At the sound of the blade unfolding, which is a smooth matte-metal click, Caleb's breath starts to go a little funny. And he won't quit blinking. He looks faintly incredulous with blond eyelashes fluttering away — shuffling inexorably backward, just short of taking the step that'll take him back against the furniture. Nathan's bedroom is rigged for moody lighting and total soundlessness, and for cameras.

The tip of the knife catches on the hem of Caleb's shirt. A slip of flat white navel is visible. Nathan can scrape a line up his belly with the tip of this thing and he'll barely even bleed, with that light a touch and that sharp a blade, but he'll turn red. Despite all suspicions to the contrary, corporate drone Caleb Smith is not something that anybody made in a lab somewhere, someplace with quality controls — thus the fucked-up spine he still has, a decade later. There's imperfections in his surface, little inconsistencies of texture and gristle that'll hitch up under the knife. Predictable irregularities, smaller and finer — Jackson Pollock worked in fractals. All natural, automatic.

"You're a bastard," he says again, which isn't very quotable.

The moment metal touches skin, Caleb's bearing shifts perceptibly. Nathan's bedroom just got a lot smaller for him.

"That's the spirit. Some mixed signals? Some crossed wires, huh?" Lightly, while grinning. Blood is dribbling from Nathan's nose where Caleb hit him. He can feel it painting his upper lip. It was a pretty good swing, a nice surprise for somebody who must not get into a lot of fistfights, and by now Caleb hugs his wrenched wrist to his chest, but the look on his face when the blow landed was sheer pleasure. If it weren't for that look, Nathan would be demolishing him right now, but it's a promise of something much fucking weirder.

Nathan's other hand is on the back of his neck, cradling him in place like a hefty relic with the soft hair of his nape poking up between his fingers — if he lunges forward and headbutts Nathan in the face, Nathan will hit him back again, harder. But this isn't about that. His thumb traces a line down Caleb's nape.

"I mean, I guess. Is this part of the test, or are you just screwing around?"

"I'm not pissed off at you. I'm impressed. That got you going, didn't it?"

Nathan glances down his body, down from Caleb's flat stomach to the really interesting part, the guilty swell in his pants. He's hard, hard from the clinch of bodies and maybe because of the pain, or in spite of the pain — Nathan hadn't really hurt him, just laughingly manhandled him back into position, and it'd be hard for Caleb really to hurt anyone. The throb of pain Nathan is currently experiencing is more like a contact high.

Nathan palms him curiously. Beneath that uneasy smile Caleb's flushing with color, from his collarbone up — the kind of subtle color creeping up and up that Nathan ordinarily notices under very different circumstances. He's just so soft. Which flips the paradigm on its head, in a way — girls are soft in certain places, concave-convex and carved out to get naked, while Caleb is slim and ill-defined everywhere. Smooth, flat, pitiable stomach — navel — thighs. Nathan wants to cut his clothes off. No, on second thought, Nathan wants him to strip.

He's never killed somebody with a knife before, but it's good to try new things. It can't be much harder than jimmying off a stuck plastic panel with a screwdriver tip, or lifting a sheet of silicone with a scalpel. The knife's all-titanium with a four-inch blade and it had been heavy in his pocket all the way down the hall, rattling against the flat of his keycard like a jaunty parody of an erection. It feels good. It feels clean.

He's not going to pound him, or they'll break the fucking furniture. He's going to exercise control, scraping with the blunt edge of the blade to draw a pink track on the skin — lightly, teasing. Caleb palms at his own dick now, uncertain if that's what Nathan wants, and Nathan scratches him with the tip of the knife.

Just a scratch — the blade singing out as it pares a red track across Caleb's upper arm, making him wince and jerk his head to the side — which is stupid, evolutionary reflex-speaking, because the smooth expanse of his neck is bare and it gives Nathan a kick of pleasure to watch the veins pounding in his throat. More importantly, he stops trying to grab his dick.

"Hold still. Sorry, it's just, you know, these things are sharp."

The knife slides up, the flat of it gliding over cloth and only catching a little — he can sense the skin beneath Caleb's clothes puckering with fear even as the spiteful grimace on his face deepens to a rictus. The side of the blade finds the hollow of Caleb's armpit. Nathan can watch him hitch and whimper. He's trying very hard to put a brave face on it, to fix his jaw and stare back in Nathan's face with uncomprehending hate and dread — but it works.

