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“What does it feel like?”
Flynn, cross-legged on the ground, lifts his head briefly to meet Tron’s gaze across the empty, half-rendered street. “Hm?”
Tron pushes himself off the wall he was leaning against and ambles closer, the movement sinuous, smooth, his poise almost otherworldly. Such a pleasure to watch him.
He motions to what Flynn’s crouched over—a heap of code hopelessly tangled in his cupped hands, pulled directly from the digital pavement he’s sitting on. From what will become the pavement, eventually, a new street in a new sector of the city, if the damn code just cooperates for once—
“This. Manipulating code. Making something from nothing, breathing energy into it. It’s…” Tron laughs. Shakes his head. “It’s still difficult to compute, I guess. Seeing a User inside the system. Speaking to him.”
Flynn’s gaze drops to his lap again, to the stubbornly broken code. Glowing faintly, the way all things on the Grid do—once he weaves light into them. Thought into reality into light. Creation itself. “It’s, uh, it’s cool. It feels… cool.”
Very articulate. In his defence, he’d really like to get that bit of code unscrambled and working before he has to go back.
Seemingly undeterred, Tron continues. “I’ve seen what you could do in that old system. Feats programs could barely even comprehend.”
“Nah,” Flynn says, distracted. “It was nothing, man.”
“And you were at a disadvantage there. The MCP wanted to destroy you. The whole system was against you. But here… in a system you yourself created… I can only imagine.”
Flynn laughs. “You’re making me sound like some sort of a god. Don’t—” he lifts a warning finger and glances up— “don’t say it.”
Tron, stood a couple of steps away with both his hands up in a gesture of surrender, turns his head away from Flynn; just slow enough for Flynn to notice the shadow of a smile curling his lips. “I’m not saying anything.”
He’s still thinking it if his sly tone is anything to go by, but as long as it’s not said out loud Flynn can bear it. Can forget about it. Makes an effort, immediately, to forget.
He looks down at the code again. Tron silently circles behind him.
“But I am curious,” he murmurs. Suddenly he’s very close, almost sounds like he’s leaning over Flynn. “You used to have circuits back in the old system. So much energy coursing through them I could scarcely believe it. Makes me wonder—” He trails off. Steps aside again.
“You’re unusually cryptic today,” Flynn mutters, the bulk of his attention still on the tangle of code. He’s almost got it—but he can’t help but look up, follow Tron back across the street with a stolen sideways glance. Easier to watch him when he’s not watching back. When he thinks he’s not being watched.
His shoulders are slightly slumped. The glow of his light-lines slightly dimmed.
Flynn frowns and turns to face him fully, the code he was worrying at instantly forgotten. “Tron? You okay, man? You look… tired.”
“I’m low on energy. It’s nothing.”
“Low on—like those little drinks you guys have in the clubs sometimes?”
A nod. “Yes. Among other things. There’s energy lakes and streams, most of them below the surface. Like in the old system, remember? There’s also recharging. And—” He cuts himself off. Waves it aside with a flourish of his hand. “It’s nothing, Flynn. Really.”
“And what? Tell me. You gotta tell me, man.”
“Energy transfers.” Strained. Not meeting Flynn’s gaze now.
“Sharing energy? Between programs?”
“Or between a program and a User.”
“Oh,” Flynn says. “Oh! See, that’s not a problem then, you just gotta tell me these things—”
Something about Tron’s posture shifts, tenses. “Flynn—”
Is it the energy thing making him act strange? It must be.
Flynn tosses the hopeless tangle of code back onto the pavement—god knows he could use a break anyway, stretch those sore muscles—climbs to his feet, makes towards his program. He’s at Tron’s side in a couple of easy steps, reaching out, smiling brightly. “In fact, you should have told me earlier, I could have just—”
“Flynn, wait—” Tron takes a stumbling step backwards and his back hits the glass wall of the half-rendered building behind him; Flynn follows.
The tips of his fingers meet the emblem high up on Tron’s chest, a sleek memory of what it used to be in the old system. And like in the old system, Flynn doesn’t know what to do, how to do it, but—he guesses.
Next thing he knows, Tron goes limp, nearly folding in on himself, all but collapsing into Flynn’s arms with an outright obscene sound breathed right into his shoulder.
A hot flash goes through him.
“Woah, man,” Flynn laughs, embarrassment flushing his cheeks. He’s holding his program up. Just barely. “That good, huh?”
