. 

The eel was gone, absorbed into the larger creature.

“Holy shit,” Sam breathed, retreating from the thing. 

The hum of an active identity disk made him glance back; Tron, his helmet already up, held one of his disks as his other hand pushed Sam behind himself.

“Don't kill it,” Sam protested. “It might be the only one of its kind!”

Tron's lights shifted to red. His head lowered and his voice emerged rough, vibrating with a low, dangerous purr. “If it attacks you, there won't be any left of its kind.”

Sam shivered. Tron had been worried about Sam being in danger, but the chilling reality was that Rinzler was the most dangerous creature on the Grid. 

He tugged on Rinzler’s arm, drawing him away toward the other side of the pillar of light. The many-tentacled creature remained where it was; it seemed to prefer the darkness beyond the light, likely picking off the smaller animals that consumed the energy bubbles. “It probably won't attack us,” he said. “We don't look like its food.”

Even as he said it, though, the currents played over Sam’s scales, stronger this time. Rinzler must have sensed it as well, he growled and tilted his head this way and that, hunting the surrounding water. 

“But I think it's food for something else,” Sam added weakly. 

On the other side of the pillar, somewhere behind the tangled knot of tentacles, a circular array of colourful lights brightened and began to flash in a dizzying pattern. Sam watched it as it seemed to approach, mesmerized, trying to figure out what was making it.

His fascination turned to horror when the light array split into pieces and a massive black void opened in the middle. The currents shifted violently, so strong that they dragged Sam and Rinzler toward it, and the tentacle creature vanished into the void. Sam fluttered his tail, desperate to stay back but unable to fight the current. Rinzler punched his disk into the sea floor and held on, locking them into place.

The powerful current died as quickly as it had started and the void closed. As soon as it did, more lights appeared, flashing and brightening, and finally revealing what had just attempted to consume them. The lights ran down the length of a massive serpent, so long that Sam had to turn in place to watch the lights circle around the area. His shock deepened as he took in the vast scale of the thing. It had to be a hundred feet long. Two hundred. And thick around as a semi trailer as it coiled around the light pillar. It must have been lying in wait for the other animals that fed on this oasis.

The lights faded as it finished absorbing its meal, throwing its massive body back into obscurity.

The currents shifted.

“Let's get the fuck out of here,” Sam whispered. Something told him that this particular beast wouldn't have a problem consuming something that wasn't typically on its menu. 

Rinzler nodded, freed his disk, wrapped an arm around Sam’s waist, and thrust them away with a powerful surge of his tail.

The currents churned behind them as the behemoth shifted.

Rinzler twisted as though to turn and fight, but Sam snagged his arm again. “We can't kill it!”

“I will not allow it to devour you,” Rinzler growled.

“It's fucking huge.” Sam kept pulling him on. “We'll find somewhere to hide.” The moment he said it, he remembered, “The rocks! It felt like there might have been some cracks or crevices.”

Rinzler purred his disapproval.

“If we can't hide, you can destroy it,” Sam allowed. “I just want to give it a chance.”

Behind them, the water heaved with the passage of the silent behemoth and the black gloom flickered like lightning in thick clouds. Sam put on a burst of speed, only to realize that the waves that the monster created made it nearly impossible to navigate.

Where the fuck are the stones?!

The surrounding water suddenly lit up from the beast’s mesmerizing display, revealing that it sped close behind them. Rinzler, apparently deciding that it had approached close enough, whirled around and freed his second disk in one smooth motion. 

Sam’s stomach sank as he envisioned Rinzler eviscerating the thing. He winced and looked away and was startled to find, in the leviathan's light, the formation of stone pillars and boulders only a few yards away.

And, there, a slim gap just large enough for two mermen.

“Rinzler!” he snapped, grabbing Rinzler’s fins and giving a hard yank. When Rinzler’s helmet tilted toward him, Sam pointed at the little gap. “Come on!”

Sam could feel the vibration of Rinzler’s exasperated snarl, but Rinzler obliged him by executing a tight somersault and diving toward the space, Sam sprinting just ahead of him.

Behind them, the lights dimmed as the void of the leviathan's mouth opened and it began to suck them in. Sam and Rinzler thrashed at the water, undulating furiously to fight its incredible, tearing force. He thought he was going backward; until Rinzler hooked their arms together and they synchronized their movements to slowly make it to the gap.

