Trompe L’Oeil, 3/3

[astrangestorm]

“You started without me.”

Sho holds up two fingers. “I’m not that far ahead. I know you’ll catch up.”

For the first time, Jun hears what Sho is saying. Fuck him. All this time…fuck him.

“It took me a while,” Jun says, not bothering to cue the bartender to pour him a drink this time. “It took me a while, Sho-san, but I’ve finally caught up.”

Sho’s thumb moves, running along the rim of the glass. His smile is everything Jun remembers and nothing Jun’s programmed. “I don’t remember saying that.”

Jun leans an elbow against the bar, resting his chin against his palm. All he can do is stare. The eyes are the giveaway. The eyes he worked so hard to get right, but all this time, he’s gotten them so wrong.

“Because you said it the night you died. You’d already created the hard drive. You’d already created your artificial self, had it locked down and shut away. You only say it because I programmed you to say it.”

“And yet, it’s kind of perfect, isn’t it?” Sho teases, offering Jun a thumbs up. “I’m a genius.”

“Of course you’d program yourself to say something that fucking stupid.”

Sho’s smile grows, and Jun finally has to look away. He sits up straight, takes in all the colorful liquor bottles behind the bar. All the tiny, perfect details Jun insisted on. Not a bottle out of place, not too many or too few cocktail napkins. He doesn’t want to know how much it inconveniences Nino to keep replacing the lemons and limes the bartender has in the unlikely chance that Jun and Sho drink something besides Sho’s too expensive Scotch.

“You’re not him,” Jun mutters.

“I’m pretty close.”

“You’re not him,” he says more emphatically, thumping his fist on the countertop.

“Can I pour you a drink, sir?” the Friendly bartender asks. It’s a programmed reaction to an impatient customer. Not an action he’s had to perform in a while, but he reacts with perfect timing.

“No, thank you.”

The bartender’s locked out of a ton of possible narrative pathways with Jun’s answer. Sho could ask for another drink, but instead the bartender follows the most reasonable pathway. Inventory in the back room. He has bottles to count. The bartender leaves them alone as the rain continues to fall. There are drains out in the corridor that collect the water, cycle it back through the sprinklers, again and again. It can go on indefinitely so long as there’s power in the Sakuramoto building.

Sho has a sip of his drink, setting it down with a bit of force. “Should we stay down here and talk or go up to your place?”

Jun turns a little on the stool, taking in the sight of him again, as though it’s the first time. “Are you bored with the itinerary, Sho-san?”

Sho turns as well. He mirrors Jun’s posture exactly. Toying with him. “We’ve done this 472 times.”

Jun swallows. He was never counting. It chills him, knowing that the Sho he’s been with all this time remembers. He remembers it all.

“Four. Hundred. Seventy. Two,” Sho repeats, eyes desperately seeking answers that Jun doesn’t have. Logical ones, anyway. “What are we doing? Why are we doing this?”

He’s on the brink of tears. “I thought maybe at some point you’d stay.”

“Stay?”

“You always leave. You always walk out that door, Sho-san.”

“You’ve stopped us early 177 times,” Sho says without missing a beat. “How do you know I wasn’t going to stay on those occasions?”

Jun just shrugs, the tears spilling from his eyes freely, shamefully. “Sometimes I…sometimes I can’t make it to the end. Sometimes I just can’t watch you open the door and walk away from me for the last time.”

Sho reaches out, takes Jun’s hand in his own, squeezes. It feels right, Sho’s touch, Sho’s warmth, but it’s not right. It’s not him. “If it hasn’t changed after 472 tries, why do you keep doing it? Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”

“Because it’s the only night I ever told you that I loved you.”

If I didn’t like complicated, I’d have never fallen in love with you.

Sho shakes his head. “No, it’s not.”

Jun squeezes Sho’s hand. “It’s the only time I said it.”

“You said it lots of times, Jun.” Sho uses his free hand, tapping his temple with his fingers. “I’m a genius. Good memory.”

“An artificial one.”

“You confessed to me in high school,” Sho reminds him.

