NOVEL NEXT 86: Metal On Skin
PEYDRAN
"Hmmm. That's the end? So, they turn into a breeze or a song? Is that a metaphor? Do they turn into music? Or is it a dream? Two people lying in the grass, listening to the wind, and they become like the wind? Were they together? Ryst and Nayth? In a musical place? In their dreams? Or this is just a metaphor? They got carried away into bliss?"
"I don't know, Ren. Do you want to ask Ryst again?" We'd finally finished Within and Without, and I wanted him to call Ryst and find out if she was secretly married, so maybe. . .
Ren shook his head, "No. It's bad enough I made them talk about having oral when they were a galaxy apart. Whatever this is, I'm just going to say it's like a poem, or a song. This person I don't know, Sibsil Creed, wrote an interesting book of erotic stories and ideas. And it ended with a poem that was like a dream. But. . . well, I feel like they went somewhere. Those people I don't know in that book. They went to some grassy place and turned into a song. That's a great book ending, isn't it, Pey'o?"
I just nodded to him. I was listening, but I was scared. Scared of what Ren had said last time I'd asked him what song he heard when he thought of this book. I was sort dreading the day that the song had to be written. I didn't want Ren to disappear for weeks writing music. Sands. Hadn't I just told Nayth that he couldn't keep his feelings from Ryst? Fuck wisdom and the mystical path.
I took a deep breath and started in, "Ren, I'm really scared right now. Are you going to need to write music for several days or weeks because we finished this book? I don't even want to ask this because I don't want you to go off into a compositional frenzy right now. Is there some way for you to tell me, or warn me if it's coming? I don't know what to do right now."
Ren looked at me, surprised. "Ah, I don't know, Peydran." He blinked rapidly several times. "I've— hmmm, no one has ever asked me that before. I just— well, I just always went off and did my thing and then came back with well, you know, lots and lots of music. It's everywhere. I barely even know everything I've written. I mean, a lot of it, I do, but. Well, I don't know. Sometimes I compose intentionally. But that's pretty rare. I think people want that— they want to commission me, you know? Write a symphony for this event or that occasion or something. I rarely ever take gigs like that. It's just not inspired. I'm much more spontaneous. It just comes out like sudden storms. And it's always reliable. Always good."
"It's just— I don't even know what to say. We set up the little studio in the empty apartment next door. So I'll be close by. So, hmmm— can I give you a warning? Well, let's just decide that I will try, okay? It'll be one of our things that we do to have a good relationship? What do you think? I will try? It's something new for me and new for you?" He smiled a knowing smile because we'd been doing a lot of things that were new to me, but not new to him.
I was very, very grateful that Ren was not only an experienced lover, but good at helping me feel completely comfortable with all the different ways we could be intimate. It had been Ren's idea that from the beginning we should find out what was agreeable for my metal hand so we'd both know what to expect and where the limits were. We'd found out quickly that I had a low threshold. We tried, but there wasn't a whole lot I was willing to do.
Holding him and caressing his skin were good, but fisting him didn't work for me. He said I was good at being gentle, and the metal didn't bother him, but it bothered me because I couldn't feel it. I wanted to touch him with my skin, and I didn't like how much I had to think about what I was doing. So we agreed on that boundary. Also, no metal on prostate. Once we had those boundaries in place, it was a matter of figuring out how to do everything we wanted to do with just my human hand, my cybernetic hand playing a supporting role.
Ren had insisted that to him, the augment was still my arm and my hand, even if it was made of metal. He'd said he didn't want my left arm to get lonely and feel ignored, so he'd asked if he could kiss it regularly— after all, I still had a shoulder and half an arm, didn't I? He'd said that to him, my metal arm was a part of me, and he loved all of me, so he was always going to treat my metal arm just like everything else.
He'd wanted to know all about the relay and how it worked, and it fascinated him as much as it had me when I'd first learned about cybernetics.
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Ren's boundless curiosity was an asset with the augmentation, and he was particularly interested in the fact that there were no wires between the relay and the augment— that the system used my natural, human nerves as wires. It wasn't a wireless system, it was wired into my human nerve tissue. He'd said that meant that the metal arm actually was part of me because it was attached to my nerves. Even if I couldn't feel his skin with it, it was still attached to my nerves, and so it needed to know that he loved it to.
