Ryan watched quietly as Dylan slept, lying on his side, naked. He ran his hand along the long line of the captain's flank envying the resilience of muscle under flesh. He rejoiced in the warmth that radiated from Dylan's body even in the coolness of his Andromeda quarters. It was difficult to believe that he had just spent several hours sharing his passionate sexual escapades with the man now sleeping here so peacefully. What had he done to be so lucky?

Ryan quietly slipped on his socks, underwear and the pants to his uniform. He groped under the bed and only found one boot and decided he really didn't need them. Stocking feet would make his egress from the room quieter anyway. He didn't really want to wake Dylan.

The corridors of the Andromeda were empty indicating that everyone, except for whoever was manning the flight deck -- probably Rommie -- had settled in for the night. There would have been a time when people would have found it unbelievable that such a large ship could virtually fly itself without human guidance. It was something he had learned first hand, when his entire crew had been killed. Still now when he really thought about it, he had difficulty believing it.

A thin line of light seeping from under the door confirmed his expectations. Even after twelve hours of crawling around the conduits of the Andromeda, Harper was still in his machine shop. There was a part of him that felt disturbed that the young engineer had not allowed himself time to sleep before correcting the mistake that had been made that afternoon. There was also a part of him that would have been angry if he had found Harper sleeping and not attending to his duties as an engineer.

Ryan knocked quietly. He knew Harper would not be expecting him. He didn't want to have him to stop and open the door; he just needed to announce his presence. He reached for the latch, opened the door, and quietly walking into the room in his stocking feet.

* * * *

"Holy freaking. . . do you always sneak up on people." Harper pulled his head out of the crotch of the android on which he had been working. He breathed a sigh of relief when he realized it was Ryan and he would not have to explain what he was dong.

"Sorry Harper, I knocked. Not loudly enough I guess."

"That's all right. I guess I was a little preoccupied."

"This could have waited until morning. You've had a long day." Ryan smiled softly.

"Almost done. Hercules will be as good as new. . . . The way you want him. . . . Hope you don't mind if I check him out."

Ryan was not used to someone being flustered in his presence, but the young engineer appeared to be just that. Ryan sensed that the frustration was being caused by something other than problems with the refitting of the sex android on which Harper was working.

"He sure gave 'bent' a whole knew meaning." Ryan smiled, he hoped that Harper realized he had made a joke. He was not real confident with the use of humor. He walked over and stood behind Harper, close enough that he wondered if the engineer was sensing the lack of his hot breath on his neck. He watched has Harper made the final closure on the skin with an electric fuser, working with the touch of a surgeon as if the android on which he worked were a real human.

"Are you always this tender with your projects?"

"You should know. I did you, didn't I."

"I guess we don't really know what happens when the master chip is turned off. Now that I see how caring you are, I guess I should thank you again. You know, I used to work at a retrofitting factory, some of the men who worked there were . . . " He couldn’t find a word. Sometimes he had that problem when emotions became intense. He wasn't supposed to have them, let alone be able to name them.

"You could have been a surgeon with those hands." He said trying to change the subject.

"Yah right, lots of freaking medical schools on Earth. I guess I could have gotten the anatomy part though, lots of dead bodies to work on."

"I'm sorry. I guess I am fortunate you became an engineer."

"You bet your ass you are, Ryan."

As soon as he had done it, he realized it had been a mistake. A motion made without thought, maybe without stimulation. He had reached up with his hand and ran it across the spikes of the young engineer's hair marveling at its bristling under his touch. Hair was the next thing he was going to have retooled. He knew that earlier when he had run his fingers through Dylan's hair pulling his lover's head tightly into his groin. He liked hair. But then he liked bone, and flesh, and muscle. . . He liked all things human. Harper had jumped back, as if he were not used to having his hair touched.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude on your personal space."

"Personal space? I was just a little .. you know freaked. I wasn't expecting you to touch me. I think I'm just tired, it's been a long day. Can you wait until tomorrow so that I can finishing the test Hercules. I don't trust Trance's work -- at least not on him."

"Of course, Harper."

Ryan expected the engineer to turn and leave. Go back to his quarters and get some sleep. He was surprised when Harper grabbed the bottom of his shirt and pulled it off over his head and even more surprised when he unbuckled his belt and dropped his cargo pants. Clad only in his boxers, Harper flopped on an empty work-bench, stretched out, and stared at the android captain.

"Well, aren't you going to get back to your fellow officer?" Ryan thought he heard a slight feeling of resentment in the man's voice.

"He's asleep. He needs his sleep."

"And I freaking don't."

"I'm sorry, I'm on my way. I just thought . . ."

"Thought what?"

"Not sure, I thought I sensed something when I touched your hair."

"Yea, you sensed me think that you should keep your freaking hands off me. That's what you sensed. I never met a touchy-feely AI before."

"I'm sorry. I just, obviously wrongly, concluded from watching you with Hercules that you would like to be touched." Ryan still thought his conclusion had been correct and instead of walking toward the door, quietly edged toward the man on the work table. "If you really want to know what a touchy-feely android is like, how about I give you a massage?"

"It's the middle of the night, I'm tired, you don't have to. . . "

"I know I don't have to, I want to. . . You've had a long, rough day, and still took time to work on Hercules."

"But don't you want to get back to Captain Hunt?"

"As I said before, he's sleeping."

"And I should be. But if you want to have the thrill of touching Seamas Z. Harper before I except a transfer to the land of nod, be my freaking guest."

"I just hope that I don't wake you up. Happens sometimes."

