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“Can I ask you something?”
Doug glances up at the ceiling out of pure reflex. “You know you can ask me anything,” he says with a lopsided smile.
Doug has long since grown accustomed to his late-night conversations with Hera, her smooth voice lulling him to sleep. These are the conversations that shape their friendship, the pair of them talking late into the night like a pair of kids at a sleepover.
“Anything?” she leads, and Doug sits up in his sleeping alcove. He knows Hera’s I’m Not Sure I’m Supposed to Ask tone when he hears it.
“What’s on your mind, baby?”
“H-human things,” she says, nervous defiance in her voice despite the glitch.
“Then you came to the right carbon-based bundle of squishy cuddles,” Doug says, smile morphing into a toothy grin. “What’ve you got for me?”
Hera takes a deep breath, and Doug has a moment to wonder if she learned that from him before she asks in a rush, “What is sex like?”
Doug Eiffel thinks he feels his brain short circuit. All he can do is gape open-mouthed at the speaker set into the side of his alcove.
Sex is both the last thing he wants to talk about with Hera and something he’s secretly been dying to discuss.
“I know humans consider questions about sex inappropriate,” she babbles, “But I thought the rule was that they’re acceptable between close friends. If I misunderstood the social convention, you don’t have to ans--”
Doug holds up one hand. “Breathe.”
“I only breathe for effect. It’s not necessary to my functionality. I could keep talking indefinitely--”
“
Hera,
” he interrupts. “It’s fine. I meant it when I said you could ask me anything. I just didn’t expect that one. What has you asking?”
“A while back you mentioned missing it, and that made me wonder what, exactly, it is you’re missing.” Hera somehow manages to convey a shrug with only the power of her voice.
Doug scratches the back of his head. “Well, I mean, orgasms are awesome.”
“What does one f-feel like?” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “I know what happens chemically in the human body, but how does it
feel
?”
“It-- It’s like for a few seconds your entire body is overwhelmed with pleasure,” Doug says, and oh good god, he can hear his voice slipping into that deep tamber, but like hell can he do anything to stop it. “For a brief time, there’s nothing to worry about, nothing else in the world but the rush of pleasure jolting through your nerves.”
“That actually sounds a little scary-- not thinking of anything else, I mean.”
Doug huffs a small laugh. “I guess it would for you. You don’t think for a few seconds, and we fall out of the sky.”
“You know that’s not how orbit--”
“Yes, Hera. I know that’s not how orbit works. I have learned that much.” He gives a self-deprecating laugh. “All I’m saying is that I get why that would be scary to you.”
He doesn’t resist the urge to press his hand to her speaker, to feel the vibrations of her voice against his palm, to be closer with her even if she can’t feel it.
“Imagine if all the important systems would keep going without you having to think about them. Like, our hearts keep beating and our lungs keep breathing, but the rest of it-- worry, self-consciousness, to-do lists-- all that fades away.”
“Huh,” she breathes. “It’s hard to imagine, but I think I understand.”
Doug sits back, thinking his work here is done and not a moment too soon. He can feel the beginnings of arousal stirring in his gut, and that’s not a conversation he’s ready to have tonight.
Or so he thinks, until Hera breaks the silence.
“There has to be more to it,,” she presses. “You mastrabate regularly, but you’ve implied that it’s not an adequate substitute to sex.”
“Hera!” he squawks. “You mean you’ve seen me--?” He makes an obscene gesture even a non-human couldn’t missinturprite.
“You know I see everything on the Hephaestus, Officer Eiffel.”
Doug winces. “If we’re having a conversation about you having to watch me jerk it, I think you can call me ‘Doug’.”
“Doug,” she echoes, like she’s testing the feel of it.
His name on her voice is nice, more than nice, and he takes the opportunity to gather his thoughts. Embarrassment is the dominant emotion consuming him, but there’s also a stirring of satisfaction that he tries to beat down. It’s not like Hera had a choice but to watch.
Doug presses his hands to his eyes and tries to remind himself that Hera doesn’t care, that she’s not programed to care. It’s not an invasion of personal boundaries if one party is an AI with no concept that such boundaries should even exist.
Or so Doug has to tell himself if he ever has a hope in hell of getting off again before he gets back to Earth.
“I’ve made you uncomfortable,” Hera says, worry evident in every syllable. “I’m sorry, Doug, but I can’t
not
look.”
“I know Hera,” he says quietly. “You haven’t done anything wrong. This is just one of those cultural differences between you and me.”
