fearofpiggies | (no subject)

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It had been a few days of radio silence on Dib's end. His house's AI picked up the IMs he missed with 'Dib's not home, pal. He's off doing that dumb deep research thing he does. If he dies, I'll let you know' and that was the end of it.

And Eddie was right. He was doing that dumb deep research thing he did. In fact, he had been in an abandoned amusement park that had been built on top of an old factory site that had lots of fucked up deaths attributed to both places, and even more fucked up hauntings. It didn't help that some freaky cult of demon worshipers had been using the abandoned haunted house attraction as a meeting place and had been doing rituals there for years, thus inviting in literally every dark presence in the immediate area of the site. It was basically the only time Dib could be talked into going to an amusement park without getting him grousing.

When he returned home after three days of extensive research and recording of phenomena, Dib was exhausted, but satisfied with the results he'd gotten. His first order of business was to take a long shower to wash off the dried ectoplasm that had gotten on him, as well as the three-day stink of someone who slept in his car instead of getting a hotel room. He didn't bother brushing his hair back or shaving, because he'd be going straight to sleep after winding down from an adventurous weekend. Once he stepped out of the bathroom, he made his way out to the living room, sprawling out on his sofa to see what he'd missed on his social networks.

Not much, it seemed. He didn't keep a very long list of contacts; the few that he kept were in alternate dimensions, or in the vague shadow agency of the Swollen Eyeball Network.

Do you never sleep? He wrote to Sollux, having seen him actively online practically every hour of the day, over the course of about a month.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

With the pull backwards, Dib huffed a chuckle, and crossed his arms, tapping his fingers on his elbow. "I guess there's a couple things I could think of doing for right now, but I wouldn't call them full-blown plans." He squirmed away just to get into Sollux's space instead, looking up at him with a dark little grin. "How good are you at holding reeeeally still? I've got another project that I need some help with, and I'm pretty sure nobody else will volunteer."

"I could make a statue weep in envy," Sollux replied with a quiet, brief purr and leaned forward against Dib, dipping briefly to catch his lips then standing back up straight, or at least as straight as he ever did before his natural slouch kicked back in. "What's the project then?"

Dib kissed back and then led the way out of the room, talking the whole time.

"Neural transceivers. I was talking to Vriska about her robotic prosthetic arm, and how it's directly attached to the tissue and muscle of what's left of her natural arm. It uses the electrical pulses sent from the brain to move, and she says it works just as well as any natural arm ever did for her. I got to thinking, what if it could work better than that? Instead of waiting for the impulses to register in the prosthetic, which probably has something of a delay, because the nerves and tissue of her arm are damaged, why not work with a neural transceiver? That way it's coming from the source - or at least closer to it - and give more subtle instruction in what to do. She says she has middling small motor function, which leads me to believe that her guy, while talented, hasn't figured out how to properly program things for minor movements that make things more fluid." He settled down on his stool in front of his work bench and held up something that looked like a microchip, which it basically was.

"Which is what got me to thinking, why just program for things that the body can normally do? Why stop there? She's got a robotic arm, for fuck's sake, she could upgrade it and make it do all *sorts* of shit, like it was as natural as flipping the bird."

His head at a tilt, Sollux listened and thought about potentially asking Equius about his hardware, though he knew that the blueblood never made blueprints, given the lack of fortified pencils that could handle him. He looked down at the little silicon chip and nodded. "He hath thlight ithueth with being able to work really fine tuning, it'th not really hith fault. If you were to be able to fine-tune tech like that you'd be able to do just about anything ath far ath artificial limbs are contherned. So what do you need me to act ath the guinea pig for?" he asked, leaning his elbow on the work table and picking up one of the larger chunks of slightly foreign-looking tech to turn over in his hand.

"She told me that, too, something about him having mutant strength. I don't look down on him for what he can't do, that's for sure, especially when what he can do is leaps and bounds ahead of most everybody else." He smiled when Sollux asked. "I've found that thinkpans and brains are almost literally the same, with only minor, superficial differences. The fact that they both connect to the body through the spinal cord is all I really needed to know to work this up. I've already tested it on myself, but just to get the kinks out of the system, I'll need you to put this at the nape of your neck, where your spine and skull connect." he said, handing the chip over. "The sticky back should hold it in place and also serve as a conductor. You might feel a little bit of a tingling sensation, but that's all." He stood and went to awaken Eddie from his sleep mode, and with Eddie's assistance, he brought up a floating screen that would give readouts of what the transceiver was receiving in terms of brain activity, and eventually show information it was putting out to remote groups of prosthetic nerves.

"Awesome. Setting things at base level takes more than one set of readouts," he explained, "And if you just... move your hand, you'll see the difference. How much information it takes just to curl your hand into a fist. You need a faster neural transceiver to pick up that kind of information, or a lot of it gets lost. I bet every time Vriska has to do anything with that arm, she has to really concentrate on it." He sat back down beside Sollux. "But the practical application of this isn't specific to prosthetic limbs for amputees. My dad used to be on the brink of cybernetic technology, advancing it by decades, but his infamously short attention span pulled him away from it. We really haven't made much progress as a society with that front since then. Individually, though..." He got a tiny, secretive smile.

