Title: Behaving as the wind behaves
Rating: T
Summary: "Topher's never had any interest in the mindless dolls before, despite their total hotness. And yet, he starts noticing how perfect Sierra's skin is, how it's just the right color." Topher almost learns something while he's Topher 2.0 in Victor's body. Almost. Victor/Sierra.
Setting: During The Left Hand, when Victor is famously imprinted with Topher's personality.
"Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer..."
Topher 2.0 is caught in a world of dead-armed, super-sexy neuroscientists and envying his actual body pretty hardcore when Sierra wanders into his lab.
He's still thinking of super-sexy Bennett and the brilliance tucked inside some apparently perfect real estate. He wonders if it's possible to love someone without actually knowing them. He thinks it is, if you know your base personality has already reacted favorably. Way favorably.
"Oh, to be myself right now," he says on a sigh.
He hears the small, sliding sound of metal on metal, and he jolts out of his R-rated (okay, PG-13) thoughts. Sierra is tinkering with some parts on his desk, gathering them up like she's trying to build a sculpture.
"Hey!" he says, stalking over to her. He takes the pieces out of her hands, gently, so they don't cut into her fingers. "No touching Topher's stuff. No touching."
She looks at him, all blank slate-y like she should be, and he feels...something. A shift; gravity vanishing and resetting itself. Like when a video game freezes and you stay stuck where you are, poised midair, until you restart and go back to the beginning.
"I...whoa," he says. That's where he's gone: back to the beginning. He never had any interest in the mindless dolls before, despite their total hotness. He's captivated by the brain, which is why he had already been half in love with Bennett when he thought she was a boy.
And yet, he starts noticing how perfect Sierra's skin is, how it's just the right color. She's always been one of the more exotic actives, with facial features that don't fit perfectly into the "beautiful" category but build up to something that can't be classified as anything other than that. Topher has always known this, but at a distance.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, and his voice doesn't sound like his own; it hits deeper, with less nervous intensity.
"Waiting for you," she answers. She puts a hand on his arm, and his muscles go taut. "You're him now. I have to wait for him to leave."
This is more awareness than a doll should have, but that's not the most alarming thing. What really freaks Topher out is that he can feel it, buried there under his own thoughts and actions. Victor's not in his head trying to take control, and there's no conscious presence here except Topher's own. But still, he can feel it. He can feel the cells in this body pulling toward the woman in front of him, straining to match up with their counterparts in her. This is connection separate from conscious thought—it's ancient, animal. It's in Victor's bones.
Victor is wearing Topher, and not the other way around.
"This is getting way too weird," he says, and takes a pointed step backward. "You need to go now."
"Why?" she says.
"Because...you need a massage! You look tense right now." These types of suggestions are triggers planted in their hands, little seeds of control, but he regrets it instantly. Now he has a picture of Sierra, nude, the masseuse's hands rubbing into her golden skin until all the tension liquefies from her muscles. He gulps.
"A massage would be very relaxing," Sierra answers on cue. She does a little shoulder move, the way normal people do to demonstrate tension, and he would wonder where she learned that behavior if his mouth hadn't gone sandpaper dry.
"Good! Good. Run along, then," she turns—hate to see her go but love to watch her leave, Victor's instinctive man-reaction says—and Topher feels his vitals returning to normal once she's out of the lab.
There's a deeper meaning here. There is something profound to draw from this experience; some new lesson Topher 2.0 can learn about dolls, the human mind and love. For just a moment, Topher was inside of someone else's love story.
"Grouping," he says, and heads back to his chair. He says the word again, louder. Then he picks up the phone and dials a familiar number.
"So, me," he says when the other line picks up. "Tell me more about our dead-armed, super-sexy neuroscientist."