“Humans aren’t supposed to watch each other do that,” she concludes.
Doug takes a deep breath, because yeeeep, looks like he’s having this conversation.
“Not when one doesn’t know,” he tries to explain.
“I’m sorry; I thought you wouldn’t want to know since it’s not like I could stop.”
“That’s the problem, Hera. Hell, it’s not like you wanted to see my dick.” He tilts his head back, one hand clenching in his dark hair. “It’s equally inappropriate among humans to force someone to watch you do that. That’s not something you do to a friend, and definitely not something I meant to do to you, baby.”
The endearment lingers between them in a beat of silence, then two, then three.
“Hera?” he tries, voice pitching up with his rising panic.
“It doesn’t bother me to watch,” she finally says, and there’s something else under the words that Doug can’t parse.
“You still shouldn’t have to when you don’t want to.”
“Doug?” she starts carefully. “What if I said I l-like watching? Would that be bad?”
Doug lets out a long breath, because holy hell he wishes she meant that the way he wants.
“Curiosity about the unfamiliar is natural,” he says diplomatically, because no Doug’s Labido, hitting on your AI BFF is not the correct response.
“I don’t like watching the others, not the same way,” Hera says. “I mean, I don’t mind; I’m designed not to mind, but I-- I like watching you. Doug, what does that mean?”
Doug shuts his eyes against all the No Good Very Bad ideas her words give him.
“Hera, it’s my turn to ask a personal question, and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, okay?”
“Okay,” she says slowly.
“Baby, are you capable of having romantic feelings?”
It’s a long moment of Doug holding his breath before she answers.
“I’m not programmed to, no, but nothing in my code precludes it. Romantic feelings fall in that grey area of my design that no one thought to fill in.”
“Because no one considered the romantic inclinations of an AI,” Doug says darkly. Sometimes he wants to punch Hera’s designers.
“Right. No one considered if I could develop romantic feelings on my own.”
“What does that mean for you?”
“I think it means that like platonic love, like who I love, it’s in the portion of my personality matrix that’s designed to develop over time. But there’s no hard code or even guidelines for romantic love. I don't know what I should be feeling.”
Doug swallows past a tightness in this throat. “Forget what you should feel; what are you feeling?”
“I don’t think I should say,” Hera says, and there’s no mistaking the anxiety in her voice. “I don’t think it’s permissible by human parameters of how an AI should function.”
“Hera, baby, you know you can tell me anything,” Doug says gently, pressing his forehead to her speaker. “Fuck how other people think an AI should function. This is you and me; you’re my girl, and nothing you say will change that.”
Doug gently runs his fingers around her speaker casing in the silence that follows that pronouncement.
“I think I might be falling in love with you,” she says in a small voice. “I’m sorry, Doug.”
He doesn’t falter in his petting of her casing. “Baby, why are you apologizing?”
“You can’t feel that same, and that makes it awkward.”
“Where is it written that I can’t feel the same?”
“Wouldn’t it be taboo in human culture for you to have romantic feelings for an AI?” she asks, but Doug knows he isn’t imagining the hope in her voice.
“Sweetheart, human hearts want what they want;
should
and
normal
don’t factor into it.” He makes himself breathe slowly through his nose before he says, “I think I’m falling for you, too.”
“Oh,” Hera says, voice small.
And okay, wow. Not quite the enthusiastic endorsement he’d hoped for.
“Is that okay?” he tries.
“I can’t give you what you want,” she protests.
“And what is it you think I want?”
“You can’t touch me. You can’t hold me or have sex with me,” she says softly. “I can’t give you what a human can.”
“Baby, you asked me before why mastrabation isn’t as good as sex. Do you still want your answer?”
She stays silent, so Doug takes that as his queue.
“Humans are very creative; we can recreate all of the physicality of being with another person, but it’s not the same. Hell, sometimes sex with someone is physically the same as when you mastrabate. It’s not the act, Hera. It’s the someone you’re with. It’s about intimacy and connection to another person.”
Hera is quiet for so long that Doug really starts to panic, but then she asks, low, “You want that with me?”
Time to be fearless. “Yes, Hera. I do.”
“And you think I can give you that?”
“I do. Would you like that?”
“I really would,” she says on a long, happy breath.
“Then we’ll figure it out. Together.”
Slowly, Doug leans forward and presses a kiss to her speaker. It’s only lips against cool metal, but the breathless sound Hera makes in response takes away the last vestiges of his doubt.
“Can you do that again?” she asks, shy.