And on some basal lizard-brain level he's excited. Excited despite the fact that Nathan pulled a knife on him or excited because of it, what's the fucking difference. He still wants this, how's that for a curveball?

Nathan drops his hand to his side, rolling his fingers around the knife.

"You know I'm just kidding, dude. I'm not going to fuck you. Take your shirt off."

Caleb does, peeling off his sweatshirt overhead and letting the shirt underneath be tugged away — watching him, watching Nathan watch his body. This must be one of his best and coolest tee shirts, printed with a panoramic view of some forestscape. He's worn it already. His hands fumble on the hem.

"Pants too," Nathan says. Caleb's eyebrows go up and apart, like he's been furrowing his brow slightly these last few days and not even realized it. "What, are you dense?"

"I thought you wanted me to hold still." I thought you weren't going to fuck me. At what point does the fucking start, exactly?

"You're going to want to be lying down for this."

Caleb sinks back against the day bed like a puppet with the strings cut. Sliding his hips back and rolling down the waistband of his jeans, still almost half-hard but embarrassed about it, stirring wherever Nathan touches him even if it's just to wrestle him back against the cushion.

He's breathing funny still, rising and falling beneath Nathan's weight. Quick maybe — pulse elevated. Caleb Smith doesn't belong to a gym, he doesn't track his steps on his phone, he doesn't stream fitness videos or go on long walks. If they do fuck, which they probably won't, it'll be the first cardio he's gotten in a long time. Nathan wonders how long he'll last.

He takes Caleb's cock in his hand — kind of a cute thing, vulnerable and red against his shaking thigh that prickles with blond hair. Strawberry blonde, like they say in catalogs and drop-down menus, with a prosthetic e. Flat on his back, Caleb makes a sound. Nathan draws back his foreskin and presses his thumb to the wet pink interior — then his thumbnail. Caleb makes a loud sound, a complaint.

"Do you think you can get it up? Or is the knife too much?"

Interestingly textural — velvet and slick, matte and gloss. He adjusts his grip, not on Caleb's dick but on the knife, which is one of those survival essentials Nathan puts a lot of stock in — there must be six of them in the facility tucked away in bedrooms and server rooms, laser-cut to specifications and easy in his hand. Caleb is very still now and very quiet; you can hear the metallic sound of the blade scraping skin, or maybe Nathan just imagines he can. Nathan tugs on Caleb's dick for good luck and sticks his hand down his waistband to fumble out his own. The comparison is good; he likes what he sees.

"You're insane," Caleb says, a last resort. Last night he'd have said, you're drunk.

"You're scared, but you're horny. You can't tell the difference."

Head bent at a bad angle, chin stuck out stubbornly, Caleb is watching him, being watched. His eyes are wet and shiny with indignation. Nathan leans down to mouth at the side of Caleb's head — he tastes like soap, smells like the inside of Nathan's shower, and Nathan's beard prickles where it rubs his cheek.

When he rises up again Caleb's mouth is open, like he's still waiting to be kissed.

Nathan hitches Caleb's jeans down to his knees and fingers him apart — he's tight and quaking around Nathan's fingers, slick with copper-tinged spit. It's satisfying working inside him and the organic nastiness elevates it beyond a chore — if Nathan stretches out his fingers and shows a little initiative he can find the specific places to press that will make Caleb come. He can ruin his orgasms for fun or press hard on the soft flushed place just below his balls and make him yell. He can make him bleed without any difficulty at all.

Caleb doesn't want him to stop, exactly. He wants to squirm and close his legs, Nathan can tell, out of sheer disgust with himself — and he can't, with his leg wrenched up and the softness of his thighs exposed, all that pink flesh and all those veins. Not much of a team player. Mark that down on next year's performance review. Nathan withdraws his fingers, enjoying the slutty little sound Caleb makes — he tries to cross his legs, to bring up his knee and have his thigh block his erection, but Nathan presses him flat against the upholstery with the broad side of the blade and he seems to get the picture. Hard enough to hurt, to squirm away, to whimper. If he's really good, Nathan might only fuck him with the handle.

