Which Flesh is Your Flesh?

Chapter 3

For the first few days after his augments had been jailbroken Iguazu had been piloting better than he had ever had before. He managed to claw his way up to the top of B rank in the arena, even ALL MIND had started to take interest in him, but after about a week his performance started to steeply decline. It wasn’t that his nerve connections had eroded, they were still just as strong, it was that the strength of the feedback had started to become a problem. The worst part of it was that he could pinpoint the exact moment when it happened.

It had been fucking Rummy of all people. Iguazu had decided to hold a rematch with the single worst fighter in the arena as an ego boost, a fucking execution meant to prove to himself how far he had come, but he had gotten cocky. He hadn’t lost the fight, even he wasn’t that bad, but he had taken a hit from Rummy’s chainsaw. Even ordinarily that would’ve been a bad hit, the spinning blades rattling his cockpit hard enough to give him whiplash. This time though, he felt it. He really felt it as the blade tore through him, shredding his plating and wires leaving his guts hanging out, spilling onto the ground. He wasn’t the same after that. Iguazu found himself playing more and more defensively, letting his opponents dictate the pace instead of overwhelming them with his aggression. Instead of trading hits, he was trying to avoid taking them altogether. Not that it was working. Melander parts were good for a lot of things, dodging wasn’t one of them. Again, he almost wished he was piloting something lighter, maybe even a reverse joint, something anything to avoid the pain.

Michigan was starting to give him strange looks. Though he didn’t know for sure that his commander knew something was up, until he grabbed his arm on the way out the barracks one morning.

“Either get over it or go get a factory reset.” Iguazu froze. Michigan knew he’d fucked with his augments. “I don’t care what you do to yourself as long as it makes you a better soldier, but this isn’t helping.”

“I’ll get it under control, Sir.” Iguazu insisted through gritted teeth. Michigan released him.

“You’d better, or I’ll drag you down to the tech boys myself.” If Iguazu didn’t know better, he would’ve thought Michigan’s brows were knit together in concern rather than anger.

He needed to see Raven again. Everything felt wrong. Things didn't feel right when he was with Raven either, but they were wrong in a way that excited him. Like digging his fingers inside an open wound and greedily licking up the spilt blood as it poured forth.

It took Iguazu three tries to get him on coms. For all that effort all he got was a growling “What?” on the other end.

“I’m getting worse.”

“If that’s you trying to come on to me, you need to work on your game.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter! I mean I’ve been piloting like shit!”

“Hey, you’re the one that sent me a dick in a box.”

“You said if I wanted to measure dicks I had to send you the damn credits right. I did you one better.”

“If you wanted to measure dicks why’d you make it so damn big.”

The one Iguazu had ordered him was pretty ludicrous. It was a nine inch long fetish piece with a girth about the width of three of his fingers. He made sure to scrub his search history after buying it, he never would’ve heard the end of it otherwise. Initially he’d been looking for something a little more standard, one of the hyper realistic models that were more popular with soldiers that had lost theirs due to injury, but none of them really felt like they fit Raven. That’s when he had started scrolling through the fetish websites. At first it was mostly a joke. Haha Raven had accused him of being a bot fucker wouldn’t it be funny to send him a novelty cock? However as he continued scrolling it started to become less and less of a joke. Raven was almost a machine himself. He was the one that claimed they were weapons, he probably thought so too. Then he’d found the maker of the cock he ultimately sent him. They were some Martian that specialized in fetish gear based off of real machines, including a line up of AC inspired pieces. In any sort of right frame of mind Iguazu probably would have thought it was fucked up to make sex toys based on war machines, but at that point in the night, he wasn’t in a right frame of mind. When he saw that the Martian had a piece based on the Nachtreiher line, Raven’s favorite, he practically blacked out and when he woke back up again, he’d already paid for expedited shipping.

The fucked up part of it all, was the the damn thing came in a few sizes, but Iguazu had chosen the second largest. He blamed it on Raven entirely. That scene the other pilot had set when he’d made him jack off in front of him kept crawling back into his mind. Though it was slightly different from his point of view.

Iguazu wouldn’t let himself be captured so easily, Raven would have to beat him half to death first, with his exoskeleton it would be so easy, he would probably have to put in more effort trying not to actually kill him. Then, when he was too bloody and broken to resist, Raven would chain him up in his cock pit. Even then Iguazu wouldn’t just submit and become his willing toy, no matter how much he secretly wanted to, Raven would have to break him first. Iguazu would still fight him every step of the way of course, he would bite his cock every time it forced its way into his mouth, even though his teeth were useless against metal and silicon. Then when his pride had finally been destroyed enough that he couldn’t muster any more futile resistance, Raven would really start training him. He’d fuck him until his jaw ached and his ass was raw and bleeding. Raven didn’t need to take breaks like Iguazu did, he could probably fuck him for hours a day until he was an incoherent mess only held up by his chains. At that point Iguazu might actually start to like it. Raven might hold his face as he unlocked his cuffs laughing that awful laugh at him as drool pooled at the corners of his mouth. Then, once he was free again, once he was finally able to escape, Raven would tell him to suck, and he would. Maybe if he was a good boy Iguazu would get to be his personal attack dog, a beast only let off the leash when it was time to kill for his master.