An easy way out. He expects—what does he expect? For Tron to laugh it off, equally embarrassed?
But Tron just nuzzles into his shoulder, his breaths heavy and ragged, both of his hands grasping Flynn’s hips for balance hard enough to hurt, and he is fully, absolutely serious when he says, just this side of another moan, “Yes.”
Flynn licks his lips. His mouth is suddenly very dry. “Feeling, uh, better?”
The next low, broken noise that makes it past Tron’s lips echoes all through his body, rebounds in the pit of his stomach. It’s the kind of sound Flynn would expect if he had his mouth on Tron, maybe—now there’s a thought—but not like this, when he’s barely even touching the program, both of them fully clothed. That suit of his is clothes, right? Flynn’s not just surrounded by programs running around naked?
Tron’s light-lines are bright again, but tinged with colour at the edges, hues of a sunset, unlike anything Flynn’s seen on his Grid before—coral pink and a blush of lavender, flushed and hot and magnetic. An invitation; Flynn steps a little closer to his program before he even knows he’s moving.
“It’s too much,” Tron gasps into the crook of his neck.
“I’m not even doing anything!”
Tron shoves him away. Flynn stumbles backwards, watching Tron slide down, his back against the glass, until he’s sat on the ground, breathing quickly.
The thought of having hurt him nearly splits Flynn’s heart in half. Puts him to rights in an instant.
“Hey—look, I’m sorry, whatever I just did, I… it…”
Tron blinks up at him; there’s something clouded behind his eyes. “No, I’m the one who should be sorry. You didn’t know. I suppose you still don’t. A transfer is… intimate. Gets deep into you. It’s easy to lose yourself in it if you’re not careful, even for programs. I imagine if you never did it before…” He trails off, frowns, looks away. “Fuck,” he mutters. For a moment, Flynn almost feels bad for teaching him to swear. “I used you.”
“But are you hurt?” Flynn presses. He’s not hearing any of it until he knows for sure.
“Hurt? Not at all. This isn’t—” He briefly glances at Flynn, then looks away again. “Ah. What you’re taking for pain was pleasure. It wasn’t—it wasn’t painful for you, was it?”
Pleasure, rings out in Flynn’s head. Another flash of heat pierces through him.
He takes a step forward and drops to his knees right by Tron’s side; the Grid cushions his fall.
“How do I do it again?” he asks quietly. “How do I feel it, too?”
Tron’s lips part, into an expression of shock, first, and then into a smile. He laughs quietly, eyes glimmering.
“It’s different for Users, then,” he says, a question without a mark. “You have to—learn it?”
Flynn barks a laugh too, hot, feverish. “I guess. Kind of, uh, hoping you could teach me.”
He’s leaned in close, his hands, bunched into fists, resting on his knees. Desperate to touch. Unmoving.
“For us programs, it is a transfer between circuits.” Tron’s leaning forward, too. Breathless. All heat. “But for a User…”
“There has to be a way, right?”
“If you can send energy out, and you certainly can,” Tron says, low, “then you must be able to receive a transfer as well. It always goes both ways, it must. And you do have an energy signature.”
“I do?”
Tron nods. “Yes. It’s not visible the way programs’ circuits are, but—” He pauses, frowns slightly. “All that is visible…” He tilts his head to the side. “Close your eyes, Flynn.”
Flynn indulges him with a laugh. “Going to give me a kiss when I’m not looking?”
“Shh,” Tron murmurs, suddenly closer, his breath warm against Flynn’s ear. “Don’t talk. Don’t move. Focus.”
“Bossy,” Flynn huffs. “I like it.”
A puff of quiet laughter brushes the hair on his temple. “I said be quiet.”
“Is there a reward for being quiet?”
“You tell me.” Spoken right against his throat this time, Tron’s voice pitched low like the idle hum of the Grid itself, wrapping around his neck like a silk tie.
Flynn breathes out slowly, wondering what it is that Tron expects him to focus on. Hoping it’s just the heat building between the two of them; energy and transfers thereof a faint, foggy memory in his mind already. Only mildly interesting. Far less, certainly, than Tron’s proximity, the way he seems to hover just out of reach, perfectly, eerily quiet.
A hand touches his chest, fingers splayed out. Flynn flinches, but nothing happens.
