The hands are always the hard part, not as bad as faces but as an intersection of functionality and aesthetics, they are some serious bullshit. Caleb Smith has exemplary hands — always in motion, typing out lines of code or fumbling against his knees or swiping through the user interface on his phone. For every segment of useable footage there's a fumble of video that shows nothing but fingertips on glass or smudges on a camera lens.

Caleb Smith's fingerprints are on file, all ten of them, among however many other samples of touch data retained on Bluebook servers indefinitely. Nathan might use them for something some day, who the fuck knows.

After they come in from checking out the view — Caleb's rubbing his arms once his coat is off, there's a spot of color on each pale cheek burning and Nathan notices it like a neat trick. He's never seen Caleb exerting himself; it's not half-bad.

Let the poor kid take a piss and change his clothes, let him flick through the same six screens of video and make sure his little girlfriend is okay. It's not even 5 PM yet. They've got time.

Nathan doesn't have the patience for all the games that lead up to sex — having to chase down and tackle everything you want every time you want it or to negotiate for hours over who gets to do what, with what, to who. It's cheap and boring and he is way too rich to put up with boring guests. They meet again halfway; Caleb stands there in his boxers and printed shirt, brittle as blown glass and rumpled from exercise. Deer in the headlights. This part — the forthright request — is easy. Nathan doesn't even have to say it.

Caleb moves with him, back against the keycard panel. Nathan sticks out a hand to lean on and the back of Caleb's head hits the wall.

Caleb hedges a little before he speaks; he is looking at Nathan's mouth the same way he had been looking at the computer screens before Nathan showed up: with mild trepidation. "She isn't at her desk." Big eyes, little vein in his throat pounding. Who else can he possibly mean but Ava? There are only two women in this house as far as Caleb knows, only one of them that Caleb cares about.

"She's just sleeping. More like recharging." (Nathan waves a hand and Caleb flinches.) "She lies on a conductive pad and… you know what, don't worry about it."

Caleb is afraid, but not of him. He's afraid the cameras go both ways, and that Ava will see them. Maybe they do. Maybe she will.

There's never been a shortage of rooms to fuck in around here, mainly because Nathan isn't picky and Kyoko can't complain. The choice of low light and music and sheets and things over the patio or down by the water or the floor of the fabrication lab is mostly to ease the passage; Caleb is softly boring, he's Nathan's friend and his mood after what they saw today is apologetic; a boring setting for sex will keep him penned in better than anything.

The guy is pretty graceless, once Nathan has him on the bed, not especially limber or especially responsive — his fascinated hands make a survey of Nathan's chest, and after the perfunctory necking and encouraging he grabs his leg, which is the next best thing to grabbing his dick. He wants to get to know Nathan better. Maybe they're friends now. Maybe this is the first step to de-escalating things between them and getting back on a mutually inquiring scientific-philosophical footing.

He's curious. He's interested. And so much for all that Reformation-era sexual rigidity; turns out he just needed to get taught.

"Whatever you want," Nathan finds himself saying when his shirt comes off over his head and his glasses hit the nightstand — like he's talking to himself, which he might as well be. "Don't think about it like should, or shouldn't. Don't think. Don't fucking try and figure it out. Come on. You can keep your shirt on."

Maybe Caleb will take the challenge or maybe he won't. Sex should be easy, automatic: fucking. Fucking microbes do it all day long. Just parts and holes.

Caleb shakes against the sheets after that, as sensory appreciation spirals into a little freakout. Nathan's hand fits against his throat, and he stops thrashing — instantly subdued, like hitting a switch. It's like finding the cheat code.

Caleb Smith has never been in a relationship that lasted longer than three months, which is well before his threshold for anything more sexually adventurous than fucking in the shower. It's time to innovate.

"Now you try it." Nathan tips his head back and lets his own hands fall to his chest. Caleb's red mouth presses into a flat line, and his pupils get tight, but he doesn't say anything. Concentration is a good look on him. "You think I let just anybody do this? Come on, Jesus. Just put your hand right on it and squeeze."

Caleb brings his arm over to Nathan's waiting throat, and for a moment he's waiting too. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, maybe, which he wouldn't be if Nathan hadn't been jerking him around for days and days, which he wouldn't have been doing if Caleb would just get his shit together and cooperate.

Caleb is made out of meat like anybody else, but he's got to be stronger than he looks if he made it this far because he looks like shit. His hands are soft — they haven't been toughened up on anything yet. Nathan burned his thumb on a hot wire a little while before Caleb ever came here, doing some basic repairs on Ava's guts, and it's already healed smooth. Caleb's scars go down his back, like experimental surgery scars, and Nathan traces them through his clinging shirt, crushes him down.