At that point in the fantasy Iguazu would generally finish jacking off, regaining his senses enough to fucking hate himself, but not enough to stop himself from buying Raven a dick he could really choke on.

Iguazu didn’t tell Raven any of that of course. He didn’t want Raven to think he had anything over him.

“Come on, the least you could do is humor me. I had a lot of ideas for what to say if you tried to tell me yours was bigger. The phrase ‘emaciated shrimp’ might’ve been involved.”

“You fucked up my brain and you want to make dick jokes?!” Iguazu shouted, desperately trying to steer the conversation away from Raven’s cock before he was forced to admit to anything.

“Your brain isn’t fucked up.” Raven replied, his tone completely even. “Most of the risk was in the jailbreaking process. You got out of that unscathed as far I can tell. Whatever is going on with you now is psychological.”

“I can’t see a shrink about this shit! How do I fix it?!”

“Do you have some combat data you could send me or something?”

“Yeah just give me a second.” He slipped out of the top bunk of his bed. The bottom one was empty and had been since Volta died. Iguazu crept from his room in the barracks and towards the hangar where the Red Guns’ ACs were kept. This late at night most of the mechanics would have gone home, but there was still a risk somebody was working late.

When he reached HEAD BRINGER’s back panel, there was a moment of hesitation before he opened it. He could feel the camera embedded in his coms pad on him as he froze moments before opening the hatch. Once he got inside, he hurriedly took out a transfer cable and plugged one end into the dashboard and the other into his coms. He wanted to get the transfer over as soon as possible.

“Just your most recent bout is fine. I think I’ve already got an idea of what happened.”

Iguazu transferred the data and Raven let out an almost pleasant sounding synthesized hum as he reviewed it.

“That’s what I thought.”

“What?”

“You’ve trained yourself to associate being in your AC with being in pain.”

No shit. He was always in pain when he was in his AC. It was a fucking nexus of everything wrong with his life. The augmentation surgery he had been forced into, his daily hell of living under Michigan’s thumb, his fucking inadequacy, all of it was crammed into the 5x5 box that was his cockpit, hanging in the stale air like smog.

“And?”

“And that’s what’s fucking you up. Dodging a punch is great but you’re flinching before your opponent even draws back their arm.”

“I’m not a masochist.”

“We both know that isn’t true, though the footage doesn’t read masochist so much as chicken shit.”

“So is that your solution, just fucking man up? Some shrink you are,” Iguazu complained.

“There’s two things we’ll need to do. One is quick and easy, but it’s a bandaid solution, the other is going to take a while and it’s going to make you think I’m fucked in the head, but it will help you way more in the long run.”

“What’s the second thing?”

“I’m sending you a set of coordinates.”

“Hey, that isn’t an answer,” Iguazu protested as Raven hung up.

This time Raven wanted to meet him in the middle of nowhere. It was nothing but tundra, flat snow covered ground for miles in every direction. It made it eerily bright even though the winter sun had long set. If he was back on Titan, this might’ve been a good place to watch the stars. Raven touched down beside him, the amber lights of his sensors and various external indicators twinkling like he’d ripped all of them from the sky.

“It’s really something isn’t it.” Raven finally buzzed awkwardly. Iguazu guessed he wasn’t one for small talk. Though, who really talked to Raven besides him?

“Something?”

“The sky. All those stars and not one constellation I recognize. I don’t know if I’d call it beautiful, but it’s-“

“Something.” Iguazu finished. He understood the sentiment.

“Yeah it’s something.” Raven didn’t turn his face away from the stars. “To fix your hang up we have to get you to a place where at worst, you don’t associate your AC with any particular emotion. It should be like your body, a neutral part of yourself rather than a place you go to experience pain.”

“Some people associate their bodies with negative emotions,” Iguazu replied just to be argumentative.

“Yeah and that’s considered a medical issue, dumbass, but unfortunately I’m not an MD so we’re going to have to fumble around in the dark a bit.”

“You don’t sound fucked in the head so far.”

“I haven’t gotten to how we’re going to be fumbling yet.” Raven kicked at the snow. “Fuck it I’ll just come out and say it. We need to have sex.”

“How is that supposed to make me more comfortable in my AC?”

“It has to be while we’re both in them.”

Iguazu looked at the flat pelvic panel of his AC. There couldn’t be right? He slid his hand over the surface trying to see if there was a place where a hidden dick could pop out.

“Okay I appreciate the initiative, but we’re going to have to get a little more creative here.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet.” Iguazu hurriedly returned HEAD BRINGER’s hands to his sides. “How the fuck would that even work? It’s not like this thing has any holes.”

“Iguazu, you have a woefully limited idea of what sex can be.”

Raven took one of HEAD BRINGER’s hands in his slim fingers. Then he held it out straight, parallel to their bodies, as if they were about to start dancing. He traced the fingers of his opposite hand along the edges of his plates. Suddenly, Raven’s slim fingers slipped beneath them slightly, just above his elbow joint, and Iguazu gasped.