Then, without a warning, Tron’s hand sinks inside him—through the fabric of his t-shirt, past his skin, into where flesh and blood should be; but instead, the strange touch stirs something else in him, built of the same material that the rest of the Grid is.
Code.
And Tron purrs; a deep, rumbling sound, stuttering like a straining hard drive, mechanical.
Caught halfway between fear and wonder, Flynn blinks his eyes open. Meets Tron’s dreamy gaze.
“There we go,” Tron murmurs, the inhuman noise still just beneath the surface of his voice. “Sink into it. Sync with it.” His fingers on Flynn’s chest—in it—curl gently, as if he’s combing them through sand. “Can you feel it? So much energy in you—you must feel it—”
Something in Flynn breaks open. Makes space for a new sensation slotting itself into place, a new sense somewhere beyond touch; incomprehensible at first, until his mind finds a way to make sense of it. Tron tethers him to the feeling; an invisible pull, a thread wired between the two of them. Crackling with potential. Pushing into him, shooting through his chest from where Tron’s hand is still on him. Where Tron’s crouched right in front of him, watching. The glow of his circuits is faint again, but flushed with colour, peach and plum and orange.
Warmth pours into him, a rich, sweet taste on the back of his tongue, a pleasant soreness throbbing through all of his muscles, liquid heat pooling low in his stomach.
Flynn wraps both his hands around Tron’s wrist. Feels the heat coming off of the light-lines on his fingers. Traces that link, that connection in his mind.
Sends something back. Careful this time, now that he can feel it, too.
Tron’s eyes flutter shut. His light-lines brighten, sunset again.
“Is that good?” Flynn asks, overwhelmed, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “Brighter glow is good, right?”
Tron’s lips stretch into a smile. He blinks his eyes open.
“Look at yourself instead,” he hums, tracing the fingers of his other hand up Flynn’s arm, the touch supercharged, making the hairs on the back of Flynn’s neck stand; making him feel like once again Tron’s fingers are penetrating deep inside him, touching something raw with feeling. So he follows the touch. Follows Tron’s suggestion. Fixing his gaze on his own exposed skin.
Thin, wire-like stripes running in neat rows line his forearms, a faint bronze edging slowly into gold beneath Tron’s touch; elaborate, familiar patterns of striated tracks and circular vias, liquid gold etched into his skin.
No, not gold. Soldered copper. Like a printed circuit board.
He grabs his t-shirt and peels it off, looks down at his chest, stomach, hands.
The circuitry is more reminiscent of a densely packed computer motherboard than of the programs populating his Grid—but it is, indisputably, circuitry.
“How did you do this?” he murmurs, finally meeting Tron’s eyes again.
Tron laughs. “You think a program has that much power over a User?”
“I think you might,” Flynn blurts out. “Over me.”
Something in Tron’s gaze goes dark. Hungry. “Stranger and stranger.”
Flynn just reaches out. Can’t help himself any longer.
With one hand he touches Tron’s face, slots two fingers deep into his mouth. The other he wraps around the back of Tron’s neck. A part of Tron’s suit flakes out of existence beneath his touch, revealing familiar patterns below; circuits of the old system, in place still. A glowing collar around his neck. Thick cascades of light running down his back. Flynn feels them beneath his fingers, that new sense thrumming pleasantly on the edges of his consciousness. He sends a pulse of energy down Tron’s circuits; Tron moans around his fingers, pitches forward, his knees hitting the ground.
Flynn leans in and kisses him then, pulls him into his lap until they’re chest to chest. Patches of Tron’s lightsuit disintegrate everywhere they touch, reveal more old circuits, fizzling where they meet Flynn’s. Warmth colouring the white. Melting copper into gold into pure heat.
It’s instinctive, the way all things in his system are, easy, simple; everything here belongs to him, his ideas woven into digital reality. Tron’s code isn’t Flynn’s, but Tron himself is; pliant beneath his touch, licking deep into his mouth, all heat and broken sounds of pleasure.
Flynn hopes nobody comes looking for them, and he doesn’t care.
Circuits sparkling, hips stuttering. Enough energy stacked between the two of them to light up a city. It occurs to Flynn how to untangle the bad code in the pavement. He couldn’t care less.
Tron’s all bare now, pale skin tinted with colour, bright like a sun among the darkness of the Grid. Flynn pours energy into him, carried on the high of that new sense. Feeling how it’s making Tron feel, how it makes him arch into Flynn, head lolling to the side, Flynn mapping the circuits lining his neck with his tongue. Ozone and lightning.
