Tech Support : Pot Office Romance

On Friday, at six in the evening, in a dark, and dingy server room, Yuna wondered idly if it was too late to change careers. Though technically not alone, she might as well have been with how quiet the room’s other occupant had been. She sat cross-legged on the bare linoleum floor with the bulb-shaped pot-shell of one of Gammatech’s augmented employees snugly fit in her lap. Only a fraction of the size and weight of an unaugmented, bodied human, most of her body had been removed so she could fit into that shell- none of her limbs remained, and she was essentially nothing more than a head, spinal column, and a few other important bits.

It was a drastic lifestyle change, but apparently it allowed them to interface with computers far faster and more efficiently than any normal human could ever hope to. The profile readout on her laptop, perched atop a rolling cart, informed her that her client’s name was Samantha. Yuna didn’t need the datasheet to know that the woman’s significantly-reduced body had been placed into a Type-C shell and she had been outfitted with a standard tier-3 spinal sheath implant.

 

The green ‘all systems functioning normally’ indicator on her screen was a frustrating lie. Sam, her profile indicated that she had preferred to be called Sam, the system had put in a ticket for a tune-up after noticing a dip in her numbers, reporting that her implants had been jittery and causing her to occasionally misclick, but despite the fact that Yuna had gone through her systems three times, she couldn’t find anything wrong. It was starting to feel like she had a piece of popcorn stuck between her teeth that she just couldn’t get out. It was maddening. Throughout the whole process, which was stretching into its second hour, Sam stared outwards, frozen like a deer in headlights.

There wasn’t anything preventing her from speaking, but Yuna found that most of her clients preferred not to talk during these tune-up sessions.

Closing the panel on the side of Sam’s pot shell, Yuna sighed, “So… I believe you when you say there’s an issue, but I’ve triple-checked your systems, and I can’t find it. I’m gonna take a snapshot, bring it back to my desk, and take a look at it over lunch. I’ll just ask you to keep your implant usage down to a minimum until then and try to take a break. If I haven’t reached out to you in an hour, message me, OK?”

“Yeah… OK.” Sam replied hesitantly, “You don’t even have to work through your lunch, though. I mean, It’s your lunch, and maybe the problem will go away on its own? Maybe you could-”

“Don’t worry about it.” Yuna sighed, trying to sound helpful but failing, “I’ll find out whatever’s causing the problem so this doesn’t happen again.”

Sam gulped, and dejectedly breathed, “Could you at least reach out to Linda and let her know I’ll be unable to make our meeting?”

Linda… ugh… among other things, Linda was in charge of coordinating this department’s augmented workforce, and she was maybe 75 centimeters of bitch in a can. Her official title was ‘Integrations Manager’, but from her little desk throne, she acted like a pharaoh’s taskmaster. Linda was the reason Yuna had been forced to stay so late on a Friday. For some people, when they underwent the reduction and implantation process, it really changed who they were on both a physical and emotional level. No matter what promises they had made, or who they had been, something always changed. She wasn’t sure if Linda was always so demanding, but if she was, Yuna would bet dollars to donuts that becoming augmented didn’t make that attitude any better. 

Yuna’s lips pulled into a tight frown behind Sam’s head, “Yeah, I can do that.”

“I’m sorry…” Sam said, knowing how big of a request she had just made. 

“I know.” Yuna replied matter-of-factly.

Yuna’s hands wrapped around the base of Sam’s pot and she lifted her up into the air as she stood, “Let’s get you onto your mobility base.”

There was a click, and the lights on the small wheeled platform blinked on as Sam connected to it. The tires revved slightly, the pot-person equivalent of someone stretching after a nap.

“Ok, I’m going to just-” Sam’s base activated and lurched forwards before jolting to a stop a foot away, “Woah!” The potted woman wobbled back and forth from the sudden start and stop. One of the three modesty covers on the front of her pot came loose and fell to the floor, exposing her breast.

“Ah… uh… would you mind…uh…” Sam’s base turned, this time with a far more precise and controlled movement. She indicated the fallen piece of fabric and looked up at Yuna with an apologetic smile.

“Yeah… sure…” Yuna bent down, and picked it up. The fabric was incredibly soft, and she found herself wondering if she could get a shirt made out of the material before her mind nudged itself back on track. The garment, if it could be called that, slipped into place when Yuna brought it close, but it hung loosely. The magnets that kept it there must have been weakened or… too much to do, too little time.

Sam swallowed as Yuna played with the cloth, trying to get it to stick properly by holding it at different angles and trying to press it in. “Is everything OK down there?”

“Oh…uh… yeah…no… it looks like this cover’s a little damaged. Something weird with the magnetic fasteners. I’ll…” Yuna was about to say that she would pocket it and take it with her, but changed to, “I’ll put it on, and leave it loose, and you can just be careful. I’ll look into it while I’m trying to work out what’s glitching up your haptic system.” She put the cloth cover back on, though it didn’t look like it would withstand too much jostling, “Just be careful, OK?”

“OK… I can try.” Sam said sheepishly, her cheeks reddening.

Yuna sat at her cramped and cluttered desk that had been sequestered in the IT closet. The door was open, deceitfully implying that visitors were welcome. Woe betide anyone interrupting lunch. Well, technically it was more like dinner at this point- it was in the evening after all.

With a plastic fork halfway to her mouth, she glared at her terminal as if it had personally offended her. The overhead fluorescents buzzed like lazy hornets, and the curry she was eating smelled vaguely of the cardboard box it came from. Her back ached from too many hours hunched over shrimp-like at the same ergonomic disaster of a chair, and the monitor's pale blue glow cast shadows under her eyes, making her look like she no longer walked among the living.

She didn’t want to be here- not this late, not this tired. The buzzing, the clatter of distant typing, the predictable churn of another forgotten Friday pressed in like static. The fork paused halfway, gravity tugging at the limp broccoli on it.

Checking her calendar, Yuna sighed and thought of the date she’d canceled for the second time this month. She thought about how her last partner had left her, not out of anger but out of evolution—traded skin and touch for circuits and containment. Even now, she couldn’t decide if that made it better or worse.

Some days, she wanted to scream into the office plants just to make sure she still had a voice.Not that it would accomplish anything. The diagnostic scans she had taken of Sam’s systems didn’t make any sense, and she had spent too much time on this problem already.

Across the open-plan floor, the distinctive whir of a mobility base signaled someone’s approach. Yuna crossed her fingers to no avail. The blonde, bespectacled visage of her office nemesis wheeled into view atop her type-C pot body.

 

“Ms. Quemener… I’ve been meaning to-”

“Sam’s not going to make it to that meeting. I couldn’t figure out what’s wrong with her interface systems yet. She’s having trouble connecting.”

Linda’s lips tightened at being interrupted, but she maintained her composure and repeated herself, “I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you. You are upset, it is affecting your work, and-.”

“It’s Friday night and I’m stuck here pulling a double shift. Of course I’m upset.”  

“I’m here doing the same, and I’m not upset.”  

“Why not?”  

“I’d rather be home the same as you, but unlike you, I can manage to put aside my feelings and do my job. It’s delayed gratification- you deal with the difficulty now so you can live better later. ”  

“It’s that easy for you, huh? Setting aside how you feel?” Yuna asked, her eyes scanning the terminal screen rather than looking at Linda as she spoke. 