"I don't think I know what you want me to do."

"You know that you couldn't hurt me if you wanted to. Come here and lay it on me, dude, I can take it."

Caleb's hands are soft, four long fingers and a gawky thumb each, and they finally find a place against the rasped skin of Nathan's recently-shaved neck. He's wondering if this is another test, and that's why he hesitates. It is, but fuck that, Nathan isn't just a disembodied brain floating in a jar, he has needs.

The whole of Caleb's weight is on him and it hardly feels like anything — he's bony and sharp and his drawn-up knee is pressing into Nathan's abs like an erection would, though a quick sharp squeeze confirms he's still soft in his boxers. He gasps a little when Nathan grabs his dick, and his hands flutter against his neck.

Nathan's dizzy, but he's not stupid.

"Come on," he says, pleasurably constricted. "Just squeeze. You're lucky I didn't ask you to slap me around."

From beneath Caleb looks stung, confused, unimpressed. Everything about him is a little murky without glasses. He presses down with both hands, and Nathan can feel his dick jump.

If Nathan can hold his breath for ten seconds, he can hold it for thirty. For sixty, swallowing tight and arching his back while Caleb gets his grip, feeling his little diamond-sharp short fingernails digging and shifting, feeling the heel of his hand gouge. There's still plenty of oxygen in his blood to go around, but the pressure alone drives him crazy, it gets his heart shuddering like really good cardio and he pulls up the bedsheets in fistfuls.

Even in the midst of getting going he's still waiting, waiting for Caleb's hands to get tired or for him to break it off in disgust so Nathan can breathe again. His lungs are prickling with deprivation already. This part is the test. Caleb could hurt him here, could at the very least bruise his vocal chords or something, he could leave marks — it wouldn't even be on purpose, he's a rank amateur, uncoordinated and brittle. One fuckup and Nathan is toast.

(He never got this far with — Jasmine, Katya, Jade, Lily, Amber.)

Current read on the situation: Caleb is tentative, but game. He's seen this in porn, if not exactly sought it out, and it's on his radar. And so maybe he'd rather be on the other end of it or spitting and sweating all over some equally-game Scandinavian girl, but this is Nathan's house and there are some things a machine can't do, some shit you can't rig up with a towel rod and a belt — the heat of his palm, the look on his face of exquisite nervousness fused inescapably with interest. Scientific curiosity, dude.

Caleb is curious but Nathan has the benefit of experience, infinity pools and thousand-dollar call girls back in his amateur period before Bluebook went public and lots of hands and belts in between. Maybe they should do this underwater. It'd be fun. It'd raise the stakes.

If Nathan can hang in for thirty seconds more, he can make it, no problem —

Nathan's eyes hurt and the back of his throat makes little clicky wet sounds and Caleb is thinking about killing him, maybe. Caleb is thinking about whether he could figure this place out well enough to bust it wide open, maybe get the girls out. Maybe steal secrets. Nathan encrypts all his backups, because of course he fucking does, he's encrypted everything since he was 13 — there's nothing Caleb can get into that Nathan doesn't want him to find. Party favors.

(Little pieces of Jasmine, Katya, Lily, Amber, Jade—)

Caleb is thinking about whether this is his chance.

Nathan is choking now and straining, starved for air and outrageously hard. When he's busy seeing spots something must make Caleb balk, because he releases him — Nathan's head slams back, more out of habit than anything, and the first big breath of air rips down his throat, the first swell of relief and satisfaction before he explodes into rough raking laughter. It hurts like ripping off a scab, but it's so, so satisfying, and he's still rock-hard.

Caleb's hands are splayed against his chest. Nathan sits up a little, panting for breath and hauling his ass back in the sterile sheets to peel down his sweats and unleash his dick on the world. Hips grinding on hips, Caleb's skinny thighs flinching with soft muscle and kicking a little when Nathan reaches down to fumble at his bare foot.

Caleb makes a horrible undignified sound. Nathan rolls over and fumbles for the only thing in the overdesigned bedside table: a bottle.

What would Caleb do if he killed him anyway? If he likes unspoiled wilderness and cascading electrical failures and disposing of a corpse, more power to him. He'd have a whole bunch of unsellable tech secrets and a serious mess on his hands. Especially after this.

Nathan fingers him apart and daubs on lube, pumping lazily at his own erection to spread the slickness around — the familiar wet chill makes Caleb stiffen astride him. Nathan makes a few more messy repetitions with his fingers when this seems to have the desired effect of making more of those noises come out of Caleb's spitty mouth — Caleb's body is hot inside, excruciatingly tight and yielding at the same time. Nathan's touch can coax it to yield without having to worry about making his dick bleed or accidentally circumcising himself. Organic material has a few small advantages.