Sollux returned his smile and immediately turned in place. A moment's discomfort was nothing compared to advancing neural technology. Once the chip was in place he fought the urge to scratch at the back of his neck, wincing a bit at momentary stinging then reading the information as it started to roll up the screen. He started small, moving his fingers, then curling them inward to make a fist. He was beyond impressed with Dib's handiwork, that much was obvious.

Soon he was moving his arm in every way he could think of, giving as much data as possible, even going so far as to start fiddling with his sylladex, his fingers tapping the holographic keyboard then catching a rubber ball out of the air as it fell out of its slot. He started to toss this from hand to hand without paying much attention.

"When you go all mainstream with thith and become the world'th premier neurothientitht don't forget the little guyth that helped you get there," he teased, looking back at Dib with a small smirk.

"What? No, I'm not doing this for money or fame or anything," Dib said with a scoff. He shook his head. "I'm doing it because I can." He didn't want to have the fame his father did, especially in any field that his father had already touched on. "So the next part is to sit really still and just imagine you're doing everything you just did. Just imagine moving your hand, curling your fingers, blah blah, you get the idea. It should still show up, though in a more subdued way." He settled back with a tiny smile on his face. "And then we'll get to the fun part."

"You take joketh way too theriouthly thometimeth," Sollux muttered and laid his hand against the back of Dib's neck, pressing a brief kiss to his forehead then sitting back and going through the mental motions, clearly taking the instructions seriously. His fingers twitched every now and then, his eyes flickering across the screen.

"There'th one more thing you should probably add to the readout," me mentioned after a few moments. "If you really want to fine-tune thith I mean. It won't take long to gather the data and I imagine it'll give you better data for really fine motor thkillth." With that he once more sifted through his sylladex, retrieving his laptop and booting it up, finding one of his online friends to start to bother. He told them a little bit of what he was doing, mostly getting a confused response as he lapsed into the technical language. Eventually the window was filled with a wall of yellow text that he'd tapped out just as quickly as anyone would have expected of him, and he bit the troll on the other end farewell before putting the computer away again. He looked back up at the monitor readout and smiled faintly at the information scrolling by.

"Time for the fun part?"

Dib wasn't about to protest some more data, especially when Sollux was being such a good sport about all of it. "Okay no seriously? That's ridiculous, even by non-human standards," he said to the way that Sollux typed so fast that his fingers were almost a blur. "Anyway, back to what I was doing. Which I was doing in an order so your mind got used to the process. Okay, I need you to go back to doing what we were doing before, just imagining moving your hands, your arms, showing what data we had before." He watched the progress on the screen, and then smirked.

"Okay, now I need you to imagine doing something you can't physically do. Tell me exactly what you're imagining you're doing. It can be anything. Like maybe you have a sixth finger on your left hand, or you're opening up a hidden compartment in your forearm. Y'know, whatever it is. It has to be realistic in your mind, though. Like, as real as imagining you're making a fist was. You get me? It'll help the data if you tell me exactly how it works in your mind." Dib looked over at Eddie's camera, and smiled a little. "Eddie's recording the audio so I don't need to dictate everything you're doing. Just go ahead and start whatever it is you're not doing."

Thinking over his options, Sollux propped his chin on his hand and tapped his fingers across his lips, then hummed quietly at a sudden image that came to his mind. He described, in great detail, the act of simply typing, then lifting his fingers from the keyboard and extending, then splitting off into another three tips that would allow him to type the code as fast as it scrolled through his mind. It was any worthy coder's dream. It didn't matter that it was some anime shit.

"Aha, that shit," Dib said with amusement, knowing exactly what Sollux was describing. "Okay, instead of focusing on both hands doing that, can you imagine just one finger doing it? That way it'll isolate each movement in your mind, and that'll help a lot more than the chaos you're showing on the screen right now. That's really complex work, too, but I can't say it isn't fucking awesome. And you'd be an unstoppable force, that's for sure." Once he had Sollux focused on a single finger doing what he wanted, and then the sensations that would come with it, he concluded the experiment, and had Sollux remove the transceiver. "See, that data is going to be really useful for my next big project, assuming I have time to do it." He leaned back and swiveled in his chair, grinning a dark little grin that he got when he was orchestrating a grand scheme in his mind.

"I might not be doing it for fortune or fame, but I'm sure as hell not going to turn down commissions on it. And I already have a certain spidery bitch who's really interested in upgrading her arm." He shrugged, "I've got a thing or two I want, myself, but that comes next."

"Great, upgraded spiderbitch. KK'th gonna evitherate me." Snorting quietly, Sollux captchalogued his belongings again and laced his fingers together behind his head. He looked back at Dib with a lazy smile in the face of that evil look. "I thought you thaid now we were going to do thomething fun," he teased. "Thith hath been interethting, but not exactly my definition of high entertainment."

