FIC: "The Last Time"
TITLE: The Last Time
PAIRING: Neo/Smith
RATING: PG-13 (some reference to sexual activity)
SUMMARY: “Degrees of Separation” universe. On the eve of battle, Neo and Smith share one last moment together.
On the eve of the Battle of Camden Court, the Alliance Command Center was a crowded hive of activity, focussed on the massive holographic projector at its heart. Humans and Exiles moved from station to station and around the three “jump chairs” which would, tomorrow morning, allow three particular Exiles to hack into the Mainframe in the Machine city of Zero One and wreak havoc with its systems, hopefully turning the tides of war in favor of the Alliance. Amid the buzz and bustle of checks and cross-checks and calibrations one of those Exiles in particular moved with a gravity all his own, and there was always a certain clear space around his black-clad form that spoke at least as much of fear as of respect.
Smith.
Smith frowned, pausing in a set of calculations with pen poised over a sheet of paper. Shepherd’s orders had been clear - conscious transmissions between the One and the Opposite were to be curtailed on the evening before the battle, to give them both time to put up layers of mental shielding that would prevent them from distracting each other in the heat of combat - and in any case, he did not appreciate being interrupted.
Mister Anderson. He infused the formal title with cold reproof. Shepherd has clearly instructed us not to -
I need you. The mental plea, half-command, was infused with purely human urgency. Now.
Desire? Smith tasted the transmission again. Yes, certainly that was present - indeed, seemed unavoidable between them - but it was secondary to something deeper, a blend of emotions much harder to identify. Intrigued in spite of himself, Smith laid down the pen and told the human monitoring the jump chair: “Continue the calibrations. I will be back momentarily.”
This had better be good, he projected as he strode out of the command center.
Yeah, was Neo’s only reply, and then the conscious contact was abruptly terminated.
Smith didn’t need to ask Neo where he was - using the thread of their attunement that a human would have described as “subconscious”, he could have found the human blindfolded, deafened, and with both hands tied behind his back. When he entered their apartment he was mildly surprised to find all the lights off: Neo usually prefered at least spot illumination, in spite of the fact that his code-vision made such terms as “light” or “darkness” meaningless. As he closed the door behind him, Smith’s attention was already on the slender form standing on the balcony, his hands on the railing, looking down into the gardens three stories below.
He “tapped” Neo’s mind sharply as he approached, communicating his still-smouldering displeasure at being so preemptorily summoned, and saw as he came up alongside the human that his hands weren’t merely resting on the balcony railing: they were clenched around it, betraying a tension Neo rarely allowed to compromise his outward demeanor of calm and serenity. Without looking round at Smith, Neo prompted him mentally, and Smith’s eyes were immediately drawn to what he was gazing at across the wide span of lawn and several beds of flowers.
One of the little artificial groves had apparently become the locus for a Redpill party. Music, coaxed from violins and guitars and drums, floated through the still night air; figures lounged, laughed, drank, danced, embraced, argued, and generally made spectacles of themselves by the light of several tall torches embedded in the soft earth. There were kegs that Smith deduced probably contained some alcoholic beverage, judging by the abandoned demeanor of the participants.
“Enjoying themselves, are they?” Smith drawled. He could never resist the opportunity to sting Neo with words that came so much more easily to him than they did to the quieter human. And Neo wanted to be down there, among his own people - that much shone in his mind, better discerned now that Smith was closer to him. “So why don’t you go join them?”
“I can’t.” A surge of regret, underlit by resentment, highlighted his longing and made it only more powerful. Smith turned over that response in his mind. It would never cease to amaze him, the ease with which these evolved apes could entertain conflicting emotions in ways that only made their internal situation increasingly distressing.
“Because they betrayed you.” It was not a question.
Neo shook his head. “They didn’t betray me.”
Smith raised an eyebrow. “They left you to die.”
“They did what they felt they had to do.” He still hadn’t looked at Smith, but now Smith turned back to study him. Conflicting emotions and half-truths... he’d had plenty of those out of Neo these last nine months, but he had no patience for such evasions tonight.
Look at me.
Instead Neo said, “You know, if things had been different,” if Eros hadn’t interfered, “we’d probably both be dead by now. Killed each other.”
Fine. Two could play at this game, and one of them was far better equipped. “We already did.”
That finally made the human turn his gaze toward him. Smith infused his voice with subtle contempt. “Forgotten so soon? I watched you die -”
“- with a certain satisfaction.”
He ignored the none-too-subtle dig. “And you’d be lying if you said you felt any less when you destroyed me.” He paused, but knew Neo could not deny it. “Is that why you called me here, away from my work? To reminisce about old times?”