It's funny watching him squirm into that thick-fingered touch, like he's horrified and needy at the same time. The whole of Caleb's chest is flushed pink like a sunburn, marked out in darker red from the scraping of Nathan's beard. He's a washed-out silhouette cut out of white paper with no discernible upper body strength and a narrow flat belly prickling with red hair. Soft thighs currently planted along Nathan's sides, ass lifted, half-hard. A maze of physiological responses and all of them are happening whether he wants them to or not. Nathan's hands look fucking huge digging into his soft sides.

Nathan is wishing they did this in one of the rooms with mirrors. It might have been fun to watch. But that's what surveillance video is for. This warrants some extended analysis.

Clearing his raw throat; even his own voice sounds strange to him now. "Did you ever hear the one about the musician, the art historian, and the engineer?"

Caleb's hair is hanging in his face; his eyes are shut, his eyelashes disappearing into nothing, little orange smudges. His mouth is wet. "What?"

"Never fucking mind. Come on."

Once he's slick and fumbled-open Nathan lets him sink down — wincing and shaking-thighed, Nathan's own thigh muscles are rock-hard and he gives him a testing push.

The way Nathan likes to fuck, he likes to know nobody else has fucked like that before. So maybe somebody broke off a piece of Caleb's virgin holes before his boss could get there, maybe there's some dirty camp counselor or freshman fuckbuddy Nathan doesn't know about from his extensive study of every extant fragment of Caleb's lonely life. If it's not on record, does it matter? Did it really happen? Would anybody really give a fuck?

With both hands Nathan guides him into a graceless rhythm. Maybe orifices are overrated. Surfaces are the up-and-coming thing, there's only so many ways you can stick it in a damp crevice or a dry mouth when you could be grinding on a harsh angle or running your hands over a smooth plane. Scrawny as he is, Caleb is still bigger than the girls were in every dimension, not as light on top of Nathan's lap but a lot less brittle. The novelty of being made of flesh and bone gives him a pleasing dimensionality — amusing textures with spontaneous flaws, the fever-heated crush and catch where lube isn't enough. This passage hasn't exactly been user-tested for pleasure, and maybe it hurts, what does he care.

He'd pretty much forgotten what skin smacking against skin is supposed to sound like, so that part is weird as the actual fucking gets less clumsy. Caleb shifts his grip and the position of his ass at about the same time without needing to be told — his long skinny forearm braced against Nathan's chest, the heel of his hand against the pit of Nathan's collarbone, still sitting pretty on his cock. He's unbearably flustered from the vigorous motion, those same pink spots are on his cheeks again and his nipples are comically pebbled-up through his tee shirt.

Out of habit Nathan palms at where a tit should be. If Caleb is straight, Nathan is giving him a valuable data point here. If Caleb is not straight, this here is a real favor. He should be thanking him.

“Choke me again."

“Why?”, Caleb asks, and he sounds dazed. Maybe he looks dazed. Nathan is seeing spots just from the angle his neck is at. "Nathan, I don't like this. Nathan, I need to—"

The shape Nathan's mouth is making is a sneer. “Choke me so I can finish the fuck up, okay? Give it your best shot.”

And he's not sneering any more because Caleb’s salt-sticky palm is jammed over his mouth, over his nose, pressing down so hard Nathan can feel his top lip splitting against his teeth, and it's not fingers digging into his windpipe but it does work — it kicks off some primal thing in him that gets them going again in earnest, linking and unlinking to a messy finish. What's Caleb going to do? Nathan could break his forearm like a twig and watch it shatter like Jade's away into nothing, he could kick him into the bathroom door and crack his head open. He could fight this and it would be easy, he could fight this and he's not—

Nathan pulls out in time to spatter himself all over Caleb's inner leg, all over himself and his bespoke sweatpants which have stalled out somewhere around the middle of his thigh.

Simplicity itself. He doesn't see stars, but it's pretty damn good.

Not that long later, he remembers distractedly that Caleb also has a dick, and gives it a perfunctory stroke. Caleb has the on-and-off lasting power of a meticulous masturbator and Nathan would know; he exclaims an obscenity like he just broke a lamp, and blows his load on Nathan's stomach in a perfect parabolic smudge.

Nathan buries his face against his neck, Caleb's whole slack-stiff body suspended on his own like nothing, and sucks in a heavy breath. Then another. His split lip snags.