Nerves

He has cybernetic enhancements and he’s one of the creatures from “A Jungle Full of White Roses”. Sorry, I’m a nerd. I like mythology, fantasy, paleontology, and science-fiction. I luv the –ologies.

The speaker is Kasai, the other character is Linden. I want to consider this Shonen Ai more than Yaoi because I believe the intimacy relies more on the wording and actions than the actual sex. Mah furst slash.


NERVES

The damage to my arm was greater than I had previously thought. I felt nothing…just a weak weight…a weight not as great as the arm itself since most of the sensory devices in my shoulder feel damaged as well. The only thing I sense from my arm…that thing that sets me apart even more, along with my physical appearance, is clicking…just weak clicking, sizzling of the electric wires that have taken place of my natural nerves…like the weight of the damaged arm…it could exist, and maybe it does not exist. Perhaps it’s all in my head.

Perhaps the sensations are fake…like my arm. Fabrications of technology. I tap my metal arm with a finger from my natural right arm…brown and rough…textured…against the smooth, featureless, grayish metal. Hollow thumps…reality…the fingers of my damaged fake arm twitch only because my curiosity probably tapped wires causing an electric impulse. I feel nothing when my fingers move. There’s no connection, only loose wires, loose nerves. My fingers do not twitch when I tapped the arm again…a light metal out casing of skin, protecting a corded mass of muscle interwoven with the cords were wiry nerves, and then hollow metal support that was to be a bone…dead, my arm is dead. My boredom is quite alive now.

So I wait, bored, sitting in the chair staring at a featureless room that is just as boring, senseless as my arm, so I think instead; allowing my thoughts to wander since I cannot wander until my appointment is over.

I am only twenty-two…I believe I am…my ignorance or naiveté, if you wish to be romantic you can call it, is that of someone who has lived their entire life in a box (which perhaps in a way I have), a young boy who grows up in a utopian valley, and I suppose if someone could hear my thoughts, they would think I am much older than I really am, and if someone could see the way I act and acknowledge things, they would suspect I am much younger than I really am…I supposed it is best to be an enigma…there is so much I do not know much of…and so much I know a lot of…but I have the eyes of one who has seen much…it blends like hazy smoke in the observant sky, the observant, battered ocean into grey beaches…they tell me.

They tell me he likes me.

I’m his greatest creation they say.

Creation? He did not create me. He’s was not even two when I was “born”, not even a genius like him could create life like me. You’re being naïve again, Kasai. He creates the cybernetic enhancements, he designs the enhancements for you…just for you.

Do you like him?

I answer yes, and they either laugh or look at me unhappily…laugh at my ignorance, or feel sorry that I do not understand…like gods and mortals. I think of Greek mythology now.

I like mythology…it flows like memory, like clouds, cirrus wispy and folding, flowing into the sky…like water flowing on sand. Some points obvious, solid, other points less readable. It is history. It flows, understandable but not, prone too many explanations and points of views. It is memory in its purest form.

Pygmalion…Ganymede…Narcissus…Echo…Hermaphrodite…they echo the most, they are most memorable of all…not the if we will always know these ones type of memory…but that they breathe, speak of, and smell the most of memory. They are the most representative of memory…the obvious, the sublime, things said, things not said, hazy, and solid.

He opens the door, the clouds dissipate.

“Hi,” he says. If my eyes are dusky skies, his are turquoise glass…same color, polar materials. Lucky genetics you could say. He carries a suitcase under his one arm, tools of his trade…his paintbrushes he calls them. “I heard you damaged your arm again. Any serious damage?”

“I have no sensations in my shoulder,” I state. “I think I may have damaged the root sensory devices there.”

He pulls a pen like tool, which in shape and form could be mistaken for a paintbrush except it was made of dull, smooth grey metal that could be mistaken for some form of plastic from his briefcase. He chews on the tip of it, thoughtful for a moment. He blushes at the sight of me sitting in the chair, shirtless for the sake of the appointment. He paused half way down the stairs. “We’ll see about that, Kasai. I’ll fix you right up.”

He seems embarrassed with the sudden comment and he does not speak as he slightly detaches my arm from my shoulder, exposing the root sensors. He presses the tip of his tool against each nerve room, electronic sensory devices attached to actual nerves, and these electronic sensory devices from my shoulder attaches to my arm and moves with the ease of any mortal moving their natural arm. The thing is I cannot “feel” in the way of a normal person, my nerves are only for the moment of my arm, not for the sensation…the acceptance…of touch.

He presses the tool against a root sensor, a jolt—a sensation—of electricity bursts to my skull. He smiles as the electricity melts away, down from the back of my brain—the hippocampus—down my chest, easing down my throat, melting over my heart, pushing through my lungs, down my torso before resting between my thighs.