“It’s that easy.” Linda affirmed with a nod. Whether she ignored the subtext or missed, Yuna couldn’t say, but either way, she didn’t remark on the implication.

 

Something on the terminal screen caught Yuna’s eye, and she let out a short, reptilian bark of a laugh, “Gratification indeed.” 

“What was that then?” Linda raised an eyebrow, uncertain. 

“I think I’ve found what’s been causing Sam’s problem!” Yuna exclaimed tiredly.

“And that would be?” 

“Porn!” Yuna replied a little too enthusiastically.  

“I’m sorry- what?” Linda asked, unamused.  

“Our colleague has been indulging herself during work hours- there’s a… uh… background process that was going unnoticed and messing with my diagnostics. Here- I isolated the source, let me-” Yuna turned her monitor to face Linda and a video came up on the screen of an augmented woman with a familiar bulb-shaped pot body, held in a set of strong looking arms and being bounced up and down on a sizable penis. Judging from her expression, she was having a particularly good time.

“I recognized the URL and…” Yuna realized her mistake in (a) showing pornography to her boss, and (b) sharing that she recognized a link to said pornographic website perhaps a little too late, paused, and caught herself, “Now I am going to…uhh… make some recalibrations, and talk to Sam about it.”

Linda was stone-faced for long enough that Yuna began to worry that she had crossed a line and was about to be reprimanded. At long last, Linda spoke up, her words measured and calm, “I’ll see to it that Samantha is appropriately disciplined for her misuse of company property.”

“You’re not going to fire her, are you?” Yuna asked, now feeling guilty at ratting someone out for doing something she herself had admittedly indulged in from time to time.

That finally got a small chuckle out of Linda, who shook her head, “If I fired every employee who used work computers to watch pornography, by my accounting, which I assure you is extremely accurate, we’d lose approximately 83.3% of our staff, including you.”

 

“What?!” Yuna replied in shock, both at the shockingly high figure and at herself being (accurately) implicated in such a thing.

“Don’t worry, Ms. Quemener- it will remain our little secret. Just…” Linda’s nostrils flared and she sniffed the air, “Tell me- your lunch. Green curry, isn’t it?”

“Yah… kind of… not the real deal… just a microwave meal.” Yuna replied, “Why?”

“I used to love spicy food. That’s all.” Linda said, “It smells nice.”

“Used to love-” Yuna turned her head to the side before the idea landed in her head, “Ah, right!”

“Only a rudimentary digestive tract left, remember? It’s strictly power cells and delicious, mushy nutrient paste now unless I want to get inebriated at work from eating normal food.”

 

Yuna didn’t laugh, exactly, but a smile tugged at her mouth. "Guess there are tradeoffs."

"I miss the heat and spice the most," Linda said. "Chili. habanero. sriracha. It’s stupid."

Yuna’s smile turned real. "It’s not stupid."

For a moment, they sat in the quiet, the awkwardness softening. Then Linda turned and rolled back to her pod bay. Yuna looked at the fork in her hand and suddenly didn’t feel as annoyed by the day.

Monday. It was fucking Monday. The coffee dripped slowly into Yuna’s mug. Technically the mug was borrowed from the office since she had forgotten hers at home, but it didn’t matter- coffee was coffee no matter what you drank it out of. Its black surface was emblazoned with white letters that read ‘You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!’. Somehow, She was still surprised by how quickly the weekend had passed. She had barely had time to take care of the bare necessities. She had showered at least once in the past two days, and that was good enough. If Yuna had plants, they’d all be dead by now.  

The coffee was light and syrupy sweet. Normally, Yuna avoided sugar in her coffee, but whoever was in charge of ordering for the break room clearly had a sweet tooth- they had gotten a flavored creamer with a picture of a candy bar on the front. It left an unpleasant feeling on her teeth, but she drank it anyway. Coffee was coffee after all. For the time being, the too-small chair parked at the too-small circular table in the too-small break room illuminated by too-bright fluorescents was quiet enough that she could relax a little before the day really kicked off. She had a feeling that-

Yuna’s work phone buzzed with an update.  

“Fuck me, that’s early.” She muttered and checked the time. It read 8:05 am. Nothing good happened at 8:05 am. Nothing good ever happened before noon. A message came up- a request for a tune-up, flagged as urgent. Linda’s profile picture stared out at her besides the request ticket. It read ‘Personal mobility pod requires adjustment in addition to normal preventative maintenance. Back left wheel locks up occasionally- making unacceptably loud noise while in motion. Need taken care of before 9:00 am- important meeting.’ 

Yuna groaned and revisited the idea of abandoning her current job and going out into the woods. Of course, there was no coffee out in the woods, and if she wasn’t getting regular paychecks, she’d also have a hard time taking care of her Tamagotchis. Plus, there was no TV out in the woods, no internet, no ASMR videos where they tap on the microphone and… the more Yuna thought about it, the more she came to conclude that she would hate living in the woods. 

Her route to Linda’s office was pretty straightforward, but Yuna chose a more circuitous path, both to give her time to enjoy her mediocre coffee, and out of spite. It gave her a sense of much-needed control knowing that she was making Linda wait. On the way, she took a quick detour to Sam’s office.

There was something unfair about the way that Yuna, a person with a full body and a full range of motion, had been crammed into a teeny, tiny closet, whereas the augmented employees had pretty sizable spaces in which they could park their reduced bodies. Sam had decorated her space (or more likely had her space decorated) with a few potted plants. The idle backgrounds for the wall mounted screens featured diagrams and readouts of temperature, humidity, and other statistics. A monstera plant with a remote-controlled drip feeder stood beside a window, its leaves reminding Yuna of moldy Swiss cheese. 

She gave a courtesy knock on the door before opening it, though she barely waited for Sam to invite her in before she entered. Sam was atop a pristine white desk, with a headset on, strands of red hair framing her perpetually-confused face.  

There was a brief pause before Sam started with, “Hey Yuna- uh… about the other day… I…uh…”

 

“The porn?” Yuna interjected.

“The porn.” Sam nodded, unable to make eye contact. 

“Look, I need to tell you something, and I want you to take it to heart, OK?”

“I don’t really have a heart any-” 

“I know what you have and don’t have!” Yuna snapped playfully, “I mean… yeah… I know what you mean. Just hear me out: this makes me like you more.”

 

“God, Yuna- don’t be so gross!” Sam groaned, blushing, “It’s bad enough that Linda knows as well, you don’t need to rub it in.” 

“I’m only rubbing it in because you were rubbing one out.” Yuna countered, causing Sam’s blush to intensify.  

“Yuna!” Sam whined, “Come on, this is embarrassing!”  

“Ok, fine- fine!” Yuna play-sighed, “I will bear this burden. I just wanted to stop by to tell you everything is going to be OK.”  

“What do you mean? Linda seemed pretty upset when she found out about the… you know.”  

“Linda seems upset about everything all the time, Sam. Besides, she told me that if she had to actually punish people for that here, nothing would ever get done.”  

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah-” Yuna took a sip of coffee, “Plus I’ve probably done it way more than you have.”  

“Yuna! Gross! Come on!” 

“What? I’m just trying to make you feel better about being caught with your metaphorical pants down in the office. I promise, it’s really not that big of a deal.”  

“You promise?” 