“And then you asked me if my feelings were really love or if they were the ‘like’ kind of feelings, and I didn’t know what to say. I…I told you…”

“…you told me ‘it’s not like that,’ and it really pissed me off,” Sho tells him, grinning.

Jun can’t stop crying. Jun didn’t program that. Which means that Sho did. Sho put that memory in the hard drive. Sho apparently put more of himself, more of them, into that hard drive than Jun can even imagine. Jun doesn’t know if he likes that or not. People’s memories are imperfect. It’s why he needed Nino to go to the bar, take photographs.

Because Jun remembers sitting here, talking to Sho, but there’s no way he’d have remembered the arrangement of the bottles. He only has some of the little, odd things. Sho’s Scotch, the tie with the Windsor knot. Sho lifting his umbrella from the genkan floor before opening the door and leaving him forever. It doesn’t really matter where they were standing when Jun told Sho he loved him. It doesn’t really matter where or how they had sex. It only matters that it happened.

“Jun,” Sho says, finally letting him go, “I never knew that was what you wanted. I…I don’t know how to stay.”

“Because I’ve programmed it that way,” Jun explains. “It’s the narrative. You’ve got your car parked down the street, so obviously you wouldn’t want to get charged extra for leaving it overnight. That’s one cue for you to leave. And then there’s your parents. They’re coming over for breakfast in the morning, and you’ve got to get home and clean your messy shithole apartment.”

Sho holds up a hand in protest. “It’s not a shithole.”

Jun chuckles, unable to help himself. “You never put your clothes away. I think the piles of laundry probably became sentient and would have murdered you soon enough.”

“So if you’ve programmed all these logical cues for me to leave, then why are you hoping I’ll stay anyway? I can only follow the path you’ve put me on.” Sho leans in, and Jun shuts his eyes when Sho traces along his jaw, his fingers steady and gentle. “Jun, you could have done anything you wanted. You could just program me to fall asleep. You could program yourself some handcuffs and keep me locked to your bed. You can choose any ending you want.”

“Maybe I thought you’d fight it someday, fight the programming. Because I’ve worked so hard to get you right. To make you look right, sound right, smell right, feel right…” Jun opens his eyes, sees tear tracks on Sho’s face to match his own. “The Sho I knew, the Sho I love…”

Sho’s breath catches, and it’s the sound that makes Jun break.

“The Sho I loved would fight it, if he knew what was going to happen to him.”

Sho slides off the stool, taking Jun by the hand. They don’t actually need the bartender, they don’t need the umbrellas, their raincoats, any of their stuff. Sho pulls him up the stairs, and they don’t need Jun’s key to open the door either. They lose articles of clothing as they move in the direction of the bed, stopping to kiss every few feet. Because the sooner they have sex, the sooner Sho will leave. And this time they both know it.

They’ve done almost every conceivable thing in almost every conceivable place in Jun’s apartment. Jun’s apartment that Sho hates because it’s so open, so empty. Sho stops them just next to the bed.

“How did we do this? How did we do this that night?”

Sakurai Sho the human would know. Sakurai Sho who’s not human only knows what they’ve done 472 times (well, minus 177) based on Jun’s cues, Jun’s needs at that moment. They’ve probably had sex in this fake apartment more times than they ever did in reality, over the years.

The Sho standing with him right now must be so confused. Because sometimes Jun fucks Sho, and sometimes Sho fucks Jun. Sometimes they both come, sometimes it’s just one of them. Sometimes they use the cartoon condoms, and sometimes they don’t even make it to the nightstand to get them. Sometimes he’s pulled out, come on Sho’s stomach or his ass. Sometimes Sho begs Jun to come inside him. Sometimes they fuck in the shower. Sometimes in the kitchen. Once they fucked a second time in the genkan before Sho managed to leave.

The Sho standing with him right now knows what they’ve done on nights that aren’t this one. That Sho only knows whatever Sho the human thought was worth remembering, worth pulling out of his head and putting into code. Jun wonders which ones made the list. The first sloppy blowjob Jun gave him in the basement of Sho’s parents’ house. The first time they tried anal, and it sucked. The second time they tried anal, and it didn’t. The time they fucked in Sho’s car in that parking garage. The times they fucked at work. The last time they fucked before breaking things off, putting the company first.

