Eddie develops a strange habit after sex. It’s not exactly cute or romantic or nice. Nothing bad either. It’s just… well, Steve isn’t too sure what it is. But every time, it’s the same damn thing.
He collapses onto Steve’s chest and says:
“My boyfriend is a cyborg.”
Usually, Steve is still recovering from the fucking downpour of post-orgasm endorphins. So he doesn’t question it. Hell, he stopped challenging Eddie’s tolerance to geek out months ago. Dude holds fantasy knowledge in his brain better than he holds his liquor.
Which is saying a lot.
Anyways, Steve never has the mental capacity to react or respond. Instead, he runs his fingers through Eddie’s sweat-soaked hair for awhile. Scratches out little patterns on his scalp because it always makes Eddie go limp. Quiet.
Quiet is a rarity for him. And while Steve is totally weak for Eddie’s chattiness, the quiet can be nice too.
The only reason Steve finally decides to ask about it is because Eddie slips up. Says it before they have sex.
Steve is against the bedroom door, his nails dragging down Eddie’s back. God, he loves this kind of kissing. The lung draining kind. The type that’s sort of filthy from all the heat and grinding.
Eddie hasn’t marked him up this bad since that time someone at work noticed his neck. Asked if Steve was having an allergic reaction during an office-wide meeting.
And this is going to be even worse. Steve can tell by the sounds and the soft pricks of Eddie’s teeth. He can tell by how long Eddie spends over each spot, like the bruising skin needs more attention than the rest of him. Like licking them over will make the colors last longer.
The damage has been done. Really no point in stopping him when it feels so fucking good. Steve forgets to worry about how mauled he’s gonna look tomorrow because his head is swimming with Eddie’s lips on his neck. His collarbone. His chest.
That’s when it happens. That’s when Eddie’s strange habit makes an early appearance.
He kisses over the blistery mess he made, practically growls the words out this time:
“My boyfriend is a cyborg.”
“Okay, time out.” Steve says. Heaves some air back into his lungs. Pulls Eddie’s face up before he can continue making Steve look like goddamn target practice.
Eddie blinks a few times. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” Gonna have to wear fucking high-collared shirts all week, but whatever.
He’ll bring that up some other time. “Why do you keep saying that?”
“Saying what?”
“That… thing.” Steve barely can spit it out. It’s like his throat is physically rejecting the nerdy shit he’s about to say. “You keep calling me… a cyborg or something.”
“Oh that.” Eddie sighs. Casually shrugs to one side. “It’s your fault actually.”
“How is it my fault? I don’t even know what fucking language you’re speaking.”
Eddie walks over to the bed, chanting Steve’s name over and over. Definitely not in the way Steve prefers him to chant his name. Very un-sexy chanting.
“Remember that day you asked me to grab your car keys?” He asks, patting the bed for Steve to join him.
No. “Kinda?”
Steve hesitates before walking over. He didn’t necessarily wanna stop their primal makeout session. But it was bound to lead to the bed at some point, so…
Just not like this. Not talking while fully clothed. Blech.
He sits next to Eddie. Hands awkwardly fidgeting in his lap.
“Well, I couldn’t find them.” Eddie admits. “So I ended up going through your desk drawers.”
Of course he did. Perpetual snooper.
“Ended up finding a binder full of medical records.”
Well shit.
Steve’s throat tightens. Swells around the sudden guilt he feels for keeping this from Eddie.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a metal plate in your head?”
“Dunno. Hardly even remember it.” That’s only partly true. Steve doesn’t remember the surgery or much of the recovery process. He was only a kid when it happened.
But he does remember the hospital smells. He remembers the sounds of his IV bag dripping throughout the night. All the sensory indicators are still fresh in his mind.
“Well, that’s why. You're part-machine.” Eddie points to Steve’s head, expression softening. “And every time we fuck around, I think about your bionic skull. And how glad I am that it keeps your brain from leaking out when I bend you over the way you like it best.”