“I promise- I have shared this information with precisely zero people here, and I intend to keep it that way unless you tell me otherwise.”

 

Sam stared up at Yuna, “Ok, this… this actually does make me feel better. Thanks.”

 

“Don’t mention it. Just…ah… “ Yuna looked over her shoulder before lowering her voice, “do me a favor, will you?” 

“Yeah- Sure, what is it?” 

“Send me the link to what you were watching.”  

“Yuna!” Sam pleaded, “Come on, can you just let it go?” 

“What? No, I’m being serious- it looked good. Not in a weird way, just in a… I think I’d enjoy it as much as you sort of way.”

 

Sam rolled her eyes, “Ok… fine, fine, fine! I’ll send you the link! Just stop talking about this- I’d rather talk about anything but this!”  

Yuna took another sip of her coffee and peered at Sam over the rim of the mug, “You ever talk to that security guard you’ve been eyeing? The one with the neck tattoo and the nose ring? They look pretty cute.”

 

“How do you always know how to push my buttons?!” Sam sounded exasperated, “No, I haven’t spoken to them- I don’t know how to even begin to approach them!”  

“But you like them, right? You think they’re cute, right?” Yuna needled. 

“Yes, I think they’re cute!” Sam snapped, “I think tattoos and muscles are cute! Sue me!”  

“I got you.” Yuna said, winking.  

“Yuna…” Sam said dangerously, “What was that wink? I don’t like that wink, Yuna!” 

“Don’t worry about it.” Yuna smirked before making a show of checking her phone, but her mock surprise turned real when she noticed the time, “Oh shit- I’m almost late! I gotta gobyehavefundon’tforgettosendmethatlink!”  

“Oh come on!” Sam shouted to the empty doorframe, “Please, whatever you’re planning, don’t!” 

“You’re late.” Linda intoned icily as Yuna stepped through her doorframe.  

“I got held up.” Yuna replied out of breath, closing the door behind her. Linda always insisted on closed-door meetings whenever possible. 

“And If I review the security camera footage, I’m sure I’ll find you’re telling the truth.” 

“Yeah, probably, but do you want me to take a look at your pod or not? Meeting’s in..what… a half hour?”  

Linda’s frown was sharp enough to carve stone, “Fine.” 

Yuna approached Linda’s desk and held out a hand towards her, “I can touch you, right?” 

Linda nodded, “Whatever you need to get me to this meeting on time.”

 

Almost without thinking, Yuna popped open a panel at the base of Linda’s pot, revealing a series of plug inputs. She walked around the desk and pulled out a chair to sit in. It wasn’t comfortable in the least, but it did the job. Of course, it wasn’t like Linda would ever need a chair like that.  

Up close, she could see Linda’s eyelashes. Whoever had done her makeup was good at what they did. Yuna had no aptitude for that sort of thing beyond the basics, and she was confident that she couldn’t replicate that muted yet striking look if she had a tutorial video open and a palette in her lap. The way they had applied just enough blush to her cheeks to-  

What the fuck am I thinking?  

Yuna hesitated, about to plug a diagnostic cable into Linda. 

This is my boss… this is Linda fucking Moore. Linda fucking Moore is not… 

The way her lipstick accentuated her already full lips, or the way her glasses rested on her delicate nose, or the way her neck… 

 

Fuck

 

Whatever floral perfume Linda was wearing was pleasantly tickling Yuna’s sinuses. 

“Is everything alright down there, Ms. Quemener?” Linda said with a hint of threat in her voice, “The meeting is in twenty five minutes, and I don’t want to keep our colleagues waiting.” 

Yuna swallowed and shook her head. She was deeply relieved that from this angle, it would be almost impossible for Linda to see her face, “Yeah… yeah, I’m just…uhh… diagnostic cable.” 

“Fine then…” Linda sighed. 

She shivered as though someone had poured a cup of ice water on her head when the cable connected. They always did that for some reason. Though Linda likely couldn’t feel it, Yuna had put a hand on the other side of her base for support. It always threw her off that the potted employees were warm. That warmth was always disarming—real, human, even though nothing about Linda’s situation should have felt easy to touch. She told herself it was just work. That touching Linda’s shell was no different than fixing any other machine.

On Yuna’s hand terminal, boxes began oscillating between red and green. They continued oscillating. And continued. And continued. Another minute went by, and Yuna scratched her head. 

“Huh…” 

“What is that ‘huh’ supposed to be, Ms. Quemener?”

 

Yuna continued to look at her terminal, “Ms. Moore…I don’t know how else to say this… can you try to sit still for a second?”

"I’m a ceramic vase with a head. I’m as still as it gets."

Yuna snorted with nervous laughter. "Your processors are jittering. You keep trying to initiate handshakes with my device even though you’ve already connected. It’s throwing everything off."

Linda blinked. "I didn’t know I was doing that."

Yuna popped another panel open and reached inside. Her wrist brushed the warm ceramic near Linda’s skin. It wasn’t the first time- she had done this dozens of times, but it somehow felt different today.

"You okay?" Yuna asked without looking up.

The terminal beeped a few more times and the oscillations intensified.

Linda hesitated. "Yeah. Just thinking.”

"About?"

 

Linda gave no reply, which in turn gave Yuna time to think. Meanwhile, the mobility pod shivered slightly in its charging dock by the door.

 

Yuna stood, coming back around to face Linda, “I’d like to try something, but I just want to make sure you’re comfortable with it.”

“Why would I not be comfortable?” Linda replied tersely.

“I want to take off one of your covers to try to access some auxiliary circuitry.”

“Ah… yes. That would do it.” Linda frowned until her eyes caught a glimpse of the clock

“Yes, fine. Do it.”

 

Yuna reached a hand towards one of the cloth covers at the front of Linda’s pot, cupping it for a moment as she tried to orient herself.

Linda’s breath caught in her throat at the contact, and she momentarily tensed up what little of her body was still capable of such things. The cloth cover came off in Yuna’s hand, revealing one of Linda’s breasts. With the other hand, Yuna felt around the edge of the pot until she was able to fit a finger between where Linda’s skin and the pot met.

 

Trying to think of something to say to relieve the tension, Yuna mumbled, “The perfume you’re wearing smells really nice- like flowers. Is it roses?”

“I’m not wearing any perfume.” Linda responded evenly.

Yikes!

Yikes, yikes, yikes!

Yuna looked down, and resolved to avoid making eye contact for the next decade. Her finger found the hidden catch, and something gave a quiet click.

"I’m thinking about what it means to be... worth someone’s time."

Yuna stilled, hand inside the casing. The silence stretched.

"You're worth mine," she said, too quietly before she had time to consider her words.

Linda didn’t answer, but the pod stopped jittering and the lights on the terminal all switched to green.

Tuesday and Wednesday passed mercifully quickly- Yuna spent most of her time in the office dodging Linda and trying to keep her head down after Monday’s embarrassment. Rather than taking her lunch in the break room, she brought it with her into the stairwell. One thing the mobility pods that carried her augmented coworkers couldn’t handle was stairs, and that meant the stairwell was safe. Putting all but the most necessary of her duties on the back-burner, Yuna devoted her attention to a different coworker in an effort to get Linda out of her mind.

On Tuesday, she had gone down to the security office and informed one of the guards that the employee in office suite 3D had an important question for them.

