Page 93 of Smart Ass

“No, you really don’t.”

Too bad.

Max had the bot walk backward—super awkwardly, yet still with a sexy sway of its hips—and then approach Ben again.

“Better?”

“You can see it,” Ben pointed out.

“Dammit. I don’t understand why this is so fucking hard! The medical literature says you can transfer an android to a completely new body in two weeks, three at the most. I’ve been working on this for almost four.”

Ben swung the orange dildo in a little circle. “Yes, but that’s moving from one android body to another. This is obviously harder. Maybe we should take a break?” He lifted the wiggly cock to his lips.

“This is a break,” Max replied, as it technically was. Ben spent his dinner breaks in the maintenance room now, not being ravished by heavy machinery, but giving Max feedback and writing new scripts together.

“Are you sure?” He licked the head of the dildo. It tasted plasticky, but if he could get Max to…

“No.”

Well, fine then.

Ben tongued the cock anyway. He was itching for a scene.

Craving it.

They’d done two since Max started the whole android body thing, and they’d both felt a little… flat. It was like all of the elements were there, but they hadn’t come together.

He knew what the difference was. In the android body, Max was focusing more on trying to manage the bot than he was on Ben and the scene itself.

That, and every time Ben looked up, he couldn’t quite reconcile the bot’s shape with Max’s identity.

He took the toy out of his mouth, since clearly it wasn’t doing anything.

Now it was all wet.

Gross.

“Hey Max, I was just thinking that maybe you should try this with another kind of bot. You’re spending a lot of energy overcoming its sexualized programming. Maybe start with a more neutral one that’s designed for teaching or customer service or something, then add on mods that you want?”

Max sighed. “I guess you could be right. I just feel like I’d be giving up any progress I’ve made with this one.”

Ben privately thought that Max hadn’t made any progress with this one, and he kept wondering if it was the right path for him at all. Not that he would ever doubt someone about what they said was right for their body, but every time Max talked about the bot, it felt like there was something just a little bit off.

Dysphoria was complex, but it seemed like Max would be much happier working on a cool engineering project or making use of the handcuffs that still dangled, unused, from the wall.

To be fair, Ben didn’t have any room to complain on the work front. Max was always working, often presenting Ben with new analyses and ideas as soon as he entered the office from the hours of progress he’d made while Ben was sleeping or hanging out at home.

Ben had been zooming through projects, and his only wish now was that Max would get certified as a spark so his name could go on all of their papers and patents. Those would give Max some nice bonuses, too. And a salary.

Not that Max needed them, necessarily, but he was entitled to them, and Ben knew it was important to him to feel like he was contributing.

Ben started thwacking the two dildos together. It made a nice thump-y sound.

“I promised Wallace I’d be leaving soon,” Max added.

“So? He’s a wanker.” Wallace had only come down to Ben’s office once since the little heart-to-heart, and Ben had been super nice and friendly, but Wallace had still been a dick.

Ben had been willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt for a while. His family was a bunch of assholes. But that only went so far.