this is the gay sex chapter. nothing explicit, will be a YA novel fade to black thing. still, don't read this at work for your sake.
Gabriel brings his physical swords this time. He’d kept them hidden in the confessional, hoping he’d never have to use them again, but this machine has forced his hand.
He’s never lost before. To have a mere machine pin him to the ground and choke him out should inspire more anger in him, but now all he can muster is anticipation. A strange roiling heat in his stomach.
And that frightens him more than anything.
In the same empty parking lot, V1 rolls its shoulders in a pale imitation of its creators.
He is the Father’s right hand, he tells himself, drawing his swords. This is a test of his faith. He will not fail it again.
The ground swims beneath his feet. He hasn’t slept in… two days? But the machine is charging at him and he has his swords drawn so he meets it halfway, relishing in the ‘CLANG’ that travels up his weapons and into his bones when it parries his first hit.
Gabriel spreads his wings and takes flight. Is the air thinner up here? No, he’s far too low—V1 bends its legs, winding itself up, before launching itself towards him. He dodges to the side—‘You’re getting rusty!’—and jabs quickly at its abdomen.
The sword connects, cleaving through an exposed tube. Blood sprays onto its legs. It ignores the damage and punches him straight in the stomach.
Gabriel doubles over, angling his wings to prevent himself from crashing to the ground. He hears himself gasp as blood trickles onto its knuckles, seeping into absorbent plating. Designed for war, he remembers, and the thought makes him light-headed.
But he needs this victory.
‘Is that the best you can do?’
He means to yell but all that comes out is a rasp. With what remains of his strength he attaches his swords together at the hilt and throws them, a deadly blade arcing towards V1 on the ground.
It waits, thinks, and punches the swords back at him.
Gabriel barely avoids his own weapons. He doesn’t bother retrieving them, instead summoning replicas of light. The force of the punch has thrown the machine backwards, holding its own insides in place, fuel dripping into a small puddle at its feet.
He goes in close for the final blow. He raises his swords triumphantly, catching his mistake too late when he sees the glint of coins tossed into the air.
V1 slides out of the way of his swords and dives, following the trajectory of its coins. With a blood-soaked hand, it punches the nearest one.
Something hits him in the side of the head, a second hit in his stomach. Gabriel does not have the chance to scream before everything goes black.
~~~
Thunk thunk thunk
He wakes up to someone tapping on his helmet.
V1’s single eye fills his entire field of view, unreadable as always. Good. He does not need its sympathy. He tries to sit up but it grabs his shoulders and pins him to the ground.
It gestures to his abdomen. When he groans in response, saying, ‘I can take care of it.’ it presses its hand onto the wound.
Gabriel screams. It pulls away, fingers bloody, its point made.
Gabriel lies back down, panting. His flesh is mending itself quickly, but not quickly enough. He needs to get back up and go to the confessional. He doesn’t have much time left to look through the rest of those books—
V1 is lifting up his knees, sliding an arm beneath them. It does the same to his shoulders and before he can protest it is carrying him, bridal style.
Gabriel yells.
‘Let me DOWN THIS INSTANT! WHAT do you THINK you are, to MANHANDLE me like this—‘
His protests fade away as it begins to walk slowly, purposefully, taking him further and further away from the church.
‘Please,’ he says, hating the way he sounds. ‘Put me down. I don’t have much time—I need to go back. Please.’
V1 looks down at him, stops, and does as he says. He slides to the ground with a grunt of pain, coming to a rest against its leg. He grabs into it like a lifeline.
It catches his attention with a snap of its fingers.
‘You are injured,’ it says. ‘Whatever you need to do, you can do at my place. V2 can bring them over.’
‘I am not that badly injured.’ Even as he coughs and slides further down.
‘I need to know if you have a concussion,’ V1 says. ‘I don’t want a lawsuit so early in the year.’
‘I am not going to sue,’ says Gabriel sullenly as V1 picks him up again. ‘I asked to fight you.’
‘Good to know.’
He sighs, relents, and allows it to move him.
~~~
V1’s dorm is a good way from the church. It moves slower than usual, not wanting to agitate his injuries. Gabriel wishes it would stop touching him as he is healing; his skin feels awfully sensitive, especially around the now-repairing wound.
Surely there is something else wrong with him. His heart rate still has not come down even though he hasn’t moved at all, allowing this machine to carry him over fences and across empty roads. It holds him closer to its chest when it has to walk up stairs and that almost sends him into cardiac arrest.
His body is entirely too warm as it pushes open the door to its dorm. He wants it to place its hand over the wound in his stomach again, stick its fingers in the still-closing gap if it can and—what is he thinking? He needs to heal, and pain seems counterproductive to that goal.
But it would feel so good. The same way he felt good when V1 strangled him, when it pinned him to the ground and stopped him from moving a single inch.
It frightens him. It almost excites him.
V1 sets him down on a bed and rushes off, presumably to the bathroom. Gabriel’s head still spins. He forces himself to look around. Five things he can see; a bookshelf. Electronic Engineering for Dummies next to House of Leaves. A second bed opposite his, and a long table lining the entirety of the wall opposite the entrance. Small, but satisfactory. His own room is larger, though that may be because of the minimal time his roommate spends in it.