“That one works,” he says, to himself, to me? He simply says because he can say it. His breath is warm and hot, and every hot breath pours into that space between my ear and neck, where the skin is soft and thing. It makes my eyebrows and other parts…other points, of my body prick…prick like if there was a sudden blast of cold air. And the pricks do not go away, they linger, these pricks die down, but they do not leave—they linger like reminders, memory. My flesh is a network of goose bumps. It feels like there is a blockage in my chest, right between both my legs, making it hard to breath both in and out, resulting in a panting breath that I try hard to control, and succeed to a point; my breath can be mistaken for me just being uncomfortable.

“That one works,” he says to the space between my shoulder and arm, quite hoarsely. He hits another root sensor and another. His own embarrassment melts away; his nervousness slowly dissipates with each touch. My breath becomes quicker, his movements quicker, just gently testing each sensor. Jolts hit my brain. There’s no sensation in the rest of my body other than the back of my head and below my navel—abuzz in a jittery sensation, like when you put too much pressure on your ankle and it falls asleep—that kind of sensation. He presses the last root sensor. A weak shock, nothing else, just a pitter, leaving my body shaking and panting. My knee twitches as he puts away his tool.

“Minimal damage, Kas,” he tells me, “you just shook them up…bruised them. Your root sensors are fine; no need for painful replacements. In a few days they should fully heal themselves.”

He folds his tool and places it back in the brief case and removed a new cyber arm; my new arm. He holds it up just at the corner of my vision like a fisherman admiring a trout. He’s proud, but embarrassed. He wants to show off his new creation…just for me…but obviously does not want the attention or flattery. “It’s a beaut, isn’t it Kasai? I tried new materials so it’s even lighter than before, and we got in a small shipment of that new steel-webbed plastic in, so it’s just as strong if not stronger than your previous arm. What do you think?”

Some people get excited when they get letters in the mail or a new pair of shoes. Some people do. Most people do not get excited, most people scarcely regard the above; it is merely another chore. I respond like most people, and fill with a spark of guilt as his face somewhat drops with my apathy.

He removes my arm completely now with a click and sets it down on a metal tray. My body feels nude now, like a weight has been lifted. Cold. I feel unspeakably naked and even colder than before. He examines the ruined arm, sorting through the wires.

“Doozy,” he observes with a huff. I watch him, looking over my shoulder. I swear I could see his breath. Is it that cold in this examination room? My skin pricks.

He returns to me, holding new arm like a baby, I look up at him. He smiles.

“Beaut,” he repeats with a grin, his eyes hidden behind blond bangs. I look back at the wall when he sits downs beside me.

Some people look away when they get inoculations in the arm; other people watch with rapt curiosity as something new becomes part of their body. I am the former. He does not like my silence; or perhaps my silence makes him uncomfortable. He is one of the people who talks when they are uncomfortable. I suppose I could be one of those people, but I find myself mulling over what to say, and realize perhaps what I have to say is trivial—or just too stupid to discuss. I thought of mythology, the image of Pygmalion carving a statue from marble as white and as cold as ice. I imagine his finger tips slowing working over the marble feeling and admiring each vein of silver and speckled gold, his brow pressed in determination as he carves his greatest creation from the stone.

“You know what I used to do in college?” he asks me. He presses his fighters against my shoulders. Chill runs down my spine. The click cold metal, heaviness, and then wholeness. “It makes me chuckle every time I work with wires.”

Utterly random; yet utterly sympathetic; he speaks what I cannot speak; anything.

“What?” I ask, not looking as he hooks up each wire.

“Rats, I used to hook rats up to special electric shock machines with wires hooked into the hippocampus center of their brains,” he says.

“The most basic center of the brain, near the brain stem…the pleasure center,” I answer. I need to speak.

“Correct. You see we had these two little machines with peddles for the rats to press; each one on the opposite side of the rat’s cage. One machine gave the rat food pellets, the other an electric shock,” he tells me. “You know what the shock did? An…um…instant orgasm.”

He pauses and looks down at me, his eyes starting at my eyes then glancing lower and lower. Realizing I was looking at him, his face flushes. He continues as if nothing has occurred.

“Well the rats could not leave the electric shock peddle to get food, they kept pressing and pressing the peddle until they died. The only official cases of death by orgasm,” he laughs. Then he realizes I am not laughing. I manage a smile. I understand the humor. I laugh often, but the humor seems beyond me currently. Something is keeping me from laughing. He manages a small embarrassed grin. I do not whether his previous flush has left and has been replaced by another, newer flush, or his skin has remained red the entire time.

He does not speak as he finishes attaching my arm to my shoulder. I wish he would. I wish I would. But I stare at the wall, at its blankness, out of boredom, tapping my fingers on the arm of the chair.

