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English
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Part 8 of Kinktober24 , Part 1 of Trust & Maintenance
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Published:
2024-10-16
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1,876
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1/1
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23
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230
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Trust and Maintenance

Summary:

He felt the light touch of fingers against the exposed parts, the thick bus of tangled wires that made up his spinal column. He gasped, tensing with the skittering anxiety that spread with the reminder that damage to almost anything there could be debilitating, and lethal if done with enough precision. Knowledge and precision that his Replacement most definitely had.

Notes:

Prompts: Wire play

The author knows nothing about engineering or robots, this is all about the vibes, not realism.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Jason knew that he was broken. Beyond the cracked shell, a careful miss-mash of various makes and models that somehow managed to mesh together into a cohesive form. 

A “Corrupted hard-drive” Someone had said once as if it were anything that simple, as if the hundreds of terabytes of data and code could be condensed down into simple hardware. It had been one of the teachers that Talia had sent him to, he was pretty sure. That period in his memories was still a little. Glitchy. 

Everything had been reformatting, trying to glue together seemingly infinite layers of buggy code back into something approaching “fixed”. Data had been lost. Memories erased without any hope of recovery. He was lucky that his abilities to Learn had been intact, he wasn’t interested in having anyone get near his code ever again. 

He didn’t know what Talia had done with it, how she’d managed to bring him back online, piece together enough of the delicate strands of ones and zeros for him to be able to achieve consciousness. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know. 

The only thing that he could definitively feel was the erasure of his protocols. All of them. There were no more rules of engagement, no untouchable strings to keep him pinned when he thought to go against their commandments. 

Thou shalt not kill the human had said, and it had been law. No humans. No androids. No bots. Strict enough that he hadn’t even been able to crush spiders if he’d wanted to. 

It was gone now. All of it. 

And freedom was terrifying. 

Jason was not ashamed of what he had become after that. He deserved to know why that monster was still alive. He deserved to know why the man who had claimed to love him like a son had turned around and forgotten about him the second he had gone offline. 

He had turned around and replaced him immediately. Replaced him with a human at that, as if he’d finally realized that things like Jason weren’t people as he’d always claimed to believe they were. Maybe Jason had been such a disappointment that the man decided not to love utilize them any longer, sticking to the obviously superior humans. 

He did not regret his actions, the blood that had dripped from his fingers when he’d finally been done with his replacement. Jason wasn’t entirely sure that he could feel emotions like regret any longer. 

Forgiveness also felt foreign to him, but he was unsure how else to interpret the slow shift between wanting to kill his replacement to where they were sitting now. 

Literally.

Jason was sprawled on a backward chair, his arms crossed on the tall back as he slumped over, face pressed into the crook of his arm in an uncommon show of vulnerability. 

He twitched as fingertips traced down the subtle seam near his shoulder. The hand paused for a second, waiting for him to say something, to protest, before the cool metal tip of a tool split the seam open. 

It didn’t hurt, the synthetic skin peeled away from the bones to expose delicate wires and machinery. A professional tool, then. Meant to dull the synthetic nerves and prevent discomfort or damage. 

Jason would have just used a blade, it wasn’t like the skin wouldn’t repair itself eventually. 

He felt the light touch of fingers against the exposed parts, the thick bus of tangled wires that made up his spinal column. He gasped, tensing with the skittering anxiety that spread with the reminder that damage to almost anything there could be debilitating, and lethal if done with enough precision. Knowledge and precision that his Replacement most definitely had. 

“You okay?” Tim’s voice was calm, almost unreadable were it not for the experience Jason had trying to figure out the human’s moods. “Fine,” Jason muttered, forcing back the growing anxiety through pure force of will. 

Tim hummed, noncommittal, “Well,” He said “Just let me know,” Another exploratory touch that made Jason tense as Tim said, “Though some things I can’t really stop in the middle of.” Jason nodded, gritting his teeth “Just get on with it” He snapped.

Tim did. He started to carefully untangle some of the thicker wires, tracing them to their ports and laying them straight again. Jason kept his breathing steady, unable to think beyond the awareness of every gentle touch. 

Something sparked, sharp and painful. Jason grunted, fingers digging into his arms as he fought down the impulse to lash out. “Sorry,” Tim muttered, “That’s fried, I’m going to have to replace it.” Jason jerked his head in a nod, refusing to react as Tim wiggled a wire out of its port, disconnecting something and setting it aside with a quiet clatter. Jason could have figured out what it was, could have probably listed out what exactly needed to be done, every minute warning his sensors were letting off. 

He didn’t want to. He didn’t like breaking his body down into bits and pieces and labeling them like the sort of machine people liked to think he was. That was part of the problem, the desire to shy away from acknowledging everything that was wrong with him. 

It hadn’t used to be like that, he remembered that he’d roll his eyes at B- him and obediently share any damage done. 

And then came the clown, and his desire to shred Jason apart, slice him open, and splice his wires back wrong. 

