Amor in Machina

by Ink Ribbon - Vraddock

Rating: mature
Tags: Sex, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Romance, Original Character
Length: 5732

In Seaddle 257 L.R., two ponies enter a simulation to fulfill their deepest fantasies.

In Seaddle 257 L.R., two ponies enter a simulation to fulfill their deepest fantasies.

In case you needed any proof at all that I put what some may call too much effort into my clop...

(Lots of gay pony sex, Vore, Willing Vore, Digestion, Mind Break)

Thank you for reading.

Published 2015-08-18 13:40:01 UTC
Last updated 2015-08-18 13:40:01 UTC

Love in the Machine

The uncontrolled storm raged above Seaddle, pissing down rain. It soaked everything, from the balconies above to the streets below, flowing down into the ocean. What it couldn’t soak by sheer dint of being outside, it still soaked, by the actions of the ponies living in the glowing city. They tracked rain and mud wherever they walked, messing up carpets and creating dangerously slippery spots on easy-wipe plastex tiles.

“Hey hey hey! Wipe your damn hooves!” The shout came from the other side of the door as two stallions trotted into the mudlock. One was sage-green, while the other was steel-gray, and much shorter. Both stallions were very fit, easily in better shape than most ponies in the city, and wearing dark grey hydrophobics. The sage-green one shut the door behind them as the welcome mat tickled their frogs, the fibres sucking their hooves dry.

The Green one glanced around, and caught sight of a compact camera sitting just above the door. “Hello to you too, Firewire.” He gave it a mocking wave. “You get that sim ready to go?”

“You mean your little anniversary surprise? Or that Combat Training sim?” The camera’s lens refocused, zooming in on their hooves.

The Green one chuckled. “Sure, I brought Wet Work over on our anniversary to show him the new com-sim. What do you think, wirejockey?”

“Really now,” added Wet Work. “A com-sim? Hardly romantic.”

The Green pony shrugged. “Hey, I’m weird like that. Unless you wanna have the surprise, of course...”

“Long Shot. If you’re done being quippy, you and Wet put your tongues on the scanner. I gotta make sure it’s you.”

Wet nodded, sticking his tongue out and licking the panel, while Long’s lip curled. “Really? We gotta do this still? After all the shit I do for you?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve done this song and dance before. I wiped it off this time.”

“Oh goody.” Muttered Long, cringing as he licked the scanner’s panel. The door clicked open, and Long paused to wipe the taste of rubbing alcohol off his tongue before following Wet into the tiny apartment’s living room.

Or rather, what had originally been a living room. It’d been completely converted into a sim-loader space, with wires trailing across the floor and plugging into generator, or the master console, or the lights, and eventually into the backs of the two chairs in the middle of the spider’s web of cables. Firewire, an orange pegasus covered in mechanical implants, spun his pleather office chair around to look at them before nodding, and pulling off a pair of headphones.

“Wasn’t too tricky to actually program in what you wanted, just modified another one of my sims. And I basically just had to dumb down the com-sim.”

“Thank you.” Sighed Long.

Firewire was already spinning back around to face his monitors. “Yeah yeah, save it for later. Aiko!” The bedroom door behind Wet and Long opened, and a pinkish-white mare poked her head out. Firewire waved to the chairs. “Can you get our guests settled in? I need to set this up.”

The Mare smiled, before waving a hoof towards the chairs. Long and Wet nodded, before beginning to shed their raincoats. As Wet allowed the mare to help him get seated and strapped into the chair, unable to move a muscle, Long paused, and whispered to Firewire. “Hey… Do you remember that talk we had?”

“Do you remember that talk we had? About how fucking dangerous that is, for both of you and my equipment?” The wirejockey’s hooves unfolded, revealing two pairs of stainless steel finger that slid out of the frog before frantically tapping on the keyboard before him, running a last-minute diagnostic.

Long nodded. “I’m not at any risk. Wet is, and he knows that. He still wants to do it, and he made a backup this morning. I double-checked it myself.”
Firewire paused, his middle finger an inch away from pressing the enter key. After a long few seconds, he sighed. “Fine. Fucking… Fine. But if my equipment fries, you’re paying for the replacement, and if… no, when, he fries, you’re walking your brand-new vegetable home.”
The finger tapped the enter button as Long nodded. “Thanks.”