I'd agreed that he could kiss it all, and he'd worked me over with kindness. Like a balm over the most vulnerable part of my body. The part of me no one else ever touched. For me, the most difficult moment had been when he'd kissed the skin at what used to be my elbow where metal and skin were grafted together now— the scars of being an amputee. I'd been ripped open, but Ren melted away the pain with kindness. That's how I'd figured out the core of who Ren was: he was kindness in the flesh, and he'd healed parts of me that I hadn't known were wounded.
Then he'd showed me all the ways he liked to be touched, and we'd figured out what I liked. It was so good with him, and we'd built a repertoire of things we both liked to do. Ren was an endless source of laughter in bed, and we had so much fun together.
The first time I heard him say "body butter," I thought he'd said "buddy butter," and we'd laughed for ten minutes joking about whose buddy was gonna get buttered first. He preferred natural moisturizers instead of lube, and his favorite was a body butter made of nilotica shea butter whipped with grape seed oil and orange essential oil. He'd said it was the perfect mixture of softness and slide, and he was right. I really liked the orange scent too.
I pulled him into my lap, nodding. "Okay, it'll be new for me and new for you. We'll try it with you warning me if you're going to go off to compose for days. What should I expect? Should I bring you food? How can I help you?"
"Hmmm," Ren said again. "Ahh, well, I probably don't do a great job of taking care of myself. I'm totally in it, you know? I may not have any awareness of anything other than the musical storm that is flooding me and has to get out of me and into the computer or on a page—paper. Sometimes it's both."
"So, Peydran," he looked right at me. "I'm really sorry. I'll apologize now, okay? I don't want to disappear on you. But I know it will happen. I think that's part of loving me. Just like you love Ryst, and she disappears into the abyss of being sick. I'm really sorry that the people you love disappear from you."
Emotion leaked out of my eyes. Ren kept saying he wasn't good at people. He was so good at me. He read between the lines of my life so well.
"But I think," Ren continued in a soft voice, "well, I think you must be really, really special, Peydran Madrano. Because you love Ryst, and you love me. And I know that Ryst and I aren't the same. We're different, but we are alike. Neither of us is like other people. We both live in a mental world where other people are not."
"And yet, you are in it with her, and you are in it with me. So, you live in Shurwinn. But you also live wherever it is that Ryst goes in her mind, and you live in my songs. It must be really hard to be you— to live in three worlds at once."
I didn't know what else to do, so I kissed him, deeply. With all that I was. I kissed him while tears ran down our cheeks and into his beard. And I didn't stop. I kissed him, and I took his clothes off right there on the sofa.
And I made love to him, and it was the most touching, deep moment of my life. I didn't stop kissing him. We were only on our second storm for the day, so I kept the volume up and kissed down his torso. I didn't even know what I was doing. I just wanted to be in his heart again. I wanted to join with him again the way we had our first night together.
I was so open to him. I was open, and I was listening. What could I do? I kissed down to his belly button, and then just started pushing my face into his belly button, groaning. I just wanted him to let me in again. How? How did I do it?
Ren's hands went to my head, holding me to him. Hands on my head. I moved my left hand, the metal one, and made it flat like a blade. I put it right on Ren's breastbone. Then I made a matching blade with my right hand, the human one, and I sat up. Ren lay on his back, and I sat between his legs, my legs crossed. Then I took that blade of my right hand, and rested the tips of my fingers in a line down below his belly button. Like I was going to slice him open breast bone to pelvis with the blades of my hands. I closed my eyes, and I thought about everything Ren made me feel inside.
Ren saw me. He saw what it was like to love two magical people and for them to go flying off into places I couldn't follow. Ren understood me. We could share something. I knew we could.
So I let go. Of everything. Of how afraid I was that he'd disappear into musical magic and leave me for days or weeks. Leave me helpless, having no idea what to do or how long it would last. I let the emotion well up, and as my tears wet his skin, I felt it.
No— I saw it. Colors. Pink and blue, yellow and purple. Stars. Moonlight. Sunlight. Auroras. The Galaxy and beyond.
But it wasn't anything at all; it was just love. It was Ren's love.
No, I felt Ren say. Our love: yours and mine. Together. It was a feeling. It wasn't words. I just knew that he felt me, and he knew that I felt so free now that he understood me. I put my face back into his belly button and just rested there, feeling free and feeling loved as he held me.