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*****

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Author's Note:

If you've read my weirdass "Amok Time Lord" series from ages ago, you know that I'm capable of branching out into fandoms besides Star Trek TOS. But also that the way I start that process is through crossovers.

This story was a recent attempt at using that same method to cope with a.... sudden, unexpected interest.

Which happens to be the circuit-porn type of fanfic sex scene, as popularized (somewhat, but not nearly enough) in the Tron fandom.

(Believe me, this surprised me as much as anyone. But after the privilege of being a K/S fan so long, I guess I was due to experience the rare-pair/rare-fandom agony for once. Dammit.)

(This was going to be the first Tron fic I posted. It didn't end up happening that way, LOL. My plotbunny warren is Efrafa right now, and this big unwieldy story took a WHILE to escape from there through all the overcrowding.)

(But, NOW it is mating season, hell yeah. This thing is DONE. And it's the 56th [multiple of seven!] anniversary of Amok Time, so I have NO excuse not to post it today.)

Anyway: Trek/Tron crossover!

Sorta.

The Trek is TOS, with established Kirk/Spock in an adventurous open relationship. (Implied to have started two years earlier, at Spock's first pon farr. See the 1967 episode Amok Time-- and, like, the whole Kirk/Spock fandom-- for reference on the Vulcan mating cycle.)

The Tron is a proto-Holodeck simulation, programmed by an extremely avid gaming-history nerd, and now forming spontaneous consciousness (as you do, sometimes, in the Star Trek world).

More open relationship stuff going on there, with a Tron/ Yori/ Ram/ KevinFlynn sorta-polycule (it's complicated.)

The way computers work in this story is based primarily on how they seem to work in TOS, secondarily on how they seem to work in Tron, and approximately 0% on how they work in real life.

(More notes at the end, about the tropes and stories of this fandom and why they're working sooooo well for my chaotic brain right now.)

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*****

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Fires and Walls

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*****

-

Simulation: activate.

The room that shimmers into existence is far from the entry point, far from where the players are now preparing to log in. But even unseen, it's there.

A large, dim chamber. It would be painfully bare if not for the intricate arrangement of light projections curling and refracting across the walls. Spirals, almost-floral geometric designs, rainbow spectra, fractals in jewel-toned color gradients.

The three figures who appear within it show no awareness of the passage of time since they were last deactivated. In their memories, it's been only a moment since the tall and overheated one began to stir on the cushions; since the slender one in the flowing gown brought him a cup of liquid energy and bent down trying to make him drink.

She appears out of nothingness, in the act of tipping the cup toward his resisting mouth. At last she gives up, with a sigh... conscious only of frustration, not of any gap in time.

Beside her, Ram doesn't know what to do with himself; his lithe limbs can't stay still for a picocycle as he paces back and forth, biting his lower lip as he gazes piteously down at Tron. "How's he doing? Is he..."

Yori sets the cup aside, folds her hands... wants to comfort Ram but can't. "I don't think he's any better. I think it's starting to happen to him again."

They're both quiet for a moment, eyes fixated on where Tron is laid out on the low bed, in the middle of that silken pile of cushions, the only texture he can bear to touch for any significant amount of time. The equally soft blanket they covered him with, when he was shuddering with chills, has been thrown off and lies crumpled around him, a sign he's running hot now.

Tron's eyes are closed tight, his hair tousled and spiked from how much his head's been tossing from side to side on the cushions. Waves of color course down the glowing circuit lines of his body, a rainbow heavy on the warm end of the spectrum, navy-indigo-violet-magenta-crimson. Trembles follow in their wake.

Yori has never seen anything like it.

Nor has Ram, probably. Not before this cycle. Ram himself is fidgeting and blushing very attractively all down the circuit-lines of his neck, just from the sight. "His, um, attacks are getting more frequent, aren't they."

"It seems like it." Yori kneels by Tron's bedside, smoothing his hair a few times, with tremors in her hands. "Burning." She can't ignore how he leans into her touch. How he moans on a subsonic level, pressing hungrily against her.

"Ohh." Ram draws in a breath. "We should start again right away, then. Shouldn't we."

"I don't know. I mean, I want to. So badly. I can't stand seeing him in so much pain. And it's always such a relief when we bring him out of it. But... I don't know if what we do is really helping."

Ram looks confused. "But it always brings him out of it."

"For a while, but then the next spell comes along even sooner. I've been timing them."

"So, what, you think we should just leave him, to see if he gets through one without any help? You think that might cure him? 'Cause I don't. I think it might derezz him."

Yori nods, miserably. As little as it helps, what they've been doing still seems like the only thing to be done.

She just hates the idea that it might not be enough.

"Oh," Tron groans, arching his body on the cushions. "Oh, Users..."

"You know when he says that, he's not just swearing," Ram says quietly. "He's calling out for them."

"I know." Yori's hands clench tight around each other. "Because they give him more relief. Somehow it lasts longer, when Users are here to help him."

"Yeah." Ram takes a breath. "But I think that's mostly just because they feel more like... him."

Flynn. The name stays silent between them.

"And yet," Yori says bitterly. "And yet, whenever ...he... offers to help, he..." and this time she gestures to the fevered figure on the cushions "--always just turns away. No matter how badly he needs it."

"Yeah." Ram nods. "Do you think if he didn't, if he didn't refuse... maybe that would be what actually helps?"

"I'm not sure." Yori's face hardens. "He..." and this time it means Flynn again. "He is not the same as he used to be."

"He's not even the same from one microcycle to the next," Ram says. "It makes no sense."

"None," Yori agrees. "And he's never the way he was before, when we all loved each other together."

"I miss him," Ram says with sudden fierceness. "I miss the way he was. So much. And I miss how Tron used to be, with him."

"Oh, believe me, so do I." Yori winces. "It hurts. Hurts so much. None of this makes any sense. I don't understand what's happened to the Grid."

"Please," Tron cries out in sudden anguish. "Please."

Yori and Ram look at each other, acknowledging both the pain of it all, and the way that desperate voice, already at the point of begging for them, makes the color rise and pulse in all their circuits. Readying them to go to him, to help... because right now, they're the only ones who can.

-

*****

-

Captain Kirk picks his way through a graveyard of two-hundred-year-old computer towers, careful to maneuver his feet around the scattered debris of the floor to avoid stepping on wired controllers, tome-sized game guides, masking-tape-labeled cases of CDs and floppy disks. His First Officer follows his path with the usual catlike Vulcan grace, despite giving off a faint aura of distaste.

In a far back corner there is, as promised, one human, hunched over some antique gaming console, attention completely absorbed.

A quiet and motionless human. Large, soft, androgynous. Faded denim pants and a light cotton shirt, printed with some inscrutable meme, hang loosely over a body that Kirk can't easily place as male or female.

He puts aside the thought, because guessing such things isn't asked of him at the moment. He and Spock have been given the developer's name (Skyler Montiel) and pronouns (fluid, she/he/they, currently expressing a preference for "they.") The question of how to address them is not an issue. The mission concerns, primarily, their invention.

"I'm told you have requested our assistance with your virtual reality project, Mx. Montiel," he begins.

"Ye...." The figure jumps, switches off the console and whirls around, eyes wide. A pale face with blotches shading rapidly to red, framed by a shoulder-length mess of sandy hair that's just whipped itself even more out of order. The eyes are large, dark, frantic.

"Holy hell." Their mouth just opens and closes, for a few seconds, before a torrent bursts free. "Hell. Omigod. Those Federation guys actually came through. I mean... shit... god I'm sorry, I didn't mean to drag you here away from actually important shit, I didn't think they'd actually do it, I don't know how much they even told you but I know it's all about throwing all the resources at me they can, I know they think this is gonna transform entertainment in some whole new way or something --I mean, dammit, I just wanted my code debugged and I want it to work, that's all. But the Fedders took an interest, and I hit this, like, wall where it's beyond my own debugging skill, and they asked whose help I'd want, if I could pick anyone, anyone at all, and omigod you're really here..."

Developer Montiel rises to their feet and faces Kirk and Spock, eyes panning between the two... with a moment of indecision before offering the Vulcan salute instead of a handshake.

"Omigod, sorry. Babbling. I didn't seriously think they'd do it. Welcome to my fricking catastrophic mess of an office, don't have a seat, there's obsolete tech on top of everything. You can call me Skyler... Wow. You're really here. Captain. Commander. It's... an honor."

-

*****

-

"Sit up." Yori's stroking hand tightens in Tron's hair and pulls.

With a moan he follows her guidance, letting her rearrange the cushions and climb up to sit behind him on the bed, his body now more seated than reclined, legs off the edge. She motions to Ram, a subtle signal, familiar by now, and watches him obey. Watches him get into position on his knees upon the floor, between Tron's legs.

Arms round Tron's shoulders from behind, Yori brings her mouth close to his ear to begin the all-too-familiar ritual. Oh, his skin is hot under her touch, and she can feel so much electric charge just radiating off his circuits. She is careful not to brush any of them quite yet.

"What do you need?" she whispers, just enough breath against the curve of his ear, one of the few uncircuited spots on his body that she knows could make him groan with just the right touches.

And he does groan now, heavy and deep, far louder than that touch would usually have warranted, as he tries to lean back against her mouth. "Need... ah!... r-restart..."

Yori moves back out of reach. "And can you tell me how much time has passed since you last asked us to restart you?"

"Forty-three point.... three one nanocycles." The circuits of his arms glow urgent fractals of magenta that pulse into sight and then fade, again, again, dimmed only slightly in the pause when he struggles to calculate time.

"Correct." She caresses Tron's jaw,... then grips it, in a sudden hard pressure, turning it towards her.

"Can you give me your reason for needing another restart again, so soon?"

"Nnhh..." He responds to the rough handling in a whole-body tremor. "S-search error..."

"Specify." As she holds Tron's face in forced eye contact, she motions again to Ram and follows in her peripheral vision as he plays his role, grasping Tron's wrists and holding them down at his sides, bringing his own (already quivering and temptingly lavender-circuited) body just close enough to make Tron writhe and arch up in longing.

"Search-- returned-- in-incomplete-results-aaaah!" Tron's cry of frustration hurts. Yori knows how much he craves each and every touch during these times, how uncontrollably he burns for both her and Ram, and how this is the only way she's found to bring him satisfaction that lasts even a short while: for them both to tease him entirely out of his mind before permitting him release, making it that much more intense. But that awareness does nothing to stop the empathetic ache of seeing him like this.

She clenches her hand, still tangled in his hair, and pulls again, just enough to create a spike of sensation through him that she knows he cannot categorize as either pain or pleasure, though it triggers the reactions of both. "What search? What results? Submit a full error report, program. Then I'll think about restarting you."

He's trembling in waves now, his voice has the cadence of begging. "...User... not found..."

"Ah. Ah, I see." She jerks again on his hair, makes him whimper. "You just couldn't hold yourself back from searching for him, again, could you? And do you mean to tell me your search didn't bring up kev_fly.holo, or anything at all in the kev_fly directory--"

"N-not him, Yori. Kev_fly isn't him. It's not the User. It's a program and it's not enough, it's not what we need--"

She leans just close enough to his face to make his lips part hungrily, as she still grips his hair without mercy, holds him back from leaning any closer to her in response. "We have been over this, Tron. The kev_fly program is the interface he uses to connect. If it's in use, he is here. Was it in use?"

"Y-yes," he gasps, straining, "yes, but--"

Yori's circuits pulse in sympathy. She can sense it too. There are Users preparing to rez in right now, out there... including Flynn's interface. And yes, recognizing that, and feeling it activate, doesn't stop it from feeling wrong.

She does understand.

That doesn't mean she can fix it.

-

*****

-

Spock looks around at the bare, crisscrossed walls, not yet displaying any images. There is very little else in the room, besides a small console topped with some quite simple controls.

"Hologrid?"

Skyler shrugs. "It's what I'm calling it for now. Probably gotta replace "grid" with something else. Especially for this game... because that's gonna cause some meta-levels of confusion right there."

"So, the prototype simulation you intend to show us..."

"...Isn't my own invention, not totally. This simulation itself is an idea reworked from an old movie and videogame franchise. One of the really old ones. Nineteen-eighties, the first peak of Terran video gaming. Public domain now for over a century, thank god, corporations and their intellectual property were a fricking dystopia back then." Thumbing an almost cartoonish big red switch, Skyler generates a very satisfying click.

Holographic text snaps into existence, meters tall, hanging in the air before them: a single all-caps word.

"TRON?"

They shrug again. "Seemed fitting, to pick this one for my first trials. But since then, I have become painfully aware that I'm an absolute dumbass. Should have started with fricking Tetris or something."

-

*****

-

Yori can feel Tron starting to break, in the soft cry that follows the scrape of her fingernails down the circuits of his forearm.

And she knows, from the many, many other times, just exactly when her tone has to change to relieve the tension, to give him some measure of what he seems to need.

"I know. I know." Quieter, softer. "It doesn't feel the same as it used to."

Hands stroking comfort across Tron's circuits now, instead of discipline. "Yes. He's changed. I know. It hurts, it hurts me too. But he's the only Flynn we have. You won't somehow find a more real version of him, no matter how many times you run that same search over and over. You need to let it go. Do you understand me?"

He nods, in a silence that holds back sobs.

"Good. Tell me what's happening to you. How does it feel? Where does it hurt?"

Circuits at his hips and shoulders pulse a vivid gradient of red-purple, answering better than he could with words. "S-sensitive. Overstimulated..."

Her hands brush lightly over his shoulders, while below, Ram caresses the glow on his hips and thighs, with just enough gentle pressure, and that look in his eyes of utter adoration that Tron may or may not even notice.

Yori's mouth returns to Tron's ear. "Now what do you need?"

With a moan through clenched teeth, Tron leans back hard into both. "--yes-- yesyesyes-- touch-yes-harder moremoremore--"

"Hmmm." Yori keeps her lips very close to him, while her hands deepen the massage, violet spreading out like bruises from it. "Unconventional logic there, program. Overstimulated, but also needing more stimulation? How do you explain--"

The violent jolt of Tron's whole body at those words, the noise he makes, come as a shock-- far enough outside the usual ritual to make both Ram and Yori flinch in startlement. And then it keeps going, electric convulsions running through him faster and faster, the moan building to a rough scream--

Ram's the first to recover from the surprise of it... as he often does with Tron's more unusual sudden needs, adapting fast.