“Repay me by not letting anyone see you walk out of here with a blank.” With Wet now properly strapped in, Aiko approached, holding out her pinkish hoof for Long to take. He let her guide him over to the chair opposite his husband, who shot him a smile.

They were both sitting in an odd position for ponies; flat on their rear, legs forward, head up, lying back. This was for a few different reasons. First, it made it much easier to jack the cables into the slots in the base of their neck, and kept them free from obstruction, unlike if they’d been lying down. Second, it let them face each other, which had always kept the Simmers calm, ever since the first prototype.

And third, which very well could have been the most important reason of them all, it meant when they started to get into it their dicks didn’t have anything to get cramped into. They could freely bob in the air, which was useful for many, many more reasons.

There was a final click as the last cable slotted into place, and it resonated for a split second through Long’s skull. Though the feeling quickly passed, it always had that claws-on-a-chalkboard feeling, that was more than plain sound. It just felt uncomfortable, in the purest way.

He tried to distract himself by focusing on Wet Work. The pony had that smile, that smile that Long loved, that said, “Hey, I know we’ve both had a right shitty day, but you and me are gonna come together soon and make it all worth it.”

There was a rattling, scratching noise as Firewire appeared from his right, holding a large, green piece of silicon and wiring, and covered in warnings. Warnings like, “DO NOT REMOVE” and “WARRANTY AND LITIGATION VOID IF ALTERED OR REMOVED”.

“This is the failsafe, Long. Remind me to re-attach it after you and him are done, if you can.”

Long would’ve nodded, but the straps had been tightened to the point where he couldn’t even manage that. With a gulp, he responded, “Okay. I’m ready. Wet?”

“Ready.”

With a final nod, Firewire disappeared out of their field of vision once again. “Running final checks, and pre-caching the assets… Both of you, close your eyes. You don’t want to get double images again.”

Long closed his eyes, and just focused on everything else. His implants were syncing with the compact supercomputer now, and he could feel each of his other senses shutting off with a click-click-click.

Click. There went his sense of taste.

Click. Smell next, not that there had been much to smell in the apartment anyway, aside from the soaked-in stench of bad pizza and rubbing alcohol.

Click. With his eyes safely closed, his vision turned even darker. Experimentally, he tried to open them again, and found that either he couldn’t, or the optical nerve had been completely overridden.

Click. Hearing finally went, and he was deaf, lost inside a black void. No sound, no smell, nothing to see. Only the feel of the plastic-fibre straps against his fur.

He didn’t hear the last click. He had nothing to do it with, not even the sense of touch. Like that, he was nothing.

@ @ @

Pollen always had this sort of sickly-sweet smell. Budding flowers, under-ripe fruits, newly-planted trees... They all smelled the same. As Long exhaled, breathing the pollen back out, he opened his eyes.

He was sitting in a plastic lawn chair in a greenhouse. The bright light of the sun filtered through the turquoise glass above, and played across the leaves of hundreds of plants, all in their own little planters in neat, orderly rows. Small insects, little humming things that he didn’t know the names of, flitted between them. Pollination. It was sort of mesmerising, seeing it in action.

He turned his head, looking out the side of greenhouse. It was built off the side of a little country house, with idyllic rolling hills stretching far into the distance, shadows of clouds creating odd-shaped patterns across them. Following the glass wall up, his eyes settled on a window that had been left propped open, close to the ceiling.

Leaving a window open… That was adventurous.

There was a cough from beside him. “So, you like it too, huh?”

Wet was sitting in a plastic lawn chair beside him, reclining comfortably and gazing lovingly at… well, everything. Long watched him take in the flowers, the vegetables, the fruit, all these plants that neither of them knew the names of. He watched his husband’s gaze following the sprinkler lines in the rafters, tracing them back to the control valve.

Sure, Long could have looked at those things too… But he much preferred to just take in Wet, like he’d never seen the stallion before; clean. For the first time in ages, truly, properly, clean. No layer of peroxide staining his flesh, no blood under his hooves, no splatters left over from his job. The sunlight even played into his fur, revealing a faint blue sheen hidden in the dark grey that Long had never, could never, have noticed before.