On Tuesday night, as she was on her way out, Yuna had spied Sam chatting in her room with said security guard. Reviewing the building access logs during a routine decompiling session, she found that Sam was registered as present in the building until 9:00 pm.

 

Good for her.

 

On Wednesday at closing time, Yuna saw Sam leaving the building in the arms of the same security guard, both of them laughing at some shared joke.

On Thursday, Sam had called in sick. Checking the call log during an audit of the automatic absence logging system, she recognized the overacted cadence of Sam’s ‘I’m not sick, but I’m taking a sick day’ voice.

Great for Sam, but now Yuna had no one to pester.

It was as she was in the elevator, back against the wall, eyes closed, and thinking of whether she should move her lunch from the stairwell to an auxiliary location in case Linda came to her with a request that the doors opened, and  the sound of a mobility pod scooting in interrupted her inner monologue.Before Yuna could nonchalantly bolt out, the doors closed, sealing them both in together.

 

Great.

 

The office elevator shuddered, then stopped with a soft ding. Yuna’s stomach dropped—not from the halt, but from the sudden closeness. The small space buzzed with fluorescent lighting and too much unspoken tension.

She shifted her weight, suddenly hyperaware of the silence and Linda’s presence beside her. The pod emitted a faint mechanical hum, and the faint smell of ozone clung to it, sterile and foreign. Minutes passed and accumulated, with no motion on the part of the elevator.

 

Great.

 

Linda broke the silence first. “That’s new. At least we’re not trapped with anyone awkward.”

Yuna gave a sideways glance. “Speak for yourself.”

Linda tilted her head, a slow, calculated movement. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

Yuna swallowed. There was something sharp in her chest, a protest she didn’t know how to voice. She wanted to fold her arms, create distance, but it felt childish. Instead, she said nothing.

“You know… I used to be terrified of elevators. Before,” Linda said. “Now I don’t feel it anymore. I think I miss that.”

“You miss fear?” Yuna’s voice was quiet.

“Sometimes. Fear means something’s real.”

Yuna leaned back against the wall, arms finally crossing. “I used to think love meant something real.”

Linda turned slowly, her eyes steady. “I’m sorry?”

Yuna pressed her lips together, arms folding tight across her chest. Her voice, when it came, was brittle. “You ever date someone who decided they'd rather be something else?”

Linda’s expression shifted, confused. “Something else?”

 

Yuna didn’t look at her. “I was with someone. Two years. She got approved for conversion. Didn’t even talk to me about it first—just did it. Said it was freedom. Said she didn’t want to carry her body anymore, or anyone else’s expectations.”

The elevator lights flickered slightly.

Yuna kept going, voice lower now. “She left her toothbrush on my sink. I found out she’d gone into surgery from an email. That’s how important I was.”

Linda was quiet. The hum of her pod filled the silence, steady but not quite comforting.

 

“I thought I was angry,” Yuna said. “But mostly... I just felt replaced. By a decision I didn’t get to be part of. Like I’d been dated out of relevance.”

Linda’s gaze softened. “That’s not fair. To you.”

Yuna shrugged. “Life isn’t.”

Linda looked straight ahead. “I don’t think what she did means the rest of us aren’t capable of caring. Or of choosing differently.”

The elevator buzzed and resumed its ascent, but the silence between them had deepened.

It was Friday. Yuna sat outside on a balcony, alone, drink in hand. It was snowing, and the evening air was damp, smelling faintly of ozone and the tail end of someone’s cigarette. Her legs dangled out through the fence and over the courtyard. The ground was wet, but she didn’t care- she was undeterred by the weather as she stared out into the night. The pulse of bass from inside the office party thudded through the floor, but out here, it was muffled enough to feel like a distant heartbeat.

She stared down at the streetlights glimmering in puddles below. Her drink, something pink and too sweet, had gone warm in her hand. The cold from the metal railing seeped through her elbows. Despite these discomforts accumulating like the snow on the deck, Yuna was more comfortable out here by herself. In there it got too hot, too crowded, just too much. She liked going to these things, but they also stressed her out. It had become a sort of masochistic social ritual.

She let her thoughts drift. The laughter inside, the performative joy, reminded her too much of what she’d lost. Of how disconnected she felt in places where she was supposed to belong.

She missed being known.

 

The door behind her slid open with a quiet hiss, and the familiar whir of servos followed.

"You came?" she asked, turning her head. Music pulsed inside. She didn’t fit in. Didn’t want to.

Linda’s pod paused in the doorway. Her skin looked pale in the moonlight. “I think it was starting to reflect poorly on me that I never showed up to these holiday parties. I’ve never liked them, but I think it’s important to show my face.”

Yuna laughed. “Not that you’ve got much else to show.”

Linda smiled. “Watch it- I’m still your boss.”

“We’re no longer in the building, which means that the hierarchical relationship no longer applies.”

“You realize this deck is still company property?”

“Shhhhhh.”

“You’re shushing me?”

Yuna couldn’t tell if the blush in her cheeks was from the drink, the weather, or something else. “I am indeed shushing you- it’s not the employee and the boss tonight. It’s just you and me.”

“That’s all well and good- I wanted to see what you’re like outside the ticket system anyways. There’s no way you’re as much of a troglodyte out of work as you are in.”

“That’s not fair! How much of a troglodyte I am depends on what you count as a cave, and I’ll have you know my home is no cave!”

“I’ll be the judge of how much of a troglodyte you are.” Linda chuckled.

A silence blossomed between them, and for a good five minutes, they enjoyed one another’s company in silence.

Yuna reached out—awkward, unsure—and touched the curve of Linda’s ceramic shell. Her hand stayed there.

 

Linda looked at her. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

“I’m not, at least I don’t think so…” Yuna said, but there was a catch in her voice. “I think…. I think I’m afraid of what you represent. What you’ve chosen.”

Linda tilted her head, a small frown tugging at her lips. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve traded everything to be this...this...machine. And that’s okay for you, but it feels like… I don’t know…. A… uh… rejection of everything that I thought mattered. I guess I’ve just been burned before."

Linda hesitated before responding. “You’re still here. It doesn’t feel like a rejection to me.”

 

Yuna swallowed, uncertain, but she reached for Linda again, fingers brushing the cool ceramic. The air between them crackled with tension, and without another word, Yuna leaned forward and kissed Linda gently at first, then with more urgency. Their mouths met, and the kiss deepened, each of them pulling the other closer. Yuna’s heart raced, and she pressed against Linda, feeling the warmth of her skin against the cool ceramic, the contrast impossibly magnetic.

The kiss lasted for what felt like hours, neither of them wanting to pull away. When they finally broke apart, Linda was breathless, smiling softly.

 

“That wasn’t in the ticket system either,” she whispered.

Yuna laughed, eyes bright with something new. “No. That one’s all ours.”

The following week, as part of an update to the internal message client, Yuna scrolled absently through some of the company message threads from Monday morning. A mug of too-sweet coffee cupped between her palms, and seated awkwardly in her chair with both knees brought up to her chest, she tabbed across multiple sources with the light of her screen giving her face an eerie blue glow. She had been tasked to find the source of a strange glitch that somehow seemed to be the result of someone attempting to upload an unsupported file type several times in a row. The threads she looked at were mostly mundane- post-party cleanup, someone looking for a lost earring, or a blurry photo of the catering trays.