“Okay it’s done, but I need to check and make sure all the connections are right,” he says quietly, playing with the tool between his fingertips.

“Okay,” I answer, tilting slightly in my seat, exposing more of my shoulder and neck to him, looking at the wall, waiting for his touch. He pauses again. I can sense him…know him…know he is chewing on his bottom lip, thinking over something, perhaps something to say.

But I do not feel the tool. The electric shock is nonexistent. I feel his fingertips…his fingernails…and mixture of glasslike smoothness and ridge softness against the side of my neck. Things melt and ripple.

He traces the veins in my neck. He observes my reactions like a scientist performing an observation…a scientist leaning over a cage of rats. I close my eyes and breath out, twitching in my seat. He pauses. The hand that stroked my neck rests on my shoulder. His other, still holding the sensory tool, presses against my other shoulder. I feel his breath, hot and steamy against the back of my head.

His lips are unspeakably soft when they touch the back of my head. His one hand, the one not holding the tool, wonders. His arm fits under the nook my arm, hooking his elbow to my armpit. He must lower himself to continue. His heel catches on the chair he was sitting on earlier and he pulls it to him and sits upon it. He does not let his flesh pull away entirely from me.

Between his lips, soft and fleshy, barely felt except for the pressure they exert, he catches the tip of my ear. His hand clumsily strokes my pectoral muscle.

“Are you uncomfortable?” he whispers.

“No,” I answer.

He answers with a breath. The tool falls to the ground. I think it may have broken upon striking the tiles. He wraps his free arm around me from behind, underneath my arm. He spreads his hand, his fingers open across my right pectoral muscle, teasing the nerve points, the pricks of my body. Like a master artisan, he builds up and smoothes the prickled mounds of my flesh. Each mound becomes a sensitized prick; each steep prick becomes a senseless mound.

He kisses my ear, working his way down my neck. He kisses the thin flesh of my neck. His lips work over my skin, his tongue warm and wet. Most of the time he does not even bother pulling away from my skin, soundly advertising each contact with my skin. The blood running up to my neck becomes hot and bursting; even more electrified after its trip through the canals of my throbbing heart.

The coldness of the room leaves, frigidness is now a dead thing. Hardness and serration are dead things. Immobility is dead. Separation is dead. Dead memories. I melt into my seat.

“Can I?” he whispers softly, hoarsely, desperately. “Can I Kasai?”

I do not know what he wishes to do. His voice does not say what he wants to do; his eyes do not say what he wants to do. He does not know what he wants to do. That is what makes this so beautiful. Hazy like memory…a creation of a memory for the two of us to keep and savor…a legend, a myth.

He fits his face in the nook of my neck. His one hand moves to twist my head. He kisses my throat. His other hand…his fingertips…bury themselves in the band of my jeans. My body is so full of sensations I feel only the pressure of his intrusion. My fingers dig into the arms of the chair.

I twist my neck for him so he does not have to do it himself. His hand now free wiggles between my arm and body and rests on my chest. He tries his best to kiss a pathway down my throat, curving over my shoulder to the edge of my shoulder; his lips pressing onto the flesh of my shoulder and cold metal of my arm. His hands switch place. His right hand buries itself in my pants, his left hand slides up my body to the flesh between my metal arm and mortal flesh.

“Nerves,” he manages between kisses. His fingers pressed against my flesh. A bolt hits my brain. “I made this just for you. There are two pathways to each root sensor.”

He presses again around the perimeter of my arm. Another shock hits my brain. He has made other attachments to the root sensors. He knows where to press, where to touch to send a bolt to my mind. “Do you like it?”

He touches another spot; like playing a piano, a rapture. I feel a wave of pleasure again. He taps his fingers on each point like he was playing a tune…a classical piece, each note chosen by the soul, born out of passion…all natural. It can’t be done again, and will only be left to the memory and dreams.

“Yes,” I answer hoarsely, overcome with hazy pleasure.

As his fingers play the special nerve pad around my shoulder, his other hand finds something else, something else just as sensitive as my shoulder. But this thing he touched, it was me…it was my flesh and had always been of my flesh. The sensation was much more different than the electric rushes, it was dull and soft, a feather rubbed over prickly flesh. I moan and lean back in my chair. I cannot lie, I am a virgin. Not just to sex but sensual touching as well. These new feelings were more than enough for me.

He refits his head in my neck to watch himself work. He presses an ear against the side of my neck. His fingers pull away from me, stroking the thin skin below my navel, pulling sensations upward and away from the demanding force between my thighs.

“Your skin is hot,” he whispers into my ear rubbing the side of his face, his ear against my neck. He nibbles my earlobe to pull an answer from me. “What do you want? What can you say? Tell me Kasai, I want to hear your voice.”