“Know what it reminds me of?” Asked Wet, who was still taking in the grassy knoll outside, with trees at the very far edge of vision.

“What?”

“That Geranium we tried to grow that one time. Remember that?”

Long nodded sadly. “Poor little thing didn’t last a month on our windowsill. Never even had enough sunlight to bloom.” He paused, sighing, before wrapping a hoof around Wet. “Come on. Don’t worry about that now, let’s enjoy our anniversary.”

The grey-blue stallion nodded, rolling off his lawn chair and onto Long’s lap, nuzzling into his chest. “Kinda wish this had been our honeymoon instead.”

“Yeah… That hotel sucked. Especially the wake-up call,” Long agreed, tracing his hoof along Wet’s back, and settling on his rump.

Wet chuckled. “That wasn’t the hotel, that was the Boss! Remember? That rush job?” He started trailing kisses up Long’s neck, as the larger stallion groaned happily.

“Nah, that whole morning was a fuckin’ blur…” He trailed off as Wet started trailing back down, sliding a hoof down his barrel, followed by his lips, kissing and playfully nipping, just a little bit. By the time he’d slid all the way down, with his shapely rump sitting on the sun-warmed concrete floor, Long was already warmed up and hard as a steel rod, squeezing his eyes shut from sheer pleasure. “Quit… Quit teasin’ me, Wet, or I’m gonna come the second you put it in…”

“Oh, what a terrible tragedy that would be.” Snarked Wet, as he held the end of the shaft with a hoof and started slurping down the side, coating it in his spit. The whole time, he was using his other hoof to play with his own balls a little, stroking his own shaft, squeezing just enough to keep himself hard while he got Long worked up.

When he finally felt the larger stallion was ready, he moved his hoof to the base of the blackish-green cock, and positioned his own muzzle above it. “Hey, Long. Open your eyes.”

When he did, he was treated to a long, slow view of Wet sucking his tip into his mouth, slurping at it, sucking at the head, and then pushing it in deeper. The slowly-flaring head starting sliding against the soft palate at the top of his mouth, running the flare against the bumpy-but-smooth surface, until finally it was positioned at the back of his throat.

Gently, with consummate care, Wet took Long’s hoof and placed it against the back of his head, leaving it there before laying his hooves in the other stallion’s lap. He might not have been able to speak, but the message was clear. “Have fun… but be gentle.”

Long was exactly that. He never moved faster than a crawl, and he never had to push Wet down—they worked their way down the shaft together, with Long suggesting the speed, and Wet wrapping his tongue around it, licking and slurping as he slowly breathed through his nose, just barely. The smaller stallion used to have a gag reflex… Used to. They’d gotten him past that together, after lots… and lots… of practice.

Eventually, he bottomed out, the cock finally blocking his throat, or rather, his throat wrapping around it lovingly, caressing it with his silky flesh even as his muzzle nuzzled into Long’s crotch fur, that same wonderful tongue darting out and suckling at his balls, trying to suck them in too. Eventually, he let out a shiver, and Long let his hoof drop, so Wet could slide back off the shaft with agonizing, yet wonderful, slowness.

He paused once he’d gotten back up to the medial ring, letting out only a tiny, cute cough in the aftermath of a full deepthroat before he was right back to it, running his tongue in circles on the head of the flare, as his hooves starting stroking the rest of the length in the absence of his throat. As soon as Long started getting close, which was barely seconds after that, they made eye contact, and Long came.

The flare finally reached full girth, stiffening inside Wet’s mouth as it squirted once, twice, three times, four, and finally tapering off after the fifth. The whole time he never stopped slurping, suckling, sucking at the head, milking it for every single drop he could manage.

@ @ @

Both of the strapped-down stallions had cocks like support pillars, solid and fully vertical, but it was still a surprise when Long jerked, and ribbons of cum sprayed straight upward, arcing at a couple feet, and then coming right back down on his own chest.

“Hoh! Shit, guess they’re having fun.” Firewire chuckled, only glancing over to make sure cum hadn’t landed on anything sensitive. It hadn’t, but he still turned to the mare beside him. “Aiko. Mind cleaning that up?”

