She thinks he's beautiful. Scarred and malformed from the web, causing her hands to become rough and calloused from clutching to his ragged armor during their previous lovemakings, she sees beyond the physical realm.
He is infinitely gentle with her when they are together, cradling her body in lethally-sharp claws, and yet, not once has he intentionally hurt her. Perhaps during previous meetings when she held nothing but animosity and contempt towards him, but not now. The times that he has, it was never without apology, a broken murmur in her ear. She still bears those scars, and she wonders if he thinks they are beautiful too. He has said so more than once, her face pressed into the large expanse of his chest as he rocked against her, but it was always in a hazy cloud of pleasure, blurring her dreams and reality together.
The code she receives during their file merges is viral, she knows, and it physically taxes her body. She has dropped offline more than once in front of him, and yet he does not apologize for his viral input. He asked her, once, if she took on this alliance from a sense of duty as , despite knowing the implications of his being malignant.
She never did reply.
Once, after one of their early file merges, she found him crying in his sleep. His breaths were still slow and even, filling the room, but the green droplet slowing making it's way down towards his chin betrayed him. She had caught it, rubbing it between her forefinger and thumb, the dark green smudges staining her lighter skin, and he had opened his eyes then. She said nothing of the green streaks staining his black face, and when he turned his back to her that cycle, she did not complain, but neither did she leave. She never received an explanation.
Sometimes, she wonders, if he will betray their alliance and Mainframe—if during a file merge he will caress her face and then slit her throat for the fun of it—but he never does. His patience is endless, it seems, and he does not force her if she is not willing. He has cited that he is not in any rush, but many times she believes there is another reason that he is not telling her.
She provides him with readme files from time to time, trying to keep him entertained during the times he is with her in the Principal Office instead of Silicon Tor, and he accepts them graciously. He does not say if it disinterests him, only informs her when he is ready for the next file. And if she is busy, he will wait until she is free. She forgot about him once, leaving him there for seconds on end, and yet, when she remembered whom she was housing with alarm, she had found he had not moved an inch, his eyes still fixed on the datapad, re-reading what she had first given him.
When she returns him, trailing the tips of her fingers along the curvature of his spine as he lay impossibly still on the bed, his hand reaches behind him, taking her wrist gently in his claws as he turns around.
"Restless, Ms. Matrix?" he asks.
And her lips twitch upwards in a smile as a claw strokes down her jaw, his baritone voice rolling around pleasantly in the pit of her stomach.
He is beauty.