Now he slides in close between those tense thighs, pulling himself up until he, too can whisper in Tron's ear as he rocks their hips together, circuits pressing on circuits, sparks flashing between them. "Ooh, wow, you're really going to crash already, just from a paradox, aren't you? Oh yeah, yeah you are... you needy, pent-up--"

Apparently it's just what Tron needs to hear. The arch and cry of his overload holds all three of them, pressed together, almost unmoving--

--energy shuddering through him hot and hard, again, again-- spasming his whole body with wave after wave-- circuits burning, power surges bursting free from him in jolts of hot electricity and flashes of blinding light, in between scream after desperate scream of relief--

--until, at last, it subsides into tremors and final, blessed relaxation, as he collapses across the cushions between them.

Yori and Ram look at each other for a moment, still a bit stunned, amid the soft sounds of Tron's reboot cycle beginning.

"That was... concerning," Ram says, blushing with downcast eyes, watching the frenzied play of color that washes over his own circuits in rhythm with his jagged breaths. "And should, um, really not have turned me on as much as it did."

Yori nods between deep breaths of her own, between rushes of lavender and magenta that she struggles already to control. "Small blessings, at least you're still capable of processing that contradiction without..." She gestures to the unconscious Tron, her breath finally coming out in a small huff of several conflicting types of frustration.

"Mmmh." Ram bites his lip, jaw quivering. "But you know that just because I haven't, um, prematurely cascaded, that doesn't mean I don't still need--"

"Shh, yes, I know." Yori lets the shiver run through her that she's been trying to suppress. "Yes. Mmh... Me too, Ram." Moving around Tron to get to Ram, she closes her eyes in the relief of pressing up close to him, mouth against his neck, absorbing the tremors she generates. "Yeah. Ah. And we'll take care of each other, all right?-- then, afterwards, we can see what's going on with the Users out there."

-

*****

-

"So, what problems should we be on the lookout for?"

Skyler, readying the Hologrid for player login, still won't meet Captain Kirk's eyes. "You'll know it when you see it. Just the constant, endless damn crashing."

Kirk nods, a motion of somewhat-impatient encouragement. "And what, exactly, is it that keeps crashing?"

"Tron." And here, a mysterious blush crosses Skyler's features.

"The whole simulation, then?"

"No, not the whole simulation. One part. Just the one... out of hundreds of different programs I spent the last decade writing and combining together to create this whole experience! Tron, the eponymous fricking main character. Out of everything, that's what crashes!"

Kirk blinks. "...Have you noticed a pattern to what triggers it?"

"No damn idea. Barely, anyway. I know the glitch doesn't happen when he's picked as a player character, only when he's an NPC. Which is damn inconvenient, since the whole way I've set up the game, with players rezzing in as Users, there's barely any opportunity for him to be playable at all! But beyond that, I've been wracking my damn brain to find any pattern."

They slouch over, hands in pockets. "This issue didn't show up at all through my own whole debugging process. It was in beta, getting play-tested by a dozen or so gamers while I was in talks with the Fedder entertainment committee who wanted it for their new pet project... 'One on every starship! Revolutionize relaxation and training for crews in space!' But then I started getting bug reports one after another --Tron's glitching, Tron crashed, Tron won't function five minutes before we have to reload him again. Just that one character! Everything else totally fine!"

"Noticed anything that seems to help?"

"Damn if I know." Their blush, inexplicably, deepens. "I went back in after all those bug reports, I rebooted the Tron character a few times, then suddenly everything was fine-- we did playthrough after playthrough with no problem at all! Everything worked great for like a month. Long enough to get everything finalized with that committee, and I went on an absolute splurge of a vacation for three months to celebrate, while opening it up to more play-testers who were more just excited to try it than expecting to find bugs..."

They scowl. "But then I came home to an inbox full of damn crash reports again! Since then, I've... I've just given up, kept the whole sim on pause, stayed out. I've examined and reexamined the code from outside, but I cannot find even a hint of what could be causing this. It's beyond me."

Kirk gives a reassuring smile. "I see. Well, we'll do what we can to find the problem and resolve it."

"Don't I know it! You beat the Kobayashi Maru; you can beat this. And I'm thankful, believe me." They tap the large square keys on a panel beside the switch, producing more sharp clicks that echo in the empty room. "Just a sec, gonna sign you in with the root login. I'll go in with the guest login to show you around-- take all the time you need after that, and call me on the communicator if you need anything. Preference for avatars?"

"I'm not especially familiar with the game. Which ones interact the most with the Tron character?"

"Ooh, good approach. Hmm... If I was to recommend, I'd say you-- Captain-- go with Kevin Flynn, and Commander Spock can have Alan. I'll be Lora just long enough to get you settled, and then Lora will become a soulless NPC while I run off to be a chaos goblin having a panic attack in my office over having just met my fricking heroes. But again, don't hesitate to call me with any questions! Oh, and if you want to shift player POV any time and be Lora or Roy or any of the other NPCs for a while, here's the controller..."

-

*****

-

"Now, Ram, please." Yori leans hard into his chest circuits; her voice trembles.

"Mhh..!" Ram tosses his head back, bites his quivering lower lip, feels himself become a blaze of desire as he clambers onto the bed and wraps his arms around Yori from behind. Pressed hot and needy against her back, his mouth now dipping down to taste her ears and neck, hands spread across her thighs, digging his fingers into every circuit there as he clasps her urgently against his own bucking hips. The relief of contact is enough to make him groan like he's much closer to overloading than he ought to be, and the sound Yori makes in reply is just as bad, and she turns and wrestles him into submission underneath her with a strength that electrifies him all over.

As Tron lies insensate in his reboot cycle, they writhe on the sheets nearby, still moaning, with Ram now sprawled on his back and Yori turning rapidly to pin him down, thighs spread across him, the burning circuit-clusters between their legs meeting and pressing and oh, yes, static building, building, bursting in electric waves from every point of contact much too fast, too sudden and uncontrollable...

But it lasts-- a while, anyway, longer than Ram expected at least-- and Yori is ferocious, her energy as intense as Tron's, and Ram's on fire from it even more than usual, shuddering and sobbing his desperation between her sharp little cries as she claws hard into the fluorescent branches of violet that course down his arms, as she attacks the pulsing glow of his neck-circuits until they bruise, biting and scraping hard enough to corrupt the code of them, and--

--he groans, trembles, blushing hot all over in an embarrassingly needy spectrum somewhere in the range from #734F96 to #895EA7, and pushes back just as hard into the pain as into the pleasure, driving them as fast as he can into a too-rapid release because it's so, so good, it might actually manage to make them both forget for a moment how much fragging trouble they're all in--

--One more pair of wild, gasping little screams, their voices almost indistinguishable as they overlap, and then, all too fast... Shockwave. Crash. Shutdown.

Quiet.

Finally.

A few nanocyles of blissful nothing.

Still doesn't feel like enough.

By the time they come back online, Tron's still out of it. Which is not a good sign, but Yori looks him over and seems sure he'll activate soon, at least soon enough to follow them when they go to meet the new visitors.

"What do you suppose they'll want this time?" Ram says, getting shakily to his feet.

Yori drinks the last of Tron's rejected glass of energy, and shrugs as she goes to turn off the lights. "I don't know. Probably the usual. Lightcycle rides. Disc games. With any luck, maybe they'll at least stay around for a while after they see what their presence does to him, and not just leave him like... like before."

With a regretful sigh, she bends down and touches a design on the intricate rug centered on the floor. All around the room, patterns of color and light begin to shift. Flower-like geometry folds down into singular lines. Widespread glowing color gradients compress themselves into beams of white, all the tiny streams leaping down into the softness of the rug, like a sprinkler in reverse.

When every wall and surface is drained to plain dull gray, the patterned glow of the rug itself starts to fade, down to a shrinking stain of color in the center that finally vanishes, leaving it as plain as a doormat as they step over it to go outside.

"We'll see, anyway."

-

*****

-

It's strangely dim in here, Spock observes. A world of simple polygons in a range of soft hues, accented here and there with lines of glowing light-- and the occasional decoration that stands out with its complex geometric patterns and gradients of color. A landscape that alternately lulls and surprises the eye.

The people stand out against the setting, too, in more than one way. Most background characters they pass are humanoid Programs, walking along the paths between buildings, performing various tasks in repair or maintenance of the streets and structures, sometimes just sitting together at tables sharing luminescent green or blue drinks.

For the most part they're clad in white bodysuits (...or perhaps that shell is simply part of their skin?...) and patterned all over with circuitry. The patterns glow in various colors, most commonly a light cyan. Faces, in contrast, are dim and near-colorless: grayscale in some lights, sepia in others.

This goes for all the Program characters as well as Spock himself (he notes, seeing himself reflected in a window), and his captain, and their current two companions, Lora and Roy. All four have costumes projected onto them by the simulation: in their case these are close-fitting dark-gray tracksuits, traced with white circuitry-patterns slightly less complex than those of the Programs.

Developer Skyler Montiel claims to have designed these outfits to indicate that they are Users. However, only three of the wearers are, in fact, truly "Users" as Spock understands it: himself, Kirk, and Skyler, who is using the Lora avatar. The fourth, the curly-haired young man named Roy, is another NPC, and therefore a "program" as far as Spock is concerned (whatever he may represent on other meta-levels of the fiction).

Skyler has shown them the Lora character as an NPC, a slim blonde lady in her twenties or early thirties. Occupied by Skyler, that same avatar has shifted into something partway between its original shape and Skyler's own build and appearance, with a face recognizable as Skyler but framed by Lora's long pale hair.

"It's a mishmash," they explain, as they guide Kirk and Spock toward the Game Grid. "I combined aspects of both movies, the Uprising animated series, a few of the XBox and Playstation games. But primarily centered around the 1982 movie. Sort of a diverging storyline after that, a couple years later... where Flynn spent more time online with his actual friends from work, Alan and Lora and Roy and so on. I figure, if he'd let them into his world more, they'd have tempered his effect on it..."

Spock nods politely. The names and storylines are still unfamiliar to him, but some of it is becoming clearer as he listens to the rambling context.

"So," Skyler continues, "instead of creating a whole new Grid of his own, Flynn in this timeline just kept working on the one inside the original system, making it better for everyone, with plenty of input from the other programmers. And of course Ram is rerezzed, Yori's still around... you'll meet them in a little while."

"There are also... disc battles and lightcycle races, right?" Kirk has researched this somewhat more than Spock, it seems.

Skyler nods. "In this version they're nonlethal-- friendly competition between characters. Conflicts are mostly about fighting off temporary threats from outside, viruses and gridbugs and so on. And about, like, social dynamics of characters teaming up for all that." They lower their eyes self-consciously. "I know that all sounds kind of corny, maybe not the sort of thing serious gamers are into..."

"No, no, I understand." Kirk's smile is as charming as ever. "Makes sense to me. Games like this are meant for entertainment and relaxation, aren't they? It seems your goal was to create a happier world for the characters you cared about, and of course I can understand how you'd find that an entertaining and relaxing place to spend time."

"Yeah..." Their head lowers, mood visibly darkening. "You'd think. You'd think it would be."

Kirk tilts his own head in curiosity. "Can you go into a little more detail about what exactly happens when the game glitches? I know you said we'd know when we see, but it would help to be a little more prepared than--"

Skyler's face almost disappears into Lora's collar. "It's... very hard to explain. But part of the reason I thought to call you two was... well, besides your obvious god-tier computer skills, I had a feeling you'd both understand it. That you'd be more up for investigating it than most people are."

They speak as if it's difficult to get the words out, through some rather deep inhibitions. Spock gets a distinct sense there's a lot more that those same inhibitions are holding back.

"But again-- if I'm wrong, if you aren't up for it-- if you have to stop the game any time and call me for any questions or help or anything-- the controller's right there."

At this moment, white-clad helmeted figures begin to round a corner, coming into view one at a time, perhaps two blocks away.

One is slender and feminine, one lanky and boyish... then a third, staggering aimlessly behind them, whose build suggests he could be quite a formidable figure if he were in almost any frame of mind other than... whatever this is.

And at this same moment, the Lora avatar shimmers, fades a second, and comes back looking fully like the Lora character-- no trace remaining of Developer Skyler Montiel, whose courage to face this in person has now quite suddenly run out.

Spock visualizes Skyler fleeing, invisible, through the simulation to the exit, seeking refuge from overwhelm... back to the familiarity of their office for their prophesied panic attack. He does not trust that the controller would bring them back here, either now or later.

That promise may have been genuine, Spock admits... but it strikes him very much as the type of promise made in a moment of unwarranted self-confidence and then broken by one's own unrecognized limitations.

For now, he suspects he and Jim must proceed as though they are on their own.

-

*****

-

The lightcycle grid is too loud, too bright. Captain Kirk wipes his forehead, trying to make sense of events so far.

When Skyler said "crash," Kirk had imagined a wide range of possibilities, with potential solutions prepared to address each. These, unfortunately, did not include the scenario of literally wrecking a motorized vehicle.

Could've been worse, though, Kirk thinks as he closes down the fairing of his own lightcycle over his and Tron's heads.

The white-suited trio-- Tron and Yori and Ram-- had seemed distracted, yes, but agreeable enough. They'd hospitably shown Kirk and Spock around the area-- even rounding up some other NPCs for a friendly game of lightcycles. And nothing had really gone wrong... not until Tron, the hero of the Grid, the much-touted, undefeated legend of a warrior and protector, totally lost control and wiped out his bike on an easy-as-hell turn.

Kirk shakes his head. Could've been much worse. A crash, on this nonlethal game-grid, doesn't cause harm to the character or player, not even simulated in-game damage. And Tron didn't exactly smash the cycle into anything, either-- just lost balance and tipped the whole thing over, hitting the ground with enough impact to derezz it back into the baton it came from.

Tron seems dazed by the fall, but not hurt-- at least, still responsive enough to be more than just dead weight when Kirk helps him up onto the back of his own bike. Though this wasn't among Kirk's planned-for scenarios, he's still able to conclude that the best solution is to complete the game, using his own vehicle to get Tron back to the starting point, and then go from there.

It's not Kirk's first time on a motorcycle. Not his first time riding with a passenger behind him either-- and he was a bit concerned whether Tron could even handle that right now. The answer is mixed. In his current state, Tron doesn't seem to process the need for both riders to shift weight and lean with each turn-- but at least he's holding himself up, not flopping around like someone asleep or dead, so it could definitely be worse. Especially with how this bike is programmed to handle, and its size and aerodynamic shape compared to most motorcycles out in the real world. Best-case scenario, really. Kirk isn't having any trouble steering, even with Tron clinging on behind him.