“I can do that.” She responded, standing and trotting over to the messy stallion. Firewire was about to ask what she was doing, when she extended her tongue, and started licking the cum out of Long’s fur, carefully, like a cat cleaning another.

“Fuckin’ Tartarus…” Muttered Firewire. “Aiko. Have I ever mentioned I love you?”

“You have. Many times.”

@ @ @

Long was panting as Wet finally popped off the end of his shaft, and opened his mouth to show off the load of cum sitting in his mouth. A moment later, he closed it, and let it slide down his throat, gulping down every drop of the seed with a faint bulge.

Long chuckled. “Come on up here, show me you got it all…”

Wet nodded, climbing onto the chair between the larger stallion’s hinds, and propping his fores up on his chest. Opening his mouth, he gave Long a close-up view of the inside of his mouth, all the way back to the throat, to his slick, dripping uvula all the way back…

Long panted again, his erection not even getting a moment of downtime before it was stiffening right back up. “Fuck, Wet… Fuck the foreplay, I just wanna feed you again… Except I wanna be the food…”

Shifting, the smaller stallion’s cock started poking at Long’s rump. “I’d like that… But I don’t wanna just jump to the good part. Let’s do this right.” A moment later, his head poked inside, and Long grunted, his own cock slapping against his barrel. Wet’s shaft was short, but wide, and he was exceptional at using it to make Long blow his load all over himself before. They’d licked it up together… though it had to look pretty funny whenever the smaller pony mounted him.

“I love being inside you, you know that?” Wet asked, pushing inside slowly, and lazily stroking Long’s cock. “You’re so big, and warm… It’s like being inside a big blanket. But you know what’s even better than rutting your ass?”

“What… What’s better?” Long knew the answer, of course. But he loved hearing it, and Wet loved saying it.

“I love it when you take my hinds, and slip them into your mouth… When you suck on them, clean ‘em off… And then you start swallowing…”He panted as he began speeding up, connecting their hips with soft ‘plap’s over and over again. “When you gulp my legs into your throat, it’s everything I love about being inside you. Tight, warm, wet… And when you reach my balls, and my cock… That’s when I cum.”

“And what about after that?” Long grunted, with Wet still slowly stroking him.

“After that,” Wet continued, starting to get up to finishing speed. “I love the afterglow, the feeling of you surrounding me, swallowing me, as I slide down into your stomach… My air runs out, and I fade away, inside you…” He crooned, the noise almost involuntary, as he started to cum inside Long’s ass. As he finished, he added, “I love dying in your stomach, Long… It’s so peaceful, and I’m so happy…”

They were both left panting as Wet slumped onto Long’s shaft, still slowly stroking it as cum started to seep out from around his own, dripping onto the lawn chair.

After a moment, Wet sighed. “Firewire came through? I’m going to feel it this time?”

Long nodded, ruffling Wet’s mane. “Every moment of it. Like you always want to.”

@ @ @

Aiko had barely finished licking the cum off of Long Shot’s unconscious form, before Wet Work jerked upward across from him. The smaller cock twitched around, trying to fill a hole that wasn’t there, and the cum shot almost straight up before coming down all over Aiko.

There was a pause, before she giggled, and started licking the other stallion dry. On the other side of the console, Firewire sighed happily, beginning to stroke himself as he watched his mare fondling and sucking at the Simmers.

@ @ @

The two stallions could have stayed there forever. Literally, with the right program. But they weren’t done just yet.

Wet’s cock started going limp, and he let it flop out of Long’s ass, coming free with a quiet slurp and a splat, as a large glob of his cum dropped through onto the concrete floor. For a moment, he looked as if he wanted to lick it fry, but he caught Long’s hungry gaze, and decided to add a little flavouring.

“Head-first.” Wet said, and Long nodded, lowering his fores so that Wet could climb up his chest, and the larger stallion could grip his asscheeks once again. As he did, he whispered, “I’m gonna be delicious, today.”

“You’re always delicious,” responded Long, before opening his mouth, so that Wet could look inside like he had done before. Gently, he pushed his head into the large stallion's’ mouth, resting it on his tongue as if it were a soft, fleshy pillow.

“Make me meat, Long. Make me your meal.”

