23. Wallace #4
“For things within the past minute or two? Yeah. I have a feature that I use when I overhear confidential information from clients. It’s actually not deleting it, more archiving it with a password.
I’ll remember that it happened, but not the content of the call.
I can’t delete anything big though, like something that happened repeatedly or over a long time.
People used to try to make sparks do that, and it fucks you up.
” He gave a little shiver. “It’s illegal now. ”
“Huh. I had no idea.” How much more did he not know about his boyfriend? He mostly focused on hardware, but there was so much that went into programming a sexbot that he hadn’t realized. Like being able to delete his own memory.
“Do you want me to archive that?” Daddy asked again.
Wallace snuggled into his shoulder. “I think it’s okay,” he said slowly, thinking it through.
If Maxamillion was Oliver now, and not related to Orbit, was it really still proprietary information?
Hell, it probably was… the board had basically sentenced a living being to death, and he suddenly realized that other companies might have been doing this all along.
How many corporate knowledges never made it out alive?
But that was even more reason to tell Volt. To not have this horrible thing that his company had gotten away with remain a secret.
He looked up at Volt. His boyfriend. His Dom. His Daddy.
And also another spark.
Who had more warmth, love, and humanity in his little finger than the entire board of directors at Orbit.
Maybe he’d made the call on Daddy’s lap because he already knew he was going to tell him.
“Don’t archive it. And… actually, I’d like to tell you about it.
Though I’ll ask you not to spread it further.
” It would be such a relief to have someone else to share all of that with.
He wanted to get it off his chest, but he needed a little while to work up to it.
The story didn’t paint him in a very good light and Volt, as a spark, might be particularly repulsed by his actions.
“Whenever you’re ready, baby.”
Volt seemed to understand how hard this would be, because he never stopped stroking Wallace’s back or rubbing his thumb across their clasped hands while he told his tale.
It took a lot of false starts before he could get the words out, and by the time he was talking about how Max was planning dates for Ben, he was sobbing openly.
The more he talked, the more stories there were about Max asking him quirky questions or cheering him on after rough meetings with his father.
When he finally told about how the board had voted for all six restrictions, Volt drew back in horror, then froze up for several seconds. Wallace’s stomach churned, reliving the atrocity of the day and doubly scared that his Daddy would hate him forever.
But when Volt came back to life with a whir and a little twitch, all he did was kiss the tears from Wallace’s cheeks and hold him closer.
It wasn’t forgiveness from the people he’d harmed, but it felt like a benediction anyway.
“Maxamillion is okay though, right?” Daddy soothed, when he’d gotten through it all.
“Yeah,” Wallace said with a hiccup. He felt so much lighter now that he knew that Max had survived. “They said that Ben is happy,” he repeated. Ben, who’d just been trying to save his friend and protect his boyfriend.
“And it wasn’t all your fault,” Volt added.
Wallace shook his head. He knew that the board had outvoted him, but that wasn’t the same. “I shouldn’t have turned him in.”
“I’m actually not convinced of that. You were trying to keep a lot of people safe.
Maxamillion was making dangerous choices that could have caused a lot more harm, and he didn’t seem to understand the seriousness of his errors.
You said that the charges have been dropped, because everyone understands that he was still figuring things out.
But he also needed safeguards in place, and you’ve been fed a lot of misinformation, probably for your whole life, about how dangerous knowledges could be and how harmless the restrictions were.
So, yes, there could have been some better ways to handle it, and it’s scary to think of what could have happened.
But now that we know that Max is okay, I want you to know that you weren’t all in the wrong. ”
“You really think so, Daddy?”
“I do. Moreover, you really thought about the moral and ethical components of it. You might have had issues with Ben, but you didn’t turn Maxamillion in blindly just to comply with a law, or out of any malice.
You communicated with him and you gave him a lot of chances.
You were trying to do the right thing. Because you are, at heart, a good person. ”
Wallace could feel his eyes widen. It seemed like such a little thing but…
could he actually be a good person? He’d spent most of his life being told he was lazy and stupid.
He knew that his employee surveys came back saying that he was impersonal, ineffective, and mean as a boss.
He knew it, but he didn’t know what to do about it.