As soon as it was within reach, Sam jabbed his disk into the stone to give himself a handle to haul himself in. Rinzler reached past him with his own disk to drag them further inside, and Sam did the same again. With each turn, they inched their way inside. Once in the protection of the crevice, Rinzler forced Sam against the wall and blanketed him with his own body, holding him steady as the leviathan hovered just outside, sucking as hard as it could suck.

Sam tucked his face into the crook of Rinzler’s neck, laughing to find himself in such a position.

After several long seconds, the roar of the water faded and the leviathan's huge black bulk slithered past the crevice.

“Why are you laughing?” Rinzler demanded. “That thing nearly consumed you.”

“You mean it nearly met its end,” Sam countered. Adrenaline throbbed through his veins, intoxicating him. He swept his sinuous tail around Rinzler’s, groaning at the trembling sensation. “You ever seen something that big? I mean, other than my dad's ego?”

“Your arrogance,” Rinzler murmured.

Sam laughed again. “You like my arrogance.”

Rinzler’s growling sigh blended with the hiss of his helmet folding away from his face, revealing the burning hunger in his crimson eyes and the curl of a smirk. The smirk twisted into annoyance when the leviathan swam past their crevice again, its scaly hide barely visible in the faint illumination of their circuit lights. 

Sam palmed Rinzler’s cheek to recapture his attention, brushing a thumb along his jaw and under his ear. “It looks like we're going to be here a while,” he began. “What do you think–”

Before he could finish, Rinzler lunged closer, crushing their mouths together, his hands slamming into the wall to either side of Sam’s head, his hips pinning him. His longer tail wrapped around Sam’s and squeezed, hard , and Sam gasped in surprise and pleasure; it felt like Rinzler's rough hand had just squeezed his dick. 

His entire tail alive with sensation, all Sam could do was squirm and thrust helplessly. The sensitivity he had programmed was backfiring in a way that he never could have predicted, leaving him dizzy, intoxicated. It was like that moment with Rinzler so long ago, straddling his lap and overwhelmed by the connection between master and subordinate program. 

At least he wasn’t alone. Rinzler seemed just as overwhelmed. He broke away from their kiss and buried his face in Sam’s neck as his tail squeezed rhythmically, his fingers crushing the rocks to either side of Sam’s head. “How do I take you like this?” he rasped. “Sam, I need you.”

“I don't know,” Sam groaned. “Just… just do what feels good.” He wormed a hand down between their bellies and stroked the small, lacy fins framing Rinzler’s hips, knowing they were extremely sensitive on his own body. “Here. Do you feel that?”

Rinzler rewarded him by mouthing the blade of his jaw, scraping his teeth across the skin and sucking the jut of his throat. Sam allowed his head to roll back, allowing Rinzler access, and nearly shouted when Rinzler fondled his fins. Combined with the pressure around his tail, it made his head spin.

“ Sam ,” Rinzler breathed gutturally. “You're changing.” He squirmed down Sam’s body, bringing Sam’s attention down to his hips. He couldn't see much in the dim light, but he could feel a sudden sharp increase in sensitivity. Rinzler’s face pressed to him and Sam cried out, shocked by the warm lathe of Rinzler’s tongue. He gripped Rinzler’s head and gasped again as Rinzler sucked on his new, changing anatomy. 

“What is it?” he managed to demand, trying to tug Rinzler off of him. 

Instead of answering, Rinzler grabbed his wrist and pried his hand away, pinning it to the stone. His face pressed harder and Sam felt the intrusion of his tongue into his body, making him moan and try to thrust into Rinzler’s mouth so he could get deeper. The combination of Rinzler’s dominance and the firm caress of his tongue quickly dissolved Sam into a panting mess. His gut twisted and his tension spiked, something was shifting in his body, crackling down the length of his tail. 

Just as that molten heat began to pool in his pelvis, Rinzler pulled away. “Delicious,” he murmured. “You programmed this interface with the input and output in the same location. I admire your efficiency.”

“I what?” Sam echoed faintly. “Same location?” 