"Whatever, that was pretty fun," Dib argued, slipping out of his seat to put one knee on the space of the chair which wasn't currently occupied by Sollux's ass, and he leaned over him, putting his hand on the back of the chair. "But I'm pretty sure I know where your mind was headed with that." The dark smile had been replaced by something just a shade more impish. He ignored a groaning protest from Eddie, who decided it was time to go back into standby, and he looked into Sollux's eyes.

"But maybe you should fill me in on what you were thinking."

"You," he interrupted himself with a light peck of Dib's lips, "are a huge," another kiss, "nerd." Grinning, Sollux slipped his fingers into the pockets of the other's jeans, pulling him forward just a hair more then mouthing along the underside of his jaw and down the front of his throat. "Honethtly I didn't really have much in mind, I jutht want thomething to do that'll latht a while. Even if itth jutht playing video gameth or thomething, ethpethially thinthe I'm not thtepping foot out of thith houthe while I'm here."

"A wise decision if I've ever heard one," Dib said with a chuckle as he tipped his head back with a purring murmur of, "I like the or something option. There's a couple consoles hidden away in the entertainment center, but..." He tipped his head down and caught Sollux's lips with his own, persuading him into a rough kiss.

"Then gameth later, or thomething now." Sollux pressed back into the kiss and slipped his tongue in past Dib's lips, encouraging the kiss deeper as his hands began to wander, shoving Dib's shirt up to his chest then leaving it there as his thumbs ran over the other's nipples. He wanted to continue on right here in the chair, but at a small warning creak he finally leaned away and ran his hands back down to rest at Dib's hips.

With a little huff of sound through his nose, Dib gripped Sollux's shoulder, roughly brushing his thumb over the other's neck and up his jaw as he followed Sollux's tongue into his mouth with his own. He huffed his disappointment at the little warning groan that the chair gave them, and stood, still slightly straddling Sollux's legs as he offered a hand up. "There's plenty of surfaces, who needs a chair, anyway," he said, his brow quirking for half a second.

"Maybe the next time you get bored you can reinforthe the chair and we won't run into thith problem," he replied with a small smirk and stood up with his hand still hooked around Dib's. He glanced around, considering the worktable for a moment before deciding against it; too much delicate hardware that didn't need to be rattled off. He dipped his head to nudge his nose against Dib's and urge him back toward the couch instead.

Once Dib had been pushed down to sit back comfortably his lap was straddled instead, Sollux' arms coming to rest against the back of the couch on either side of his head.

"If you're so concerned about the chair, you could do it. I've never had any problems with it before," teased Dib, who wandered to the sofa and had a seat, looking up at Sollux in all his shirtless glory. He pulled him closer by the small of his back, while his other hand scratched up his chest, leaving yellow welts in the gray skin in their wake, while he leaned up to open his mouth against Sollux's throat, biting just around his windpipe before licking there and then nipping his earlobe. "Should get your toys before you come to stay here and escape the doomy stuff," he mentioned.

"I'll keep that in mind for next time," Sollux purred as he lifted his chin, his eyes falling closed briefly. He grabbed Dib's hand and held it back over his head then dipped and caught his lips briefly then sucked down the length of his neck to bite in at the base of his throat. He sucked a dark mark into the pale skin then sat back again. One hand hooked into the front of his jeans, his thumb working open the button to allow his hand room to creep just inside.

Dib's breath momentarily went ragged at the edges with the bite, arching into Sollux's sharp teeth while he used his free hand to pull the other's pajama pants down his slender hips. He looked up at Sollux and rolled his hips upward against Sollux's hand, his expression anticipatory, but not impatient. He knew how much Sollux liked to tease.

Sollux was grinning some at him as his hand dipped in to wrap around Dib through his underwear, giving him a couple of slow pumps through the cloth. He pulled away after a few moments though to allow Dib to push his jeans down around his hips then settled right back into place, his hand running down the ridge of his hip then starting to run along the sheath of his bulge to coax it out. His forehead was leaned against Dib's as he wrapped one of the two slick appendages around the other, the second twisting between his fingers.

Wrapping his hand around his own erection and Sollux's bulge around it, he pumped them both, his eyebrows knitting as he let out a low, quiet groan. His fingertips brushed against the ridge near the curve where Sollux's bulges met, and he pressed a softer peck of a kiss to Sollux's lips before claiming his mouth firmly, slipping his tongue out to brush against the other's lower lip. He busied his other hand with tracing up the line of Sollux's hip, then back to give a somewhat rough squeeze to Sollux's ass.

Sollux' tongue slipped out to run along Dib's again before invading his mouth, his hips pushing forward as the scent of honeysuckle began to fill the space between them. He let out a soft chuckle at the thought of what Eddie was likely to say about the sudden air freshener smell permeating the living room. Diving more fully into the kiss, Sollux ran his slicked hand down to grip down on the other's balls, rolling them some in his palm while the other hand ran up the length of Dib's body to rest against the back of his neck and tangle into the hair at the back of his head.

With his mouth still against Sollux's, he groaned out, "harder," and rocked his hips upward, before his own hand slipped away from Sollux's bulge and he shifted his hips forward to give Sollux a better angle with which to move. He pulled Sollux back into the kiss, his breath gone sharp through his nose. He wanted more but didn't know exactly what.