Stranger things have happened. And, like the many strange things he had encountered during his tortured lifetime, he wasn't exactly sure how he'd stumbled into this. A peculiar form of luck, perhaps? Engie had this theory about Captain's luck and how it extended to his minions, but if this was the kind of 'luck' he was getting... well. All said, the current situation, though strange, wasn't exactly what he would call 'bad'. In fact, if he wasn't just a little bit superstitious (and wasn't everyone?), he could almost call it 'good'.

Almost. Because he had been thinking. Thinking was something he did a lot. It came with being unable to connect with the network and consequently being frequently ignored and forgotten. While people were mindtexting and distracting themselves with image macros and pointless videos, beamed directly into their minds, all he could afford to do was think. So he thought, and he thought a lot. Most of the time, this turned out to be a useful lifeskill. Presently, though, it was seriously interfering with his enjoyment of the moment.

It started off with something stupid, because, of course it did. Being anywhere in the proximity of the Captain eventually led to madness and stupidity. He could pinpoint approximately when this whole thing began, but he still wasn't sure how they got from there to here, 'here' being frenching Pilot on a relatively non-radioactive sofa in an abandoned house during mandated 'Friendship Bonding Time'.

A part of him marvelled that he was capable of carrying on a full internal monologue while his mouth and, indeed, the rest of his body, was busy responding to the very enthusiastic and thorough assault by Pilot upon his being. Then Pilot made that little sound, that little thing between a gasp and a whimper and his thoughts promptly derailed like a jet train.

For the next few minutes, it was just tongue and teeth, the warmth of body against body, hands, sliding, grasping, caressing. His gloves were off, bare fingers sliding under the black leather jacket, seeking and finding bare skin, tracing the curve of a spine that arched to his touch, drawing out more distracting little sounds. With his free hand, he caressed what little of Pilot's face he could get at, considering the man's stalwart refusal to remove anything more than his oxygen mask.

Right, about that. That was...

Pilot leaned into his touch, kissing him desperately, body tensing momentarily before he reached his release, cries muffled in his mouth.

Right, about THAT! Actually, about DEX cyborgs. Ever since this... thing... began, he had been forced to wonder exactly how much of this... everything was actually real? Certainly Pilot seemed to enjoy their... little encounters, becoming more and more frequently the initiator of the happenings during 'Friendship Bonding Time'. It didn't quite sit right with him, though, because he wasn't sure... or rather, from what he had observed, it didn't seem likely that DEX cyborgs were physically capable of experiencing... well. Arousal? Climax? Sex, generally?

But, of course, Pilot was Pilot. Which didn't actually make it better. At which point did one draw the line between casual sex with a co-worker and taking advantage of the mentally impaired? And how much did it matter if said co-worker was technically more robot than human? And what if said robot was deeply and fundamentally (wrongly?) convinced of his humanity?

He'd thought about just asking Pilot directly, about what exactly he was getting out of this not-a-relationship, but there really wasn't a nice way to say it, was there? That and Pilot seemed to be utterly convinced that he was just a normal human being, for some value of normal. Previous attempts at pointing out how obviously he was not were met variously by blank stares, sulking, outright denials or some combination of the above.

Insistent hands were making their way below his belt and his thoughts stuttered to a halt, freeing his mind to deal with the more pressing attempted invasion of his pants.

"Pilot," he managed to get out, mortified at how raw his voice sounded. Green eyes glanced up from behind green goggles, a pink tongue flicking quickly across lustfully swollen lips. Wow, fuck, what was he going to say again? "Not with your gloves on."

Pilot sat back on his heels, pouting, leaving him suddenly bereft of physical contact. As painful as that was, with a tent in his trousers and the object of his desire just a few centimetres away, he really didn't want those gloves, which had come into contact with just about everything in this radioactive post-apocalyptic wasteland, anywhere near his junk. Though they had compromised before with scavenged hand-sanitiser, that had run out quickly once Engie got into it, the damned germaphobe he was. This did, however, present an opportunity that he had been half hoping for.

