"Remember this?" Harvey gestured extravagantly to his tall and ink-black form. "I always liked John's mental representation when I took over. His suppression was oh-so tantalizing hmm? Hard to forget that feeling." He stuck out his tongue suggestively.

Scorpius scanned him up and down. "Elaborate."

"You mean, 'fun.'" Harvey as Scorpius John smirked. "Thrilling. Full of possibilities." He slung an arm over Scorpius's shoulders, lazily dragged his tongue up his neck.

Scorpius purposely ignored him, tapped his own chin. He had a series of schematics in front of him on a conference table. He'd set it up to speak with Harvey about it, but Harvey apparently wasn't interested in working. "I am here for your input more than your games?" Scorpius chided.

John hung on him heavily while he waited, nibbled on him. "But you like my games." He dragged a hand up Scorpius's inner thigh. "I'll make it worth your while. Then I'll do whatever you want, but first." He fiddled distractedly at a buckle on his hip.

Scorpius's perpetual glacial barrier began to thaw under his attention, and he leaned marginally into John's groin. "Agreed."

John hummed and deftly freed his other to be fondled, stroked him hard before he snaked the same hand around to finger his opening. Scorpius relaxing into his prodding was like ice in a glass cracking slowly while warming.

"I want you. Do you want me?" John whispered closely into Scorpius's jaw.

"I want you to stop talking." Ground out Scorpius breathily.

John inserted his fingers into Scorpius's open mouth, pressed his head back on his shoulder. He was teasing his entrance stretching it open enough to accommodate the head of his cock. "You feel so good. Do I feel good?"

Scorpius made a noise through his nose, struggled to thrust back on John's cock.

John nuzzled him but kept his hips at a distance. "Mm, not yet." Scorpius's dick was trailing precum. "You're wet for me." John reached down to squeeze his tip. Scorpius jerked into it with another guttural sound. John repeated it again but milked it harder, Scorpius's response was to whine and bit down on his fingers. John hissed pleasantly. He began a pulsing rhythm, rolling and squeezing Scorpius in the palm of his hand at the same speed as penetrating him shallowly. He nipped at his jawline, licked. Drool was running down his forearm, so he put two more fingers in Scorpius's mouth, cupped his hand against the biting. Scorpius clutched at any part he could grab on John. His breaths were quickening, escaping faster through his nose as he leaned more into the support of John's shoulder. John sensed his resistance against his own pleasure crumble.

Scorpius keened with the fingers in his mouth and spurted hotly into John's fist. John kept his rhythm unhurried and pumped two more spurts of cum out onto the table. "Look at that. That's it. Beautiful." He removed his fingers but kept him supported by holding his neck. Scorpius, once ungagged, panted open-mouthed but whimpered when John squeezed him again.

John lowered him down on the table into his own mess and prodded his shaft deeper. Pleasure curled up his spine. He dragged Scorpius into him, who bucked and groaned. "You like that?" John did it again, but drew back slowly. Scorpius practically mewed. "Yes?" He took his time fucking into his tight sleeve until Scorpius was hard again and snarling. John touched his new erection earning him a desperate thrust and moan, sank his teeth into Scorpius's suited artery. Together they ground out their mutual collapse.

When they both blinked back alert, they were puddled in a heap on the floor. Harvey was once again Harvey. Scorpius untangled himself from his clone and pushed up to sitting heavily against the conference table. A relaxed exhaustion hung over him. Despite his agreement with Harvey, it would be hard to return to his working mindset from before. But it was no matter, there would be time later to work.

Harvey was looking at him from his thigh. He had his hands laced on his stomach and was fiddling with them nervously. This was far from how Scorpius felt at the current moment. He sighed, reached out, and stilled his hands. "What are you doing?"

"I love you. Do you love me? Can you say it? You haven't said it to anyone before."

Scorpius had an intensity that could snap a twig at twenty paces. His mouth must've fallen open because he immediately clamped it shut. The calm he had before left him abruptly, and for one minutia, he thought he would break out in a hysterical twisted burst of laughter. Instead, he bit down on those reactions, let them bleed out. He inspected his other hastily. There was nothing visibly amiss with his twin. "Something is wrong with you?" He said instead.

Disappointment flooded Harvey's body. He dejectedly sat up. "Yeah, something is." But when he looked back again, the expression was gone, replaced by his normal, unaffected nonchalance. He crawled into Scorpius's lap and settled against his chest. "You know what's happening. The time delays. The missing memories. I'm being absorbed into your psyche. I'm not going to be around, like this, for that much longer."

