Cyberotique

New message.

SERI0USLY, R0SIE? AGAIN?

"I have NO idea what you're talking about," she replied sarcastically, keeping her voice low. She knew tone didn't carry over speech-to-text, but she felt like slipping him a little extra sass today, because his timing was, as usual, extremely inconvenient.

She was currently standing in front of the plain wooden door at the end of the long hallway next to the bathrooms behind the stage, better known as the hallway to the practice room. She'd been standing there idly for the past five minutes, trying to convince herself she had the authority to just walk right in without fear of retribution.

She wasn't succeeding.

New message.

D0N'T MAKE ME TAKE AWAY Y0UR ALL0WANCE, R0SIE. THIS HAD BETTER ST0P BEING A REGULAR 0CCURRENCE, 0R Y0U'LL NEVER PAY 0FF Y0UR DEBTS.

She paused to steal a glance down at the puke-beige plastic bag in her free hand, then sniped back, "...you just worry about counting your bills or whatever it is you do all day when you're not harassing me."

Her internal balance sensor automatically shifted her weight as she resumed her ordained task of staring at the door with an indecisive hand poised to knock on it.

Oh come on Rossy, what's with all this hesitation? she scolded herself, frowning internally. You don't have a stomach for butterflies to flutter in, and you don't have a heart for the beat to pound in your chest. You're a Cyborg now, you're supposed to be immune to the jitters. Robots don't have feelings. All silicone and software, not buttercups and rainbows...

She shook her head.

CYBORG, not Robot...there's a difference. And well, you are at least a LITTLE BIT rainbow. Heh.

New message.

PLEASE, LIKE I D0N'T HAVE A LIFE 0UTSIDE 0F KEEPING Y0U IN LINE.

She didn't bother responding. Instead, she fell back on her old human habits and pushed out her chest, then relaxed her shoulder joints. In lieu of not possessing organic lungs, this was the closest action she could get to taking a deep breath, and the effect was oddly just as calming. There were some things even rebuilding a body out of electronics couldn't change...

...look, you just gotta do it, Rossy. There's no backing down now. You're already here, you already spent the money, and you know she's gonna love it. Or, y'know, she'll at least appreciate the gesture. I mean, hopefully...

New message.

WAIT, H0LD UP JUST A MINUTE HERE. THIS IS DIFFERENT, ISN'T IT? Y0U WEREN'T SH0PPING F0R Y0URSELF THIS TIME, WERE Y0U?

She felt her fake teeth grind together. The last thing she needed right now was a judgmental voice watching over her shoulder, much less a text-only voice spamming her vision.

New message.

0H MY G0D THAT'S S0 GAY.

"No shit, Sherlock," she muttered back. Her attention shifted from the hand that still hadn't knocked on the door to her other hand, still holding the plastic bag with the Flashfire Lingerie logo on the side.

...guess I can't really hide it, huh? She grimaced, fingers flexing involuntarily. I spent hours thinking of different ways I could frame this, different words I could use to make it sound "totally not gay", but when you're giving a lady friend a flashy magenta g-string edged with lace and sparkling with glitter, there's no way it won't come off at least a LITTLE BIT gay...

She nervously called up the thermometer app on her virtual overlay, convinced she was burning up inside. It currently read 45°C, average as white bread.

...fuck it, what am I worried about, anyway? This is Millie we're talking about. She already knows I'm a cyborg now, what's it gonna hurt knowing I'm a girl-kisser on top of that? She doesn't seem like the bigoted type, and she's clearly been flirting with me - jokingly or otherwise - so what AM I afraid of?

Rossy realized she was now chewing on her bottom lip, in that anxious way people with flesh lips often do.

...guess I'm just afraid I'll be wrong about her.

New message.

Y0U KN0W, I WAS G0ING T0 WRITE S0METHING SNARKY, BUT H0NESTLY THAT'S KIND 0F AD0RABLE. S0, I GUESS, I H0PE SHE LIKES IT. Y0U KN0W, F0R Y0UR SAKE.

Rossy consciously blinked. Then she reread the message. Then she glanced back down at the bag in her hand. Then she read the message one more time.

...I hope she likes it too.

And with that, before she could spend another moment in hesitant trepidation, Rossy's hand was already in motion, knuckle-first toward the door. It was all she could do now to watch it fly forward, as if in slow-motion, dead-on toward its target. No way to stop it now, no matter how hard she thought about it. The joint was cast. Her fate, come whatever may, was sealed.

From somewhere inside the room, she heard a loud sigh and the stumbling sound of someone standing up too quickly. A pause, a click, and a slight creak of the door later, Rossy saw Millie's nose poke out from the crack. "...can I help you?"

