Chapter Text
It started the way most of their better evenings did: a strong drink and a mind-numbing rant about economics.
“An oligopoly, Otto,” Norman repeated himself, brandishing his glass to emphasize his point. “Did you sleep through macroeconomics?”
“No,” Otto smiled. Even if he did, hypothetically, remember what an oligopoly was, he would much rather listen to Norman attempt to explain it through his utter outrage and disbelief. “That’s how we got to know each other, don’t you remember? You were failing some physics course or another, I was struggling in economics–”
“You had a B.”
“Clearly you could have been a much more apt tutor. You only have your past self to blame for my utter ineptitude,” Otto joked, taking a long drink from his glass to cover his smirk as Norman feigned fuming.
“You were a terrible student,” he huffed.
“I beg your pardon, but I was a very good student.”
“Not for me!”
Otto just threw his head back and laughed. Norman seemed to appreciate his good humor, even despite their mutually teasing tone. They had been different people when they first met–younger, more ambitious, and given the amount of deeply unacademic study sessions, far stupider. It was fascinating, far more so than Otto’s barely scientific interest in his partner’s taste for the actuators, how two such people could part in bitter resentment and come back together compatible. The bite of their old conversations was still there after all these years, even if they both knew damn well the other hardly meant it.
They had grown up. That was most of it. They had also loved others, learned the way affection fits into different shapes for different people. While he preferred to steer clear of the human psyche on a scientific level, its mysteries were often kind in practice. He was all too happy to stumble through this one with Norman, observe what was different, what had never changed, what was comfortable.
It had been so many years since he had fallen in love. It was a daily joy to learn how to do so again.
“You were attractive, Norman, what was I supposed to do?” Otto sighed, barely holding back a smirk when Norman kicked his feet up onto the ottoman and raised an eyebrow.
“What the hell did you mean by that bit of past tense you threw in there?”
Otto rolled his eyes.
“You’re still ravishing,” he returned flatly.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Norman grinned, threw his glass up in a mock-toast, and took a swig.
“At the time, I thought you were some kind of personal demon meant to torment me,” Otto chuckled. “I was young and repressed and you didn’t make fun of my glasses–”
“I didn’t?”
“If you did, I was blind to it,” he joked.
Norman sighed.
“Not your best.”
“One man of science to the other, we find success through repetition and experimentation,” Otto recited while Norman gave him the sort of pained look that belonged in an art gallery.
“You might want to save the experimentation for when I’m out of the house,” Norman feigned a grimace.
“So what were you saying about this oligarchy?” Otto pressed, grinning.
Norman wilted.
“Do me a favor and top me off, would you? I think I’m gonna need it,” he sighed, holding out his glass with all the dramatics he could manage under his partner’s joking glare.
Despite his feigned frustration, Otto knew an opening when he saw one. While he viewed using the actuators to refill Norman’s glass as a completely neutral action, he now had the data necessary to know the exact shade of red his partner would go in response.
At the beginning of the experiment, he had made a mental note not to take too much pleasure in tormenting Norman. It was almost comical how quickly he had forgotten it.
He had long since given up on trying to be clinical about the experiment. It didn’t matter how much he cared about scientific ethics. At the end of the day, he was always going to be just as attracted to his test subject as his test subject was to his actuators, if the data checked out. That meant at least a small part of him would glow with delight every time he rendered Norman silent and staring with some menial action or another. It was a good look on him. A little pathetic, but good. Helpless, almost.
Otto dragged himself kicking and screaming out of the clouds.
“You enjoy that, don’t you?” Norman chuckled, his voice a little thin and his eyes obviously on the nearest arm as it glinted fiercely in the lamplight.
“Enjoy what?”
“You’re not dumb, so don’t pretend to be,” he smiled wickedly. “You know what the hell you’re doing. You’ve known what the hell you’ve been doing for weeks now.”
“Now, hypothetically, if I weren’t playing dumb, would you mind catching me up?” Otto asked. “You know me and my memory in my old age.”
“You son of a bitch,” Norman threw his head back and cackled. “Pressing all my buttons while you sit there fucking examining me like some kinda specimen.”
Otto raised an eyebrow.
“Since when have you cared about ethics?”
“That’s the trick, honey. I haven’t started.”
The coffee table between them could’ve been a mile. It could’ve been an inch. There was no time, nor space, just the sodium orange lamplight setting soft shadows ablaze while the silence hung thick in the room. Otto couldn’t even be bothered to make a mental note.
“So this experiment of yours,” Norman began as he stood, swirling his whiskey in hand as he paced a slow, decaying orbit around Otto’s recliner, “how long has it been going on?”
There was a glint in Norman’s eyes now, something sharp and cruel and excited. It might have terrified another man, but it left Otto’s heart pounding for a very different reason.
“Two weeks,” he answered.
“Two weeks,” Norman mused. “Is that why you’ve been cooking so much more?”
“That’s confidential,” Otto failed to answer without a smile.
“You bastard,” Norman chuckled, shaking his head fondly. “And the shit with the tie?”
“I plead the fifth.”
“And sticking the actuators up my shirt the other day? That was bold, even for you,” Norman continued to think aloud.
“That was their volition, actually,” Otto corrected.
“Your arms just decided to give me hypothermia?”
“They get cold, Norman.”