Then she saw it. A casual comment from someone in HR:

“Guess we know what Sam was up to when she disappeared with the night shift guard 😏”

 

Yuna blinked. She clicked through, half disbelieving. More comments followed, laced with emojis and teasing. Apparently, Samantha had spent a good hour in the freight alcove with one of the security team. One of the photos even showed the edge of Sam’s base near the loading dock ramp. Nothing graphic, but suggestive enough.

Yuna sat back in her chair. A strange tangle of discomfort settled in her gut. It wasn’t jealousy. Not exactly. But the image of it, of touch and closeness, even with Sam’s limitations, clashed sharply with how careful everything had been with Linda.

The two of them hadn't actually talked since they had kissed on Friday, which made for 107 hours and 6 minutes of effective radio silence.

When Linda finally rolled into the office that afternoon—on time, as always—her expression was placid, composed, her mobility base humming faintly as she passed through the sliding glass partition into Yuna’s corner of Systems Ops.

 

Yuna didn’t look up from her screen. “Did you see the internal thread this morning?”

“I scan updates as part of my morning digest,” Linda replied crisply. “Which one?”

“The one about Sam.”

There was a pause. “Ah. That one.”

Yuna closed the log window she was working on. “Did you know she…? With the guard?”

“I suspected.” Linda’s tone was neutral but edged with impatience. “Is that relevant to the packet error you’re tracing?”

Yuna pushed her chair back slightly. “It’s relevant to me.”

Linda tilted her head. “Why?”

“Because we kissed on Friday,” Yuna said, too bluntly. “And then you ghosted me for four and a half days.”

“I didn’t ghost you. I had a firmware recalibration scheduled—”

“You didn’t message me,” Yuna said flatly. “Not once.”

Linda blinked. “I didn’t think we needed to.”

Yuna stood, rubbing at her temple. “I didn’t think I’d have to compete with the night guard either.”

Linda’s eyes narrowed. “You're not.”

“Then what are we doing?” Yuna asked. “I feel like I’m the only one even trying to figure that out.”

“I was giving you space,” Linda said, and the brittle edge in her voice returned. “Because I wasn’t sure if you regretted it.”

Yuna stared. “Is that really what you thought?”

“I’m not good at improvisation, Yuna. I need a plan. A structure.” She gave a humorless smile. “And I’m a ceramic container with a head. So yes, I assumed you might be... reassessing.”

Yuna folded her arms. “You're not the only one who wants control, Linda. But you can’t run this like a systems ticket. You kissed me. I kissed you back. And now we’re both pretending like none of it happened.”

“I wasn’t pretending.” Her voice dropped. “I was… preparing.”

“For what?”

“For what happens when people notice. When you and I are more than employee and equipment specialist. When they start asking questions neither of us can afford to answer.”

Yuna’s voice softened. “You really think we can’t be both?”

“I think,” Linda said, slowly, “that if we don’t figure this out now—what we are, what we want to be—we’ll lose both.”

Yuna exhaled and turned toward the window. “Well. At least we agree on that.”

Linda’s gaze lingered for a while on Yuna’s back, her expression unreadable.

A long silence stretched out between them, filled only by the soft hum of equipment fans and distant chatter of conversations in the office. Somewhere a phone was ringing.

Yuna didn’t turn around. “I should… get back to work. The glitch is still somewhere in the logs.”

“Of course,” Linda said quietly, “That… that would be prudent.”

 

Another awkward beat of silence passed between them.

Linda’s base gave a soft series of mechanical clicks as she reversed, preparing to leave. “If you’d like to resume this conversation later, we can schedule a time.”

Yuna turned her head slightly, her voice flat, “Yeah… I’ll open a ticket.”

 

For just a fraction too long, Linda hesitated before backing out of the room.

Yuna sank back into her chair, trying and failing to make her eyes focus on the screen. Taking a sip from her mug, she frowned. Her coffee had gone cold.

 

Figures.

Later that evening, late enough that most of the staff had cleared out and the office lights hit the point that they dimmed automatically to conserve energy, Yuna anxiously spun a stress ball in her palm.

 

This sucked.

 

This really sucked.

 

Regrets swirled around and gnawed at her like a swarm of voracious piranhas. She hadn’t meant for their conversation to go the way it had. She also hadn’t expected the argument to weigh so heavily on her all day.

The door to the server room slid open with a soft woosh. 

 

“I don’t want to leave this unfinished.” Linda’s voice came drifting into the room.

Yuna slammed her laptop shut harder than she meant to, causing both of them to flinch. “Shit… sorry.”

 

Looking up, she noticed Linda’s mobility pod parked at the threshold, like a vampire waiting to be let in.Lit faintly by the glow of LEDs and little else, her face had a strangely villainous air that was in direct contrast to her tone. But Linda had come here, and had been the first one to break their silence, and that meant something. She wanted to say ‘me neither’, she wanted to pick Linda up and hug her as tightly as she could, she wanted things to go back to the way they were outside on the balcony.

 

"I thought you went home," Yuna said, looking over Linda’s head, voice tight with frustration.

Linda’s pod rolled further into view. “You’re angry.”

 

Yuna turned, her expression flickering with a mix of emotions. Linda was right, at least close enough, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit it. She’d sooner swallow a durian whole than swallow her pride. "I’m not angry. I’m confused."

Inching further into the room, Linda sighed, “You’re going to think I’m crazy, and you’d be right, but… I ran simulations. I kept replaying our conversation. Every permutation, every instance…. None of them ended well unless we tried again.”

That put a massive dent in Yuna’s dark mood. Against her will, she cracked a smile, “You giant fucking nerd… you absolute… Only you would run emotional projections like they were lines of computer code.”

Something in Linda’s expression loosened, and she rocked back and forth on her wheels ever so slightly. “It’s…it’s how I process.” Her voice was quiet and vulnerable, “I like order, stability… control… and this… whatever this is… it’s not neat… it’s got jagged edges I can’t square off, and it’s frankly terrifying.” 

“It’s messy, but it’s also real.” Yuna agreed, “In the elevator, you said you missed fear- that fear meant something was real.”

“I just… I don’t want to lose you before we even started trying to make something.” Linda said hesitantly.

Yuna stepped closer, “Then let’s stop trying to plan it to death and just let it happen… let us happen.”

 

Linda’s tone softened. “What happened?”

Yuna shook her head, unable to voice the unease she’d felt earlier. "It’s just... I wanted to believe in what we had. But when I kissed you, I didn’t know if it was real. I didn’t know if it was just you trying to fulfill some kind of need or if we were really connecting."

Linda paused, and for the first time, Yuna saw uncertainty in her eyes. "You think I did it for the wrong reasons?"

Yuna bit her lip, frustrated at how tangled her thoughts had become. "I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t expect... I thought you might be doing it to fill a void, something you needed."

Linda rolled forward slowly, her face soft but earnest. “Yuna, it wasn’t a void I was trying to fill. It was just you.”

Yuna stared, her breath catching. "But... you’re not like me. You’re not like anyone I’ve known."

Linda gave a small, sad smile. “Neither are you. That’s what makes us both special.”

The weight of Yuna’s concerns finally lifted as Linda’s words sank in. She got down on her knees and reached out, cupping Linda’s cheek gently. “I want this to be real,” she whispered.