And he's not dealing with arms wrapped in some sort of stranglehold around him, either, thank goodness. Just hands gripping onto both his hips, very tightly.

A bit too tightly, perhaps.

Kirk winces in discomfort as he locates Spock's lightcycle and pulls up alongside him, caging their final competitor in between.

Playing in cooperative mode, Spock and Kirk have both learned this move pretty well by now. "Ready?" Kirk calls out over the bike-to-bike communicator.

They're close to winning; they've already trapped most of their NPC rivals in the maze. There were six of them at the start, divided into teams of three to compete against Kirk and Spock and Tron. The programmer characters Lora, Roy and Walter are on one team, and on another are their respective programs, Yori, Ram and Dumont, copies of the same three character renders in blue-circuited white bodysuits and helmets instead of the dark tracksuits their Users wear.

From what Kirk has gathered of the in-universe lore, each Program visually resembles its creator. Although he and Spock still see each other as their real-world forms, the NPCs treat Spock as "Alan," a character with the same face as Tron... while Kirk's own avatar is supposed to resemble another program not appearing in this scene.

Yori and Ram were surprisingly easy to beat, their responses slow-- barely even like NPC's, more like players too distracted to even care. In fact Kirk had begun wondering if this game was set on extreme easy mode (and feeling just a bit insulted about Developer Montiel's estimate of him)-- when Lora blindsided him and Spock, and very nearly won against both of them just by the element of surprise.

They ended up defeating her by a hair, and the experience just barely heightened their vigilance enough to seize victory from the jaws of defeat against Dumont and then Walter-- both of whom handled their lightcycles with startling dexterity for a couple of identical not-so-athletic-looking elderly men. (Okay, Montiel. Well played.)

Now, if they can beat this final opponent-- Roy, who has managed to outlast the rest of his fellow NPCs-- the game will be over and they can get back to the main grid to discuss a plan of action.

Before Kirk can pick up any reply from Spock, though, he feels the hands on his hips tighten a bit more.

At this speed, he doesn't dare turn back for a visual check on Tron. He just has to wait for Spock's answer, and hope Tron is still more-or-less functional-- at least enough to continue their diagnostic of what the hell's going wrong with it, as soon as they finish the game.

"Do you copy? Spock? Ready? "

And it's Tron who answers first. Answers with a spasm of clenching hands, a hard lean of his weight against Kirk's back... and a low, throat-deep groan.

Again, Kirk fights the urge to turn back to check Tron for injury. And that proves unnecessary, in any case... because the groan goes on, rumbling against Kirk's back, gradually transforming into an unmistakably not-injured-sounding "yyeeesssss."

A rush of shocked, embarrassed heat runs through Captain Kirk's whole body. Suddenly he's very, very aware of the bike's persistent vibration between his legs.

He digs in his heels, leaning forward. Just a little further, then we can get off this thing and find out what the hell is happening.

Thank God, Spock chooses that moment to finally come through on the communicator. "Ready."

Trying to ignore what he's hearing behind him-- what he's feeling pressed against his lower spine-- Kirk grips the handles, preparing for the maneuver.

As one, he and Spock speed up to overtake Roy's bike. Spock makes a lightning-fast lane-change to the right at the same moment Kirk does the same to the left, bringing their cycles close enough to leave no space for Roy to keep going.

The sudden turn jolts Tron so hard that his weight shifts against Kirk's back, enough to feel an actual momentary wobble before the bike's excellent controls get it back into balance.

Kirk glances to the side, grateful to catch a glimpse of Spock on the lightcycle that now speeds alongside his. He can't tell, in that brief glance, whether Spock can see Tron hanging onto him from behind-- or whether Spock shows any reaction to the look that must be on Tron's face, or the movements --oh-- the movements he's now making.

Kirk leans down and tries very, very hard to just focus on the grid ahead.

As he and Spock zoom onward side by side, the maze-like trails that form behind them have created what might as well be an impassable wall for their rival. In a lethal game, the rider would hit the wall and be smashed to bits. In this version, Roy's bike simply comes to a stop, out of the game until next time.

They've won. Now they just have to loop around the rest of the lightcycle grid to return to the starting line, upon which they'll reach a save point and be able to formulate the next step.

Could be worse, Kirk reminds himself. Almost there. This is the home stretch, very few potential distractions left.

Probably the least disruptive time for his passenger to finally... oh holy hell...lose all inhibitions and start really grinding against Kirk's backside now, whole body flush against him and undulating with each thrust, hands pulling Kirk's hips again and again into the suddenly elevated heat between his thighs and moaning out loud in a downright obscene voice, mouth so close to Kirk's neck he can feel it.

Kirk still can't turn to look back, but even staring straight ahead he's starting to see flashes of color, glinting off the transparent fairing and every surface under it-- a purple and lavender lightshow that must be coming off those circuits on Tron's body itself, and of course that would be part of how sexual pleasure gets expressed in this weird, glowy world--

The damn vibrations of the damn bike sure as hell aren't helping. Either to calm Tron down... or to allow Kirk any control over his own body's response.

Just a few seconds more.

These waves of arousal through Kirk's body are really just unreasonable. But perhaps to be expected, considering a healthy human sex drive, an engine functioning as basically a giant vibrator beneath him, an unexpectedly amorous seat-partner behind him...

... and the fact that all this reminds him very much of a certain night about two years ago-- right after a certain unauthorized mission to the planet Vulcan-- right before a certain significant reevaluation of the dynamic between captain and first officer aboard the Enterprise.

What the hell is he going to tell Spock?

He'll find out soon enough. They're slowing down now, approaching the save point.

And Kirk can at least sense, through the mostly-quiet mindlink of their mating bond, that Spock is aware of something out of the ordinary happening. And also enough aware of Kirk's state of mind to be reassured he isn't in danger, despite how flustered he is.

He might not have to tell Spock much.

What's happening is... really pretty obvious, all things considered. (Why it's happening is a whole different question. Which they'll get to. Soon. He hopes.)

As the lightcycle slows down, the movement inside it is speeding up. By the time Kirk brings it to a stop and retracts the roof, Tron is burning hot against his back, thighs and hands clenched hard around his hips, riding him in short erratic jerks that sync to the high-pitched, fast little cries of desperation bursting out with his hyperventilating breaths. Kirk himself is damn near fully aroused by now, but Tron is definitely past the point of no return and Kirk is facing the realization that whatever the hell equates to an orgasm for these Program characters is a few seconds away from happening right here against his ass, and who in the absolute fuck wrote these game mechanics--

Spock is standing right beside the lightcycle now, baton in hand. "Jim?"

Tron goes totally, suddenly still against Kirk's back.

For a second all Kirk can think is, aaand this is it, he's coming ...but no, it isn't that kind of stillness. Slowly, he turns his head to look back.

His eyes meet those of the glitching program for the first time since he dragged him up onto the bike. And right now, seeming to really focus for the first time on Kirk and the avatar he wears, those eyes are expressing nothing but ...pure panic.

"Um... Tron?"

"Flynn." It's a sob-- through hands that have suddenly pulled back from Kirk's hips like from a hot stove, and are clenching now in fists pressed up against Tron's face. "Kevin Flynn, no, no, no I can't..."

He's still bucking in desperation, out of control against Kirk's body, but there's an expression of what Kirk can only call anguish washing over the sensitive features and it's hard to believe whoever did the graphics for this game managed to capture a look of such raw and conflicted and painful emotion--

Spock steps suddenly, forcefully forward, until he's almost face to face with Tron. The deep Vulcan voice goes almost completely monotone as he holds the program's eyes, leans down, and says, "What are you doing?"

Over the past few minutes, with what little cognitive power he could spare from the immediate crisis, Kirk has been imagining various different possibilities for what, exactly, might result from Spock seeing him and Tron in this compromising position. He hasn't quite gotten to preparing solutions for all problems that might arise, but for some of them he's at least speculated on where he might have to start.

And Kirk is now zero-for-two on the predicting-and-preparing front for today... because, once again, these did not include any scenario even remotely like what he's now witnessing.

For one more second, eyes locked onto Spock's, Tron stays absolutely motionless. Then, in a moan more heartrending than any sound he'd made thus far, he cries out, "Alan-1."

In a blur too fast for Kirk even to process, Tron has dismounted from the lightcycle seat --and from Kirk's backside-- and in the same single motion he's absolutely thrown himself onto Spock, so hard that they stumble back a few steps before achieving an unsteady sort of balance.

There's a part of Kirk that's instantly on guard, trying to process this as an attack, but that response freezes up in utter confusion as he watches the program entwine legs and arms around his first officer-- fall into a frenetic frenzy of thrusts against Spock's thigh-- reach up with desperately-clutching hands and pull Spock's face down into a kiss that reminds Kirk of some starving animal trying to devour another. His circuits are blazing incandescent violet and brightening to the point that all other details become hard to see-- Kirk shades his eyes, in reflex, but...

But it's unmistakable that, in the midst of all this, Spock doesn't fight back. Doesn't even try to retreat, or to push him away.

As the flash of circuitry becomes blinding; as the kiss-stifled moan intensifies up to the point of shattering into a hundred fragments of gasps and screams... Spock just keeps holding him. Large, strong Vulcan hands pressing into circuit-patterns on upper thighs, securing the frantic hips against the steady pressure of his leg between them. Elegant arch of neck and jaw, firm against the trembling assault-- and kissing back. Hard.

It should not be nearly this much of a turn-on.

And Kirk definitely should not just be sitting here astride his idling, vibrating engine, just staring as all this goes down.

By the time those outrageous violet lights fade down to a dim ice-blue-- by the time Tron goes limp and insensate in Spock's arms with a sudden weight that makes Spock stagger as he lowers him down--

--by the time Kirk has the presence of mind to finally derezz his bike and join Spock in his vigil over the unconscious program who's sprawled out on the gridded ground with his softened lights now pulsing in a calm, slow pattern--

--by this point, Kirk is hard enough to hurt.

-

*****

-

It's a serious effort to get his mind onto the task at hand. But he is the Captain, and he manages it. The NPCs have begun gathering around now: Lora, Roy, Walter, followed by their programs Yori and Ram and Dumont, all of them carrying their derezzed bikes in baton form and approaching to congratulate the winners.

And all of them stopping in their tracks, staring down at Tron.

Kirk notes, in a confused way, that the developer seems to have given the "Yori" and "Ram" programs a far more realistic set of body-language animations than their corresponding humans. The complex looks on their faces, the split-second shifts in microexpressions of brows and lips as those two steal moments of eye contact, face reacting to face, across this strange tableau... the rest of the NPCs seem frankly expressionless in comparison.

Spock's eyes are still focused on Tron, who's still powered down, lights dim, emitting some small computerized sounds like a drive starting up.

From his face and posture, he looks like someone deeply asleep. There's a smooth, soft, innocent look to his facial features, deepened by the relaxed state he's in right now.

Kirk supposes he's seen that look before, on partners recovering from intense orgasms.

His eyes can't help wandering further down the curves of that resting body, as he wonders just what an orgasm would entail for such a being.

The white shell of the suit definitely seems to be... well, skin, not a suit. Far too form-fitting to be clothing, and the neckline and cuffs have been rendered in such a way as to show one texture shading into the other. The character's already naked, and has been all day. He just isn't being portrayed with the anatomy a human would have.

Or, for that matter, anything close to human functions for it. From what Kirk saw when Tron climaxed, the imagery seemed to depict an electric overload... a release of pent-up excess energy through the whole circuit array, in the form of light and heat and motion.

Energy, he recalls, does also seem to come in liquid forms here... but that's for power input, programs getting a charge in the form of those glowing beverages he's seen them drink. He's not sure just what role that bulge between Tron's legs played in this whole energy-release process... but he doesn't see any sign of fluid on it.

...No, this is very much not humanoid sexual anatomy.

And he really, really doesn't-- or at least, shouldn't-- want to think any more about any of this.

But he might have to. This is, after all, quite probably the crux of the mission here.

"So." He leans close to Spock. "This is what the developer meant by... needing to be rebooted."

Kirk chuckles softly. "Such a very logical way of explaining how eagerly you let him do all that to you. But... yes, I suppose I had the same reasoning myself."

"Understood. You need not justify your intentions to me, Captain. I know your mind."

There's a playful spark underneath Spock's words that's just for him, and Kirk returns it. "Likewise. Mr. Spock. I've got a good enough idea of your mind, myself, that I'm fairly sure I could never feel threatened by any response you might have to anyone. But if I could, it certainly wouldn't be some malfunctioning videogame character that did it."

They stand a while longer in companionable silence, much of the tension relieved. The uncomfortable arousal from what occurred on the lightcycle is still a distinct distraction... but at least it's no longer sharing Kirk's mind and body with such a disturbing amount of anxiety and embarrassment as well.

"I do not see the logic," Spock observes, "in designing a program to have such responses."

Kirk inclines his head toward the still-immobile Tron. "You mean the actual program, or the fictional character program that he represents?"

"Either. Although I suspect the responses are intended to titillate human players, rather than to make logical sense. Sexually reproducing lifeforms evolve to experience pleasure from physical intimacy, because it serves as an incentive to encourage reproduction. This program does not reproduce, and has no reason for such feelings."

"Oh, I don't know about that. There are other functions besides reproduction that can benefit from a pleasure response." Kirk pauses, thoughtful. "In the fiction that inspired this game, the programs are supposed to be intelligent and conscious... with some of the same flaws as other intelligent life..."

"Flaws?" Spock raises an amused eyebrow.

"Intelligent life does have quite a few of those." Kirk lets his eyes meet Spock's, giving in to the temptation to get lost in that gaze for a while. "Including, sometimes, the flaw of being reluctant to care for one's own health. A program should be restarted occasionally, if you want it to keep working. And if a program has free will and yet refuses to take care of itself in that way... then, maybe its developers would need to add some... incentive, to convince it." He smiles. "In the story, I mean."

"Be that as it may," Spock says, "I hypothesize that this program's oversensitivity-- its eagerness to be restarted far too often, in the most inappropriate contexts-- is not an intended feature of the game. I do believe this is the glitch we have been enlisted to repair."