The Sho standing with him now might have all of that or only some of that running through his head as points of reference, but no matter how many times they’ve been here, in Jun’s apartment, he doesn’t know what really happened.

“Nothing complicated,” Jun says. Sho’s holding his face between his hands. Sho’s looking at him with such sorrow in his eyes. Can he fight it? Does he want to? What does it mean if he fights it? What does it mean if he doesn’t?

Sho kisses him slowly, their foreheads pressed together. “I always wanted this,” Sho explains. “Even after we broke up.”

“That’s how he felt. That’s what he wanted,” Jun reminds him. “You’re not him.”

“But I am,” Sho tells him desperately, kissing him again. And again. And again. “I am him. I’m…I’m me. It’s all I know, it’s all I’ve ever known. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You’re just circuits. You’re just programming,” Jun murmurs, pulling him closer. He can feel Sho pressed all along his body, can feel his warmth, can feel the way his cock is so hard and wanting. None of it’s real. “You’re not him.”

“Tell me how it happened,” Sho begs him. “Show me. Please.”

Jun kisses his way down Sho’s body until he’s kneeling before him. He looks up, sees how Sho’s eyes burn with desire. “I started down here. But you didn’t come. I just missed giving you head. It wasn’t all that serious, I guess.”

He finds Sho’s hand, moves it to his head. Lets Sho tug on his hair a little. He sucks Sho’s cock, just like he did that night. Just like he did that night after he told Sho that he loved him. When he stops, when he tugs Sho onto the bed, pulls Sho on top of him, he realizes what he’s been getting so wrong all this time. He realizes why he’ll never be able to recreate that night perfectly.

Not because Sho isn’t Sho, not because Sho only programmed his life up to a certain point into a computer. But because Jun will never be the Jun who lived through that night ever again. The Jun who lived through that night didn’t know a truck would plow into Sho’s car within half an hour of them kissing each other goodbye. He only knew that moment, that feeling of being with Sho again, that innocent happiness. Thinking it was a beginning when it was actually an ending. It’s something he can’t recapture, no matter how many times they start this night over.

All this time he’s been trying to fix Sho when what he’s never been able to fix is himself.

He slides his hands up and down Sho’s back, slips his tongue into his mouth, feels the perfect weight of Sho on top of him. His skin, his body feels perfect, it feels right. His lips ache from so much kissing. He feels like maybe they’re fighting it a little. That night they never kissed this long…

“I want you,” Sho admits. “You can say it’s just programming, but that’s what I’m feeling. I’m feeling it so strongly, it hurts.”

“You definitely didn’t say that back then,” Jun teases gently, kissing the corner of Sho’s mouth.

“And I haven’t said it the other 472 times we’ve done this either, so maybe that’s a good sign,” Sho says. “What did we do? What did we do in your bed?”

Jun watches Sho watching him. “You touched me.” He brushes his fingers along Sho’s bicep. “Then you somehow got a cramp in your leg crawling to and from the nightstand to grab lube and a condom.”

“I definitely did not,” Sho protests.

“I’ve been preserving your dignity all this time, Sho-san,” he says with a smile. “You’re welcome.”

“Please don’t tell me that because I had a cramp we didn’t even sleep together. That I limped to the door, kissed you goodbye, and…”

“No,” Jun chuckles. “No, you recovered.”

“Do you want me to reenact that?”

“No, we can skip that part.”

Sho is extra careful anyway. He laughs at the condoms for a moment before getting serious. They kiss while Sho strokes inside him, scissoring his fingers gently, timing each kiss with a thrust or movement of his hand. Again, it’s going much slower than Jun has experienced or that Jun remembers. Sho’s touch is unrelenting, fingers deep inside him, crooking them just right. “Fuck,” Jun says, taking his cock in his hand. “Oh fuck.”

He’s lost in it, barely registering the uncomfortable, sticky sensation when his come starts to dry on his belly, on his fist. Sho moves, putting on a condom.