“There they are.” Raven bent his head to Iguazu’s hand in an imitation of a kiss. “There’s a system of haptic sensors in your arms to help adjust for recoil. They feel really nice when you touch them.”

Iguazu hadn’t felt anything like it. It was like a direct wire to the pleasure centers in his brain.

“You’ve got way more sensitive ones too.”

When Iguazu was brought into the Red Guns, Michigan had made him wait six months before he could even touch the controls of an AC. During that long period, he’d been assigned to Balam’s squad of mechanics. He slid his hand along Raven’s face plate. The form factor of Raven’s Kasuar head was completely different from a Melander or a Tian Qiang, but sensor placements were more or less standardized underneath all ACs’ armor to insure compatibility. His clumsy metal fingers dipped beneath Raven’s faceplate, just beneath the independent’s ballistic glass and metal eyes. Raven hummed contentedly, leaning into Iguazu’s hand.

“Yeah, you’ve got it.” His voice crackled with static. “Fuck that’s good.”

Raven let go of Iguazu’s hand, his slim fingers slipping below his much bulkier faceplate to get at the sensors underneath. The second his fingers touched the sensitive components Iguazu began to drool. His whole body felt pleasantly warm and relaxed in a way he didn’t associate with sex. For him it had always been quick fumbling and violent, a blow job with teeth given in a back alley, Volta fucking him fast and hard in the locker room to relieve stress, it was never this languid, this exploratory. If it wasn’t Raven with his hands beneath the plates of his armor, he might have even said it was tender.

He sat down in the snow and Raven followed him to the ground, slotting himself between Iguazu’s legs. He was heavy in his lap, but it didn’t feel oppressive, he felt comfortable, a small, weak part of him even felt safe. Raven slid his other hand against Iguazu’s sensors and Iguazu slid his other hand against Raven’s. They laid there in the snow, heads pressed against each other’s, fingers beneath the other’s skin, the eerie silence of the tundra broken only by moans, static and soft breathing. At some point Iguazu had started crying. He kept expecting the violence to come, but it never did. Iguazu realized that this must be what it was like to have sex with someone who loved him. Even though he and Raven were just mimicking love, pretending that they understood its motions, it was closer than anything else he had ever experienced. Despite that, Iguazu could still convince himself that he hated Raven.

No, because of it. Hate isn’t the opposite of love, Iguazu knew that well. What every other man he’d fucked had felt for him wasn’t hatred it was at best contempt and at worst ambivalence. Something a man felt so little for was easy to break and discard. Raven hated him, Iguazu knew he did. He saw how quickly the independent burst into an assault boost the moment he saw Iguazu on radar. Raven had to hate him. He had to have the same tunnel vision Iguazu did whenever he saw him. There had to be nothing else that mattered anymore when they saw each other on the battlefield. Because if Raven didn’t hate him, then did Iguazu mean anything to him?

“Iguazu,” Raven’s voice crackled, cutting out as he tried to speak. “I’m close.” He dug his fingers even further under Iguazu’s faceplate. He whined, but managed not to smack his head against his dashboard again. Feedback screamed over his internal speakers as Raven came as well.

Iguazu leaned backwards as Raven’s hands slipped from his faceplate. The independent collapsed on top of him. The harsh angles of their bodies locking into each other. Iguazu didn’t move to push him off, he just stared into the glowing amber of the false eyes surrounding Raven’s cameras. He turned off his mic.

“I think I love you.” He gently stroked Raven’s face plate.

“Hello? Did your mic go out?”

“I still hate you, I hate you so much it hurts, but I think I might love you too.”

“If you’re saying something I can’t hear you. I think you muted yourself.”

“I just don’t understand, why did it have to be you? Why are you the only one that acts like you care that I exist?”

“You didn’t knock yourself out again did you?”

Iguazu unmuted himself.

“Would you shut the hell up.”

“So how are you feeling?”

“My sensors still feel a little strange.”

“Your sensors?”

“Yeah, everything feels a little out of focus.”

“Your sensors?”

“Yes, my sensors.” He didn’t understand what the problem was.

“Is this your hand?” Raven grabbed one of his hands from the ground.

“Yes.” Iguazu replied incredulously.

“Damn we got it in one. Good job, Iguazu.”

He took another look at his hand. Right, that wasn’t his, it was HEAD BRINGER’s. When had he started thinking of that hand as his? But that wasn’t the extent of it was it? When did he begin to think of HEAD BRINGER as himself? When did the meat inside his cockpit become only a piece of him rather than the whole?

“Woah there, don’t think about it too hard.” Iguazu had curled in on himself. “It’s alright, I’ve got you.” Raven wrapped his thin arms around Iguazu’s thick armor and he grabbed onto the independent mercenary’s arms, trying to ground himself. “This is you.” Raven squeezed tighter. “This is you.”

“This is me.” Iguazu answered hesitantly.

“This is you.” Raven repeated.

“This is me.” Iguazu repeated slightly more confidently.

“This is you.”

“This is me.”