“Your touch is warm,” I answer, panting now. My brain is overloaded with sensations. “Your skin is warm. You smell like metal, cologne, and sweat. I taste a mixture of salt and oil in the air when you’re near. Your shoes squeak like sparrows when you walk, and I can hear your watch ticking as we speak. It was cold against my flesh, and now it is so warm that I can no longer feel it. You’re making me beg, what are you going to do?”

He is satisfied. His hand wonders southward again.

“Your face is the shade of red of the blood of a beet stained on white cotton. You smell like juniper and iron when you sweat. Your arm sounds like the innards of an antique clock clicking on a stone fireplace. I sleep well at night because of the sound of my clock,” he whispers into my ear. His finger tips touch me again. “And yes, I am making you beg. Do you like it?”

“I do not know,” I pant. I can taste my sweat in my mouth. It tastes like typical sweat…the tears of my flesh, crying and begging.

“I won’t let you wait anymore,” he says.

His fingers press the tip of me, the head of my member, hard, rigid…but not with cold, but with heat, like a volcano. He just pauses now, his touch barely felt. He kisses my neck and rests his chin on my shoulder. His left hand presses against my chest, against my thudding heart. His chin digs into my shoulder and he fits against me as best he can with the chair between us. He gives up his comfort for my own.

He presses his entire hand under the band of my pants. He holds my member by the shaft now. Blood rushes to my organ. A spurt of magma bursts from the tip. Just a spurt…I could feel more building behind his hand. My hips lurch in the seat.

“You’re hot,” he admires, then pulls his hand down my shaft to its base.

The blush from my face, I can feel the blush from my face, fading away as any unnecessary blood rages down my chest to my erection. I manage to unbutton my pants to make more room for him and my growing lust. Maybe he unbuttoned my pants—I cannot remember.

His hand pulls up and down my engorged organ, his palm like a feather against the blushed flesh. At the head of my organ he would pause and stroke it gently with his thumb. He does these gestures quickly and aggressively, only pausing at the head of my organ, and only pausing when my hips would thrust within the seat. His free hand massages my trembling side. He strokes my ribcage, looking downward, gently biting my shoulder. He wasn't letting me leave. How can he do two things at once?

“Ah…ah…ahh…” I said. The volcano rumbled between my legs. It erupts in an explosion of white seed.

He stops biting my shoulder and kisses my flesh, slowly pulling away from my skin. His hand is slick with my seed, he pulls it away. His warmth from around my body dissipates. I exhale while all this is going—the foggy, muggy remnants of the heat of the volcano. The steam folds into the cold air of the room. The air is heavy with the scent of salt, oil, and metals. My skin pricks again.

He goes back over to his briefcase and removes a tissue and cleans off his hand. I pull my pants back up and button up. I pick my shirt up off of the table and pull it on. I approach him, tucking my shirt in. He finally looks up at me, tossing the tissue into the garbage. The flush has left my face. Not even the trickles of blush remain. All blood is spread out evenly with in my body. I say nothing, just look directly at him and fix my shirt without looking down. I purse my lips.

“How’s your new arm?” he asks smiling. His face is red again.

I flex my arm and tighten and loosen my fingers. They move like water.

“Feels and moves great,” I answer.

“Perhaps we can test it out later,” he says with a smile and a laugh. I look at him.

“Yeah, that probably will be a good idea,” I respond, paying attention to the movement of the elbow. I look up. His face is an even deeper shade of red. He collects his tools, my old arm, and packs them into the case. I cock my head for a moment, waiting for him to say something else, which he doesn't, then I walk towards the door.

“Do you want to get lunch Kasai?” he asks, stopping me.

“At the cafeteria?” I ask, turning around.

“How about an Asian restaurant? Or pitas?” he asks me.

I smile. I answer honestly. My stomach rumbles. “I could go for spring rolls and sesame chicken.”

“Do you like your sesame chicken dredged with lotus flour or regular flour?” he asks. My fingers are on the door handle. The metal finger tips tap on the metal door knob, like a wind chime.

“Lotus flour,” I answer. He smiles with approval.

“You want dinner too?” he blurts eagerly. Before I can answer he says, “And a movie? At my place perhaps?”

I look at him and smile. “Sure.”

I pause and wait for him. He joins me. His hand touches mine. I feel nothing, but my heart leaps within my ribcage at just the sight of it from the corner of my eyes.

Memory, I think and smile, rubbing my chin with my real hand. I chuckle. The sweetness of memory is that the creation of memory…you are always creating memories…you are always hoping to create memories…to cherish, to dream about to tell.

He laughs over something. I smile in response. We’ll make memories.