“You held my hand,” he murmurs, still high and not ready to come back down. “You held my hand when you fucked me.”

Sho doesn’t care about the mess Jun’s made, positioning himself and pushing inside. Sho moans, his cock filling Jun so perfectly. Like he did that night. Like he did years ago. Like always. Jun lifts an arm, the hand he didn’t use to jerk off. That’s the hand he lays flat against the mattress, palm up. That’s the hand Sho holds, their fingers intertwining, when he starts to move. The hand that squeezes tight, Sho murmuring “I love you” against Jun’s neck when he comes.

Jun lies there with his heart racing, stunned, Sho collapsing against him, leaving sloppy half-assed kisses against his neck.

He hadn’t told him Sho had done just that. He hadn’t told him Sho had said “I love you” right before he finished that night. Jun hadn’t told him, and Sho couldn’t have programmed it.

Jun waits until Sho’s moved off of him, gone to and from the bathroom to get a damp cloth to clean them both. Then Sho comes back, flopping leisurely onto his stomach beside him while Jun stays on his back. They stare at each other for a while, but Sho gives in first.

“What? What is it?”

“You told me you loved me.”

“Because I do love you, idiot.”

“No,” Jun complains, even as Sho’s blissfully ticklish fingers rain torture down the inside of his arm. “No, that’s not what I…”

“What?” Sho’s hair is always such a mess after they fuck. It sticks out every which way. It’s a mess and it’s perfect.

“You did the same thing. That night. Just like that. Exactly like that, actually.”

“You programmed it then, huh?”

Jun shakes his head. Somehow he’d forgotten that, but Sho doing it again, Sho saying it again triggered the memory. Sho stares at him for a while, absent-mindedly stroking his fingers along Jun’s skin.

“I obviously didn’t program it,” Sho mumbles. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“That’s unlike you, Jun,” Sho teases. But his smile quickly fades.

Jun moves onto his side, alarm replacing afterglow in an instant. “No. Don’t.”

Sho’s eyes fill with panic. “I…I have to go?”

“No, fight it.” Jun moves closer, presses his lips to Sho’s. “Tell me what’s happening. Tell me, I’ll help you.”

Sho can’t meet his eyes, his whole body going rigid. Jun remembers that terrifying night when Sho…broke. When he just kept repeating himself until Jun had to shut the program off entirely.

“It’s like…it’s like I have to piss.”

“What?!”

“You know, when you have to piss really badly, and all your thoughts become bladder bladder bladder, empty my bladder. And it just keeps getting stronger. That’s…that’s what I’ve got. But instead of having to use the bathroom, I have to leave. Like I don’t know how I’m still here in this bed when every instinct I have is telling me that…telling me that my car…my car is parked…”

Jun moves them until Sho’s on his side too. Jun clings to him pathetically, even as he tries not to laugh at the bizarre, very “Sho” explanation he offered.

“Fight it. Sho, you need to fight it.”

“I don’t…I don’t understand this. I’ve done this over and over again, and it didn’t feel wrong like this…it just…it just felt inevitable.”

“That’s the…”

“…the programming. Between you and Nino, I had a feeling it would be strong but…”

“I couldn’t change the ending myself,” Jun admits, feeling how Sho’s skin has gone a bit clammy. He has an arm around him, as though that’s enough to keep him there. “You said I could have done anything I wanted. Sho, I’ve done all of this, but I’ve always left the ending up to you. It was never my decision to make.”

Sho struggles a little in his arms. He’s crying. He doesn’t want to go either.

“Even if I stay,” Sho says, “even if I stay it doesn’t change a god damn thing. You keep telling me I’m not him, I’m not him. Even if I stay, you’ll stop the program and the next time I see you, we have to start all over. It’s all we ever do. I see you come in, and you look exhausted. You look miserable. You try to smile at me, and I have to smile back. I don’t get to ask if you’re okay, I don’t get to yell at you for not taking care of yourself. I don’t get to tell you that you should just stop this. That you should just let me go for good.”

Before he can respond, Sho’s touching his face.