“I’m right here,” Linda replied, leaning into Yuna’s hand.

 

Yuna closed her eyes, finally letting herself believe. She leaned forward and kissed Linda again, this time slower and more deliberate.

 

Linda’s voice was breathy and quiet, “So… what happens now?”

Yuna brushed a strand of hair behind her own ear, heart thudding in her chest, “Now,” she said, leaning in, “I stop pretending I don’t want to be near you every chance I get.”

 

Her hand gently caressed the soft curve of Linda’s jaw, fingertips resting lightly at the edge of her temple. Linda closed her eyes, the smallest exhale escaping from her lips. Yuna bent forward, their foreheads nearly touching, and her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.

 

“We have twenty five minutes until the next server ping, and this door can lock from the inside.”

Linda’s eyes opened. There was a flicker of something almost like awe beneath her guarded expression- someone learning for the first time that they can break the rules. “You really think we can be… unprofessional together?”

Yuna smirked, “Only when it’s very professional.”

 

The door closed. The lock clicked. Eyes met again, though now any teasing was gone, replaced by an unmet need that had been smouldering all week. 

Yuna leaned in slowly, and lips met. Not tentative like on the deck during the party, but deliberate- the firm, warm lips of a gourmand savoring a gustatory experience. 

 

“I’m yours…” Linda’s voice was low, “Use me.”

Yuna’s hand found one of Linda’s covers and massaged the surface. It was warm, and as she touched it, she could feel a dampness spreading beneath her fingers.

“Just like that?” Yuna asked, peeling the cover off.

“Just like that.” Linda breathed as fingers played with her now exposed and sweating womanhood.

Repositioning her hands to support Linda’s body, Yuna pressed their lips together in another kiss and then trailed downward. 

“What are you- oh- Oh!” Linda asked, cut off when she felt Yuna’s lips around her clit.

 

It was right about when Yuna’s tongue found its way inside her and Linda was struggling not to lose it that-

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

Fuck!

Fuck!

 

Yuna’s eyes looked up, Linda’s eyes looked down, and their gaze met somewhere in the middle. With her mouth still on her boss’s pussy, Yuna gave a flick of her head indicating for Linda to speak.

“Yes… mmm… hello? Who’s …unhhh… there?”

“Hey, sorry… uh... Linda? It’s Savannah from Facilities. We’ve got a power grid sync error on the lower floors and the elevator’s stuck again. Boss said I should check with you directly since you’re still logged in?”

Yuna pulled back, her forehead resting on Linda so that she could smile and try to suppress a laugh.

 

Of course.

 

Linda took a moment to clear her throat, recalibrating back into business mode.”Is that so? Just a moment…. I’ll… I’ll get to my office and reroute to the backup protocol and initiate a diagnostic from there.”

There was a pause.

“Cool. No rush. Uh… I’ll just wait out here, I guess....”

Yuna pulled away, slowly straightening her blouse and replacing Linda’s lower cover. “So much for twenty-five minutes.”

Linda sighed, “That’s the third time she’s interrupted me this week.”

Yuna gave a self-deprecating grin, “She has a gift.”

Linda turned her eyes to Yuna, lingering just a second too long before saying, softly, “We’ll try again. I promise.”

Yuna nodded, brushing her thumb gently over Linda’s cheekbone one last time before stepping away. “Just… make sure next time, I get at least thirty uninterrupted minutes.”

Linda smirked faintly. “If I schedule it myself, you’ll get forty.”

It had hit the point in the middle of the night that the office was still, most of the lights dimmed to standby glow. A hush blanketed the Systems Ops floor, broken only by the low ambient hum of climate control and the occasional mechanical shift of the mobility bases being used by overnight staff.

Yuna had stayed late. She had stayed late on purpose. She pondered who she had become that it was past midnight and she was still at work. She had stayed late on purpose, and she didn’t want to throw herself out of a second floor window. She had stayed late because she wanted to, because she was waiting for her… for whatever Linda was to her now. She had hit the point that she had finished up every single one of her minor ‘to do list’ tasks, and was just killing time with solitaire on her laptop.

The place had emptied out hours ago, and she had stayed, waiting. Cramped as it was, her workroom had always been more than just a workspace: a few string lights curled along the upper shelves, an old couch she’d salvaged from Facilities and covered in a soft throw, a tiny Bluetooth speaker barely holding a charge anymore. Her laptop sat to the side on sleep mode, and she’d brought in two ceramic mugs- one filled with instant cocoa, the other with water for Linda, out of politeness if not need.

Linda arrived quietly. No announcement this time, no sharp voice or business-like tone. Just the low hum of her wheels and her face, framed in the soft blue glow of Yuna’s desk monitor.

 

“You stayed,” Linda said.

Yuna shrugged. “I had a feeling you might come by.”

Linda tilted her head, unsure. “After last time… I thought maybe I’d scared you off.”

“I do scare easy,” Yuna said, standing up and closing the door gently behind her. “But I always come back.”

The silence stretched, full and warm. Then Linda said, almost cautiously, “Is this… are we doing this here?”

Yuna nodded. “We keep getting interrupted. I didn’t want to wait anymore.”

She stepped closer, kneeling beside the edge of Linda’s base, looking up into her eyes. “Unless you’d rather wait.”

“No,” Linda said, her voice quiet. “No more waiting.”

 

Yuna’s touch was careful, reverent. She brushed a loose strand of hair from Linda’s temple, as though she was dusting off a priceless relic, then leaned in slowly, giving her every opportunity to pull back. She didn’t.

Their kiss was gentler than the last, less adrenaline, more longing. Yuna’s hand cupped the side of Linda’s head, thumb brushing the edge of her jaw. Linda let out the softest hum of relief against her mouth, and it was enough to undo something in both of them.

Yuna didn’t rush. She eased herself onto the couch and helped guide Linda’s base closer, her movements slow and communicative. Linda couldn’t move herself into the couch, but Yuna knew the positioning by now- had helped her adjust more than once, though the context was very different. This was no tune-up.

 

When she settled, Yuna lay beside her, facing her, propped up on one elbow. “You okay?”

Linda smiled, a rare, real one. “I’ve never been more okay.”

 

They lay together like that, trading whispered words and warm touches. Yuna trailed her fingers along Linda’s cheek and hairline, kissed her temple, her jaw, the corner of her mouth. Linda breathed in each sensation like a map being drawn.

As they lay there, drinking in one another with their skin, the silence between them grew again. Then-

Yuna swallowed and closed her eyes, “Before we go forward… I don’t want to lose this,” Yuna said, finally. “Whatever ‘this’ is. This is good. This is the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. Such a long time that I was starting to think that good things couldn’t happen anymore.  I just don’t want to feel like I’m dating a sealed black box. You want to plan and prepare- fine. I love that about you. I used to hate it, but… now I don’t think I’d change it even if I could. But you can’t plan me like an error log. I’m messy. I get scared. I act without running the simulation first.”

Linda’s voice was quieter now. “I know. That’s what makes you so alive to me.”

Yuna blinked, caught off-guard.

Linda continued, “You make me want things I told myself I wasn’t allowed to want. I spent years telling myself connection was an inefficiency. That control and predictability were safer. That no one would ever really look at me and see more than what value I could provide… that they’d see nothing more than hardware.”

Yuna breathed out slowly. “I see you,” she said.