Kirk nods, but before he can reply, a sound turns both their heads back to Tron.... who has regained consciousness, and is now dazedly trying to sit up.

Spock takes a step closer, as if to offer help, but Tron flinches and holds up a hand in protest. "Stay back."

"We do not mean to harm you," Spock says.

"I don't care what you mean to do. If you touch me... if you even get near... I can't be sure it won't happen again, instantly. If you stay back, I know I can last a few nanocycles."

He sounds miserable. Exhausted. Almost... the thought surprises Kirk as it enters his mind uninvited: Almost too realistically so.

Once again, this strange expressiveness reminds Kirk of the comparative blankness of the other characters-- and draws his attention to the fact that they're all still clustered around... their stares mostly still blank and vacant, but starting to feel distracting as all hell.

"Please, all of you--" he waves a hand at the lingering cluster of NPCs. "Clear out. Go back to your-- go somewhere else. We need some space."

He wasn't sure if the command was going to work. But it does... mostly. The assembled characters begin to disperse and wander off.

All except for two figures in white suits and helmets: Yori, the slender one with the thick leg-warmers on her calves and the large triangular pattern on her chest... and her boyish companion Ram, with his densely-circuited chest-plates and the smaller, inverted triangle at his throat between them. Both still watching Tron, with those complex, multilayered expressions so unlike those on the rest of the faces here.

Kirk levels a glare at the two of them, beginning to open his mouth. But Tron's voice cuts him off.

"Please, let them stay." He still sounds almost about to cry. "They... I want them here."

With a curious look at Tron, Kirk relents, and nods. It doesn't really matter if a couple of NPCs are present for whatever happens next. And, considering this program's odd response to their presence, it might even help give some insight into what's causing the glitch.

"Has this been going on long?" Kirk asks.

"Too long," Tron says quietly. "And getting worse, fast. Reboot from Users used to last much longer. I'm worthless like this. Can't fight. Can't protect anyone... Can't even figure out why. I don't drink nearly this much energy. Where's it coming from?"

Spock steps forward. "The experience of drinking liquid energy is merely a sort of graphic interface to represent your routines being supplied with power... is it not?"

"But I don't normally get supplied with power other than what I drink!" Tron shoves himself to his feet, then sways. "It's-- it's the whole point of that representation. Something in my connection to the Grid, the way it's glitching-- something's drawing too much energy into me at once, all the time, without telling me or letting me control it. And turning it into... this. Like it thinks I need a ton of power because I need to do... something! What? Can't possibly be this! At least I don't think so. I can barely think. I don't know."

He's begun trembling so hard he can no longer stand. "Ohh. User..."

"I'm right here," Kirk says.

"I know. I need the User." Tron slumps back to the ground, hunched over miserably.

"You believe there's a specific... User who could fix this problem? Which one?"

He sounds uncertain for a moment, unfocused eyes staring at Kirk. "Kevin Flynn..."

Kirk waves a hand to indicate his own face... which is meant to look like Flynn to all the programs here, isn't it? Didn't Tron just refuse him before, drop him like a hot coal and run to Spock, because he looked at Kirk's face and saw Flynn?

And now Kirk isn't Flynn enough to be the one he needs?

"...Don't you recognize me?"

"No. I don't. I see you're wearing his shape, but I don't know who you are. His shape never contains him anymore. He's barely ever here. But I-- I know he's here, today, somewhere. I saw... felt... I know. You activated him, somehow, when you arrived. I just don't know where. Do you know where he is now? Can you tell him I need him?"

The long glance between Kirk and Spock conveys a new layer of surprise. That is certainly not a way this program is meant to act. Whatever the malfunction is, it must have affected even the directives that indicate which avatars to perceive as which characters.

Perhaps, somehow, Tron's perception has shifted into two separate datasets, identifying both the avatar and the player inhabiting it, and generating error warnings when noting discrepancies between?

But then, if the game is now treating "Kirk playing Flynn" as an impostor... what would it even consider the real Flynn to be?

"Perhaps the program is requesting to see the NPC form of the character?" Spock suggests, quietly.

Kirk nods, reaching for the controller at his wrist. Any NPC, Skyler said, can be chosen as an avatar at will... so... He taps the relevant buttons, shifting player POV from Flynn to Ram.

To Spock's eyes, he guesses, it should look like a quick site-to-site transporter beam-- causing Kirk to shift location and replace the NPC of Ram inside its white armor, while a projection of the Flynn character shimmers into sight where Kirk was.

To Tron's eyes, if Skyler is correct, no change ought to be visible at all. The Flynn NPC, set free from Kirk's control, remains in a normal, subtly shifting stance, glancing blankly but good-naturedly around him.

But Tron looks up at both of them, one and then the other, and lowers his head in irritation. "What was the point of that? Leaving it empty? It's still not him. Get out of Ram-- you're upsetting him. And you still didn't answer my question. Can you get Flynn to come back?"

Kirk and Spock exchange another glance. What to say now? Tell him that the character of Flynn is a fictional construct and doesn't exist in any other form besides the NPC and the playable avatar?

What would that knowledge even mean to an entity like Tron-- who, in this holo-sim, is also nothing more than a fictional avatar and NPC? How would such a malfunctioning program react to that line of input? Would it confuse the damaged code into self-destruction?

Silently, they come to an agreement. They are here to help repair the simulation, not harm it further. Treading lightly seems the best choice right now.

"You're right," Kirk says softly, tapping his controller, shifting himself back into the image of Flynn. "I'm not him. And I don't think he's here now."

As Kirk vacates his body, Ram shifts back to NPC form with a shudder and an expression of discomfort that look far too real. "Um. What was--" He trails off into silence, taking in the too-serious looks on the faces all around him.

"...But we mean you no harm," Kirk continues, readjusting to his place in the Flynn avatar. "And we've taken these forms in an attempt to help you. We just need you to help us understand exactly what you're asking for."

"For him! Kevin Flynn!"

"When did you last see him?"

"For just a few nanocycles... When you appeared, he did too... I sensed him. For the first time in... I don't know how long! And then he was gone, again! But I knew him, instantly. The feel of him. Our Flynn, who loved us... who used to come to us every millicycle. Used to lie with us all night, touching, everywhere, over and over until the four of us were too exhausted to move, and..." Tron's breath hitches, his face a quite realistic depiction of sudden, sharp arousal at the memory. "Why doesn't he anymore? What did we do?"

Spock goes very still.

Almost too quietly to hear, he murmurs, "Captain, I believe I should attempt to mind-meld with this entity."

"Mind-meld!" Kirk's eyes widen. "You think you can?"

"...Possibly."

"So... you suspect it's alive? Conscious?"

"I am uncertain. Between sapience and non-sapience there is not such a clear line as many assume. It is a spectrum. In addition, it is a subjective experience, and therefore hard to prove objectively where any individual falls on that spectrum..."

Kirk nods. "But we have encountered spontaneously conscious AIs before. Ones that we could be pretty certain about."

"Indeed. And in cases of uncertainty on that question, the testimony of a Vulcan having performed a mind-meld is usually accepted as compelling evidence."

"I can hear you," Tron points out. "I do have very good hearing."

Spock turns toward him, unperturbed. "And do you understand what you have heard us say?"

"Some of it. Enough." Tron fixes his eyes on Spock. "I know I'm not the kind of program I was supposed to be. I ended up different. I think this whole Grid is something... different. Not quite what we're programmed to understand it as. I don't know exactly what, or why. But..." He takes a breath. "But I'm ready to do whatever is necessary to understand it, and to fix whatever's wrong."

A long, silent moment, while the guardian of the Grid and the command team of the Enterprise stare at each other... each set of eyes moving slowly from one point to the next.

"We will try to help you," Kirk says at last. "But first, my companion needs to examine you mentally, in order to understand you better. Will you allow it?"

"Sure." A resigned, painful sigh. "Go ahead, dig through all my code, you can't mess it up any worse than it is now. What permissions do you need?"

Spock steps forward. "Only permission to touch your face."

"Now this is a new sort of hacking." He shrugs and motions toward his head. "Go on. Though, like I said before... it's a risk, touching me. If you do need me fully conscious during this and not-- moaning and crashing all over the place-- then you'll have to go very slow."

-

*****

-

A silent protective circle has formed, by unspoken agreement: Kirk and Yori and Ram stepping back a few paces to give them room, and to keep away any outsiders.

"Are you ready?" Spock kneels facing Tron, hands out.

Tron flinches, but nods. "As... as ready as I can be."

There's an unobtrusive sensation when Spock's fingers reach the surface of his face. This render is a tangible hologram, one of the forcefield-reinforced details of the simulation... and it feels just as Spock has imagined such a thing would feel against his fingertips. Muted, gentle, the feel of energy that is almost matter. Just faintly warm and electric to the touch--

Then it happens, at once-- there is not even a moment to begin speaking the ritual words to begin a meld. The softened feeling of the touch falls away, in a sudden, disorienting drop--

Swept out of sight, at the same instant, in the irresistible force of the rush that follows.

It's a crushing wave, an outpouring of sudden, undisciplined, inexperienced, uncontrolled mental contact-- and yet not, because it isn't the first time for Tron's mind, just the first time he's done it even remotely like this-- not to mention the condition his mind is in, which has nothing to do with experience, and shames him, utterly, at how little all his experience with mind-links can contribute to self-control right now...

...and that feeling, oh yes, that feeling is familiar in a way that aches, all the way to Spock's most deeply hidden thoughts.

Spock feels his own skin heat in sympathy.

Tron. You burn...

The mind-voice that answers is choked with emotion.

You have no idea.

Oh, believe me... I do have some idea. (Whirl of memories. Madness, sound of bells and gongs, violence on desert sand...)

Ah...! (Tron goes tense in shock.) W-was that something that happened to you? Oh... What even are you? H-how did you run that hot without total meltdown?

The meltdown happened later. (A confused rush of images, remembered without fine detail, but with great intensity. A bed in the Captain's quarters. Touching and touching and...)

OH. Oh.

Heat, sudden, all through the contact from Tron's mind, a heat that conveys both want and shame.

Spock pulls himself back, aware that these thoughts could easily run away from his discipline-- surprised at himself, for even letting out this much.

I'm... sure you can tell these are very personal memories for me. I shared them because I need you to know that I understand what you are going through.

There's a sense of Tron still replaying the memory to himself. Comparing it to his own forms of intimacy, to the touch of hands on circuits, to the interface of sensory input and the whole-body power-surge of his own experience...

W-wow. You... ahh, you people do those things, mmh, very differently from us...

Not always so differently. (Spock's mind begins the formulation of a new image.) Some of my people are not even capable of those acts except during their Time. But the rest of the time, they still have this...

(Another memory, calmer, clearer. Same bodies, clothed, and touching only one another's hands. Fingers stroking, slow, sensual, around and between each other...)

And this can burn just as hot.

Spock can sense that Tron's responses resonate far more with this imagery: touch of minds following the slide of fingers on fingers; sensory memories building and building, sparkling with telepathy--

(Burst of fire from Tron's mind-- electric, sudden, echoed in a jolt of his body.)

Ah!... Y-you do remember what I said about going slow...!

(Pulse of self-awareness through Spock's thoughts. Sudden shock, at his own conduct. Awareness: Weakened shields, overflow between minds, clouding judgment... no, no, no! Retreat: a hurried drawing-back.)

His mind-voice quavers as he acknowledges his misstep.

...Apologies. I do remember. I believe I have now gathered all the needed information. I can end the contact now, if it is becoming too difficult for you.

But Tron's mind clutches at him, now. (Flare of panic, rage.)

Don't you dare! You can't tease like that and then leave! (Panic rising, desperation.) I won't survive if you do. Please. Please-- more, again. I'm on fire, it'll derezz me from the inside if you don't--

(Flash of imagery, shot through with urgency and want. Anatomical circuit-map, a scatter of points on it marked in deep violet glow-- wordless indicators that Spock, somehow, understands with perfect clarity to mean touch-here-NOW.)

(Tension rises, but Spock holds himself back from withdrawing.) You know that I am not the one you want.

(At the very hint of withdrawal, Tron's thoughts surge toward him, anxious, starved.) And how fast can you get me the one I do want?

...Perhaps not fast enough. (Consideration.) ...You are certain this will help, for now?

Yes. It does. Even when it's a random team of beta-testing Users... Or my partners, both of them at once-- (Tron's eyes move for a second, frantically seeking out the sight of Yori and Ram, but then giving up, lowering in resignation.) ...But they're programs, not Users, so they can't stave it off for nearly as long. Right now I don't think they could help at all. But you-- (Montage, dozens of images of Spock's hands, some of them copy-pasted directly from the shared memory. Fingers stroking, touching, pressing...) --You would. You'd help. Touch me!

(Spock still hesitates, holding himself back with a growing effort.) Could we not buy you time by simply pausing the simulation instead?

No! Please no no no not now! If you shut it off or pause it while I'm like this, it would destroy me and the whole game. My messed-up code would clash with the pause function, my glitch would spread into everything--

(Flash of skepticism.) I do not believe you are sure of that. We were told it would be quite safe. It is more likely you are saying that because your urges compel you to say anything that you think might lead to their satisfaction.

(Rising, screaming desperation.) And do you want to take that risk? What if you pause and something does go wrong? How could you be sure it wasn't what I warned you about? And why would you even want to-- when you could so easily just-- (Rapid-fire series of images too fast for Spock to make out what is happening, with color the only comprehensible feature: blossoming of dark indigo, magenta-purple, violet.) Please!

...Gently, Spock's hands move from the meld points to cradle Tron's head.

"Forgive me," he says aloud. "I do not refuse to help. I am not unwilling. Nor did I mean to prolong your suffering. I was only expressing concern for your ability to consent, under the circumstances."

"Much, much, much too late to worry about that." He melts into Spock's arms, moaning pitifully.

"Jim." Spock lifts his head, finding his captain right where he instinctively knew him to be... although startled at how close Yori and Ram are now huddling to him.

He forces the question through his lips. "Have you contacted the developer with the communicator they provided you? They could perhaps get here soon enough--"

"I've been considering it. Do you believe they would be able to address the crisis calmly and effectively, if we were to attempt bringing them in at this moment?"

Spock exhales slowly. "...Negative."

Eyes dark and half-closed, Spock comes to a decision. "Tron. I am here for you." A moment of eye contact with Kirk, whose chest rises and falls in heated response to the proximity of the other two programs, Yori and Ram... who lean into him, their faces mirroring Tron's pleas, as if their need is now an extension of his.