Steve laughs. The jokes help lighten the mood. Not enough to replace it entirely, but enough for it to be easy to swallow again.
They’re both quiet as they get ready for bed, folding the covers down. And yeah, sometimes quiet can be nice. Just maybe not right now.
“Hey, Eddie.”
“Yeah?”
Steve stares hard at the pillows. “Are cyborgs like… cool?”
Eddie pauses for a moment, then hops onto the bed. Starts crawling over to Steve with a smug grin. He lifts up to meet Steve’s lips. Kisses him sweeter than normal. Lighter. Starts nodding his head mid-kiss, keeps nodding as he breaks away.
“Yeah, babe. Cyborgs are so fucking cool.”
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Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.
Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):
In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.
It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]
The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]
Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]
In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]
In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]
Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.
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Part 2 of f1 drivers and their weird relationships with each other
Yeah I’m sorry, so…
-but Seb had a weird thing with Charles, because Seb was a big thing and Charles has daddy issues, and Charles also has always had a thing with Pierre because they are childhood best friends and everyone falls in love with Charles, but then Pierre developed a weird relationship with Yuki, who was literally sitting on his lap and talking about being like girlfriend and boyfriend on videos when they were teammates, but now Pierre has a weird toxic thing with Esteban, because they have always kinda hated each other but now they’re teammates so forced proximity, and Pierre also could’ve had a thing with Max, because I think Max is incapable of not falling a little bit in love with his teammates, and then Max also maybe had a weird toxic thing with Esteban, since they’ve also never liked each other and at one point max kinda wanted to choke him, but Esteban has always kinda had a thing with Lance, since they’ve always been very good friends, but then Lance would literally fall to his knees for Fernando, because he has daddy issues, or Seb, because he has daddy issues, and Seb maybe had a thing with Nico H when they were younger, because they’ve known each other for a long time, and Nico H and Kevin definitely slept together at least once, since Kevin literally told him to suck his balls on live television, and Nico H also might’ve had a thing with Daniel, when they were teammates at Renault, and Daniel had a weird night with Charles, since they went to Vegas together in 2019 and refuse to tell us what happened, and Daniel could’ve had a thing with Lando, cause they have a similar vibe and were teammates at mclaren, and Lando has a cute little thing with Max, because they’re very close, and Max also has a thing for Martin Garrix, cause they’ve been friends for a long time and look at each other like they want to get married, and then Max introduced Martin to Lando and now Lando and Martin look at each other like they want to get married, Daniel is in that mess too, and Lando also has a thing with the other Max, Max F, who has been his close friend for years and who lived with him for a long time, guess who also lived together when they were in f3, Niki and James, who probably had the weirdest thing going on…
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I'm gonna need dunmeshi fans to think critically for a few seconds about the Toshiro and Laios misunderstanding. Turn off your western culture brains and think for a minute
It's one thing to dislike toshiro, and another thing to do it completely blindly and from a modern western perspective. Yes Laios is very heavily autistic coded and that plays SO MUCH into the entire story and not just his and Toshiro's relationship, but you need to realize that another major aspect of his misunderstanding with Toshiro is CULTURAL. Like how are yall missing the point so badly
Toshiro is from a high context culture, raised into nobility, and living in a foreign country. Think about how this may intesect with Laios as someone from an isolated, lower context culture
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Picture this. It's been almost a year since Tech's death. His siblings are still grieving as though it happened yesterday. They hang on to all his things, never modify the Marauder in a way he wouldn't have approved. The wall next to his bunk is still full of equations in his handwriting.
They miss his frequent chatter - it's too quiet without him. Omega frequently tears up when she's flying the ship, his voice in her head gently reminding her to check the fuel gauge and brake status as he always did while mentoring her.
One day Tech's datapad pings. It hasn't gone off in a long time. On the screen is Tech's notification to commemorate a year's passing since Wrecker ate a full meal during their first evening on Pabu.
It's almost like he's still with them.
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