The bathroom door clicks and V1 emerges, holding a dusty first aid kit. Gabriel holds his breath as it places the box on the floor, kneeling before him, the steady hum of its fans indicating its concentration.
It retrieves a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some cotton. ‘Stay still.’
He groans when the alcohol comes into contact with torn skin. V1 tears away the remnants of his bodysuit, dabbing at dried blood to remove it. He wants it to stick its fingers into his injury.
What is he thinking? He’s just tired, that’s all. He needs to get back to his room and sleep—
V1 shuffles closer, gently pushing him to lie down on the bed. He hears it tear loose a strip of surgical tape through the blood pounding in his ears, the unbearable tightness in his stomach. Gabriel resists the urge to hit himself in the head with something like a brick. Nothing about this situation should make him feel like this. It’s standing over him, taping gauze over his wounds, hands grazing his bare skin—
V1 pinches him, annoyed, when he writhes under its metal fingers. In an instant it has swung a leg over his hips, straddling him, squeezing him between its legs to keep him down—
Gabriel whimpers involuntarily as he bucks upwards, chasing the contact of its pelvis against his own. A storm of thoughts swirl in his mind. He’s not this easy. He does not fall to sin like this. Yet…
It slides a hand underneath his chin, tilting his head back. He squeezes his thighs shut with a soft moan as it begins to sign.
‘Figured you were sexually frustrated.’
‘Y—‘
His yell dies in his throat. Its wings are out, caging him when it rests its full weight on his chest, looking as pleased as a machine can be with itself.
Damn this thing.
‘Damn you,’ he growls out loud even as he shudders from the feeling of its fingers on his stomach, trailing lower. ‘This… this defilement will not go unpunished.’
There is no bite to his voice. Whispers of sin and betrayal vanish under a haze of fantasies, all involving being touched there. It’s lifting his skirt to trace the gold lines on his thighs and he cannot tell it to stop. God. He’s never been touched like this, so methodically yet so casually, fingers trailing further up, so, so close. Is this what he has been missing out on? This body, capable of feeling so good, locked away because of… what exactly?
Any guilt he feels at his Father’s disappointment vanishes when it strokes between his legs, drawing out the first genuine moan from him.
~~~
Gabriel’s limbs feel heavy.
He passed out when it was done with him—yes, he remembers that. A combination of sleep deprivation and the sting of pleasure coursing through his veins, turning white hot when he curled up into a whimpering mess around its fingers, wings shining gold.
Oh God.
It’s not in bed with him. He can hear it shuffling about, clearing up one thing or another.
He lifts his head. His vision spins but he can make out the window, located a foot from the bed. He can break the metal grating and leap out, catch himself before he hits the ground, and find an obscure corner of the world to hide in.
But first he has someone he needs to kill.
Gabriel sits up. Everything hurts. His back from being curled up in a small, lightless room for days, his legs hurt from—he banishes the thought. V1 stands with its back to him, fiddling with something on the kitchen counter. The hiss of boiling water poured into a mug makes his head throb.
‘Get over here.’ God. He can barely hear himself. ‘I’m going to kill you.’
V1 turns, holding a mug in its hands. It strides over, carefully staying out of his reach, then slides the mug onto the bedside table. Gabriel eyes the drink, cautious.
‘You can drink tea, right? On second thoughts,’ it signs, snatching the mug out of his reach, ‘I want my components to stay dry.’
Like that was a problem five minutes ago. He swings his legs off the bed, but as soon as his feet are on the floor a wave of nausea forces him back onto the bed. V1 seats itself on the bed opposite him, crossing an ankle over a knee as he struggles to stay upright.
‘I will hunt you down to the ends of the earth,’ he growls. ‘And when I find you I will tear you apart with my bare hands. See if it is flesh or machine or both that lies within your chest. I will relish tearing out your nerves one by one while you can do nothing but lie there and watch.’
‘Kinky,’ says V1, and Gabriel’s wings manifest, still brilliant gold. May God strike him dead right here and now. ‘But I think you need some sleep.’
‘I can rest all I want when your desiccated limbs lie twitching at my feet.’
V1’s shoulders shake in an approximation of laughter. ‘Go sleep, Gabriel.’
‘You will pay for whatever you have done to me.’
He is righteous, he is loyal, his faith has never wavered. The stray thought gnawing at that dogma, ugly and unformed, comes into being when V1 signs, ‘You begged for me to.’
And it isn’t lying. The rawness of his throat is enough evidence, asking for it to touch him and hurt him in between incoherent moans. Gabriel bites back a scream and folds his wings closer to his body, wishing V1 wasn’t looking so intently at him.
‘Rest first,’ it says. ‘Whatever you want to do will need more strength than this.’
He hates that it’s right. It continues to watch him as he lies back down, throwing a blanket over himself.
‘You’ve taken everything I hold dear,’ he says, not sounding as harsh as he wants to.
‘Keep telling yourself that,’ it says. Its single yellow eye is the only thing his fading vision can capture. ‘Honesty’s never looked good on you.’
say gex
this man has a lot of issues tbh and i am going to utilise his mood-ring wings to the max. i think they would be very soft
oh hey minor update: i might start doing mid-week updates too because i am locked the fuck in writing this fic. there are like seven unpublished chapters in the gdocs. i just quit my job because it gave me two mental breakdowns and have nothing better to do except write about gay people. so uh look forward to that