Caleb arches up to kiss him, and his mouth is still raw with alcohol — on the offensive now, he's hoping Nathan will drop the knife long enough for Caleb to snatch it up and stick it in the side of his neck, or up under his chin. Nathan bites back and presses hard. Caleb kicks out in vain, complaining the whole time, grinding up against Nathan like he's daring him to open up a big red gash. The two of them are jammed in close on a platform that's really not made for any bulk more substantial than Kyoko's tiny balletic body — and Caleb is anything but graceful here; the sleek ground edge of the blade presses in just beneath the ridge of his ribcage, in the soft spot where the hard bone ends. His own thumb rubs up against the corner of the blade, and out of the corner of his eye for a moment Nathan sees red.

Ava wouldn't do this if you made her. Caleb liked seeing her on her knees, though, cute and pert like a schoolgirl. The student in front of the master. Nathan sucks him off slow and messy, loud — never letting him forget that it's a man jammed between his knees, groaning and panting with every sloppy pull. In his head he can compose an essay, the kind of brief he'd deliver if his mouth weren't full of quaking flesh — oral sex, the first paired sex act and a timeless classic. Fuck, even primates do it; primates probably love it. His beard scratches the whole vulnerable zone of Caleb's gingery crotch until the skin's a shocking Pantone shade of red, and when Nathan mouths at his balls he can feel Caleb shudder against him. Wanting and not-wanting, stimulated and disgusted. Two fingers in his ass, and he's greedy for more, already dripping; three fingers is easy, the same motion as Caleb's whole body spasms and tightens, against Nathan's palm and inside Nathan's throat. Four fingers might be too ambitious.

Neither of them is thinking too much about anything that exists outside this room. Volume isn't an issue. Just two hands and a mouth full of teeth.

Caleb cries out in dismay and Nathan lets him drop — tasting bleach, grinning with a wet mouth. He turns his head to spit.

His arm's starting to get sore like this, you know, and they've reached a point of diminishing returns. The knife drops and skitters. Nathan hauls up on an elbow and leans in close, hiking himself up alongside Caleb's abdomen; Caleb's hand flashes up to seize his shoulder, leaving a red handprint.

Nathan swipes his tongue around in his mouth, thoughtfully lewd. "You like watching girls change?"

"What?"

"I mean, not in real life, but — you like watching them get dressed, you like watching them put clothes on. You liked watching Ava."

"As a behavior—" The accusation cuts to the quick, apparently, judging from the way his voice breaks. Caleb the subjective spectator, squinting for a glimpse of robot nipple.

"You got offended when I maybe glanced at your browser history, but you peeped on her while she was changing. The sightlines are all there; I built the place, I should know. You couldn't help yourself. You liked watching her get dressed even more than you liked watching her strip."

"I don't want to talk about Ava right now." Caleb's voice has a tremor. His dick is sticky against Nathan's belly, going soft. Maybe he broke him.

"You could have asked her to strip. I mean, she'd do it. Why wouldn't she? Ava would do anything to get you going. You just needed to ask her."

There's no expertise; Caleb doesn't wrap his arms around Nathan like a lover or hook his bare foot around the back of Nathan's knee or really demonstrate any kind of finesse. The two of them are off the day bed now and on the tile, slipping to the floor in a hard tangle and rolling over, and Caleb's body doesn't even make a play for sexual artistry in the midst of all that humping and gouging. But his hand is a hard vise even before it clamps on Nathan's windpipe.

The pressure isn't so strong, at first, that Nathan can't exhale hard under strain and draw back into a grin. Everybody feels better after they break something.

"You bastard—" Caleb is blinking and swivelling, angry again and a little dopey even as he spits the words at close range. But those two clammy hands form a collar around Nathan's throat, a flushed reddish band — he can see it in his mind's eye as clearly as if they were fucking in front of a mirror, Caleb's ragged nails where they dig in to cut shallow semi-circles, his bumpy knuckles standing out white on pink. "—you fuck—"

"Let's not get crazy," Nathan says, but what he's thinking is come on, you pussy, do it.

Do it for her. Caleb hates him, and he should. That's the missing data point in the dossier, that Caleb Smith pops a boner when he gets angry and if you stick him with a partner he's not afraid to hurt he morphs into a risk-taking freak.

All the bones in his fingers roll as he flexes. Caleb's pretty face is twisted in a wince — confused, horny, angry, inflamed. He's going to have to coax him.