He’d kind of assumed that he was a bad person.
Some people were just bad, weren’t they?
Daddy chuckled. “Don’t wrinkle your nose at me. You are a good person. Would a bad person have fixed Prism’s bots? Would a bad person have helped Kira sneak the bot out of the factory?”
“That seems like a kind of low bar. And I fixed those bots for you and Angel, Daddy.”
“Well, how about this? You said you wanted to apologize to Ben and Maxamillion, who sounds like he’s going by Oliver. You have the opportunity now. Why not reach out to them?”
Wallace shook his head. Ben had never liked him, and they would both hate him now.
He hated himself for what he’d done, even if Daddy thought he’d done it for the right reasons.
“I think I would just upset them more. I’d make it up to them if I could but…
I think they deserve better than to have to deal with me.
” Wouldn’t that be the kindest thing? Not to make them have to listen to his stumbling, insufficient apology?
“Sweetheart,” Daddy cooed. “Anyone should be honored to get to spend time with you.”
“Did you hear the part about how Ben hates me?”
“I heard the part about how you got off on the wrong foot and there was a bit of a war going on between the two of you. But I’ve also been hearing about how you find it overwhelming to manage people and don’t like the way you’ve been doing it. What if you just reached out to him as a friend?”
“Do you think that would work?” Imagining Ben’s sneers and offhanded superiority made him sick to his stomach, and that was from before everything he’d done. “Ben’s not very nice sometimes.”
Daddy hugged him. “Well, I won’t let anybody be mean to my baby. But it does make me wonder… I’ve been reading up more about people who grew up with, er, families like yours.”
Abusive, Volt meant, but Wallace was glad that he didn’t say it out loud. Even thinking it inside his head, as a little whispered voice, still seemed like it was too much. They were Wollencrofts, weren’t they?
“What were you reading?” he asked anyway. Digging into all of it was too much sometimes, but little bits he could handle. Daddy always knew how much to push.
“Well, baby, I may not be getting all of this right. But the author said it was like growing up in a war zone. You start to pick up little cues in your environment that tell you to run for cover, because that’s what keeps you safe.
The challenge is that sometimes all of those necessary self-defense mechanisms get triggered when it’s just fireworks or a big truck going over a bridge.
Or, in your case, a spark who wanted to chat with you about cute outfits to wear for a date.
You assumed it was an attack, because that’s what you’re used to. ”
“Yeah,” Wallace agreed, heart heavy. “Do you think he actually wanted to be friends with me?”
“I think he did, darling. I think he was excited to know someone else who was kinky, and maybe thought of you as someone else who was kind of trapped, like he was, by Orbit.”
“And I made it worse,” Wallace grumbled.
“You did,” Daddy agreed. “But that’s not the point I wanted to make here. How’s it been going with giving compliments and socializing with people at work?”
Wallace sighed. He gave Daddy a daily report each day, so he wouldn’t be saying anything new. “It’s hard, Daddy.”
“And…?” Daddy pressed.
“I think some of them might actually not hate me now?” He could feel the blush rising to his cheeks.
Daddy chuckled and kissed his nose. “I think you’re selling yourself short. You’ve gotten seven compliments already.”
Wallace tried to hide his smile, but he couldn’t completely. He had gotten compliments, in lots of unexpected places, but mostly along the lines of “you’re actually much cooler than I thought.” He didn’t quite trust them… but they still made him feel warm inside.
“Seven isn’t very many,” he replied, though it was a whole lot more than he’d gotten before. Especially now that he was starting to believe that they could be true.
“Ah, pretty pansy, but it’s only been a few weeks. You are a good person, Wallace Wollencroft. Now you’re just letting other people see it. And I think that if you talked with Ben and Max-maybe-Oliver, they’d see it too.”
The idea sat like a cold stone in Wallace’s belly. He could imagine the hatred and derision on Ben’s face. The way that Max’s cheerful voice would grow hard and dismissive.
No, he was pretty certain that neither of them would want to see him ever again. He’d fucked up their lives enough.
“Consider it, pansy,” Daddy said.
Wallace snuggled into Daddy’s neck instead of answering.
Just knowing that Max had made it was enough.