“You say I’m not him. Maybe that’s true. But I’m everything he told me to be, with a few adjustments from you and Nino. That’s who I am, that’s what I know. I’m Sakurai Sho. And Sakurai Sho hates seeing you like this. Sakurai Sho doesn’t want this for you. He doesn’t want this hell for you. He loved you…I love you.”

“What am I supposed to do without you?”

“How long has it been? I can count how many times we’ve met here, but that’s all I can do.”

“Two years…a little more than two years.”

Sho gasps a little before pulling away. Jun understands, the mattress creaking as Sho gets out of bed. He’s known all along that Sho would hate this. That Sho would want him to move on.

He watches Sho get dressed like he’s watched him get dressed so many times before. Eventually Jun gets out of bed, the room still smelling like sweat and sex, like Sho. He follows him to the genkan.

Sho stops before he can pick up his umbrella from the floor. It’s still raining outside. No, it’s not. They both know it’s not. Usually they kiss here if Jun allows it to get to this point. Sho usually kisses him like it’s the first time, when everything was possible. In their work, in their lives together. He always smiles before he opens the door. Sho’s not smiling now.

“More than anything, I want to see you again,” Sho admits. “It’s selfish, but I’m being honest. At least as honest as the circuits in my head allow me to be. But I know that if I see you again, if I wake up and I’m sitting in that fucking bar waiting for you to come in from the rain, I’ll hate it. Because even if I spit out the words you want me to say, I’ll know that you’re hurting yourself. I’ll know that you’re suffering just to see me.”

Sho’s done a terrible job with the tie. Jun undoes it, slowly reties it for him. Sho allows him that at least.

“I could have Nino change the coding,” Jun says quietly. “You’re the one who programmed yourself to learn. To remember. I didn’t do that.”

“It would be like tonight never happened,” Sho warns him. “I’d be blissfully ignorant. I’d be just as empty-headed as a Friendly. Is that what you want for me?”

Jun doesn’t say anything, his fingers lingering on Sho’s lucky tie. It’s the original, the one he’d been wearing when he died. There’s a tiny blood stain on it that Jun knows is there. He wonders if Sho has ever been curious about it.

Sho’s hand covers his, holding them together against his heart. It’s a fucking marvel of engineering. It’s not real, but it beats.

It beats.

“Jun, if you erase that part of me and you keep doing this, it’s going to kill you. It’s not worth it. Especially because…” Sho’s eyes aren’t the eyes Jun and Nino programmed. They’re Sho’s eyes. “…especially because I’m not him.”

But he is, Jun realizes. He is.

It’s easy to deactivate a Friendly. It’s easy to deactivate a Partner. But he thinks about erasing everything Sho’s learned. Everything Sho has become. He can’t…he can’t do that. It would be like losing him a second time.

He tugs on Sho’s tie, kisses him. Sho kisses him back. But soon enough Sho’s reaching for the door.

“What if…what if I find another way?” Jun blurts out.

Sho’s expression is curious.

“A way that doesn’t hurt me. And doesn’t hurt you.”

Sho raises an eyebrow. “Playing god?”

“Says the arrogant bastard who coded himself and stuck it on a hard drive, thinking Nino might actually want to receive something that stupid.” He grins. “I’ll figure something out.”

“And all this time I thought you were just the good-looking half,” Sho teases.

Jun loves him. Jun loves him.

Sho lifts his umbrella from the floor, smiling.

“Well,” Sho says, following the only narrative pathway left to him at this point. “Until then.”

-

Jun is fired on a Tuesday morning.

He thinks maybe he should be more upset about his life’s work being stolen away, but Nino’s still there. He’ll still be chief programmer. He won’t let the soulless corporate assholes ruin everything. And Nino’s found a place for Aiba as well. All the Sudoku has paid off, and Aiba will be in quality assurance, chatting up Partners and Friendlies. Probably more fulfilling than getting Jun’s coffee and canceling all his meetings anyway.