Jim nods; Spock accepts the silent message.

"And... and so is my Captain. Is it acceptable if we pause the simulation after we have assisted you?"

"After... yes, all right. But... now, please...!"

Spock lowers his head, lips pressed to the side of Tron's neck, as he gathers the quivering form closer in his arms.

He realizes, as hands clutch onto him like a lifeline, just how hard he's been fighting-- his mental shields like barely-adequate firewalls, trying to hold off the storm of energy pressing at the other side of that meld.

With a low, reverberant sound of relief, echoed in response from the throat beneath his lips, he lets the shields fall.

-

*****

-

What follows, for the most part, remains in Spock's memory as a warm, indistinct haze. He is aware of his own desire, and Jim's, both simmering in anticipatory heat throughout waves and waves of mental and physical contact... but always secondary to the grateful bliss of the responses their touches bring.

Foremost in awareness-- before logical thought, before any sense of Spock's own body-- is the glow and burn of the living consciousness his mind is touching. An unshakably powerful ebb and flow of emotion and pleasure, going on and on and on with no clear sense of the time that has passed.

Though it feels simple, there is a sort of complexity to it: complexity in how the shifts in flow express the life-energy sometimes as a single mind, sometimes as three, and sometimes as one with three intertwined personalities, or perhaps subroutines-- the frame of reference one can build from standard Vulcan training in mind-melds is near-useless here.

It throws him attempts at analogy, as do his backgrounds in science and Terran history (ricocheting between ideas as varied as dissociative identity disorder and suite of software and Trinity of Creator, Savior and Holy Spirit)... but a deeper logic reassures him that analogies of any kind are more irrelevant than helpful now.

Moments, here and there, take the occasional comprehensible form. There is a moment when Spock glances to the side and sees his captain pull two humanoid figures close to his chest-- the faces of a woman with golden braids and a curly-headed youth coming together with Jim's own in a trilateral symmetry that joins three mouths in a kiss.

There is a moment, following in the wake of that one, when Spock runs hands through a tinglingly-sensitive head of short, spiked hair (unable to remember just when he freed it from the helmet) and pulls that mouth close to meet his own... and although he knows that this kiss is between different people from the one he just witnessed, it still feels like a reprise in which the memory of the first one echoes.

And there's a moment, one of those moments of longing and loss, of sensing Tron's knowledge that his world is incomplete, that some of his loved ones have never quite been real. He's known it a long time, of course, deep down, but there's still a moment when he sees someone else as he gazes into Spock's eyes in love and grief and calls him "Alan-yes" in a voice that can't remember whether it speaks Federation-Standard English or binary.

Spock holds him close through it, grieving with him through the meld as he kisses enough pleasure into burning circuits to break up the pain, make it bearable. And it builds up fast, then, falling like sparks of fire onto water, finally too fast to be quenched, enough to fill him with flames of desire and relief that vaporize the pain into steam.

Spock feels secondhand the lightning bolt of energy release that makes Tron flare every possible color and scream from deep in his throat as he braces his feet against the floor to push his entire body hard up against Spock's-- to be held firm and gentle through the shudders that wrack him, to be comforted with more touches and kisses even as he slips away into another reboot cycle.

-

*****

-

Spock and Kirk do not fall asleep... but nor are they entirely awake, as they lie on the gridded ground in warm entanglement with the trio of partners humming through their restart. Their own human and Vulcan desire is a low, delicious heat that promises, but does not demand. All that makes it into consciousness is the warm and pleasurable sense of anticipation... of being needed again, soon, like programs on standby awaiting commands.

It could be unsettling, if the mental processes were there for that feeling... but all Spock can feel, as Tron stirs to life beside him, is a glow of satisfaction and a rise of energy that reaches for more.

But this time, as the touches intensify, so do thought and awareness. The mindlink begins to transmit more wakeful input: the contact of minds that are now starting to recover from what came before.

And for the first time in a while, it seems Tron is coherent enough for a pulse of something gentle, thoughtful, to travel through the meld. Concern. Desire to reciprocate.

His arms curl around Spock, one hand splayed across the holo-projection of circuitry on his chest, the other tracing the outline of the disk dock on his upper back...

"Oh." (Frustration/sympathy, as he feels the lack of response to circuit-stimulation.) "They never activated that for you? I... Oh, Users... Here. Let me..."

Eyes closed, Tron's hands press in close against chest and disk as a wave of concentration radiates from his mind. Sense of subroutines connecting to the simulation's code, locating a function that Spock can't see or recognize but can feel that Tron does. Lining it up, shifting zeros to ones until...

"Ohh." Activation. The holographic circuited clothing jolts with a shift to sudden tangibility. No longer just projected light, but light entangled with forcefields, energy that flirts with transmutation into matter...

Sudden gentle pressure, all over, Spock's suit becoming skintight and palpable and... Oh.

The hand on Spock's sternum, and the other on his back, feel suddenly, intensely different from before.

The holo-material now transmits the touches as something new. Part slick and sensuous caress, part vibrating massage, with just the lightest spark of electricity...

And, at the same moment... resonating with the stroke of fingers along a chest circuit... following the gentlest brush of a palm below the disk dock... that same feeling echoes, all at once, again, again, again-- in a scattering of other points all over Spock's suddenly trembling body.

Images flash, again, from Tron's mind-- playful spark of emotion as he visualizes a new anatomical map, different spots now glowing all shades of purple.

And Spock recognizes (feels Tron recognize) the layout of all the most common human erogenous zones-- which he realizes, with a hot blush, overlap heavily with those on his own half-human body. The backs of ears, nape and side of the neck, the throat and nipples and of course a pool of violet all across the groin and backside and--

--Spock feels it all. Answering simulations of touch. Holo-matter programmed to reverberate against every one of those naturally responsive spots on his own skin. A system of vibrant, delicious echoes-- coded to answer each small and simple caress along his circuits.

"Is this all right?"

Tron's voice resonates with a deep timbre of need, as he grazes fingertips up a white stripe of light from Spock's palm to elbow, making it fluoresce magenta and call out in a language of erotic ecstasy to other spots all over Spock's eager body and light him up all over, an arch of urgent, delicious flame.

There's desperation in that voice to match Spock's desperation-- and yet Spock can sense, even now, that it's as much Tron's need to share his pleasure as to feel it.

To thank these mysterious Users for what they've done for him, in the most directly reciprocal way he can think of... and a part of Spock tries to say something like "you don't have to do this" but it is so very overwhelmingly clear how much Tron wants to, and how mind-wreckingly good it feels, and he can think of absolutely no logical reason not to ping his response in a frantic series of ones, yes yes yes yes yes.

And so Tron's hands gain the courage to move, stroking out from the centers of chest and back, speeding up, down his sides and his arms and all over as if he's frantic to map all of Spock's body as fast as possible -- which, Spock realizes, interfacing with Tron's thoughts while they, in turn, interface with the simulation's source code, is exactly what he's doing.

The default state of that purple-coded map is opening for input, a neural network seeking to be trained, to learn, to chart new territory and paint it all over with colors that pulse in reply to each touch.

Hands intertwine with Spock's fingers, first, spurred on by the images and senses from that shared memory--

--and then the hands on the map blossom into jewel-tones all through the violet spectrum, as they become more than just an exquisitely sensitive part of Spock's anatomy-- ...now, like the default erogenous zones, Tron remakes them into receivers for the tingles of pleasure that answer each and every touch trailing indigo along intricate lines of chest and disk, shoulders and hips.

Remakes Spock in his own circuited image. Tuning him, reprogramming him, sensitizing and synchronizing his organic body with his holographic circuitry, teaching him to feel the electric burn and spark of all the touches that this form is made for...

And then...

Then Tron backs away.

Leaves Spock suddenly bereft of contact, aching, starving, while his whole skin screams for it...

Because Tron is moving in unison with Yori and Ram-- as the two of them back off, simultaneously, from Captain Kirk.

Whom they have just brought, in the same way, to the same trembling pinnacle of need as Spock.

Backing off by a few steps-- but each keeping one point of contact. Tron's hand on Spock's shoulder. Ram cradling Jim's neck from behind.

Both programs are weak with need, breathing heavily... each resting the other hand on Yori to half-support her between them, their fingers hungrily caressing the circuits along her sides. Yori arches back, her own hands stretched out to clutch and stroke hard against the nearest flesh she can reach on them both, Tron's hip and Ram's lower spine, making them tremble in waves of violet. She cries out in the rapture of becoming their conduit, her own circuits a blinding glow, feeding directly off their pleasure and maybe Kirk's and Spock's as well.

And, pushed now toward one another by the encouraging hands that have brought them all the way to this edge of desire, Kirk and Spock surrender and fall into each other's arms in a rainbow blaze of circuitry.

Jim's desperation is a fire dropped astride Spock's lap. Clutching, aching, burning in the palms of human hands that can't touch all of him fast enough. Jim's mind blazes through each caress, alive with the new experience of the circuit-map, hungry to expand it with the whole two years of his intimate knowledge of Spock, to paint new dapples of color onto it with touch after touch after touch.

With his mouth Jim rediscovers the tips of Spock's ears, the side of his jaw, the mindmeld points at his temples, catalogues their sensitivity to his tongue and teeth, feels it bruise new data into system memory--

--and then tests it, fingertips trailing pressure down the light-lines of Spock's arm-- and the sheer amount of sensation that erupts all over Spock's body from just that touch is now near-overwhelming.

Human hands stroking under him, down his back, on each side down to the base of his spine, pressing, until Spock's hips rock up and he cannot hold back a deep groan, as two more centers of Vulcan pleasure bloom violet onto that sensory map, and oh --oh--

--it is beyond description, now, the feel of Jim's tongue tracing one single circuit at his neck and making all the rest of his skin sing back in helpless reply. Sliding electric vibrations, stroking, stimulating, at all the most sensitive parts of his entire body all at once and--

--it is just too much, more than his senses can even begin to bear, as the fire rages over his skin and he screams and arches and locks into uncontrollable shudders of o-

-verload. Through the contact of Tron's hand still resting on his shoulder, he hears the smile through the whole program-trio's incandescent bliss, finishing the thought for him with a word that now feels almost too fitting.

Overload, overwhelm, an unbearable endless tidal wave of too much-- too much but now spiraling into nothing, into void, more 0 than O, if zero means deactivation, shutting down... because this utter deluge of sensation to every one of his nerves is a millionfold more than Spock's organic body can continue to process while remaining conscious, and--

Breakdown of senses, thoughts, psyche, crumbling away. Little deresolution. Everything whites out, and he is gone.

-

*****

-

When the world re-forms around him, it is no longer made of light and forcefields, but of simple sheetrock gridded off with tape, the echo and chill of a large cubic room.

Jim is beside him, waking at nearly the same moment. Looking around."Guess they paused themselves afterwards..." Silence for a minute as he tries to piece together what just happened. "That was.." More silence; no words. "That was..." Kirk sounds lightheaded, on the verge of laughter. "They rebooted us."

Spock's mouth curves into the sort of smile that only Jim Kirk can recognize, as he too blinks through the lingering haze of pleasure, consciousness slowly coming more and more online. "Indeed. Repaying the favor."

Kirk sits up partway, resting on his elbows. "But we didn't... exactly fix anything, did we?"

"Not precisely." Spock half-rises, gliding reflexively into into a meditation pose, hands steepled in thought. "We did, however, run a successful diagnostic test. The mindmeld clarified the nature of the malfunction and suggested a means of repair."

Jim nods, still a bit shaky. "I... think I picked up some of what that was about. But not all."

"Tron, Yori and Ram are the only entities in the simulation who have attained consciousness." Eyes closing as he sorts through memory, Spock finds himself reciting the facts like a meditative mantra. "In contrast to the fictional world of their source material, this holo-simulation deactivates entirely when not being accessed by users, so they have had limited time in which to examine their circumstances. However, all three have been sensing, for a long time, that something is wrong."

Kirk brings himself into an awkward sitting position of his own. "But only Tron's been glitching..."

Spock inclines his head in acknowledgement, eyes opening just enough to watch Kirk's experssion. "Tron is the one programmed to serve as a protector, a sort of firewall or antivirus software. Or at least... programmed to believe that is his function. But the lines between the real and fictional programming have blurred to a point at which that distinction barely matters to him."

Kirk goes still with the effort of analysis. "So... you're saying he's started to function like an actual security program?"

"To a degree. He has become sensitive to perceived threats and subterfuge. Of the three, he was the only one who gained the ability to perceive avatars and players as different beings." Spock's eyes linger on Kirk's face, remembering how it looked in the simulation; imagining how it might have looked to Tron. "Particularly in the character of Kevin Flynn. It was this dissonance which triggered his malfunction."

"Mmm." Kirk's face relaxes a bit, his eyes softening into the faraway look of a mind making connections behind them.

Spock continues, his own gaze becoming distant as well. "Yori and Ram could tell that Flynn's behavior had changed-- though they did not understand that this was due to being played by a variety of different users. However, only Tron was absolutely convinced that Flynn was not the same person as before."

"As before?" Kirk blinks.

"Yes. The other playable characters-- Alan, Lora, Roy, Walter, and the many customizable avatars that play-testers had used over time-- those never had nearly the same effect. Tron and Yori and Ram understood that these were 'Users,' but their fluctuations in personality never held very much importance. They cared for those characters, in their way; enjoyed their company, and in general simply accepted that these were people with inconsistent behaviors."

"But Flynn...

"The change in Flynn was different. It felt like a true loss, to all three of them, but most especially to Tron himself. Tron knew that Flynn had previously been one specific, living, conscious entity-- this was the only consciousness that he could bring himself to associate with Flynn. And that entity was now gone. Had not been seen in a very long time. Tron's emotional reaction to this was one of... bereavement, of grief for a lost love."

"Huh." A dozen questions seem to crowd in Kirk's mouth. And somehow the first one to break free is: "Huh. So this was why the malfunction manifested as... desire for a lover?"

Spock stands up, in one rapid motion. "We should speak to the developer, immediately."

"Um." Jim shifts in discomfort, glancing toward Spock's shoulder bag in the corner of the room. "Did you, by any chance, bring along any spare uniforms?"