Rinzler brought his hand to his body and allowed some space to open between them, where he discovered the hard, curving length of his erect dick, and, around its base, the swollen edges of some kind of opening. It glowed, brightening and fading with his heartbeat. He stroked its slippery lips and shuddered at the sensation. Unable to resist, he dipped his fingers in.

“Stop that,” Rinzler chided, brushing him away. 

“You want it all to yourself?”

“Always.” 

“Do you have the same?” Sam stroked down Rinzler’s stomach until he found a distinctive bulge and the hard tip of his output port, already erupting from a swollen opening in his smooth, scaly skin and thick with tiny, glowing circuitry. As he palmed it, Rinzler growled and thrust against him, and his entire output emerged in one smooth curve. Beneath its base, Sam fingered the edges of his input and sank into his slick warmth. They groaned together as Rinzler squeezed around his fingers. 

Only yards away, the leviathan scraped past the opening of their crevice. 

“That's hot as hell,” Sam whispered. “We're going to give that thing a show.” Chuckling breathlessly, he plunged his fingers deeper, rewarded by Rinzler biting his neck and rolling his hips. The movement forced the tip of Rinzler's output into Sam’s swollen input, making his entire body stiffen in shock from both the physical sensation and the circuit to circuit connection. “Fuck that's good,” he gasped. “Fuck, Rinzler.”

Rinzler grunted in agreement. He reached down and squeezed Sam’s cock, stroking it a few times before aiming it lower, to slide into his input even as he drove into Sam’s. 

“ Ah– !” For a moment, Sam couldn’t breathe. The crushing force of Rinzler’s body around his dick and the unexpectedly deep penetration stole his ability to move and think. He clung to Rinzler’s shoulders, his mind as dark as the Sea, his body capable of little more than primal undulations. 

Rinzler’s growl filled the narrow space, warping in the water, and his hips rocked faster and faster, fucking Sam and fucking himself. At each thrust, his circuits struck Sam’s core, sparking and electrifying, shaking Sam’s body. It was almost too much, making him tremble helplessly as Rinzler swept him higher. Every muscle locked up, the heat lashed from his belly down his tail and up into his chest. 

“R-Rinzler,” Sam sobbed. “ Fuck! ” His dick pulsed and he stiffened in Rinzler’s punishingly tight embrace, releasing into his input.

Rinzler’s growl became ragged and breathless, he crushed Sam close, and a powerful jolt of energy tore through Sam’s body, briefly whiting out his senses. 

When he snapped back to reality, his heavy, satisfied body throbbed all over and his mind was a fog. He hung limply, still pinned to the wall, becoming gradually aware of his partner relaxing in his arms. Slowly, he let his tail unravel and loosened his grip. When he finally opened his eyes, he met Tron’s unfocused blue gaze and grinned. “What do you think of these interfaces?” he asked.

Tron nuzzled his neck, kissing the sharp ache where Rinzler’s bite had bruised the skin. “I think we need to explore them more thoroughly,” he said softly. His tail slid free from Sam's and they both gasped as their inputs and outputs disengaged. 

“I agree.” Sam watched, fascinated, as their strange new aquatic anatomy slowly retracted into their bodies. “I feel like we've only gotten a taste of what they can do.” 

Tron kissed his cheekbone, nudging his head up so he could capture his mouth and plunder it with slow, insistent thoroughness. Sam yielded to him, still basking in the heavy warmth of afterglow, more than happy to relax and allow Tron to take whatever he wanted. 

When Tron slid down to pepper kisses down his throat and across his shoulder, Sam chuckled and tugged on his thick, dark hair. “You want to stay in this little crack the whole time?” he asked. “There's a whole ocean to see.” 

“Everything I want to see is right here.” Tron turned to glare at the crevice's black opening. “Besides, if that thing is still out there and it tries to consume you again, I'm going to get… agitated.”

“Hmm, that is a good point.” Sam let his palms smooth down Tron’s back and over the swell where his muscular tail began. “I really don't want to be the cause of all these previously undiscovered creatures going extinct.” He tilted his hips to rub their fins together. “In that case, we'd better stay here a little longer to make sure it's really gone…”

**Art!**

Omg look at this beautiful watercolour by Glowzilla48 💕💕💕💕