Anger flashed over the surface of Neo’s mind, but did not take root. “Damn it, Smith -”
“Because if so, I’ll save you the trouble.” And, opening the data gates to their full capacity, he thrust into Neo’s mind the fullness of his own memory of that terrible moment: fury at seeing his enemy still standing, the outrage of having every attack blocked, then the hideous sensation of having someone, something alien, filling him and knowing him and taking him apart from the inside. He used the stream of thought as a weapon, driving it cruelly into the human’s awareness and sparing nothing. He’d wanted mind-to-mind contact, had he, in spite of Shepherd’s orders? Then let him have it, in full measure!
Neo’s exposed skin paled, but he did not look away. Instead he waited out the savage flow of data, then countered with one of his own: the shock of the first gunshot, the sight of his own blood on his fingers, the repeated impact of bullet after bullet tearing him to pieces... and then, out of darkness, light. Out of death, life.
“Trinity gave that to me,” he whispered.
Smith shrugged fractionally. “Nobody gave me anything. What I have, I took for myself.” He looked down again at the humans in their revels. “Is that what you want? To find her?” He made no effort to discipline the sneer that twisted his mouth. “Then go. It has nothing to do with me.”
He started to turn away, but Neo’s fingers on his wrist stopped him. Glancing down, he saw how light the touch was - so small a pressure, to make him pause in his tracks! Especially now, when all he wanted to do was leave this human to wallow in whatever sorry passions he still carried. You DARE?
Look at me. And Smith did, seeing the warm brightness of Neo’s eyes behind those cold glasses, feeling the alien mind reach out to him as that damnable mouth spoke soft words: “I’m trying to say that it doesn’t matter. They’re still my people - but the past is the past. I can’t change it.” The fingertips moved, tracing the line of the tendon in Smith’s wrist. “It’s the future that matters.”
Smith considered pulling away. It would serve the human right, teach him his proper place in their relationship. Who was he to make such demands?
At last the desire underlying Neo’s thoughts broke cover: This could be the last time...
That was one point Smith could not argue. Tomorrow might bring the end of everything they’d worked for, and their own destruction. And in spite of himself he’d developed a taste for what passed between them - but on his terms, a fact that Neo as usual seemed to have forgotten, because his other hand locked around the back of Smith’s neck and pulled him closer even before Smith’s hands had closed around his waist. Then that cool mouth was pressed hungrily against his and Neo’s intent, laughing and hot with lust, filled his senses: They can wait for you. I can’t.
You never could, Smith told him smugly, but Neo had already caught hold of his tie and was pulling him back into the apartment, still kissing him - an indignity Smith normally would have protested strongly, but his own hands were doing ruinous things to the front of Neo’s cassock, so he supposed they could be counted even.
What followed was a long span of activity, unspeaking, that was nonetheless far from empty of communication. Shepherd be damned, Smith thought as bodies and minds penetrated and entwined at their deepest, but Neo, lost in his orgasm, was beyond commenting on their contravention of the General’s commands. As the waves of sweet sensation began to ebb, he had only one thought: More, his hands and mouth and sweat-drenched skin already working their miracles of persuasion. More, an order, one that was so perfectly in synchronicity with Smith’s own goals that he did not take Neo to task for his presumption. More! A final cry, full of longing and fulfillment, and then at last the human lay still, his grip on Smith loosening, his dark eyes drifting closed and a deep, sensual shudder wracking him from flesh and bone to the deepest reaches of his consciousness.
Not one to linger, Smith rose and cleaned himself up, then donned his suit again along with mental shields: better late than never, at least as far as his orders went. When he came back into the bedroom for his tie Neo was lying on his side, draped with a single sheet at the waist, watching him with a half-lidded gaze.
“Go to sleep,” Smith told him, allowing no trace of telepathic transmission to leak out. Morning would come too early for the taste of most humans.
Neo nodded. Smith did not need mental attunement to see the regret on his slender face. “Will you come back before we have to head out?”
“If we hadn’t just wasted half an hour, I might have been able to.” He adjusted the knot in his tie to perfect alignment. “As it stands -”
“Come here.”
Neo reached out a hand, and Smith humored him, sitting on the edge of the bed only when Neo’s grip on his elbow drew him down. The human propped himself up on one elbow and gazed for several long seconds, as if committing his Opposite’s face to memory. He made no attempt at telepathic contact, respecting now the shields that Smith had set in place, but his expression was sufficiently eloquent. His hand started to rise, as if to touch Smith’s face, but then he caught himself and drew it back again.
“Go,” he said. So Smith went. It was necessary - and now that battle was so near, he was eager to conclude the preparations. Desire was one thing, but no matter how pleasurable the joining he knew what he was made for: he was the Opposite, he who laid waste, and tomorrow would be the culmination, in this lifetime, of his ultimate Purpose.
