Checkered Tales and Nighthawk Feathers

Paul, Tools, Browser

So, Emma's a robot, and that's fine. Paul's seriously not one to judge, being what he is, and it doesn't really change much about their relationship. Of the few things that did change, most are positive: she no longer has to pretend to eat, or make excuses for her eerily-impressive strength and stamina, and she doesn't have to hide her charging cable when she goes to bed anymore. Her lips are still soft and her laugh is melodic. Their fingers lace together perfectly when they hold hands. At night, her internal machinery whirs and clicks in a way that soothes Paul effortlessly to sleep, and he wakes up feeling more rested than ever.

Married life means being comfortable doing weird but necessary things around each other. For Paul, it's the messy physical stuff that comes with being human-approximate: his body is a copy of a copy but it still processes food into waste, grows hair, sweats, excretes oil, and gets sore and sick. Emma's unfazed by these functions, and will happily continue conversations with Paul while he showers, shits or shaves. She's not exactly the squeamish type.

For Emma, the 'weird but necessary' rituals are far more mechanical. Emptying out tanks of waste and coolant; tightening small screws, replacing old parts, re-applying solder. Paul is a little squeamish, so he does what he can to help but otherwise keeps his eyes averted while Emma sits on the couch, the front plate of her body lying on the coffee table to reveal her metal and silicone innards. She usually does it while listening to a podcast or watching TV, going through the motions as nonchalantly as Paul might while cutting his nails or tweezing his eyebrows.

One of Emma's self-maintenance tasks is removing dust and debris from small crevices, and she has a set of built-in tools to deal with that. This is what got Paul interested. It's also why Paul's internet browser history looks the way it does right now.

The tools in question are stored in Emma's fingers, and she can flick her fingertips back at the frontmost knuckle to reveal them. Her index finger has a spinning wiry brush inside, presumably to clean narrow ports and jacks. In her middle finger is a smaller, softer brush, which Paul assumes is for sweeping dust out of joints. Next to it, in her ring finger, is a tiny hook that he's seen her use to pull out hair trapped in her fans; finally, in her pinky, is a cotton-headed swab for dabbing up little droplets of oil or coolant.

Paul has seen these tools exactly once, when he walked in on Emma doing some routine maintenance in the living room, and he has thought about them at least five times a week for the past several months. Specifically, he's thought about how they'd feel: Emma knows about his love for being tickled (it just feels so good to let go and not think sometimes, to just lay there and overwhelm himself with sensation, to become a vessel for laughter and nothing else), but she doesn't know exactly how badly Paul needs to feel those buzzing little tools on his skin.

The soft brush and the little swab would devastate his ribs. If he thinks about it, which he does embarrassingly often, he can feel them sweeping between each fold and nook of his torso: the hollows of his hips, the spot right under his pecs, his armpits, his navel. Threading between each rib and buzzing insistently, driving him mad with spasming, hysterical laughter. She'd have to tie him down. It helps that she loves doing that. Having a trussed-up, vulnerable and very eager husband is one of her little vices; Paul's fairly sure that if she could have him wear looping, intricate coils of rope every day instead of clothing, she'd never let him wear anything else. He doesn't mind the idea. Occasional chafing aside, not having to calculate his movements because he can't move is nice. So is the idea that Emma could do anything to him. His rusty imagination works overtime and she always exceeds it.

On the other hand – or, rather, finger – the wire brush looks coarse like a pipe cleaner, and the first time Paul idly thought about it flossing between his first and second toe he got so lightheaded he fell out of his desk chair. Everyone got concerned (well, Charlotte and Bill did, Ted laughed at him) and he had to make up an excuse that his blood sugar was low, like some kind of nerdy prude. The hook also appears in his daydreams, scraping at the taut planes of his underarms or a restrained, immobilized foot. He's nearly hyperventilating just thinking about it. Paul has been told that he's not an imaginative man, which is true, and thank god because if he pictured these scenes in any more detail his heart would give out.