After all this time, after all they had done, he'd never managed to get Pilot to take off anything more than his mask. Not that he had any particular problem with that, and he definitely didn't want to force Pilot to do anything that he wasn't comfortable with, but he just couldn't help wondering what exactly was under those clothes. Considering that they had long skipped past third-base, it was only reasonable that he would want to see, right? And besides, wasn't it strange that for someone who seemed to get off just from skin-to-skin contact to be so reluctant to take off even one glove to do some touching in return?

"No gloves, then teeth is ok?" asked Pilot, nuzzling his crotch, scattering his thoughts and forestalling his reply. Gloved hands pinned his hips against the sofa as that talented mouth worked on his zipper, and this was why he never seemed to make any progress, trying to puzzle out this not-a-relationship.

The air was almost painfully cold on his heated flesh, but he wasn't left hanging for long, warm lips engulfing the tip, and Pilot doing that thing with his tongue that made him throw his head back, hips jerking against the hands holding him down. Then a few long, slow licks from base to tip, green eyes catching his through their goggles, as if taunting him, that this agonising pace was of his own doing, and that they could have gotten it on much more quickly if he didn't have a thing about not having radioactive and/or potentially toxic material smeared all over his privates. Except that Pilot didn't tease like that, not when they were doing this, and oh god, why weren't they getting on with this?

He had a hand against the back of Pilot's head and it was taking every ounce of his swiftly decreasing willpower not to just pull him down. Instead, he massaged the back of Pilot's neck, that bit of bare skin between his helmet and his jacket, that Pilot seemed to really like, and was rewarded with a demonstration of what one could achieve without a gag reflex.

Eventually, their encounters tended to turn out like this, with Pilot on his knees and with him trying to touch, caress and knead every precious inch of bare skin available to him. It was the most he could give back; it was the most he was allowed to. He would have liked to have given more, but he'd long since realised that some things were simply physically impossible. The anatomy of a DEX, what little he had managed to find out about, didn't exactly lend itself well to such pursuits.

When he was spent, when they were both spent, he pulled Pilot up to kiss him properly one more time. It wasn't something he often did, because he wasn't fond of the taste of himself, but it gave him an opening to slide one thumb under Pilot's left glove, brushing it against the exposed wrist.

They both jumped a bit at the contact, Pilot snatching his hand back as if burnt.

"Whyyyyyy?"

That wasn't skin.

Well, of course. Yes. Only it was one thing to know that Pilot wasn't exactly human, and another to actually feel it. And it was easy to forget, with such human emotion brimming in those green eyes, shock, confusion. Betrayal.

Oh no. No, no, no.

Instantly, one hand was on Pilot's face, stroking, soothing. With his other hand, he reached carefully for Pilot's left hand, waiting until he had the other's permission to move it. Pilot watched him intently, uncertain. Watched him press that hand to his chest, over the spot where he'd been impaled by a katana, then to his lips.

"Can I see?" asked Snippy.

He could see Pilot wavering. Then the fight went out of the DEX and he huffed, dropping his gaze.

"Why?" he whined a little more quietly. "Such useless! Stupid Snippy. See!" With an impatient tug, he whipped off the glove.

No, it wasn't a human hand. Well, it was shaped like one and functioned like one, but was surfaced with what appeared to be circuits rather than the skin (skin-like substance?) that was present on other parts of his body. Not that Snippy noticed, as his attention was entirely focused on the series of rusted metal staples attached to Pilot's left pinkie.

"What the HELL is that?!"

"My pinkie ran away for two weeks," explained Pilot, obviously sulking at having to explain such an obvious thing. "So I staples it so it cannot run away again."

"How long ago was this?!"

A non-commital shrug, but nevermind that, there was no way rusty staples were ok to leave in anybody, DEX or no. He said as much, only to receive a scandalised look.

"But I NEEDS pinkie! What if it RUNS AWAY AGAIN?"

It was so absurd, he wasn't sure how to react to it. "Then we'll go look for it together," he said finally, because thinking about it made his brain hurt. The rest of "Friendship Bonding Time" was spent picking rusted metal staples out of Pilot's hand.