“I’m close,” murmured low into his ear. Voice charged, just as the rest of him.
“That makes two of us,” Flynn manages between gasps.
Tron’s palms stroke down his back, sending pulses of energy through him, echoes of what he’s pushing into Tron. Fingers thrust into the back pockets of his jeans and the fabric derezzes beneath Tron’s touch; and Tron’s hands sink further still. An overwhelming presence beneath Flynn’s skin, toying with his code, sending cascades of helpless pleasure rolling down his spine.
Flynn bites Tron’s neck circuit with a groan; his program laughs, a deep satisfaction flowing from his circuits to Flynn’s now. Beings of pure energy.
Flynn’s halfway buried in Tron’s code, cock trapped between their heated bodies with no friction except for the flow of energy; different, new, not enough and too much all at once. Flynn bucks his hips with a whine, rendered nearly speechless, Tron’s weight in his lap sinking against him a little deeper, his restless, roving touch digging into him.
With one hand he tilts Tron’s head towards himself to kiss him again, to gasp into his mouth; the other he finally wraps around his own need, coming in a handful of strokes; and on top of him Tron pulls taut, breaking the kiss, leaving Flynn to mouth needily at his throat, to rub his fingers into the sparkling circuits on his back.
The lines between them blur; they’re a surging tangle of energy, code joined together in perfect harmony, white-hot rush of brightness and power that makes Flynn see stars. He thinks he’s calling Tron’s name; he thinks Tron cradles him close, impossibly close, like they’re inside one another; he thinks it’s never going to end. It must last hours, real-world hours—
He’s a part of the Grid, a part and the whole; feels all of its code brush past him, familiar, rumbling deep in his bones. His creation, his system, letting him in. Flynn senses the building blocks of code, sectors and districts, the magnificently tall structures crisscrossed with labyrinthine streets, with the lightcycles and lightrail cars hurrying along, with programs going about their business; for a moment, for a lifetime, he’s a part of it all, stretching in every direction, infinite.
And Tron leads him through it.
“Flynn,” murmured into his ear. Infinitely, overwhelmingly fond. Still charged. Still breathless. “My User.” He’s never sounded more awed. “You must go back.”
Flynn blinks his eyes open. They’re still tangled together, him and Tron. His cheek is resting on Tron’s shoulder. He nuzzles into it without thinking.
“Back?”
The energy still loops between them. Through it, he senses Tron smile. “To your world.”
“This is my world,” Flynn mutters deliriously. Brushes his lips over the side of Tron’s neck. “You’re—”
“Shh,” Tron interrupts him. Still smiling. The energy in his circuits thrums with satisfaction. “No arguing. The portal closes soon.”
He rubs a soothing hand up and down Flynn’s back, tucks a stray curl behind his ear, kisses his temple. Waits. He always waits.
“Come on.”
Flynn groans, but lets himself get pulled to his feet. Grabs his shirt off the ground. Rezzes the rest of his clothes in. Half expecting himself to collapse, but his body is remembering how to be a body and not a tangle of pure energy surprisingly fast. There’s still traces of it—in the way Tron’s touch lingers on his back, in the way he aches to link up with his program again—but it will have to do. Until next time.
He walks alongside Tron, an arm looped around his shoulders, for balance and comfort both.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he mutters.
With that low, strange purr again Tron drags him towards a wall to pin him against it and kiss him, slow and deep, fingers locked around Flynn’s wrists, body pressed flush to his, swallowing Flynn’s moan.
Flynn lets his head fall back against the wall, looks at Tron, the drowsiness slowly giving way. He faces his program head on, notes the faint blush of lavender-pink still colouring his light-lines, notes the brightness of his eyes.
“Soon,” he says again, barely above a whisper.
The Grid’s a part of him now, or maybe it’s always been a part of him, just as he’s a part of it; and the connection with Tron burns brightest of all.
“I’ll wait for you,” Tron promises, and it should sound ridiculous, because Flynn’s going to be gone for hours at most, but it comes out—genuine. Calm and sure and true, the way maybe only a program can be.
Flynn laughs, eyes cast downwards.
They land on the tangled piece of code he was working on, earlier, sitting perfectly between his feet. Untangled now.
Flynn shakes his head. Grins. Steals one more kiss from Tron before pushing off the wall.
The half-rendered code behind his back brightens, as if alive.