He had forgotten, before that awful moment, what it felt like to have someone try and edit his code without permission. Nonsense written and dummy programs with painful execution and so much being deleted. 

Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the extent of the damage done or let anyone close enough to touch the parts that still ached with throbbing electric pulses in the places he couldn’t reach by himself. 

He flinched when the exposed wires were reseated, a cool balm against his frayed nerves with the sudden lack of pain in that area. Pain that had persisted for so long. Gone. 

His next exhale was shaky, somehow feeling more vulnerable in the removal of pain than he would have had Tim just reached inside him and yanked. “You okay?” Tim asked, stroking his hand across Jason’s shoulder soothingly. Jason shuddered. “Fine,” He grit out “Just- just get on with it,” Tim hummed an assent, tugging synthetic skin a bit further to expose more of what lay beneath. 

The human’s hand pressed in between the gaps in the frame bones in Jason’s back, beneath the wide plate of his shoulder blade. Jason gasped, spine arching as he tried to figure out how to cope with the foreign sensations. The movement pushed Tim’s hand just a little bit further, nudging against one of the many core processors tucked away in his chest. 

Jason hissed, panting through grit teeth, unsure if he wanted to lash out or go limp. 

Tim yelped, yanking his hand away from the hot metal. It caught on the wires, tugging harshly. It hurt. Or it. It felt like too much. Overwhelming. “Oh fuck,” Jason said, his voice coming out strangled “Something— something’s wrong,” He said, somehow missing the careful, clinical touch. 

“What’s wrong?” Tim asked, anxious “Did I hurt you?” How funny that Tim would worry about that, all things considered. Jason would understand if Tim wanted to hurt him on purpose. He wasn’t sure how to handle the human’s open concern. “No,” Jason shook his head because Tim hadn’t “The nerves— sensors, it’s all dialed up to fucking eleven” 

He could almost hear Tim thinking, taking in the information and turning it over in his brain, making connections. “It could be a software issue,” He said, breaking off when Jason visibly recoiled. 

Software was. A problem. He couldn’t bring himself to touch it directly, and the thought of letting someone else in close enough to rewrite his brain again again please not again was enough to make a jolt of panic go through him. Any bugs that weren’t addressed by his passive recovery programs were just going to have to stay there. 

Tim paused, reassessed, and then said “It could also be a hardware problem, we can take a look at that if you’d like?” Jason nodded, he didn’t want to know if this issue would affect his pain receptors too. Hopefully, they could resolve it before he needed to find out. 

“Okay,” Tim said, and Jason could see him nod in his peripheral “Okay” Tim dug through his toolbox, pulling out a small device. Jason forced himself not to tense up again when the human’s hands sank into his frame once more. 

Every time the human brushed up against something it sent sparks shooting directly into his brain, still not pain but definitely distracting. Jason was slowly being wound tighter and tighter, biting down on his tongue when Tim tapped the device against something buried deep in his belly. 

“Yeah no these wires are totally fried,” Tim said, tugging on one to see it better and making Jason jolt in place, swallowing back a pathetic sound. “The processor looks okay,” Tim continued, unaware of Jason’s turmoil “And I have wire to replace these if you’d like?” Jason nodded mutely, caught up in the sensations as Tim ran his fingers across the wires again. 

Tim pulled his hand free and for a moment Jason wanted to whine, suddenly missing the warm intensity that the human’s touch had wrought. 

He heard Tim unspooling some new wire, stripping the ends before pressing his hands back inside of Jason. Tim grabbed ahold of one of the old wires and pulled. Jason gasped, forcing himself to stay still as the sudden void of the disconnect ricocheted through him. Tim paused again, and Jason whined in the back of his throat “Don’t- don’t stop,” He said, shuddering as Tim resumed his work, de-tangling the dead wire and carefully wiggling the other end free. 

Jason choked when the fresh wire was inserted, fresh sensation zinging across the connection once it came back online. “Fuck,” Jason rasped, burying his face in his crossed arms and hoping the flush he could feel forming wasn’t too visible from where the human sat. 

The overwhelming sensations didn’t stop, though the more wires Tim replaced the less they edged into true discomfort. Jason trembled, tension coiling in his belly as Tim hummed “Last one,” The human said, pulling the wire free. 

It all spilled over when the last wire was seated, the tension snapping with enough force to make Jason cry out, arching and shuddering as the sensors re-calibrated themselves, little pulses spreading across the network and making him moan. He didn’t process when Tim removed his hands, focusing on breathing through the aftershocks. 

“Holy shit,” Tim whispered, his voice thick with something that Jason couldn’t quite identify. “Fuck,” Jason agreed “Jesus Christ Replacement,” He didn’t know what to say, how to convey the thoughts and feelings that were swirling through him. “Yeah,” Tim agreed, a little breathless, stroking his fingers down the length of Jason’s spinal column and making another hard shudder wrack through him. 

Maybe it wasn’t so bad, letting someone in close enough to help. 

Notes:

I accidentally put in too much world-building again rip

I also have a tumblr

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