Scorpius's calm was sinking back into him despite his struggle to keep affected, alert. Harvey's love confession was like the tide leaving to collect for a tidal wave, and now as it broke, the bone-deep exhaustion was back heavier than before. There was a strange pain in its return. "I could put you back on a chip. Stop the process."

"Naw. That won't work. The corrosion has already begun. The chip would capture that as well. I'd still degrade on a chip or in here." He tapped Scorpius's forehead. "Pick your poison, but not me, I've come to terms with it."

Scorpius snapped his teeth. A niggling disgust that his other was simply succumbing to his own eradication, gnawed at him. He could think of nothing to say for a long time. His sloshing internal turmoil was unable to settle on anything poignant. "Do you still wish you died in John? If I had left you there and not duplicated you?"

There was another long pause before Harvey responded. "In John's brain, there was always something new to discover. There was so much to take in and experience. Places I'd never have opted to mill around in if I was in your position, but with all the time in the world, I did. Emotions I, you, would have found uncomfortable that I had to sit in, absorb, reconsider. Here it's all familiar. Your memories are very painful to revisit. Your anger blankets almost everything, and you hide any other feelings very deep down, in the dark. When I do go and poke around, I always end up saddened. It's a mire in here."

From Harvey's placement on Scorpius's chest, he felt the other noticeably sink. "Ah."

"But I'm glad I'm here with you." He drew back and quickly stated. "It's been enlightening. Maybe I got it both ways. One of me died in John. One of me got to come back home and tell you all about it. See how the original was holding up." At this moment, the original was hollow-eyed. "Look, don't listen to me. When have you ever listened to me? You're a-ok. You're kicking ass. Don't listen to me. You know I think we had an agreement before all of this. How about I take a look at your project, and we can forget this whole thing, hmm?"

As Harvey stood, Scorpius caught him and dragged him back down. "No. We're not done. You're me, where are your survival instincts? You must have some idea on how to stop your decay, some investment?"

Harvey wasn't sure if Scorpius was upset that his clone was dissolving and would be inaccessible or if he was worried about everything that would shortly become part of his essence, all the junk, and emotional conflict. His survival instincts were there, but they had been dialed back as he fell more into the fantasy of being a memory dweller. After all everyone survives in their memories. There were times in his past when the survival instincts flared, and then he relied on revenge to drag him through. If he was going to die, John was coming with him. Or if he was going to die, John was going to be suppressed and Harvey was going to go for a test drive. But this situation, Harvey's absorption into Scorpius, was entirely different. It didn't feel like dying for one. The threat simply wasn't there. "It's not really death is it?" He settled on at last. "How can I be scared to be you, when I'm already you? Maybe you are scared to become me, even a little bit."

"I won't become like you." Scorpius shook his head. "You aren't the first clone I've absorbed. Your memories get filed away for when I need them, but I stay in control. I stay me."

Harvey growled. "I'm not like your other clones. Don't treat me like I'm at all similar to your own straight duplications. If I'm so disposable, I'll hop into your filing cabinet right now. Disappear forever for you—" Harvey visibly stuttered, and blipped out. The space he once occupied was empty.

Scorpius, who was preparing a nasty retort, glanced around, stood up. The liminal space was dark, quiet. Harvey couldn't keep most of his scenery up for long these days. "If this is your idea of a joke, bravo. You can end it now." As the moments stretched on, Scorpius wondered when he'd return, if he would at all that is. Fear slammed into him that perhaps that was it, Harvey was gone now, and he had wasted those last moments on useless bickering. He gripped the edge of the table to steady himself. "Harvey?" He rasped.

.

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But to the silence, he whispered. "Harvey, come back."

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.

.

Harvey blinked back into existence. "To seldom reference— wait what was I saying?" Harvey looked up from the ground at Scorpius. It was like he hadn't moved, hundreds of microts ago. Scorpius could only imagine what he looked like to his clone. He slid back down.

"Do you remember what we were talking about?" Scorpius swallowed dryly.

Harvey's face tightened. His eyes flickered down seeking his last memories. "Were we about to have sex? Or something?" His twisted expression was enough to show he didn't think that was correct.

Scorpius sighed painfully, grabbed his clone's skull, and headbutted him lightly. "Then I will say, I can't say it aloud, but I do feel it. And I will miss you when you're gone."

Harvey laughed. "What the hell are you on about?"