PAIRING: Neo/Smith
RATING: PG-13 (some reference to sexual activity)
SUMMARY: “Degrees of Separation” universe. On the eve of battle, Neo and Smith share one last moment together.
On the eve of the Battle of Camden Court, the Alliance Command Center was a crowded hive of activity, focussed on the massive holographic projector at its heart. Humans and Exiles moved from station to station and around the three “jump chairs” which would, tomorrow morning, allow three particular Exiles to hack into the Mainframe in the Machine city of Zero One and wreak havoc with its systems, hopefully turning the tides of war in favor of the Alliance. Amid the buzz and bustle of checks and cross-checks and calibrations one of those Exiles in particular moved with a gravity all his own, and there was always a certain clear space around his black-clad form that spoke at least as much of fear as of respect.
Smith.
Smith frowned, pausing in a set of calculations with pen poised over a sheet of paper. Shepherd’s orders had been clear - conscious transmissions between the One and the Opposite were to be curtailed on the evening before the battle, to give them both time to put up layers of mental shielding that would prevent them from distracting each other in the heat of combat - and in any case, he did not appreciate being interrupted.
Mister Anderson. He infused the formal title with cold reproof. Shepherd has clearly instructed us not to -
I need you. The mental plea, half-command, was infused with purely human urgency. Now.
Desire? Smith tasted the transmission again. Yes, certainly that was present - indeed, seemed unavoidable between them - but it was secondary to something deeper, a blend of emotions much harder to identify. Intrigued in spite of himself, Smith laid down the pen and told the human monitoring the jump chair: “Continue the calibrations. I will be back momentarily.”
This had better be good, he projected as he strode out of the command center.
Yeah, was Neo’s only reply, and then the conscious contact was abruptly terminated.
Smith didn’t need to ask Neo where he was - using the thread of their attunement that a human would have described as “subconscious”, he could have found the human blindfolded, deafened, and with both hands tied behind his back. When he entered their apartment he was mildly surprised to find all the lights off: Neo usually prefered at least spot illumination, in spite of the fact that his code-vision made such terms as “light” or “darkness” meaningless. As he closed the door behind him, Smith’s attention was already on the slender form standing on the balcony, his hands on the railing, looking down into the gardens three stories below.
He “tapped” Neo’s mind sharply as he approached, communicating his still-smouldering displeasure at being so preemptorily summoned, and saw as he came up alongside the human that his hands weren’t merely resting on the balcony railing: they were clenched around it, betraying a tension Neo rarely allowed to compromise his outward demeanor of calm and serenity. Without looking round at Smith, Neo prompted him mentally, and Smith’s eyes were immediately drawn to what he was gazing at across the wide span of lawn and several beds of flowers.
One of the little artificial groves had apparently become the locus for a Redpill party. Music, coaxed from violins and guitars and drums, floated through the still night air; figures lounged, laughed, drank, danced, embraced, argued, and generally made spectacles of themselves by the light of several tall torches embedded in the soft earth. There were kegs that Smith deduced probably contained some alcoholic beverage, judging by the abandoned demeanor of the participants.
“Enjoying themselves, are they?” Smith drawled. He could never resist the opportunity to sting Neo with words that came so much more easily to him than they did to the quieter human. And Neo wanted to be down there, among his own people - that much shone in his mind, better discerned now that Smith was closer to him. “So why don’t you go join them?”
“I can’t.” A surge of regret, underlit by resentment, highlighted his longing and made it only more powerful. Smith turned over that response in his mind. It would never cease to amaze him, the ease with which these evolved apes could entertain conflicting emotions in ways that only made their internal situation increasingly distressing.
“Because they betrayed you.” It was not a question.
Neo shook his head. “They didn’t betray me.”
Smith raised an eyebrow. “They left you to die.”
“They did what they felt they had to do.” He still hadn’t looked at Smith, but now Smith turned back to study him. Conflicting emotions and half-truths... he’d had plenty of those out of Neo these last nine months, but he had no patience for such evasions tonight.
Look at me.
Instead Neo said, “You know, if things had been different,” if Eros hadn’t interfered, “we’d probably both be dead by now. Killed each other.”
Fine. Two could play at this game, and one of them was far better equipped. “We already did.”
That finally made the human turn his gaze toward him. Smith infused his voice with subtle contempt. “Forgotten so soon? I watched you die -”
“- with a certain satisfaction.”
He ignored the none-too-subtle dig. “And you’d be lying if you said you felt any less when you destroyed me.” He paused, but knew Neo could not deny it. “Is that why you called me here, away from my work? To reminisce about old times?”