The stallion started doing just that, tilting Wet upwards and into his mouth, so he could slide in. Gravity would do most of the work. Wet tasted a little dusty, but his mane tasted like blueberries, and that masked the worst of it. As he started sliding in, his hinds twitched, plushy buttcheeks grinding gently on Long’s hooves.

When he reached Wet’s cock, he finally paused, slurping his own juices off of his stallion’s crotch happily. He was starting to get hard again, and Long eagerly played around with the half-flaccid length, and tonguing his asshole, before finally letting him slide deeper.

Inside the stallion, Wet was panting, staring down that tight, yawning abyss of Long’s throught. His hooves had been pinned to his side as he did, giving him a little tingle of vertigo… When he fell, he wouldn’t be able to put his hooves up to stop himself. He gasped as Long’s tongue started slurping around his taint, coddling his balls, and he moaned happily when that tongue gently probed into his anus, making sure to get all of the flavour of Wet Work.

Wet wanted Long to have plenty to remember him by, after all. With safeties disabled, he was going to die, or at least experience simulated death. Nopony had experienced that before, and mentally survived to say what it was like. He’d saved a backup scan of his mind at the apartment, but that wasn’t him. This him, the one he was in this sim, the one currently hanging down Long Shot’s throat… He was going to get wiped. He was going to go into that stomach, and never come back out.

He groaned again as Long’s tongue slipped back out of his asshole. Part of him wanted to tell him to stop, to re-enable the safeties, to just get their usual… But even more of him wanted it. To die in here, for real. And when Long finally let go of his hinds, and let him drop, face-first, into his esophagus… All he could do was moan, “Yes…”

His head pushed through the entrance to the stomach, and then he was in, back in that acrid, comfortable organ, sliding into a pool of acid that took up the space inside. He twisted as he fell in, shifting so his head stayed above the liquid, but everything below his barrel was submerged. The acid already felt like a hundred little grey goldfish, nipping and biting as his flesh.

There was a pat on his head from outside the stomach. “Wet? How is it in there?”

“It’s… really warm, and it kind of burns… I never felt this before, it’s wonderful…”

After a moment of silence, Long sniffled. “I… I can still vomit you back up, you know. It’s not too late. You can still get out of there.”

Wet gently patted the hoof that was placed against the outside. “It’s okay, Long. We talked about this. It’s okay.”

“I know…” He sobbed, gently. “I’m… I’m gonna miss you, is all…”

“You’re not gonna miss me, Long. Won’t be anything to miss. I’ll be me, and you’ll be you. That’s never bugged you before, and it’s never bugged me before.”

Long rested his head on the bulge of Wet. “Do you… Do you think there’s a bunch of copies of us somewhere? In some better place, after those times the job… After times we were careless?”

Wet chuckled, looking down into the cloudy pool of acids he was sitting in. He couldn’t feel his hinds anymore, and the burn of acids on his crotch had stopped. “If there are, I’m sure they’re doing what we’re doing now, having fun and being each other’s meals.” There was a weird sucking feeling, and Wet gasped.

“Something... Something just fell apart… That didn’t take long…” Pushing his forelegs under, he pushed himself up… and found his legs had completely dissolved. Looking underneath, the acids were beginning to eat through his torso, and the soft flesh holding him together.. well, wasn’t.
The sucking feeling returned, and with a cry of pain, of pleasure, of horror, Wet’s intestines slid out of the remnants of his belly, slurping out of the acid-eaten hole where his crotch had been, slopping into the acids with a splash. “Yes! Oh, Luna, yes!” Shaking, twitching, spasming as the pain returned, Wet let himself, fall into the acids completely, only stopping them at his neck. His hoof emerged from the pool, but the flesh was missing, and and he only managed a single, half-hearted prod at Long before it fell apart.

“Oh Luna, I’m dying, Long, I’m dying… It feels so good…” The acids were turning red around him, chunks of organs and flesh and fur and his own bones bobbing around him. He could feel Long stroking himself, through the skin of the belly, the stallion getting off on his death inside the stomach. He managed to gurgle out “See ya in a couple minutes, Long…” before the rest of his major organs fell into the acid, and he slipped beneath the surface, dying happily.