Doug happily obliges, letting his lips linger this time.
He nuzzles affectionately at the metal grating, somehow managing not to give a flying fuck that he’s doing his best to make out with a space station. She lets out a contented sigh, and he raises his eyebrows.
“Can you feel that?”
“Mmm, yes and no,” she says. “I can sense the temperature change where you touch, and knowing it’s you-- that makes it good.”
Doug can’t help his goofy grin. He turns himself, fighting with the lack of gravity until he’s pressed fully shoulder to hip against the cool metal of her wall. It should be disconcerting, should jar the threads of arousal beginning to course through his body, but it’s not-- it doesn’t.
He can hear the sound of her breathing, and he knows that’s all for his benefit. She wants him to know that she’s still here, that she’s an active part of this just as much as he is.
“I like looking at you,” she says, low and soft. “I like watching the way your body moves.”
“Yeah?”
“I always pay attention when you’re in the shower. I like seeing you like that and knowing that the others don’t get to, not the way I do.”
“And what way is that?” he leads, valiantly resisting the urge to palm himself through his flight suit.
“Unselfconscious,” she says, then hesitates before asking, “Doug… Are you aroused by the thought of me watching you?”
“Yes,” he says honestly. “God, yes. The amazing girl who keeps us all alive thinks I’m worth spying on in the shower.”
“You are worth everything I can possibly give you,” she says, and affection rings through every word.
This time, Doug doesn’t try to stop himself from pressing the heel of his hand against his growing hard-on.
Still, some gentlemanly instinct must remain, because he says, “You don’t need to give me anything you’re not ready to or don’t want to. What is it
you
want, Hera?”
“I want to see you like that again. I want to watch you when you know I’m looking.”
Doug doesn’t need to be told twice. He strips out of his clothes as quickly as one can in zero-G. He’s already half hard, but he doesn’t touch himself yet.
“Oh,” she breathes, low, and Doug swears he can feel her looking at him. “Is that because of me?”
“Yeah, baby. That’s all you.” He quirks a smile. “I really like your voice. Like,
really.
”
“Doug?” There’s a beat of silence before she quietly says, “Can I watch you touch yourself?”
He lets out a long breath. “I was afraid you’d never ask.”
He wraps his fingers around his cock, and it only takes a few good strokes to get him fully hard.
Hera lets out another soft sound. Before he has time to think better of it, he tilts his hips until the tip of his cock grazes the cold metal of the wall.
That earns him a sound a lot like a moan.
“I like seeing you try to get closer to me,” Hera says. “I like the deep noises you make while you stroke yourself.”
Doug thinks about fishing for the lube he’d requisitioned from Medical, but something tells him he’s not setting any records tonight even without it.
“Keep talking to me, baby,” he tells her, fist beginning to pump up and down along his length in earnest.
“I like the way your body temperature rises when you do this. I like the way your muscles tremble when you get close.”
“Oh, Hera,” he breathes, closing his eyes and leaning into the cool embrace of her wall as his hand works. He spreads the wetness at the tip of his cock before it can bead up and float away. “God, baby,
your voice
.”
“I love knowing that I’m the one you want, not another human, but
me,
” she continues, breathless. “I’m the one you’re hard for, not them. You don’t care that I was built instead of born; I’m the person you want to be with.”
“Yes, baby. Just you. Just Hera, my beautiful, brilliant girl.”
He focuses on her voice, on the rough drag of skin on skin as she speaks. He leans in again, kissing her with lips and tongue and the clack of teeth on metal. He catches the next bit of precome on his finger, bringing it up to smear across the wall, a shared secret between the pair of them.
She whimpers; that’s the only word for it.
“Yes, baby. Yes, yes,” he babbles, crashing ever closer to the edge. “You’re so good to me. You take such good care of me.”
“I’ve got you, Doug. Let go.”
And just like that, he does, shuddering and gasping out his climax with a groaned, “Hera.”
In the silence that follows, Doug leans his weight more fully against the wall, free hand fishing for something to clean up the mess before the lack of gravity can make things difficult.
“Was t-that okay?” Hrea asks, somehow managing to be both shy and proud.
“Absolutely amazing, my love,” he says, the new endearment slipping out without his permission. “Congratulations on giving your first human an orgasm. What’d you think?”
She giggles, giddy with the new experience. “I think I want to know how long until we can do it again.”
God above, he really loves this beautiful, baffling woman.
And, he realizes, he’s allowed to tell her now.
So he does.