Despite the general mood of the conversation, he couldn’t help breaking into a genuine laugh, dragging his partner down with him within seconds of attempted eye contact.
“Shut the hell up,” Norman attempted to croak.
“You first.”
Norman caught his breath, downed a swig of his drink, and set it aside.
“So two weeks,” he started once more, that sly look of his returning to his face as he resumed his pacing, “two weeks you’ve been what–doing some kind of psychological experiment on me?”
“Why don’t we say I was proving the validity of an anonymous tip?”
Norman’s jaw dropped.
“That son of a bitch,” he hissed.
“Well, if you look at it a little more broadly, isn’t he really doing you a favor?” Otto teased as Norman’s frustration faded into something a little more fond. “I wouldn’t have ever known without a hypothesis to test, you know. Frankly, I wish you would have told me earlier.”
“I knew you enjoyed it,” Norman accused. “Just sitting there, playing innocent. Watching me squirm. You’re sadistic, you know that, Doctor?”
“Testing a theory that, if proven correct, could be beneficial for the both of us,” Otto corrected as he stood.
He wasn’t usually one to pay much attention to height, but it was simply fascinating how much shorter Norman looked when staring up at him, lips slightly parted and pupils blown a mile wide.
“Doctor,” Otto shook his head. “Now who’s pressing buttons?”
“Since when have you been against revenge?” Norman chuckled, eyes still wide and rapt–not gazing at Otto, but on the actuator snapping delightedly over his shoulder.
“They like you too, you know,” Otto smiled as another arm slithered around Norman’s waist and closed the few inches left between them.
“That’s one hell of a trick,” Norman breathed.
“We’re just getting started, dear.”
“You’re a sick bastard,” Norman all but cackled, head thrown back in delight as one of the actuators began to creep around his neck.
. . .
“Norman.”
“Mhm.”
“Dear.”
“Mhm.”
“Love of my life.”
“Mhm.”
“When am I going to get my arms back?”
Norman raised his head from the vague pile of happily humming actuators curled around him like over-affectionate snakes.
“Never,” he yawned.
Otto did his best to turn over with a dejected huff, though the fact that he was still very much connected to the knot on the other side of the bed made this significantly more difficult than expected.
“When you told me the AI got possessive, I didn’t think you meant this,” Norman chuckled, his voice nearly drowned out by a soft mechanical whirring as one of the actuators grabbed unsuccessfully at his head in a motion Otto was sure was meant to be affectionate.
“Yes, well, the damned things are very clever,” Otto returned, his fondness almost overwhelming the feigned exasperation in his voice, “it learns from me. If it associates dopamine, affection, et cetera with a person, it tends to latch on. The AI is just making its best guess of what I want when the instructions aren’t necessarily clear.”
“Are you saying you want to be over here cuddling little old me?” Norman snickered.
“Well, I don’t want to have to fight those four after ten o’clock, so I’m perfectly happy over here,” Otto pretended to huff.
“You’re adorable,” Norman grinned.
Otto began to laugh, though it broke off into a glare when he looked over to see Norman petting one of the actuators’ claws like a dog.
“You do realize those are a part of my body, correct? They have as much independent thought as a limb with restless leg syndrome.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t complimenting you too,” Norman laughed.
Otto managed to roll over the other direction, using the actuators to drag the very tangled pile of limb and partner close enough that he could join the knot himself.
“I knew you’d come around to it,” Norman teased.
“Shut up,” Otto yawned into his shoulder.
He had barely closed his eyes for a moment before a faint, arrhythmic clicking started to ring out from somewhere nearby.
“Dammit,” he groaned.
“What’s it saying?” Norman mumbled.
Otto sighed. He really didn’t want or need to be translating morse code from his actuators at a time like this. However, Norman probably found the whole ordeal adorable, meaning his hands were tied.
“I didn’t think you were so interested in the whims of my left arm,” he grumbled.
“Come on,” Norman complained.
Otto closed his eyes and listened for a moment.
The actuator repeated itself, a little louder this time.
“.... . / .. ... / -.-. .-. ..- ... .... .. -. --. / -- . / - . .- .-. / .... .. ... / .-.. .. -- -... ... / --- ..-. ..-.”
Otto forced a smile.
“Just my subconscious letting you know how wonderful you are,” he grimaced, trying to roll the two of them over as subtly as possible.
“You’re too good to me.”
“I was going to just ignore it until he fell asleep,” Otto mouthed at the claw, which hissed once before closing and curling up in a ball somewhere behind his shoulder.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, Norman,” Otto smiled.
For a moment, they were silent, save for the soft mechanical humming as the actuators adjusted themselves. It was Norman who broke the quiet first, looking up from Otto’s chest to grin.
“So there’s another successful experiment for Doctor Octavius in the books, huh?” he chuckled.
“You could call it that.”
“Not nearly enough data to really run any kind of hypothesis test on it though, right?”
Otto raised an eyebrow.
“Correct.”
“Sure would be a shame if you had to collect some more sometime,” Norman prompted.
Otto shook his head, laughing fondly.
“I think I have more than enough to draw a conclusion,” he started slowly, feigning indecisiveness, “but if you’re so passionate about the pursuit of knowledge for the greater good–”
“I am.”
Otto smiled.
“Then I don’t see why not.”