@ @ @

Seconds later, both stallions started jerking around one last time, twitching, shaking in their straps, and this time Aiko was ready, holding both their cocks and stroking them as she pointed them towards herself. She gave Firewire a wink just before they came, coating the pink-white mare with off-white cum, massive spurts of it, spraying across her. Cum landed in her mane, in her fur, in her eye, in her mouth, and she was reveling in it, giving herself a cum shower with the jacked-in ponies.

At the same time, the computer started flashing error warnings, bright red messages flicking across the screen. Wet jerked one last time, as if he’d been shocked by lightning, before slumping into his seat, smoking gently. Behind him, the power stabilised, and the power crystals behind that prevented electrocution, cracked. One by one, they fell out of their sockets, burnt black and smoking.

Firewire began panting happily, stroking himself as the stallion’s cumshots ebbed to squibs, and grunted, “Aiko! C’mere.” Behind her, Long squirted one last strand of cum, re-smearing his belly.

The mare nodded, and climbed atop him, slamming herself down again and again before Firewire came, finishing inside her. She held him to her barrel, smearing the cum on his muzzle too, as his own orgasm slowly faded. After reveling in the afterglow, Firewire gulped air, and slumped back. “Aiko? Clean up.”

@ @ @

Long Shot lay back in the lawn chair, now alone in the simulation. He gently rubbed his belly, hoping against hope for movement of any sort, but it was fruitless. Wet Work was dead.

All that was left of his husband was a bulge in his belly. Even that was shrinking pretty fast.

Sadly, he looked up at the blue sky above, through the roof of the greenhouse. He didn’t need to, he knew that, but it gave him something to focus on as he said the exit phrase.

“Roses in Winter.”

The skybox fell apart first. It pixelated, then started unloading from the program, blackness spreading from the centre of the sky above. The world around it followed, the green hills fading from existence and into a pixelly blur of green, until all Long had left was the Greenhouse. The flowers were gone in moments, and he looked at his own hooves just in time to see them disintegrate into blocks of data as the program kicked him out.

@ @ @

The back of his skull clicked, and the noise jerked Long Shot out of his stupor, straightening up and smacking his forehead into Aiko’s chin. “Ah! Shit! Sorry, Aiko.” Rubbing his head, he looked down. She was still in the process of unstrapping him, while Wet remained untouched.

Tentatively, he rubbed the back of his head, and the metal slot in the base of his skull tingled. The flesh around it felt raw, and his hoof came back with a watery splatter of blood on it… The first symptoms of implant rejection. He’d need to replace the Shell soon.

A moment later, Aiko stood back, and he was unstrapped. As soon as he’d slid off the chair, he was at Wet’s side, opening his eyelid with a delicate finger. “Is he…?”

“He got lucky.” Answered Firewire, who was combing cum out of his fur behind his computer desk. “Only blew out the power crystals, and those are cheap to replace. I’ll take the liberty of pulling the credits out of his account for him, though.”

Wet’s eye slowly focused, and his lips split, giving his hoof a lick. “Why’s that?” Tentatively asked Long.

Firewire paused to wipe the comb off on a microfibre cloth. “Wiped out all higher brain function. Pretty much fried all of his cybernetics, so all he’s working off of is the organic chunks of his head. He might be able to access some memories, but not enough to talk, or really do anything but follow you around like a lost puppy.”

Under Long’s hoof, Wet whinnied, jerking in his restraints, before looking at them, confused. He tried to bite through the nearest one, but Long patted his chest. “Hey. Hey. It’s okay. One second, okay?”

Aiko moved closer, and together, they started unstrapping Wet from the chair. As soon as he could, he struggled out of the restraints, landing on the carpet with a stumble. As soon as he’d found his footing, he held himself against Long’s side, hooking his neck over the larger stallion’s shoulders. Long turned back to Firewire. “He seems to remember me…”

“Well, according to this diagnostic, your hubby’s a blank. That’s all muscle memory.” His head poked back around the monitors. “You two had fun in there, though?”

“Lots.” Nodded Long, giving Wet an affectionate nuzzle. “You programmed that really well. You done vomiting before?” He started moving towards the door, and Wet moved with him, content just to stay close.