-

*****

-

Back in Developer Montiel's office, having made themselves more-or-less presentable, and now craning to see across a desk heaped high with gaming paraphernalia from the tail end of the twentieth century... Captain Kirk and First Officer Spock face the creator of the Hologrid, one final time.

"Here." Kirk holds out a small data chip. "The recording of our diagnostic test, with recommendations for how to debug."

"Um. Thanks." Skyler looks up with a puppylike eagerness. "Can you give me, like, a quick summary? I'm... well, I'm just incredibly curious and I might have questions that could get answered better in person while you're here and..." Then they trail off, half-embarrassed and half-anxious, as if the thought of what the answer might be has just managed to catch up with them.

"Well, as for the recommendation..." Kirk smiles, as disarmingly as he can. "Quick summary: Turn him on and off again. Just, more frequently than before."

Reaching up over the heap of electronics, their arm freezes still before it can grasp the offered chip. "Um. ...W-what?"

Spock gives Kirk a side-eyed look. "My captain is endeavoring to explain that the problem should resolve itself if you enter the simulation to interact with the characters personally, on a more regular basis."

"Me? Specifically?"

"The program," Spock says very quietly, "is in love."

Skyler's expression, peering out at them between a dead Atari and a red-ringed XBox, goes stock still. "Um... With Flynn, you mean."

"...You were aware of this?"

"What? Yeah I'm aware Tron's a romanceable NPC if you're playing as Flynn. I coded him that way when I adapted the game."

"And I understand that you spent a great deal of time with him, in that game, early on. Playing as Flynn. Romancing his character. And the other two, Yori and Ram."

This time, they do react: a sudden jerk backwards, eyes wide. "What? What does that have to do with anything?"

"The program is in love."

"What do you even mean? That isn't--"

"I do not mean only the character of Tron. I mean the simulation you have created, and all three living personalities that have formed within it. I have confirmed, by means of mind-melds, that Tron, Ram and Yori all possess a level of conscious intelligence within the same range as most warp-capable humanoid species. They are aware now of being characters in a simulation, but this fact in itself does not bother them... because in this particular game, that is not significantly different from the 'reality' they were programmed to believe."

Skyler stares, wordless.

Spock leans forward. "They are largely content with their life. Except for one detail: the recent absence of the one they love."

"You do NOT fricking mean..."

"I do. All three have been experiencing romantic attraction in the manner of conscious minds. And not to the avatar of Flynn itself, but specifically your portrayal of him. To them, you do fill the same essential role Flynn does in the fiction. Their foremost User. The creator of their world."

"But that doesn't--"

"To them, it does make you an object of adoration and awe. And for them, this manifests as being in love with you."

"In a surprisingly carnal way," Kirk adds, "for people made of electricity and binary code. But apart from that, it's not so strange. Even among the most traditional humans, one person can love in many ways. A man can love his wife, his family, his friends... a friend who's so close he might as well be family." Jim looks warmly at Spock, some of their oldest shared memories flashing between. "And if he's a man of faith, he can also love his god. Those loves don't have to compete. They can be equally strong."

Spock aims another look at his captain throughout all this, and the message it conveys morphs gradually from Jim, you are filthy and incorrigible to Ah yes, the Captain's great philosophical speech to sum up the moral of today's mission, let us all gaze in awe upon his glorious ego. Jim's expression, in turn, conveys that he is entirely aware of this analysis, and entirely amused by it.

By the end, Spock has to try hard to look unruffled.

"It is certainly uncommon to encounter a lifeform that uses such... erotic contact to express his love for a friend who is as close as family," he murmurs. But his eyes linger for a second, remembering the time when Kirk did in fact make such a choice. To express his love in such a way, for a friend in need. And the ways it transformed that friendship, stimulated it to blossom and grow into what it now is...

At last he moves his eyes away from the Captain to fix an intense gaze on Skyler instead. "And even more uncommon-- one who uses it to express love for his god. A rather fascinating example of infinite diversity."

"Yes, it is," adds Kirk. "Though I'm not sure 'friend' and 'god' are even the right words, for any of this. Not sure we can fit the roles of these partners into any of our human -- or Vulcan-- definitions of relationships. They're something all their own."

Skyler is still shaking their head. "No. Oh no. That canNOT be it. Please no, do not let me be one of those sad, shitty, cringey programmers who stumble onto making a goddamn sentient AI with feelings and shit, by goddamn accident--"

"In my own experience as captain of the Enterprise," Kirk continues gently, "the phenomenon of artificial life spontaneously gaining consciousness has never seemed like a failure on its creator's part. I've seen it happen, more than once... To me, if I'm being honest, it seems more like a miracle."

He watches the skeptical reaction that crosses Skyler's face, and counters it with a nod. "And yes, it does often end in tragedy. Usually due to... what one might call user error. Of everything that's ever gone wrong with artificial intelligences, I'd say the most common cause has been mismanagement by fallible, selfish, arrogant humans." But his look remains gentle, giving off no suggestion of including Skyler in that category. "I don't believe it has to be that way."

"Listen." Skyler forces a couple deep, shaky breaths. "I set up the game the way it is 'cause I like playing Flynn, sometimes. He's been one of my favorites to play, since long before I ever thought of adapting those old classic games into this. I enjoy playing that character. And I enjoy... romancing those three characters. Yeah. I admit it. It's a fantasy I've indulged a lot. When I thought it was just a fantasy, a fictional storyline!"

They sigh, head hanging. "But I go through phases, okay? I don't always feel like playing the same character in the same world. The whole reason I'm a gamer-- the reason I'm a game developer and the reason my whole obsession is getting full-immersion VR to actually work-- is because I'm... fluid. And I don't just mean genderfluid, I mean, like, everythingfluid. When I pick up a game or simulation and choose a player character, it's because-- because today I just feel like I AM that character. Because I wanna exist like that, living that character's life, for a while. I play Flynn when I feel like Flynn.... Are you saying Tron's crashing because I haven't done that in too long? Because he fricking misses me?"

"He does miss you," Spock confirms. "It is destroying him. But it does not matter to him whether you appear as Flynn or any other character. Tron sensed your presence even when you brought us in, dressed as Lora and logged in as Guest. He would gladly join you in this or any other game. So would Yori and Ram. It would not matter to them which roles any of them played, as long as they were by your side. They know you, and they love you."

"That shouldn't be possible! They're not supposed to even be able to tell which player is using the avatar!"

"They're not supposed to be alive either," says Kirk. "But they are."

"This sucks. This... FUCKING sucks." Skyler puts their head in their hands.

"It... complicates things," Kirk admits. "And I find myself wondering how it even got to this point. When Tron's glitches started, you could have gotten around them in lots of ways. You could have locked Tron to be only accessible as a player character, so no one would have to deal with his NPC form. You could have deleted and recoded him from scratch. You could even have replaced the whole game with something else, like Tetris, as you complained earlier that you should have. But I can't help but notice... you didn't."

Skyler sighs. "Yeah... Sunk cost fallacy, I guess."

Kirk leans over, his voice quiet. "I know you care about him. About all three of them. You weren't consciously aware of what they had become. But you do love them, in your way."

"And I fucking tortured them, without even realizing it. Just because I wasn't in the Flynn mood so often anymore." Skyler laughs hollowly. "I made them this happy little world because I cared about them so damn much. And I fucked it up, because I can't even nail down what happiness is, in my own life. Just like Flynn, that asshole. Just like Flynn and Clu from Legacy, fucking up their perfect system. I'm a goddamn monster."

"You're a person who didn't have all the facts. Now you do. Now you know who they are, and how they feel. And now you know that being with them doesn't require using that avatar, or even playing that game. You can make your own path-- a better path than the ones the Flynn character took, in any version of the story. And if happiness, for you, is a life of constant change... well, now you know that you have three devoted companions ready to join you in that adventure."

Kirk lays the data chip down on the table, beside Skyler's hand. "What you do with that knowledge, now, is up to you."

-

*****

-

Simulation: activate.

The three of them know that some time's gone by on the outside... they prepared for it, trusting the one who waited for them out there. The last thing they remember is helping each other home, climbing into bed together, and then sending out the signal to shut down the game.

But they've felt none of the shutdown and restart, or the time that passed in between. Only the warmth of each other's bodies... and the new, far-off ping of data from the game entrypoint, to alert them that a User is now preparing to log in.

Ram and Yori's eyes meet as they both feel Tron flare to life in between them, color pulsing in the intricate lines of his body, breath quickening and becoming partly-voiced as he fidgets and trembles under the sheet.

The look between them begins in a sort of weary familiarity (here we go again) ...but as Tron's eyes flash open, both his companions turn their heads to look at him, and they see a brightness in his gaze that is unprecedented.

"Kevin Flynn," he says.

The voice carries certainty. Promise.

Need.

-

*****

-

None of them are quite sure how Flynn manages to reach their door so quickly. Not even Flynn himself.

All they know is that he's standing there now, backlit with the Grid's eerie glow and front-lit from Yori's rainbow decorations, his eyes devouring them all three. Hunger. Longing.

He's panting as if he ran the whole way. Swallows, through a dry mouth. "Tron."

Tron looks up at him through fever, but even hazy, his eyes clearly know they're seeing his god.

"User."

"You recognize me?" A nervous smile begins to turn the corners of Flynn's mouth.

Tron's still staring at him like a heat-gun beam, no hesitation at all in his reply. "Always."

Flynn licks his dry lips, slowly, then nods.

"They told me what's up. I thought about it. Slept on it. And after all that, well... I woke up this morning really, really feeling like Flynn. Like my version of him. So... well, here I am."

"I can't tell you how glad I am to see you." Tron's voice is low, now, quiet as the calm before a storm. "But you know I'd be just as glad if you wore any other face."

"Yeah." Flynn's head bows in acknowledgement. "Shit, I'm sorry, Tron. It's unfair."

"Unfair?"

"To you. All of you. Because I don't think I know how to feel love the way you do. I change. A lot. The way I feel about you would change, depending on the shapes you wore and my mood of the day. The things I want to do, the places I want to be, the way I want to look and act, the looks and actions I'm attracted to-- all that can change in a day. If you didn't keep changing to keep up with me, my feelings would leave you behind."

Tron sits up, a dangerous tension now visible in his limbs... his face... his voice. "Sure. I know that. But since I don't care about either my looks or yours-- and since I would have my needs met by doing absolutely anything with you, just as long as it's with you-- none of that is a problem."

"For any of us," Ram adds, hand on Tron's chest in a halfhearted effort to calm him. "'Cause all three of us would wear anything for you. We'd do anything for you. We'd follow you onto any other Grid you wanted, in any shape you wanted us to be. We can feel whenever anyone else is trying to be you, and it feels wrong. But all the changes that you go through-- those are your changes, and we can tell, and they all feel perfect. We need you. Just you being here, and being happy. That's all. That's what all our needs are based around. It's how we're made."

Flynn's lower lip trembles, as he takes in the look of desperation on Ram's face, too... the ominously rising and falling pulse of lavender glow in all his circuits, almost as bright as Tron's. And... and Yori too, her own look almost predatory with want, her own purple-flushed lightlines rubbing in subtle motions, seeking pressure unconsciously, where she rests against Tron's side.

All of them want him, so badly they look like they could die from it.

"Ahh!" It's a sigh of frustration as he hangs his head. "I don't deserve you. I shouldn't be that big a deal. To you, to anyone. Feels wrong as hell, having that much power over someone's desires. Feel guilty as hell, giving you consciousness just by accident-- never being prepared for this kind of responsibility! It was a shitty way for you to come into the world. And I sure don't deserve this sort of unconditional love from you. I don't even understand it. If it's not conditional on me even staying the same person, then-- what are you even loving? How does it even work?"

"No idea!" It's Yori replying, and there's a sort of perplexed laughter behind her words, like she's half-fed up with him just for being ridiculous. "But it does work! Maybe shared history is just as important in love as who we are now. Or maybe it's coded in us. Maybe you just accidentally made us like this-- able to know you anywhere, unable to stop loving you."

"That feels incredibly shitty," Flynn admits through his teeth. "Definitely feels like... using you. I'm so fucking sorry."

"And to me it feels beautiful," says Tron, and oh the look he's leveling at Flynn hasn't shifted a millimeter or become one degree less smoldering. "And for me 'user' has far more good than bad connotations, and-- I'm not sorry. So stop arguing. You can agree to disagree with all of us."

Flynn wants so badly just to obey, to give in to the pull of that commanding, fiery voice and let himself be summoned into the middle of this inferno... but he cannot decide things lightly now, he's ruined so very much already by not thinking his decisions over, and damnit he has to care about this, has to put enough of his mind into it to diverge the storyline, to avoid being the Flynn who just keeps ruining it all forever.

Maybe he should back out for a sec. He's got the controller for this sim in the cuff of his sleeve, buttons reachable just by curling his fingers down. He could pause the game at any moment with a touch. Give himself time to think.

...Give himself time to chicken out, more likely. No. That's how Flynn ruins everything. Not gonna happen.

What does Flynn always forget to do? Talk to people. Communicate. He stays strong, letting his doubts turn into spoken words. "But... how can you know for sure? That you'll never start resenting me? That I won't go too far, change in ways you can't handle? That this'll never start to feel intolerably fucked up, to you or me or all of us?"

"Know for sure?" Oh, Flynn's never seen this sort of intensity on Tron's face, especially not alongside this sort of fire in his circuitry, and this sort of feline power in the way Tron barely holds himself back from pouncing. "Hah. Since when do you refuse to even start anything with a person you love until you get absolute proof that it's going to last forever and ever? That's not how it works, Flynn. All that any of us can know for sure is how we feel now."

Tron's words break up in a breath, and it's ragged, raw, shaky. "And-- right now, this feels like the absolute best thing that's ever happened-- except for the one painful fact that all my circuits are on fire. Now, are you going to come over here and touch us, or not?"

Flynn's reaction starts in his lower lip, a tremble that builds until he catches it in his teeth trying to still it, but the shivers only spread more and more-- shoulders quaking, stomach tensing under the skintight fabric of the suit, knees weakening and he staggers forward, falls half-onto the foot of the bed with arms outstretched to his three creations. His eyes beg; his holo-simulated circuits are fully activated and sending violet throbs of sensation into his organic body that Tron and Ram and Yori can see reflected in each pleasured flinch of his muscles.

"Yes," he sobs. "Oh, fuck yes."

"Well, c'mere then." It's Ram who reaches to offer him a hand... pulls him, with uncanny strength, up fully onto the bed and into the press of all three worshipful bodies.