The following Tuesday Jun stops in to see Ohno-sensei. He doesn’t go into the office, doesn’t stretch out on the couch. Instead they sit together at a table on the roof of the professional building. There’s a tiny garden. There’s not much of a view, but Ohno-sensei seems to like it.

For the first time, Ohno asks him a question.

“Are you happy?”

“I’m working toward it. I will be. I know I will be. Soon.”

Jun’s severance package is considerable. In the end, the overlords just pitied him, losing his long-time business partner the way he did. Jun gives half his stock to Nino and Aiba, cashes out the rest. He sells the apartment, the sparse expanse of it. He leaves Tokyo, buys a cozy old house in Nagano. Sho’s got family out here. For a computer nerd, he sure loved to get outdoors, go hiking, snowboarding, skiing.

Nino could be charged with theft of intellectual property, and so he acts like a super spy when he and Aiba drive up to the Nagano house in a van one morning several months later, once Jun’s got everything settled. Nino and Aiba both hug him at the same time, and it’s kind of weird. But he likes it anyhow.

“Do you want to stay? So he has another familiar face?” Jun asks quietly.

Nino pats his back, rubbing gently. “No. We’ll come back. Once you’ve got a handle on things.”

“I can’t wait to meet him,” Aiba says. “Well, I mean, I’ve already met him but…you know what I’m trying to say, right?”

Jun laughs. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

He watches the van turn around in the driveway, Aiba driving and Nino half-hanging out the damn window waving like a kid.

“Idiots. Surrounded by them,” he mutters, waving back before turning to go into the house.

Jun’s turned most of the second floor into a lab. For check-ups, for diagnostics. But it’s not sterile. There’s warmth to the room. Jun’s decorated it with all the action figures and dumb clutter Sho used to keep in his work area. It’ll really be his workstation, not Jun’s. He’ll be able to program himself as he sees fit. It’s better that way.

It’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be easy at all. Sho will grieve because even though he’ll be able to see his family, his old friends, he won’t be able to meet them. He’ll be close but never as close as he wants to be. There will be limits on the things he can do. He’ll be able to go outside, have a life. But he won’t have an identity card. He’ll probably have to disguise himself everywhere he goes. But deactivating him would have been the same as a death sentence. It’s fucked up, but he and Sho…they’ve been a little fucked up from the start.

Not fucked up, he knows Sho would say. Complicated. And if Jun didn’t like complicated, he’d have never fallen in love with him.

This time Jun’s not in a suit. He’s not coming in from the rain. He’s in jeans and an ugly t-shirt Sho got him for Christmas years and years ago. My Attitude Isn’t Bad. It’s In Beta. Jun hates this stupid shirt.

“That’s exactly why I bought it,” Sho had always teased him.

This time Sho’s not in a suit either. No lucky tie. Just some of Jun’s clothes. They’ll have plenty of time to shop soon enough, to let Sho pick out what he wants.

Jun has never been more nervous than he is when he sits down on the couch beside Sho. After today, Jun will never be the one deciding when Sho’s program is active or inactive. Sho gets to make those choices. Sho gets to decide what his narrative pathways are.

Jun takes in the sight of him, out of the lab. Out of the hell Jun created for them both. He’s been worried that this will become an altogether different kind of hell for Sho. He’s prepared for Sho to reject it all. But he’s praying for Sho to be a little more selfish than that.

Sho’s eyes are closed, his hands folded in his lap. Peaceful, like he’s having an afternoon snooze. Jun leans over, presses a soft kiss to Sho’s temple, ruffles his hair a little. Just in case he’s not able to do it again.

He takes a breath and whispers the word to activate.

Slowly Sho’s eyes open. Jun doesn’t say a thing, letting Sho wake, letting him take it all in. He watches Sho’s hands move, fingers brushing along the unfamiliar sofa cushion, feeling the texture. He strokes the rougher fabric of his jeans, the softness of his t-shirt. He brings his hands up, stares down at the lines on his palms.

Finally, he looks over. And Sho smiles.

“You started without me,” Sho teases him.

Jun smiles, too. “I’m not that far ahead.”

He reaches out, and Sho takes his hand.

“I know you’ll catch up.”