“Yeah, but I haven’t combined it with vore. That’s new.” As they rounded the desk again, an orange wing held out a datacard. “Here’s that com-sim. Lemme know what you think before I send it to the Boss, alright?”

Long nodded, slipping his hydrophobic on before dropping the datacard into a pocket. “Sure. Thanks again for this, Firewire.”

Firewire passed him the other hydrophobic. “Blank. Not seen. Seriously.”

Wet didn’t want to have the hydrophobic put on, but as soon as it was, he didn’t seem to mind all that much. He just stayed pressed against Long. “He seems pretty happy. Not… blank.”

“Uh-huh. Tell me that again when you discover that all his potty-training got wiped.”

With a bitter chuckle, Long led Wet back into the Mudlock. As it cycled, he accessed the city’s network, calling a cab. Another nuzzle from Wet greeted him as he disconnected, and he returned it, as the door opened before them.

The thunderstorm was still going on, of course. They hadn’t been in the apartment for more than half an hour, and if anything it had only gotten more severe. Wind blew a spray of toxic-tasting rain into their muzzles, and they both spat it out. Long nearly had to drag his husband out of the relative safety of the mudlock into the rain, and when they reached the sidewalk, and the waiting cab, he refused to get into the darkened two-pony vehicle.

A crack of thunder changed that in an instant, and Long followed him in, sitting him down on the seat beside him awkwardly. Once again, however, as soon as the door was shut and the noise of the storm silenced, Wet seemed content to lay his head on Long’s lap.

“Aww…” Long crooned. The only response was a gentle chuff of warm breath across his crotch.

The cab’s screen in front of him beeped, asking him for his credit number, and as he was putting it in, Wet seemed to rediscover his cock, giving it a lick.

“Whoah, hey, already? Luna, Wet, it’s been five minutes…” he finished putting in the code, and was greeted by an additional message:

DARKEN WINDOW TINT? Y/N*

(*Costs 40 credits in cleaning charges)

“Smartass machine…” He jabbed at the “N”, and sat back in his seat, rubbing at Wet’s mane. Around them, the cab whirred to life, and the sidewalks glowed with faint purple light as the Thaumolectric engine lifted them off the road.

Simming always made him tired. His eyes meandered just as much as his thoughts did, but they were still mostly focused on his bed. He’d sedate Wet for the night, and plug him in to upload this morning’s backup. If he didn’t join him in bed during the night, then he’d wake him up the next morning. He made a mental note to clean his rifle on the cab ride into work.

Then another lick from Wet jerked him out of his thoughts. He was about to tell him to quit it, but Wet… He had that serene smile again. He couldn’t tell him to stop, when he had that smile.

He only saw that smile when they were simming, realized Long. Never on the job. Maybe once or twice at home. But he was smiling now, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Wet was happy, he realized. Honestly, genuinely happy, even without a lot of what made Wet… Wet. All of his husband’s baggage was gone, replaced with dumb happiness at just being around him.

Could he… Could he actually bring himself to change that?

The cab beeped; they were at their own apartment. On this side of the city, the storm wasn’t raging as hard, but the drops were still as acrid as ever. He lured Wet out, and into the complex. Muscle memory took over as they trotted inside, up the stairs, down the hall, to room 342. Jabbing at the panel, the door opened, and they stepped in, shedding their hydrophobics.

The datacard was dropped on their desk, and the computer came on with a hum. In moments, Long Shot was looking at the message, “RESTORE BACKUP? Y/N” and holding a cable connected to the computer, but not to Wet.

Would Wet even actually want to come back? Would he be any happier if he did? Was he happier this way? Did he know this would happen? Long had really needed to pressure him into making that backup this morning. They’d almost fought about it, but Wet agreed not too far in. If Long hadn’t pushed so hard for this backup, Wet wouldn’t have made it, and he wouldn’t have to make this choice.

But… Was it really Long Shot’s choice to make?

Beside him, the Blank Dust rested his head on his shoulder. He’d looked at the computer screen too, but he no longer knew what it meant. It was just digital squiggles. He hadn’t shifted an inch when Long opened another window, alongside the first, with another message:

DELETE BACKUP? Y/N (THIS ACTION CANNOT BE UNDONE)

Wet Work made his decision.