* * * *

It did, of course. It didn't take a very long time for the agile fingers, trained in the massage parlors of the Clarion's Call to relax Harper's shoulder and back muscles and then slide down his back and continue the same relaxing strokes on his firm ass. Almost as soon as the boxers were removed, Ryan was certain that the engineer would not be getting much sleep that night.

"There's some oil in the second drawer." Harper muttered as Ryan turned him over to work on the chest muscles.

Once a man removes his underwear and suggests that you oil your hands, there is not a need for high speed processors to conclude that Harper was suggesting more than just a change to a less dry massage. Ryan didn't like thinking like a machine even if that was what he really was. He could pull Harper to the edge of the table and fuck him while he remained standing -- but that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted skin-to-skin. He wanted kisses. He wanted cuddles.

* * * *

Despite the fact that his body was dog-tired, Harper had felt his groin growing excited and hard. That Captain Ryan sure had talented fingers. He could ask questions with just his hands, and Harper knew the answers all too well. He had designed most of the features of the AI's body, including the oversized cock that he yearned to have buried deep inside him. He hoped the AI's programmers had included sexual skills to deserve such fine physical equipment.

"We could get a little more comfortable."

Ryan nodded his head.

"Over in that corner, there's a bend in the artificial gravity. Nice and comfy. usually sleep over there, so there are some pillows and blankies. Few cans of Sparky. Do you want a drink?" "I thought you slept on these work benches." Harper realized that Ryan's verbal sensors were dangerously close to classifying his comments as babble and shutting off.

* * * *

Androids do not really sleep. Sometimes they just disconnect the active reading of their sensors. It requires deliberate action. Ryan, however, seemed to have awoken in a naked tangled heap on the floor with no memory of ever having decided to go off-line. He wondered if Harper might have disconnected his chip, but realized that if he had, he would not have awoken at least not while the engineer was still asleep.

For the second time in just a few hours, he was holding a naked man and marveling at his physical being. He ran his hand along Harper's shoulder and then repeated the same motion with his tongue. He could tell the difference. The added nuance that the sense of taste added. It wasn't as if he hadn't licked a lover before, but suddenly he was thinking about it. What he tasted not just how it felt to the person being licked. He was experiencing new perceptions that had to be attributed to the changes that Harper had made in his retrofitting. The engineer did damn good work.

There was a big difference between fucking a human and another android. An android's sexual orifice -- he hated that term -- he ran through his internal thesaurus and wondered how he had just found a synonym that was even less pleasant esthetically than asshole. An android was designed to please the person doing the fucking. His was programmed with responses so that even though he experienced pleasure while being fucked, there was no question that his partner would have even more pleasure. With humans it was different. He wasn't supposed to know the difference, yet he could sense the difference between a partner who was just taking pleasure for his own sake and one who was trying to share an experience with his partner. Seamus Harper fell into that second group. No wonder the little man was so damn not. He wondered if Dylan realized it.

He looked down at his spent penis and realized that there was one disadvantage in fucking humans -- especially since the work room had no shower. He was going to have to sneak into Dylan's shower and back into bed, all without waking the high guard captain.

* * * *

"Morning Dylan, I decided to try out the hot water in your shower. I stunk." Ryan watched the questioning look in Dylan's face. Androids did not have sweat glands. They needed showers only when they were dirty from external sources. "I smelled like you, big guy. You were a little ripe."

Dylan blushed. "Sorry."

"Shower works fine. How did you sleep?"

"Compared to what? Better than you, I'm sure."

"Just making conversation. I know you slept well, I watched you most of the night."

"Except when you were gone. Did you think I wouldn't know?"

"I don't sleep. You know that. Would you believe that Harper worked on my android after he got done with the water pipes? That kid never quits does he?"

"What happened to your android. You never explained."

"Yea, difficult to talk when you've got your penis jammed in my mouth."

"My penis, your mouth. Not the way I remember it Ryan."

"Whoops, sorry Dylan, must have been some other penis." He laughed. He knew it had been both, he loved those memories.

"Do you think a small spanking would help you differentiate in the future?"

"If you think, Captain Ryan. I'm willing to try anything. Just to help my memory."

"Your memory, your fucking memory is . . . "

"I'm not the one who suggested the spanking."

When programs for written that allow androids to engage in sexual activities with any degree of skill and grace (Ryan had fucked a few that were not so programmed and knew that they did exist), the pheromones that exist in human sweat were given high priority in evoking responses. A man who had not had a shower in over 40 hours and who had engaged in both a vigorous gym workout and a night of sexual rooting became even more exciting. Ryan was ready for what Dylan would consider round two -- even if it were round three for him.

"I'm going to get you dirty again." Dylan said with a sly smile.

"Does this mean I'm not getting spanked."

"Of course not, that's the foreplay."

* * * *

A still sleepy Beka Valentine replaced Rommie on the flight deck. She hadn't planned to begin her shift for another eight hours, but a frantic call from Dylan feigning a headache had changed all that.

"I could have stayed on. You should have called."

"It's OK, I'm here now. I don't think much is going to happen today."

"Good, in that case I will relax for a few hours. The subliminal sensors on the ship have been on overload most of the night. I think everyone is finally asleep."

Rommie quietly walked down the hall to the room where Anna was stored. She knocked on the door and let herself inside. The sex android was doing naked yoga stretches.

"I think everyone on the ship is asleep or at work. Why don't we sneak down to Harper's workroom and check out that Hercules android. Harper finally has his penis on straight and I hear it is a whopper."

Anna removed her leg from behind her neck, pulled on a T-shirt and followed the leather clad Avatar down the hall.

"What if Dylan needs me."

"Don't think so Anna, not for a while anyway. We might as well test this guy out."

Jan

2002
 

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