Linda’s breath hitched.

“And I want to touch you,” Yuna added softly. “I want to hold you. I want to be with you. Even if it’s in secret. Even if it’s just here. With the door locked and the lights dimmed.”

Linda’s voice cracked. “I can’t give you what other people can. You know that.”

“I don’t want other people,” Yuna whispered. “I want you.”

Yuna leaned down and kissed Linda gently- her lips soft against Linda’s, slow and reverent. Linda couldn't move below the neck, couldn’t reciprocate with arms or hands, but she leaned as much as she could into the kiss, tilting her head to meet Yuna’s. Her eyes fluttered shut. It was limited, careful, and impossibly tender.

When the kiss broke, Linda murmured, “We’re going to have to run some serious HR risk calculations.”

Yuna laughed softly, forehead resting against Linda’s. “We’ll plan later.”

Yuna began to remove Linda’s cloth covers and set them aside. Her own clothes followed.

 

It wasn’t hurried, and it wasn’t flashy. It was simple and quiet and full of yearning.

At one point, Linda whispered, “I hate not being able to hold you.”

Yuna kissed her again, soft and sure. “You’re here. That’s what I want.”

The skin of their breasts pressed together, and in the small, warm space, as Yuna shifted, they peeled apart with a sticky velcro-like sound. 

“Let me see you.” Linda breathed, prompting Yuna to pull back and leave Linda sitting upright.

Sitting on the couch, One of Yuna’s hands, adorned with fingernails painted black, reached up to remove the green knitted cap from her head, letting her dark hair fall down to her shoulders.

The other hand rested lightly on her stomach. Her round form, the gentle curves of her thighs, belly, and arms, were unhidden, displayed without apology or artifice. In the artificially-colored light of the room, her pale skin took on a rainbow hue. Her features, pale and sharp in places, stood out more starkly in the intimate stillness of the room: the crooked line of her nose, the set of her mouth, the faint shadows beneath her eyes. She was far from idealized, and that was part of what made her striking. Real. Present.

Linda took it all in, her eyes trailing down Yuna’s body, and settling on what was between her legs. Yuna’s growing cock stood eagerly at attention in contrast to the nervous smile on her face. Beneath it, a glistening trickle had started to drip from her pussy.

 

“Oh my…” Linda exclaimed reverently.

“Is it…” Yuna hesitated, “Am I…” 

“Perfect?” Linda finished. “Yes… yes you are.”

 

She licked her lips, “I’ll have to decide where to start- I’m spoiled for choices. Would you help me return your favor from earlier?” 

Wordlessly relieved, Yuna guided Linda’s body down until she felt lips wrap around the tip of her member. 

Now it was her turn to gasp. Those lips were one of the only things that Linda could still move on her own, and she had developed a shocking proficiency with them. They danced over Yuna’s skin, teasing, tantalizing, tickling, and on occasion, nipping. 

Yuna’s eyes closed and her head tilted back. She let out a quiet whimper as Linda’s tongue began tracing circles on the head of her cock.

 

“How…how are you…you’re so good…”

In answer, Linda bobbed her head up and down, swallowing up all Yuna’s length and stroking up and down with her tongue. 

 “Fuuuuuuuuuuuu-”

This was incredible. Yuna could hardly believe what she was doing, who she was doing it with, or where she was doing it.

Linda looked up, her cheeks reddened from effort and embarrassment.

 

“I hate how much I want you, and I hate how little I can do about it… and I hate how much I like that. And I want you to F-”

“To F-”

“To…Ff-”

Whatever it was that Linda was trying to say, she just couldn’t get it out.

 

Yuna brought Linda up until they were again face to face. “Are you hesitating because you can’t bring yourself to say fuck while we’re fucking?”

If linda had been red before, her face was pure hexadecimal code #FF0000.

“...”

“Maybe.”

“That is so cute, and you are so hot- please, please, please, please, please, I am begging you: talk dirty with me...”

“I like it.”

“Like… really like it.”

Yuna was finding it hard to think straight in the moment, but one stray thought that did cross her mind was wondering how risky it would be to lean into talking dirty with her boss. Considering everything that had happened, and considering that she only got to live once, she went for it.

The words ‘This is your bravery test’ echoed distantly in the back of her mind.
“You adorable, helpless little cock-sheath.”

Linda stared silently at her for enough heartbeats that it felt like an eternity passed between them. Sweat had started to form on her brow, causing some strands of her blonde hair to stick to her forehead.

 

Oh no

Oh no, I’ve made a huge mist-

 

“You can’t call me a cock-sheath and then not use me as a cock-sheath, Ms. Quemener.” Linda replied sternly as something in her expression shifted.

“I may not be able to slide myself down onto your massive cock myself, but if you don’t pick me up right now and use me like the adorable, helpless little cock-sheath I am, I promise you, there will be consequences.”

 

Yuna’s mind raced faster than she could guide it.

She called my cock massive!

She thinks I’m big, she thinks-

Wait…

Consequences?!

 

Now it was Yuna’s turn to hesitate. Linda’s expression wasn’t so much angry as it was hungry and intense. Despite the fact that Linda had no physical power at all in this situation, Yuna felt intimidated by her.

 

“Well?”

“What are you waiting for?”

“If you need verbal instructions, here they are:”

“Pick me up, put yourself inside me, and fuck me until I say stop.”

 

Linda’s voice had an edge to it now, and it was enough to snap Yuna out of her thoughts and get her moving. Hands grabbed the base of Linda’s pot, brought her up, and turned her around. With one hand on the upper neck of Linda’s pot and the other steadying the base, she slowly, blissfully lowered her down.

Inch by inch, Yuna’s cock disappeared inside Linda’s drooling pussy. It felt wet, warm, soft, tight, and perfect, and she couldn’t help but let out a satisfied moan when she felt the motion stop as Linda came to rest on her.

 

“You like that, do you?” Linda asked, struggling (and succeeding) to sound commanding through a breathy voice, interrupted with small gasps.  “I’m…ah… making you moan and... ah… we’ve just barely even… ah…  started.”

“I … mmmh… want you to… listen to my…nnnnh… every word, got it?”

 

Yuna nodded dumbly and then realized Linda couldn’t see anything she was doing with her head, and instead mumbled, “Of course Ms. Moore.” 

Linda took a steadying breath and exhaled. “You are going to lift me up when I say Up and lower me when I say Down. You are going to bounce me up and down on that delicious cock of yours. Simple. Impossible to fuck up. Understood?”

 

“Understood.”

“One more thing, Ms. Quemener.”

“Yes?” 

“Turn me around- I want to see your face.”

 

Wordlessly, Yuna spun Linda around, not even bothering to lift her off of her cock. The two of them took in a simultaneous breath, and she could feel Linda shiver in her pot.

 

“Very good, Ms. Quemener. Good girl.”

 

After being called a good girl, Yuna’s dick could cut glass. 

Though Linda’s words came through a confident and commanding voice, her eyes were questioning. Face to face, there was an uncertain look between them. 

Yuna smiled, leaned in, and planted her lips on Linda’s. Their tongues played with one another before they separated, leaving Linda’s lipstick smudged. Some of it came off on Yuna’s face.

 

“I love this.” Yuna whispered.

“Then take me Up!” Linda commanded with a deeply contented sigh.

Yuna complied, shuddering as she brought her lover up. 