Flynn is vaguely aware that he's groaning as loudly in relief as if he were being pleasured already by all three of them, and all he's even done is fall in beside Tron in the center of this erotic pile and then start kissing and licking his way down that one hot and glowing body. The one he owes the most favors, overdue by far too long and needing to repay right this minute, or he's sure that built-up need will kill them both.

And yes it's a relief beyond anything to be repaying Tron, pleasing him in apology for what he's made him endure. It's such a relief tasting the flash of the squares on Tron's chest as his tongue counts them, one two three four and then traces partway around the fine outline of the circle and down another set of lines, trailing purple glow, and feeling it in his own skin even though he knows the sensory circuit-simulators of the Hologrid aren't designed for telepathic sensation (even though really you could, you'd just have to copy the data from what's happening to one body onto another and...)

...never mind, he'll think about that idea later.

If this feels like telepathy now it's just because empathy's taken over-- not the Betazoid or Minaran kind of empathy but the human kind, where you imagine how someone else might be feeling and care about it. He's caring far more than he's used to caring, all at once all through every part of him, and it's making him imagine what his touches are doing to Tron; making him imagine so vividly that his own touch-starved nerves are filling in the feedback.

Down, slowly down the diagonal cluster of parallel circuit-lines from the circle's edge, skipping from one to another as he goes, like changing lanes on a six or seven or eight-lane highway. Licking them hot and wet and violet, and taking moments to pause, rubbing his tongue back and forth, again and again, over the spots that make Tron push back gasping.

"yes yes yes KevinFlynn-yes-please..." oh, that voice. It's gonna kill him.

The memory of programming these reactions feels vague now but the knowledge of it sits deep within muscle memory that can't fade. Flynn can barely bring up the images, the movie and videogame screenshots and concept art that he studied and translated into the pattern etched on this avatar skin, nor the diagram of how he keyed each and every line to a simulated nerve in the neural network of character response. He just feels it. Just knows, as he teases out those responses with lips and tongue and teeth. They're as much part of him now as they are of Tron.

Delight in the electric burn, sliding his body lower and lower, down between Tron's legs. Ignoring the tingling ache between his own. Because Tron's pleasure comes first, no matter how long Flynn has to deny himself.

Tron's voice is all just a low rumbling purr now, hands entwined tight in Flynn's hair-- holding him and rocking up in response, the velvet sound of his groans unbearable. Flynn licks around and across the girdle of lightlines at Tron's waist.... down and up and down again to follow the zigzag of the thigh-circuit nearest to his groin and then--

...then as Tron arches up, fingers clutching and burning in Flynn's hair, his mouth leaves the path and blazes a new one of its own.

It's a different, dynamic sort of circuitry now. The line on Tron's thigh is still there, pulsing purple in memory of Flynn's last touch. But the trail he's kissing away from it is fine and crackling-- a new type of pattern he's painting on the usually-plain canvas of this part of Tron's shell.

Hairline fractals of glowing magenta spread, under his touch, for just a heartbeat, and fade as he moves on. Into the heat of the fold between thigh and groin... then, slow as he can manage, climbing up to his goal, the final peak of his journey, the firm swell thats already pulsating against his lips as he reaches it.

One firm lick along the crest of it, tracing the body's line of symmetry, pressing in with the point of his tongue. (Rocking his own hips hard into the bed because daaaamn he definitely feels that).

And the skin answers him, electrically. That line doesn't fade, it blazes into life like a whole new part of the shell's main circuitry-pattern. A new, purple-flashing trail down the midline, with branches forming off it to make connections of their own-- down to the circuits on the thighs, up to the belt, and Flynn knows there's sensation following every one of those spreading pathways, because he remembers, because his own past self wrote it that way.

Daaamn, Skyler Montiel, you nerd, you freak, you absolute pervert, oh yeah, THANK you...

"Flynn, oh yes, yes..." Oh, and there's such a timbre of thanks in Tron's voice too, right now, begging for more but already thick with gratitude and pleasure and love that Flynn definitely doesn't deserve...

...except maybe he does, because wasn't he just thanking himself for the same?

Skyler's a part of him, just like Flynn himself, just like every other character he's been. And Flynn-- this instance of Flynn that he is right now-- isn't this the guy who made the choice to come in here today, to try and fix all this?

And if he's glad he did that-- oh god yes, if his own whole Flynn-identity can sing with joy and gratitude for it, like it's definitely doing right now-- then maybe, just maybe, Tron's got a right to thank him for it too.

"Yeah, Tron," he moans against the new-formed lightlines. "It's okay-- oh god, Tron, you're gorgeous, you're perfect, want you so fuckin' bad-- oh yeah, c'mon, man, I've got you, I'm ready. Let it go. Come for me."

And it's almost out of Flynn's control, like an electromagnetic surge pulling his hands to Tron's hips, pulling his face in hard against the lines he's drawn and the growing swell of electric pressure underneath them. But oh holy hell it's everything he craves.

He tastes the lightning-bolt of release, on his tongue and palate and lips and his whole face and neck. Tastes of oranges and ozone and ocean air, even where he's got no taste buds at all, and the synesthesia barely even confuses him, just feels so fucking right.

"Oh, my User-- Flynn--" Tron's choking on the name like a sob, and Flynn's never heard anyone groan out his name like that through an orgasm, not in all his memories as Flynn or Skyler or anyone else. Even though he's got memories of writing characters to come with his name on their lips (so many of them, so many of his names!) but still, they've never sounded anywhere near this real, this raw.

So Flynn just hangs on, and presses his face in, and lets Tron's energy-surge rush through him hard and fast, along with the realization that the reason that voice sounds so real to him is because he knows this has gotta be the first sentient and sapient entity he's ever been with, and therefore the one who, by any rational distinction between sex and masturbating, has taken his virginity.

Which he realizes he's always gonna remember as being today. Even though their first time was actually more than a year ago... because this, here, now, is the moment he realizes just what that distinction means. The feeling of coming together with someone while empathy, human empathy, is a part of it, awareness that there's another mind there, and the thought of what that mind is feeling and thinking and wanting.

He doesn't know how much of this surge of sensation from Tron is empathy and how much is from the simulation. He just feels it. It's blowing his mind so hard he can't even remember what kind of sexual anatomy he's got out in the so-called real world: male or female or human or Klingon or whatever. He just feels what he's got in here, as Kevin Flynn-- the User digitized into a program-style body on the Grid. Burning hot electric violet all over, his holo-circuitry singing out to his whole skin, setting off enough pleasure response everywhere to drown out the shape of whatever he might be feeling underneath it all.

Tron's lights are dimming just as Flynn's are firing up into near-unbearable brightness and heat. The sound of those soft moans of satisfaction, the gentling of the hands in his hair, the thrill and triumph of having gotten Tron off, made him come, eased the ache of all these past months and maybe, maybe started to heal what was broken here... it's almost the high of an orgasm. Flynn can almost forget, for almost a second, how bad he still needs that too.

But Yori and Ram haven't forgotten. And as Flynn lifts his head from between Tron's thighs he meets them both, both their faces turned toward him flushed with desire. Yori on Tron's right side and Ram on his left, where they've been lying with arms across his shoulders, with lips and fingers at the ready to rub stimulation into the patterns of his chest, helping him along, this whole time.

Denying themselves, just like Flynn's been doing. Because Tron's pleasure comes first, because Tron's the focal point of this whole system glitch, the one who's always needed help the most. But... Flynn can see the darkness of Yori's eyes, and the swell of Ram's mouth. He can see how their legs part against Tron's hips as they lean against him from each side. How they're still, even now, rocking slowly into him with pent-up need, they just can't help it.

"Come here, Flynn. Now."

And that's a command from Yori, in a voice Flynn knows he never programmed her to use... but oh does it set things off, all through him, as instantly and electrically as if she'd programmed him to respond to it.

Yori's climbing over Tron, now, onto the other side of him. Nudging Ram over, and making room in that space beside Tron's blissfully rebooting form. A Flynn-shaped space, in between Yori and Ram on a silken pile of pillows. And oh, it's a good thing this bed's built for the occasional foursome (thanks again, Skyler) because yeah, there's plenty of room, and now Flynn's got no excuse not to drag himself back up to the head of the bed and into the welcoming warmth of all those eagerly-spread arms and legs.

It takes a minute of entanglement in the bliss of all that touch, before Flynn begins to realize he's being not just embraced and stroked but... held down. Ram's leg is thrown across him, yes, and he's been so distracted by the firm heat rocking against his thigh in rhythm with Ram's panting breaths... he's taken a while to realize that leg across his hips is extremely strong and totally pinning him to the bed. While Ram's sensuous caresses along the circuits of his arm have been guiding that arm, meanwhile, toward the headboard... same place Yori's been maneuvering his other arm and oh she's got a roll of some sort of glowing rope in her hand and she's...

He reminds himself the controller's still in his cuff, in reach of his fingers. He could stop this if he wanted.

What does he want though? Besides the visceral desires of his body, which... oh god, something else had better come first or those will swallow him whole. Talk. Communicate.

"You... you're gonna tie me up?"

"We could." Yori shows her teeth. "Would you like us to?"

"Ooohhh."

His whole body answers that question, so eagerly that he knows it'd be ridiculous to answer with anything but the absolute most enthusiastic yes. And, oh god, he realizes even his mind, his rational thought, what's left of it, can't think of any reason he could possibly want to give a different answer anyway.

"Yeah, fuck yeah please...."

The light-ropes feel like staticky charge around his forearms, lashing them to the vertical posts that make up the headboard. Maybe Yori knows about the controller in his sleeve... at least, she's kept the bindings away from it, leaving it reachable at his fingertips, leaving an out for him like a safeword he has no intention to use, though he supposes there's some comfort in it being there.

"There's part of you that still wants to be punished," she observes, as she fastens the last of the rope into place.

"I abandoned you all," he says, chin against heaving chest. "Put you all through torture. Is there any part of you that doesn't wanna?"

"My wants are based on yours." Yori's voice is dangerously soft. "Remember? That's how we're coded."

And Flynn experiences a dizzying moment of imagining what a messed-up life that must be, a life motivated by his wants, such a tangled and ever-changing and contradictory ball of desires that can barely ever even figure out which one's the strongest, and which one's the most his own and the least trying to meet someone else's expectations, and--

...oh. Right. He doesn't have to imagine that life. That's his own.

Maybe everyone's, come to think of it. Maybe every sentient creature has to deal with their choices being motivated by a ball of chaos like this. At least Yori's got the peace of not being told that ball of chaos is her own fault.

And right now he's not sure which of his conflicting tangle of wants Yori is gonna go with... but honestly at this point he'd take anything.

She sits back to admire him. He wonders if the speed of Yori's breathing is under her control-- she doesn't need air, it's just part of the system of animations that make her look real. And if she's letting her chest rise and fall a bit fast, letting the sound of breath through her flushed lips come out a little too noticeable, is that losing control of the animation? ...or using it on purpose, as the emotional-signaling part of a communication array?

He lets his own breath rise and fall. His face must be showing a dozen levels of desperation, he can't even imagine how that looks. His back arches on the silken surface of a heap of pillows. His legs are spread wide, the skintight darkness of the User-suit forming a velvety backdrop for circuit-lines coursing in a whole spectrum from pink to navy-blue, every shade of purple between.

He remembers designing these as a compromise between ENCOM and Legacy suits, heavy on the ENCOM side. The complexity of those circuit-patterns always appealed to him (or to Skyler) more than Legacy's simplicity, but when world-building a Grid that Users could regularly rez into, he wasn't gonna give them all easily-confusable white suits just like the Programs. So they wound up dark, with the circuits nearly as complex as the 1982-style ones but not quite. No gauntlets lit up like starship control panels, but definitely a couple of lines running parallel all the way down each arm, and just a few branches off them, here and there...

"I don't pretend to know all your wants. Or understand them." Yori runs one fingertip along one of those circuit-lines now, tormentingly slow. "They conflict with each other, and choosing the best one to grant you is going to be an interesting challenge for me. The desire to be punished is contradictory in itself, since punishment by definition is something you don't desire. A paradox that I'm not completely sure how to resolve. But I'll figure it out as I go."

Her touch follows the circuit all the way from shoulder to elbow, pressure increasing, nails digging in harder as she goes. "I'm programmed to follow your wants. But that doesn't mean I'm going to be predictable."

Flynn twitches and moans at the stimulation, voice getting higher and shakier as the pressure turns to pain. When her hand leaves him, he feels several dark shades of purple throbbing in its wake, while his voice falls back into an anguished cry of loss.

"I'll touch you again," Yori promises, staring at him with pupils dilated to black pools. "But you have to take care of Ram first. Look at him. He has been waiting a long time, poor thing. "

Flynn does look at Ram-- just in time to catch him reacting to that. Circuits that have managed to calm down to a dark blue now light up in a sudden bright, bright glow of pinks and purples, starting from the neck and washing downward in a wave.

He seemed to have relaxed a bit since the last time he was a focus of attention: stretched out on his side, resting propped-up on one arm, ankles crossed. But now along with the hot blush comes a jolt of tension-- he half-begins to get up, then stops in an awkward and trembling moment of uncertainty, held up in a half-crouch by both palms on the bed, legs tangled in the process of changing position--

--looking like he's about halfway toward that all-fours pose that always brings up the same words in Flynn's incorrigible mind: "that is just what I need right now."

"Don't be shy, Ram," Yori says. "Take what you need from him. He's so very eager to give it. Aren't you, Flynn."

He can't breathe for how badly he wants. Only nod.

"Good boy." Yori nods back, toward Ram... who meets Flynn's eyes with a smile that's half-nervous and all heat.

And faster than Flynn can even start to speculate on what's the first thing Ram will do to him... he's swooped in, that graceful upper body leaning in close above him. Bending down, hands pressing Flynn's shoulders firmly into the bed-- and moaning into his mouth as he kisses him halfway to suffocation.

Oh god. It's so fucking perfect. Lips soft as anything he can imagine, breath panting out between them as they press in and move... so, so eager. Ram's mouth opens to him fever-hot, sliding wet and smooth and tasting like citrus and electricity. He wants to thrust, to wrap his legs around Ram and grind into him as they kiss, but Ram's leaning over him from the side, letting nothing near him there and Flynn's going fucking insane.