Nathan grits his teeth and sets his jaw, jerking his head back. Caleb's thumb digs in against the artery and both of them just let it happen, even though a tiny amount of pressure in the wrong place will drastically change the nature of this ballgame. Seeing spots, feeling Caleb's fingers press — his nose is bleeding freely again, and he sees Caleb's face through screwed-up eyes as the blots of color rise into his field of vision, feeling the squeeze of desperation. Who knew the guy had it in him, really? The kid's next to unrecognizable, his sweet suburban apple-pie face is a grimacing mask.

He can't do it, because what would happen to Ava? He's smart, but he's not that smart — not smart enough to crash through Nathan's electronic safeguards, and he knows it. He can't do it, because he's scared, because what would happen to him, or because he'll never explain this one in a court of law, or because he's a decent person — a pretty okay guy, who likes thigh-highs and pegging and clean lines of code. Pretty okay, nothing special. RIP Caleb Smith, who liked watching girls take off their clothes.

Caleb Smith doesn't need much coaxing now, bearing down against Nathan from above as Nathan jostles blindly and halfheartedly from beneath — it must be nice, knowing you're a couple millimeters away from murdering your boss. Every blood vessel in Nathan's neck is throbbing, and every second that goes by inches closer to the black edge of unconsciousness, already worming around at the corners of his vision — or Caleb could reach a little farther and jam that knife up inside of him, bring it all out in a red gush, all that blood that's currently forcing itself into Nathan's hard cock and failing to circulate through his brain. He's hard as fucking granite and suffocating slowly, with all of Caleb's strength stretched out against him — the back of Nathan's skull strikes the floor twice, hard enough to rattle the screens on the far wall, and if his home network rig is the last thing on his mind before he goes, he'll have to laugh.

Caleb sobs, and the grip around Nathan's throat is broken. It's almost a disappointment.

The first surge of breath burns like fuck on the way down, flooding Nathan's lungs in one massive heave — and for a moment there's nothing sweeter, the godlike dizzy moment of pulling away from the precipice in one big yank, all at once. The pain is just a sweetener. For a long moment Nathan just lies there with another body astride him, effectively alone — eyes closed, big chest rising and falling with satisfying force, waiting.

The light pouring from the side catches the irregular tracks of tears on Caleb's face — Nathan's delighted by their spontaneous appearance, big fat tears welling from his big shiny eyes and falling fast. You can practically taste the salt.

"I didn't mean it," Nathan wheezes, "when I said you weren't a good programmer. You're pretty good. You're okay."

It doesn't get a rise out of him, or he doesn't answer, either one. Caleb's a wreck now, pulling away but too stiffly proud to crawl — Nathan only has to reach out his hand and he stops dead, halted with Nathan's fingers spanning the furrow of his spine.

"What is it? What's the matter?" His own voice is cracked and hoarse — damaged — but he can still sound solicitous. Caleb's head drops against the mattress, and cringes away.

Nathan pulls himself up — his throat is still burning — and pulls himself in close. He can spoon Caleb from behind, pressed close up against his soft freckled back. Caleb is sobbing still, sans dignity, sans everything. He can feel the little shakes of his shoulders, rocking back against his own chest, he can hear the little sounds of humiliated anger Caleb is trying to swallow and failing. It's got him really, really hard.

Nathan jerks himself off, patient as he listens to Caleb's weeping, with a hard constricted band of pain still spanning his neck where Caleb's hand once was. The backs of Caleb Smith's legs are soft, they're a part of him nobody else has really seen or handled — not like this, up close and with relish. Nathan's already slick but bringing himself to the brink and actually going for it almost seems like a waste. He's sweating and shivering, swearing, hitching his hips up and going for it. He's near the edge already. Caleb brought him there.

He can smell the salt, hear the irregular jump of his sobs — and you can't fake that, regular and random, stifled. Nathan snakes his arm around — with his fingers still sticky with Caleb's jizz, his other hand jerking at his own cock almost convulsively, short sharp tugs teetering on the edge of disaster as he feels for Caleb's soft throat. Not to choke, just to touch — to feel, wet with sweat and degraded tears, and to smell the pour of chemicals rising off where their bodies meet, like a chemtrail fog. His skin is hot. His cheeks are pink, his blond hair has gone dark with sweat and sticks to the nape of his neck. Nathan sucks on the top knob of his spine and feels Caleb shake beneath him.

And when he does come it's so hard and so strong that he sort of goes blind for a hot second — poured out in the soft squirming tight shallow place at the top of Caleb's legs. Prone and wiped-out, Nathan comes laughing.