Anger flashed over the surface of Neo’s mind, but did not take root. “Damn it, Smith -”
“Because if so, I’ll save you the trouble.” And, opening the data gates to their full capacity, he thrust into Neo’s mind the fullness of his own memory of that terrible moment: fury at seeing his enemy still standing, the outrage of having every attack blocked, then the hideous sensation of having someone, something alien, filling him and knowing him and taking him apart from the inside. He used the stream of thought as a weapon, driving it cruelly into the human’s awareness and sparing nothing. He’d wanted mind-to-mind contact, had he, in spite of Shepherd’s orders? Then let him have it, in full measure!
Neo’s exposed skin paled, but he did not look away. Instead he waited out the savage flow of data, then countered with one of his own: the shock of the first gunshot, the sight of his own blood on his fingers, the repeated impact of bullet after bullet tearing him to pieces... and then, out of darkness, light. Out of death, life.
“Trinity gave that to me,” he whispered.
Smith shrugged fractionally. “Nobody gave me anything. What I have, I took for myself.” He looked down again at the humans in their revels. “Is that what you want? To find her?” He made no effort to discipline the sneer that twisted his mouth. “Then go. It has nothing to do with me.”
He started to turn away, but Neo’s fingers on his wrist stopped him. Glancing down, he saw how light the touch was - so small a pressure, to make him pause in his tracks! Especially now, when all he wanted to do was leave this human to wallow in whatever sorry passions he still carried. You DARE?
Look at me. And Smith did, seeing the warm brightness of Neo’s eyes behind those cold glasses, feeling the alien mind reach out to him as that damnable mouth spoke soft words: “I’m trying to say that it doesn’t matter. They’re still my people - but the past is the past. I can’t change it.” The fingertips moved, tracing the line of the tendon in Smith’s wrist. “It’s the future that matters.”
Smith considered pulling away. It would serve the human right, teach him his proper place in their relationship. Who was he to make such demands?
At last the desire underlying Neo’s thoughts broke cover: This could be the last time...
That was one point Smith could not argue. Tomorrow might bring the end of everything they’d worked for, and their own destruction. And in spite of himself he’d developed a taste for what passed between them - but on his terms, a fact that Neo as usual seemed to have forgotten, because his other hand locked around the back of Smith’s neck and pulled him closer even before Smith’s hands had closed around his waist. Then that cool mouth was pressed hungrily against his and Neo’s intent, laughing and hot with lust, filled his senses: They can wait for you. I can’t.
You never could, Smith told him smugly, but Neo had already caught hold of his tie and was pulling him back into the apartment, still kissing him - an indignity Smith normally would have protested strongly, but his own hands were doing ruinous things to the front of Neo’s cassock, so he supposed they could be counted even.
What followed was a long span of activity, unspeaking, that was nonetheless far from empty of communication. Shepherd be damned, Smith thought as bodies and minds penetrated and entwined at their deepest, but Neo, lost in his orgasm, was beyond commenting on their contravention of the General’s commands. As the waves of sweet sensation began to ebb, he had only one thought: More, his hands and mouth and sweat-drenched skin already working their miracles of persuasion. More, an order, one that was so perfectly in synchronicity with Smith’s own goals that he did not take Neo to task for his presumption. More! A final cry, full of longing and fulfillment, and then at last the human lay still, his grip on Smith loosening, his dark eyes drifting closed and a deep, sensual shudder wracking him from flesh and bone to the deepest reaches of his consciousness.
Not one to linger, Smith rose and cleaned himself up, then donned his suit again along with mental shields: better late than never, at least as far as his orders went. When he came back into the bedroom for his tie Neo was lying on his side, draped with a single sheet at the waist, watching him with a half-lidded gaze.
“Go to sleep,” Smith told him, allowing no trace of telepathic transmission to leak out. Morning would come too early for the taste of most humans.
Neo nodded. Smith did not need mental attunement to see the regret on his slender face. “Will you come back before we have to head out?”
“If we hadn’t just wasted half an hour, I might have been able to.” He adjusted the knot in his tie to perfect alignment. “As it stands -”
“Come here.”
Neo reached out a hand, and Smith humored him, sitting on the edge of the bed only when Neo’s grip on his elbow drew him down. The human propped himself up on one elbow and gazed for several long seconds, as if committing his Opposite’s face to memory. He made no attempt at telepathic contact, respecting now the shields that Smith had set in place, but his expression was sufficiently eloquent. His hand started to rise, as if to touch Smith’s face, but then he caught himself and drew it back again.
“Go,” he said. So Smith went. It was necessary - and now that battle was so near, he was eager to conclude the preparations. Desire was one thing, but no matter how pleasurable the joining he knew what he was made for: he was the Opposite, he who laid waste, and tomorrow would be the culmination, in this lifetime, of his ultimate Purpose.