“And now Down!” 

“Again, Up! Aaaah, yes, that’s it. Good… you’re…mmmh… quite good.”  

Together, the two of them found their rhythm, moving wave-like up and down with an oceanic tempo. 

“Bring me.. aaah… bring me in closer- I want to kiss you.” Linda gasped in-between thrusts.

 

Again, Yuna complied without question, lifting Linda up slightly until they were face to face and she could feel her hot, thready breath on her cheeks. 

Even though Linda had announced it, Yuna was still surprised when Linda leaned in until her lips were just barely brushing her own and planted a delicate little kiss, “I’m going to finish first, and I’m taking your lip as collateral, Ms. Quemener. I’ve shown you the rhythm, now be a good girl and pick up the pace.”

Yuna’s thoughts came as thick and slow as molasses pouring out of a jar.

What does she mean when she says ‘taking your lip as collatera-’ OW!

 

Yuna whimpered as Linda’s teeth gripped her lower lip and tightened.

So that’s what she means…

 

Using the pain as motivation, she resumed the cyclical undulations, bringing Linda up and down, though no longer needing direction to do so. Faster and faster, she sped up the pace until her arms started to burn and her lip stung from where it was being gnawed on. 

Right as Yuna felt her strength fading, Linda’s teeth let go- the blonde woman’s mouth opened wide, and her jaw worked itself convulsively. A long, shuddering exhale escaped from Linda’s body, and she was left panting with her head lolling. 

Yuna felt so close, so, perfectly, perilously close. A boulder perched at the top of a cliff just waiting for a nudge. A fire hydrant with immense pressure built up behind it just waiting for the right key to open it. The sound of blood rushing in her head was almost enough to drown out the rest of the world around her.

 

Almost enough.

 

Through it all, she heard the words, “Good…girl…”

That was all she needed.

The tap opened.

The floodgates opened.

Yuna came more intensely than she ever had in her entire life.

 

This couch was going to need to be cleaned.

 

And in the hush of the Systems Ops workroom, under the lazy glow of string lights and the soft thrum of servers in standby, with the two of them panting in a half-embrace, they made room for each other- finally, fully, uninterrupted.

The morning after their night together, even the air in the office tasted different. Everything felt sharper, brighter, more clear. The world seemed just a little bit more fair. The droning buzz of the fluorescents felt more like a soft hum, and the whir of the server fans sounded like a gentle breeze. This morning, Yuna had stretched out her arms and yawned with a smile instead of a groan. She had spent the night at work, woken up, and was getting ready to start another day, feeling like she really needed a shower, with her hair a complete mess, having barely eaten, and had gotten less than four hours of sleep, and yet… and yet she felt better than she had in a very long time.

Sternly, and yet with unmistakable fondness, Linda had insisted that they spend the night in her own private office suite. The space, while designed for a pot person, was surprisingly comfortable for someone in possession of a full body as well. There was even a small couch, and unlike Yuna’s, this one remained clean. The argument for staying in the space was strong- this office had dimmable lights and lockable doors. The odds of them being interrupted again were far lower than if they were almost anywhere else.  

The blinds in Linda’s room cast long, striped shadows across everything as the sun rose and filled half the room with warm light. Yuna sat on the guest couch, putting on a spare T-shirt she kept in her desk for emergencies. Not that she had brought a spare t-shirt expecting to need to change clothes after having raucous sex with her boss overnight at work in what amounted to a supply closet. 

The original intention of the shirt was so that when Yuna inevitably spilled coffee on herself, she didn’t have to marinate in it all day. 

The rest of her outfit- jeans and a knitted green cap didn’t really need much adjusting, though the cap was slightly askew. 

She hadn’t even bothered to do anything to her hair- it was always at least slightly disheveled, and her coworkers would likely assume she was just hung over. The only thing that gave away anything different was that her cheeks seemed flushed and she looked more relaxed than she had in months.

 

Linda was already back in her desktop base, plugged in, and scanning something on screens only she could see in the lenses of her glasses. She had a touch of softness in her voice now, a trace of vulnerability, but it was still her as she gave feedback while reviewing team outputs. 

There was a knock at the door.

 

“Please don’t let that be Savannah again.” Yuna whispered.

“It is.” Linda said without even looking up.

 

The door slid open. Savannah stood there with a tall, wheeled assistive cart behind her. Not that it was hard. Savannah was one of Gammatech’s modded employees. Reduced, though not to the same degree as Linda. Her head and shoulders sat directly atop her hips, making her just over half the height of an unmodded person. Her arms were nowhere to be found. Dressed in a modified grey skirt that had a collar at the top to fit her modified anatomy, stockings and heels, she drew a formal contrast to Yuna, making the other woman seem quite underdressed. 

Savannah took a step into the room and paused. Her gaze lingered on Yuna- legs half tucked under a throw blanket, shirt hitched up ever so slightly, hair a disheveled mess, and immediately turned red.

 

“Oh… uh… wow… you two… I… uh… maybe I should just come back?”

Yuna chuckled. “You’re already here. What’s up?”

 

Savannah stepped to the side, and the rectangular profile of the cart trundled into the room like a small, mobile obelisk. Except this small, mobile obelisk had a cup of steaming coffee on top of its flat surface.

 

“I brought coffee.” Savannah said with an apologetic grin, “For… uhh… diplomacy.” 

Linda tilted her head and looked away from her work, “Bribery is generally not part of your job description.” 

“Neither is walking in on people mid-climax…twice maybe?” Savannah said with a little smirk. 

Yuna reached out and took the coffee, “We didn’t-”

“It’s ok- I didn’t see anything. You’re good. And even if I did see anything, I didn’t see anything”

 

Yuna and Linda nodded along together. 

Savannah continued smiling, “Though you two are cute togethe-”

 

“Thank you very much, Savannah.” Linda cut in. 

Savannah nodded, her smile unwavering. “Of course! I just wanted to.. Well.. enjoy your coffee!” 

With that, she dipped out of the room, her mobile assistant following her out the door. 

“She’s too informal.” Linda said, though her mouth twitched into a subtle smile.

 

An email ping came in, the chime reverberating pleasantly throughout the room. “Security Log: Freight Door Opened - 07:42”

Seconds later, Sam’s voice floated in through the open comm channel, “Hey Linda! Just giving you a heads-up: Your favorite security camera caught me again.” 

Another voice chimed in behind her: the night guard, teasing. “Tell her the freight alcove's reserved tonight too.”

Linda sighed. “If I have to rewrite the scheduling matrix to account for workplace trysts, I will become a cautionary tale at the next board review. And whoever they cart in to replace me won’t be half as fun.”

 

“Don’t worry,” Sam said cheerfully. “We’ll only use the freight dock on odd-numbered days.”

Yuna laughed until she nearly spilled her drink. “You know, for a place full of pot people and programmers, this office has way more sex drama than it has any right to.”

Linda’s voice was dry. “We’re very efficient.”

Yuna leaned back against the couch and looked over at her. “So... now what?”

Linda paused. Her cursor stilled on one of the large screens beside her. “Now… we do our jobs. We handle each other with care. And we see where this goes.”

Yuna smiled softly. “That’s… surprisingly romantic, coming from you.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

 

But Yuna saw the way Linda’s eyes lingered on her for just a second longer, and knew better.