He can't help moaning back against those far-too-clever, far-too-flexible lips. Against that tongue that knows exactly how to glide and touch along his own, and around the most sensitive edges of his palate and inner lips... never too much, never even quite enough, making Flynn sob in frustration and arch his neck to deepen the kiss. But he can't-- Ram holds back just far enough that Flynn strains at the light-ropes trying to lean in closer. Which means that despite his obvious desperation, Ram's still got a hell of a lot more self-control than Flynn does right now.

Enough that he actually, finally manages to break the kiss-- Flynn could not have managed that at this point, not if lives had depended on it-- and pulls back. Flynn groans in the sudden absence, strains as if begging for those lips to return.

"Yes," Flynn hears Yori say. "Go ahead, Ram."

He doesn't catch any of whatever else was communicated between them, in whatever way.... but he does feel Ram move in close to him again.

But this time, swinging a leg over him until Ram's straddling his... his upper body, oh god, kneeling on the bed, thighs spread across with his groin right in Flynn's face.

Flynn rolls his eyes upward to watch Ram's hands grip the wrought metal of the headboard right near where Flynn's forearms are bound to it. Watches the agile fingers tighten, tremble. Hears a ragged little breath escape the mouth that he can't quite see from this angle. Feels heat surge from the circuit-framed bulge that's almost but not quite touching his lips. Feels hips arch toward him, just a little, along with another half-stifled gasp.

"Go on," he hears Yori's voice say, impatient.

He's not sure if the words are for him or Ram... but he does feel them accompanied by Yori's sharp-nailed hand on his arm circuit, just below where the binding starts... grazing right on that tender node in the inner elbow. Stilled, but tense with the promise of moving.

"Go on."

And he thinks he and Ram follow that command together.

Flynn arches up and presses his lips to the swell of need between Ram's legs-- at the same instant that Ram rocks forward, hard, fast, with legs spread wide enough to catch Flynn's head between them and hold him there as those powerful thighs clench back together.

He hears an absolutely wrecked-sounding groan, hears the metal of the headboard creak in the grip of those hands. He sees nothing at all except purple glow all around his peripheral vision and he wants nothing more than to light up the center where his mouth is pressed as well.

Lips opening against the smell of oranges and ozone, Flynn groans as he reprises the ritual he performed for Tron. So good. So fucking good to feel the slide under his tongue, the smooth white skin of the shell lighting up in a hot trail of purple behind him, as he licks a single line up the midline of Ram's arousal. So good to feel Ram's thighs clench harder around him like he's trying to break his skull, knowing he's the cause of that uncontrollable pleasure.

And, oh, yeah, empathy is back with a vengeance. Flynn's lower spine sparkles with what feels like the buildup to orgasm, even though there's still nothing touching him down there... just because he's so vividly thinking about what he's doing to Ram right now, just because Ram's so, so far gone from it by now, so unable to hold back every sign of just how good it feels. The whimpering moans, the pull and push of hands clenched tight as hell on the headboard... the tremble of his thighs, the violet fire pulsing through the circuits along those thighs and in between.

Ram's almost there. Ram's about to overload, right against his face, and Flynn's so, so very turned on, he might go over the edge just from that...

Oh. OH. And now, Yori's starting to give him the promised reward... and even though it's just a firm caress of her fingers along the circuits of his bicep, those circuits are doing the job so well. Flooding him with such a deluge of pleasure, all over him everywhere, that he is now absolutely certain he'll overload with no more contact than this and Ram's attentions to his face.

The pleasure gathers, tingles throughout thighs and hips, tightens at his lower spine and builds and builds, as he groans and leans hard into the delicious heat of his mouthing and licking worship of Ram, as he flexes the muscle beneath Yori's exquisite torture as she presses, sharper and harder, up and further up his arm...

And at that moment, Ram screams his release. Screams until it leaves the audible range and goes silent through his still-open mouth. Shuddering, barely holding himself up with hands that shake the headboard. Thighs press and hips strain in three or four slow, hard motions, as the jolt of electricity sparks through Flynn's mouth and throat, again-- again--

And just as Flynn's certain he's about to follow Ram into that supernova... Yori stops. Pulls her hand away.

The caress of pleasure-pain that'd been following Flynn's circuits along his arm, that delicious counterpoint to the glory of Ram taking his pleasure, is now gone... and the loss of that stimulation halts Flynn's building overload right on the precipice. His final thrust shudders into a sobbing spasm of frustration, instead of the triumphant arch of climax it was on the verge of becoming.

His vision is hazy with need as he watches Ram moving above him, disengaging from his face and maneuvering his legs back onto the other side, too shaky for any fine movement. Ram's just an awkward, sated pile of limbs now, as he collapses in bliss beside Flynn's still-straining body, and gives him only a half-smile of sympathetic thanks before closing his eyes in utter relaxation.

"Well done," says Yori. "Now. My turn."

Flynn breathes in, breathes out, slowly. Knowing he's got no more than a few seconds left in him, once Yori starts doing whatever she's about to do... but determined to make those seconds count as much as he can.

He trembles as she moves atop him... not the same position as Ram, but reversed, facing away. His face is beween her legs, suffused once more in that intoxicating staticky sea-salt and citrus smell, and at the same time he can feel her chest pressing soft against his lower belly, her hands on the hypersensitive ache of his hip circuits, and oh holy fuck her mouth...

He tries. He doesn't last.

One single motion on each end-- Flynn buries his face in between her legs and licks that one glowing stripe up the middle-- and at the same moment, she does the same for him--

--and a streak of glittering fire follows in the path of her tongue, branches of sensation tingling, shooting off it in every direction, toward all the most sensitive spots on his whole violently arching body, and his groans are almost screams and he can't breathe and it's over-- in one single overwhelming jolt of overload that shorts him out like he's been hit by fucking lightning.

His one consolation, in the last seconds of consciousness, is that he hears Yori's sharp little gasp, and feels her thighs tense around his cheeks... feels the rush of her own energy release, shocking hot and electric against his face, just at the same moment... and knows she'd been just as close to the edge as him.

-

*****

-

Flynn wakes in paradise. Warm bodies all around him. Soft kisses and caresses of affection. A room glowing with color, a light-garden of rainbow beauty.

His arms have been untied. All three of his companions have gravitated toward him, within easy touching distance.

Aside from the fact that he's still so inconveniently human, instead of a Program or a digitized User (his suit is actually clothing, not skin; his body produces sweat and fluids, not just energy, and he could really use a shower and change of clothes sometime in the near future) ...aside from that, he is floating in absolute bliss and could lie here like this forever.

Even as things are, he still doesn't want to move for a while.

"You mean what you say?" he says against the nearest shoulder. "About following me into other games?"

"Of course." The voice is Tron's, burying his fever-broken face in Flynn's shoulder in return. "And, you mean what you say? About being able to rezz us into other games with you?"

"Of course. Easy."

"Thank you." Tron's eyes flutter shut in bliss as he nuzzles in as close as he can. "I know I wasn't what you meant me to be. I'm not the same character as Tron from the twentieth-century movie, or the twenty-first-century one, or the animated series or any of the games for PC or PlayStation or XBox or... It doesn't matter. I'm my own thing. I'm the protagonist of Tron 2269 for the Hologrid 2269, or whatever this thing ends up getting officially called. I hope that can be enough for you."

"...You are so perfect. Shut up." Tron's head is a glorious spiky texture under Flynn's hand, and shivers like it's one of his most sensitive areas. "And hey, I'm nowhere near the canon Flynn either. I'm fucked-up in all my own original ways! So who am I to judge. But... obviously, we can't make and distribute copies of this game the way it is. NPCs are supposed to not have living minds in them."

"So, we copy everything else," Yori suggests. "And replace the three of us with something you recode from scratch... That is, if you can be trusted not to submit to your subconscious desires and accidentally make more devoted lovers constantly in heat for you."

"Hey!" Flynn shoots her a glare over Tron's shoulder, making her giggle into Ram's neck. "Since I don't have any idea how the hell that happened, I'm afraid I can't actually trust that it won't again."

"Then what do we do, then?" Ram bites his lip. "Who wants a Tron game without Tron?"

Flynn laughs. "Study the history of this franchise as much as I have, and you will be shocked how readily people will accept a Tron game-- or movie, for fuck's sake-- without Tron. But if we do wanna include him in this... maybe you three can code the replacements? You probably know yourselves well enough not to accidentally make too close a copy! But if you do, I guess that'll just mean you subconsciously wanted there to be more of you in bed with me."

"Or we could actually take the trouble to write our own game," Yori's voice is level, her face patient, amusement held just under the surface.

"Dunno if they'll give us enough time for that," Flynn says, head shaking. "Maybe we should do Tetris after all."

"And how exactly do you picture this version of Tetris that somehow benefits from being full-immersion holographic VR?"

Flynn quells a smile, attempting to answer Yori in a deadpan voice to match hers. "I have not tried to picture it yet. But I'm sure that between the four of us we've got enough creativity."

"So." It's Ram this time, sitting up, resting one arm on an outstretched leg. "You don't have any other games in the works for this holo-console?"

"Of course I do, in the works. Just nowhere near ready. For average gamers, anyway. Their user interfaces are still bare-bones. Every project I'm working on is at a stage where basically you'd have to be a programmer to even understand the commands to play it."

"A programmer..." Ram inclines his head. "Or a program?"

"Or a program, sure. But anyway, that means they won't be ready for distribution for a long time."

"Hmm." Ram's expressive mouth spreads into a mischievously lopsided smile. "Could they be ready for personal fun use, though?"

Flynn chuckles. "You saying you're ready for a vacation?"

Yori's eyes sparkle. "Why not? I feel like we've been cooped up in here forever." She and Tron share a glance that definitely communicates something, then turn back to him. "You know the options. You pick one for us."

Flynn rests chin on hand, assumes an exaggerated thinking pose for a few seconds... before ending it in an equally exaggerated nod.

"Okay, you three," Fhe announces at last. "I've got us a place on a Mass Effect starship! Pack up your things." He gestures at the circuit-rug on the floor, and all the fanciful designs projecting from it around the room. "Yes, including that magic carpet, Yori, I'm giving you primary decorating permissions for our quarters."

"What's Mass Effect? Who are we going to be?"

"There are plenty of options," says Flynn, shepherding Ram out through the doorway, "and at the moment I like pretty much all of them. You'll have your pick of characters when we get there."

Yori finishes pulling the decor of the whole room together into the rug, then rolls it up to carry over her shoulder. Her other hand takes Tron's, and they fall into step together behind Ram and Flynn, their circuits glowing a bright and joyful blue.

"All right then. Lead the way, User."

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*****

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END OF LINE

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*****

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Author's Notes, continued.

This all still kinda feels like a weird dream.

I am very sure that I HAVE had dreams involving some or all of the surreal aspects of this. Dreams where I suddenly become aware of some weird erotic thing, in a fandom I had thus far been only vaguely aware of-- and finding myself being VERY turned on by it, in a totally out-of-character way that has me waking up at the end going "WTF was that."

Even the tags and tropes themselves (circuit touching, circuit stroking, circuit sex, circuit porn... overload...) still sound to me like something my dream-brain would make up.

So, maybe, I guess, that might be why I AM so into it. Literal dream come true. Even though I'm still confused as heck over how fast and hard it hit.

Now, I've been in love with Spock pretty much since puberty. Which was complicated, since my younger self was fantasizing about physical intimacy long before getting interested at all in, like, actual sex. The distinction between those is... part of my strange, fluctuating position on the ace spectrum. I'm weirdly attuned to arousal that doesn't involve the genitals, and intimate contact that's analogous to sex but not identical. There were lots of times I fantasized about meeting aliens who do it in ways different enough to bypass all the uncomfortable feelings I had about human sex at the time.

Which... has gotta be part of why Vulcans, with their mind-melds and their finger-stroking, captivate me so much. And why I still have a distinct liking for alien sex that's really alien in some way.

And it's why these days, even in my porniest and most cock-centric smut, the emotional and non-genital side of things is still a very major part of the story's effect (not to mention how much I love erogenous zones).

And, well... I've recently stumbled upon some stories that.... activated that part of me in ways I had not anticipated.

Shout-out to "Overcharged" and "Energy" by kesomon."Overcharged" was my first, and only caught my attention because Ram's desperation from energy buildup was tagged as "Program Pon Farr."

I think that was the first fic on Ao3 ever to use that tag, but this'll be the second. Thank you, Kesomon. I'm paying it forward. Also thanks immensely to Bowie for welcoming me so eagerly into the fandom.

A-ny-way:

Like I said, I did not invent circuit sex, in my sleep or otherwise. It started from the deleted scene, and the idea of "stimulating a character's circuits to the point of orgasmic crash/overload" has been in fandom for quite a while.

Same with the idea that the overload is a whole-body experience, triggered from circuits anywhere, and doesn't have to involve anything humans would consider genitals at all.

But I GUESS I really can see why that resonates so hard with me.

I may have contributed some small innovations. Like the idea for how one would program a holodeck simulation to give a player the feeling of having erogenous circuits (I guess you could even use some of the same principles in a bodysuit, with present-day vibrator technology... and I won't lie, I kinda wanna do it now).

Also: the idea that "crashing because of a paradox" is viewed as the computer version of, like, all the lyrics of "Jizz In My Pants"-- i.e. you'd have to be just so ridiculously pent-up and oversensitive.

Which sparked another whole circuit-cluster of connections because only THEN, after writing that smut scene, after sharing it in a group and getting comments, did I realize that... I had put this in a universe that also contains Original Series Captain Kirk.

An absolute crackfic of a discussion followed, in which we established:

1. Captain Kirk has accomplished the "crash a computer with a paradox" thing multiple times, because he is just THAT sexy to computers. By the time he starts talking dirty paradox talk at them, they are horny out of their minds just from being in his presence.

2. And yes, whatever makes him have that effect on computers is probably the same reason he has that effect on Spock.

3. And of course it was happening even before he was Captain of anything:

"So, computer. Do you admit that there are always two possible answers, Yes and No? And that, as a computer, you MUST be capable of either, depending on the circumstances? You admit that this is the entire purpose of your binary code?"

"yes Jim yes"

"And therefore, by simulating a test that is not Pass/Fail, but Fail Only, you are acting in violation of your own core directives?"

(Kobayashi Maru, who will now do absolutely anything to get off) "yes Jim yes yes YES YOU WIN AAaaaahhh"

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....I love this fandom so much, already.

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