Robot AU (Because Canon Sucks #2)

Chapter 1

ROWAN

Rowan flailed forward for something to cling to, but all he found were the sheets.

“Does that feel good, Master?” a composed voice asked.

“Y-yes,” Rowan whined, twisting the fabric in his grasp and pushing back into the steadily rocking hips behind him. “And it’s Rowan. Call me Rowan.”

“Yes, Master Rowan.”

“Urg.” Rowan turned his face to bury his groan into the pillow, offering afterward a muttered, “Keep going.”

“Yes, Master.” The voice was calm, almost tender even, but also monotone—mechanical.

Because it didn’t belong to a human being.

Long, lean, and so warm, the bot continued to rhythmically thrust into Rowan. It wasn’t purely a sex bot, though models only for that purpose did exist. It was a state-of-the-art B-model M.I.L.O.—Mechanized Intelligent Lifestyle Organizer. Or Milo, because Rowan had to call it something, unoriginal as he had been when naming the bot.

The point was that Milo was far better than any sex bot, more versatile as a personal assistant who could attend to Rowan’s every want or need. Far more expensive too, since Rowan had been able to dictate everything about the final product, from tasks it could perform to its voice and every aspect of how it looked.

His perfect man.

Rowan had only been able to afford the model because of his ten-year anniversary bonus with Andreas Tech, having been with the company since before the original director passed away and left everything to his son Andrew.

A soft hand reached around Rowan’s waist and down between his legs. He whimpered as it began to stroke him, moving in time with the fervent thrusts behind, just as he had instructed whenever the bot sensed him getting close to coming. Rowan didn’t know how it could always tell—a combination of temperature, pulse, serotonin levels maybe—but it was never wrong.

“Milo,” Rowan whimpered.

“Yes, Master? Can I do more for you?”

Others probably liked having their bots call them that, but Rowan cringed every time. He could forget he was using a glorified sex toy when it kept its mouth shut, but when it called him Master, and not as sensual roleplay but meaning the word literally, he was reminded that it was only a machine.

People jailbroke their bots all the time to get them to say ridiculous things. Rowan could figure out how to stop Milo from calling him Master. He was an engineer! Not top tier or anything super lucrative. He just kept putting it off, like he did most things in his life, which was why he hadn't moved up much in the ten years he'd been with the company. Since he'd started there straight out of college, initially he'd been too focused on finishing his Masters while earning a paycheck. Where had all that motivation gone since then?

Elsewhere, he supposed, like all his failed partnerships.

He oversaw one small part at Andreas Tech, the country’s major bot manufacturer, which basically amounted to him supervising the mass production of a surge protector for A-model units. But it was still important work! Even though Milo was a more advanced B-model, Rowan had outfitted it with the latest version he had been testing before it was even in production.

Before he had technically been given permission to produce it at all.

“F-faster…” Rowan said, shaking from how good it felt to be so fully encased. He was a beast of a man, a literal giant some said, at six-foot-six with broad shoulders and a chest like a tree trunk. With his natural ginger hair, he had outright been called a Viking, something he might have been humbled by, but because of his size, previous partners had never understood that sometimes Rowan wanted to be the little spoon. To be cared for. To be held.

To be taken.

Milo’s body certainly didn’t feel like a machine while it was taking him. Everything from the texture of its synthetic skin to the shift of gears like muscle beneath the encasement felt so real. The only thing to give it away was the glow and shifting gears in its silver eyes.

“Faster.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Harder!”

“Ye—”

“Stop talking!”

No response. Rowan adored Milo’s voice, melodic and yet somewhat raspy, but he wanted it to whisper in his ear with intent, not offer him bland affirmations. None of Rowan’s exes had compared to how well Milo knew his body, and a bot would never leave him or tell him he was too detached, too distant, too much of an asshole.

Too difficult to love.

“Harder… yes.” Rowan sobbed with every fresh slam of Milo’s cock inside him, thoroughly fucked and almost finished now, almost there, almost—

He came, hips stuttering into Milo’s hand, which continued to stroke him through the aftershocks. Milo knew just how to care for him, what pressure to use, how long to keep at it until Rowan might become over-sensitized, stopping just before, and pulling away to lie there spooning him.

Despite often being the big spoon, Milo was smaller than Rowan. Significantly smaller. Even designing Milo to be an impressive six-foot-two, Rowan still towered over the bot, and compared to Milo’s trimness, he was three times as broad.

Milo had finished too, a feature to mimic the real thing in texture and taste, but it was just a recycling of fluids within his body, produced to keep his parts running and nontoxic to humans. Another mime that wasn’t the truth.

“Milo… tell me that was wonderful.”

“That was wonderful, Master.”

“Without adding Master.”

“That was wonderful.”

Yep, Rowan was pathetic, the poster child for what not to do with a bot.

He could have sex with it to his heart's content, no one cared about that, but he wasn't supposed to want more than function or to forget that it wasn’t alive. It could think and reason to a certain extent, but it couldn't feel. It could never feel. Its drive to please was only programming.

Still easier than a real boyfriend. Still less painful and disappointing. Besides, Rowan had always done better with machines.

“You can clean us up now,” he said.

“Yes, Master.”

Milo got up to clean itself and then brought back a washcloth for Rowan. Once it had wiped him down, it set the cloth aside and pulled Rowan close, another set of programming that Rowan had standardized when he first got Milo, because he liked to be cuddled, to feel safe and secure, though Milo was one of the few he had admitted that to. It felt too vulnerable to ask that of a real person. Past partners had thought it weak. Maybe it was.

Maybe Rowan was just too weak.

Turning in Milo's hold, he looked at the face he’d had a hand in crafting. The bot was beautiful, exactly as Rowan had requested all those months ago when he’d ordered it, even with random imperfections to make it that much more unique from other models—and nothing like any of his exes.

High shapely cheekbones, straight teeth but not too perfect, a wide smile, and platinum hair. Rowan thought its silver eyes with shifting gears inside were beautiful too. Rowan could appreciate good craftsmanship and the exquisiteness of a well-made machine, but that cool, curious glow also sobered him.

“Close your eyes,” Rowan said.

“Yes, Master.”

Rowan cringed again, but as soon as Milo’s eyes were shut, the illusion was easier to escape into.

The bot could almost be human like this.

It could almost be real.

Nuzzling closer, Rowan nosed Milo’s neck, behind his ear at his hairline, and took a deep breath. Milo smelled fresh and crisp like ripe apples, with a hint of copper from flowing electricity. Rowan loved that smell despite the reality check, because it reminded him of everything he loved about machines and being surrounded by them at work. Even if all he did was build one single part on repeat, he often got lost in the rhythm of it.

Like he got lost in the rhythm of Milo’s hips.

“The time is eleven p.m.,” Milo’s monotone interrupted Rowan kissing its neck, voice always so stiff, never truly lifelike no matter how kind it sounded. “Would you like me to start your tea, Master?”

“Yes, please.” Rowan sighed, rolling away to stare at the ceiling.

Once more, Milo got up, this time putting on a robe before exiting the bedroom. Milo itself didn’t feel the need for modesty, since it didn’t feel anything, but it was a default setting for bots to cover themselves unless asked not to, acting as close as they could to real human responses.

Rowan had asked Milo to help him relax because he had a big day tomorrow. The director, Andrew Andreas himself, was coming around for inspections. Finally, if he found an opening and didn’t completely choke, this could be a chance to show off the progress he had made on his new surge protector, with weeks’ worth of data from having installed it in Milo. Rowan should have been excited. He was excited.

He just wished he had someone to share his excitement with.