Work Text:
It’s closing in on 4 AM and Stone is struggling to sleep once more. It’s become a bad habit by now, the bags under his eyes almost as bad as the doctor’s had been. As bad, really, but less visible against his darker skin than the doctor’s pale skin.
Pale and freckled, his treacherous memory offers, because he doesn’t forget anything.
Doesn’t forget the time after the fall where he’d had to help Robotnik with everything. With bathing. At the time, any inappropriate thoughts had been miles away. The doctor was suffering and he was there to make it better.
But now, alone in the darkness of the CRAB, he remembers, because he has perfect recall. Once he has memorised something, it’s in his mind forever.
It feels invasive and disrespectful and Stone hates that his mind is like this sometimes, but he’s remembering vividly what the doctor looks like without all those layers. He can probably accurately depict every freckle and mark if he so desires. Robotnik had far fewer scars than Stone did, but there was still some. Mostly accidents, not injuries from violence, but each one was still a reminder to Stone what his job meant. What he was meant to protect.
The doctor had pink nipples. Soft pink against pale skin.
Stone feels like a terrible person for even thinking about these things, but he’s always been flawed.
He’d never really seen that shade before. He has had a fair few lovers in his time, at least until about six months into his assignment with the doctor. None of them were anything but warm bodies to distract himself with. He’d told them as much. Heartbroken suitors were such a hassle.
None of them had ever had nipples like that, though, soft and pink and so damn perfect.
He’s touched himself to the doctor before. He knows he shouldn’t, that it’s breaking so many boundaries, but he’s a broken thing and can’t stop himself.
It’s worse now.
Robotnik is gone. Forever. And all Stone has left is the Swarm and the memories.
They lodge in his throat and he feels nauseated, but still—
He puts the CRAB in stand-by mode, turning off the internal recording. Bella chirps at him as he gently grabs her and activates her full maintenance scan. He has about forty minutes before she comes back online.
No witnesses to his shame.
He’s in his sleep wear, just a pair of worn sweat pants and not much else. Easy to touch his fingers to his chest in half-remembered patterns.
The smooth metal of his finger tips is a foreign sensation against his skin in this context. Not because he has never touched his skin with them — he does still shower regularly — but it has always been just that. Maintenance. This is very different.
His claws are folded in as he runs his finger across his own chest, flicking a cool metal finger against his nipple. The sensation feels odd. His fingers are still tactile, but the sensation of touching things always feels like it’s coming from somewhere slightly to the side of him.
Like it’s not his own hand touching him at the same time as it is.
Like Stone the man and Stone the machine are not actually the same.
He wonders—
The left arm detaches at the thought, attuned to his mind in a way that no other connection could do. Stone turns off the haptic feedback and touches the fingers, carefully. No sensation in his left hand, just the right. Like it’s someone else’s hand.
His mouth is dry and he’s shaking a little.
Stone has always been at ease with his particular proclivities, but this seems like a step too far in a direction he can’t return from.
Does he want to return?
When he made the arms controllable when detached, this was not what he had intended.
He pulls the hand up to his throat and places the fingers around his neck. It feels like metal, like a machine. Not like a human. But not like his own hand, either. As he thinks about it, the fingers tighten, gently at first and then firmer.
He gasps. The cool metal restraining his neck feels like an absolution.
Too mechanical to let him daydream about things he shouldn’t— Can’t. Just unyielding metal against his skin.
Their grasp tighten a little more and he twitches, hips moving up on their own accord.
He wants. He wants so much it burns.
He has already broken so many rules, so many boundaries. He might as well indulge before the inevitable shame.
With a thought, the electrical impulses of the arm come to life. Not very strong; his shock pulse can and will kill a man. Just enough to feel it, crackling against his skin, tingling and sharp.
So good.
He powers his eyes down and imagines green lighting and long elegant fingers. This is not the same. But it’s as close as he’ll ever be allowed.
Another pulse crackles through him and he arches, feeling like every inch of his skin is electrified. This is a newer desire of his, one he has never had the chance to play with. He’s always know he had particular tastes, but this—
Oh, the doctor had showed him a new world in so many ways.
He can feel the energy coursing through his arm even if he can’t feel the arm itself, the static cling hard to avoid. If he keeps his eyes shut down and his feedback stunted, he can imagine that it’s not just a battery and a carefully calibrated net of electrodes that leaves him tingling and shivering.
Sharp needle pricks against his neck startle a gasp from his lips. The claws have extended, digging lightly into his skin. Not deep enough to do real damage, but enough to draw blood. When the next pulse dances over his skin, the droplets sting and tingle and he arches into it, biting his lip. It feels like —
Like being alive, sharp and painful and so bright, pulse racing to keep up with the electricity.
Like an explosion.
How fitting.
The metal of his right hand is cool and still in comparison. His limbs barely conduct electricity, so only the hand with the electrodes tingles and moves on its own. The other is resting against his thigh still, though the fingers have curled into the fabric with a rigid grip.
This isn’t just embarrassing. This is dangerous. Reckless. His hand moves with his subconscious, only on his own commands, but if he overestimates what he can handle, he could hurt himself seriously. He could die.
The thought makes him almost as tingly as the electricity does.
He is a broken thing, a discarded toy trying to pretend he’s anything but. He doesn’t even have the ability to feel ashamed, not when his skin is alive with electricity, the sparks singing in his blood. He just needs.
Needs more.
His right hand has crept into his pants, curling around his cock, and he pulls it out and brushes his fingers along the length. At the same time, the grasp on his neck tighten, everything but the claws pushing closer.
The dual sensations drive his hips forward, the rest of him still under the grasp of his hand, the inherent danger of the sharp claws and sparking electricity holding him in place.
It’s good. So good.
He can lean into this and pretend.
In his mind, the hand around his neck is warmer, not as sharp, but the shock is stronger. Greener.
More.
More.
Another shock, a little stronger. He gasps again, hips shifting forwards, pleasure crackling through him chasing the pulse of electricity. His skin feels alive, a separate entity, like a canvas for the humming buzz.
His head feels floaty.
Disconnected.
Just waves of sharp electricity and dancing pleasure rolling over him again and again.
A particularly long and sharp shock brings him over the edge, and he feels like the electricity has gone off in every cell in his body. It feels—
The hand on his throat releases its grip, falling away. Stone feels like he’s falling too, everything bright and alive suddenly ripped away.
He lies back, catching his breath, listening to the pulsing systems of the CRAB until he feels present in his body again. It takes longer than he’s willing to admit. Maybe the electricity did melt his nerves a little. It almost feels like it.
When he can reliably move again, he reattaches his arm and retracts the claws.
He leaves the eyes off. He doesn’t want to see the empty room.
He doesn’t want to see anything.
By now, he knows the interior by heart anyway. Knows every little empty spot that is still haunted by a spectre made of memories and grief. He doesn’t need to see to find wipes to clean himself off. Doesn’t need to see to know that he still has a good while before Bella comes back online.
He pulls his clothes back on properly and grabs the bed sheets, balling them up and throwing them down the laundry chute. Tomorrow will be laundry day.
Today. He has lost track of days, and he never sleeps more than a few hours at a time anyway.
If he even sleeps.
He will try.
As he lies down, his skin still tingles slightly with fading sensations and lost dreams.