"Uh, hey stranger," said Rossy, waving sheepishly as she tried to sneak a peek inside, wondering what sort of dark ritual she may have interrupted. "Hope I'm not interrupting anything?"

"Oh, it's you...one sec," she answered, in a tone Rossy hopefully classified as "pleasantly surprised". The door closed again, accompanied by the rustling sound of clothing, then opened all the way to reveal Millie in a hastily-equipped bathrobe. "Sorry about that. Thanks for knocking, though."

"Eh, just common courtesy," she replied with a sideways shrug.

"Maybe a bit less common than you think," Millie fired back with a sassy eyebrow. "Anyway, what brings you all the way out here to my sacred dojo?"

Rossy imagined herself taking a deep breath. "Okay, just two quick things. One, you're gonna have to wrap it up in there, Sergey says he has some big important guest coming by tonight who's apparently booked the room for some kinda...corporate meeting or something? And he wants the place clean, because I guess he thinks you guys are always leaving your underwear on the floor or whatever."

"Corporate...?" Millie's face became thoughtful for a moment, but eventually rolled around and into a shrug. "Huh, and here I thought leaving underwear on the floor was literally what he pays me for. Part of me worries that 'corporate' is code for some kind of illicit meeting of creepy hacker nerds or something."

"I mean...a guy like Sergey doesn't strike me as one of those foreign offshore princes asking for startup money," Rossy replied coolly, almost rolling her eyes before remembering what kind of chaos that brought to her cybernetic vision. "He didn't really give me any other details, but if you told me they were hacking, like, some foreign government's email server or something, I could probably believe that."

Watching her curiously for a moment, Millie's head tilted a bit to one side, a smile sliding its way across her lips. "Good to see you're catching on to the whole dry humor thing. I like to think that's just me rubbing off on you."

"Heh." Rossy tried hard to pretend she was older than twelve and wasn't secretly giggling at the phrase "rubbing off on you". Her cold, synthetic body language helped keep that secret.

With an approving nod, Millie seemed to run her curious eyes down the length of Rossy’s arm, from the shoulder of her maroon muscle shirt all the way to the plastic bag in her hand. "...you know, I really have to hand it to your designer. Your skin looks pretty convincing. And I should know, I'm kind of an expert on skin, if you know what I mean."

"What, you were a dermatologist before you became a dancer?"

Millie’s nose wrinkled playfully. "Cute."

Rossy opened her mouth to follow up, but decided not to, and simply accept that as a compliment. Millie beat her to the punch anyway and reached out to stroke her fingers along Rossy's arm, squeezing gently. "...it even feels like skin...maybe a little on the thick side."

Rossy's eyes followed Millie's hands as they copped a generous feel of tough but lightly padded silicone bicep.

Okay, hello to you too...

The action continued for another hot second before reality suddenly settled back in and Millie paused, then withdrew her hand cautiously. "...oh god, sorry. Probably should have asked first before I decided to just start groping around."

And in the instant she took in Millie’s embarrassed expression, before she could stop the automatic flow of dialogue from brain to mouth, Rossy replied evenly, with a perfectly straight - yet decidedly not straight at all - face, "...well, treat me nice enough on our next date and maybe you can grope me any time you want to."

...ah, shit.

The air around them seemed to clench up as they held each other's gaze, neither quite sure if the other was joking or not. Rossy's face froze up as if her software had simply stopped responding, and could only stare in mute terror as Millie seemed to bite the inside of her lip, like a child pretending she wasn't hiding anything in her mouth. A beautiful face like that could only be thinking so many things...

...like what, Rossy? You think you're some kinda smooth operator or something, and Little Miss Bathrobe here is just fanning herself over your honeyed words right now? You think you've somehow managed to successfully fluster the world's snarkiest stripper, just like that?

For being supposedly the world's snarkiest stripper, Millie seemed in awfully short supply of witty rejoinders at the moment. She appeared to be dead set on winning the staring contest, though it was readily apparent that she stood no chance against a pair of prosthetic eyes.

...well, I can dream, can't I?

Finally, the silence broke as Millie cracked and erupted into a full belly laugh. "Dammit, fine, you win! I couldn't come up with anything better than that one, you win. Point for Rossybelle."

Rossy laughed too, if mostly out of sheer nervous relief. "Haha, point, right...am I catching up to you yet?" She hoped her continued babbling would be enough to keep Millie distracted from the completely obvious slip.

"Like I said, I must be rubbing off on you," she said, taking a breath to rein in her laughter. More soberly, she added, "Oh, and...sorry for getting a little...hands-on there. You do a job like this one long enough, sometimes you forget that normal people have boundaries."

Rossy nodded, still half-smiling. "Makes sense, I guess."

"I just...I dunno, I really wanted to know what it felt like," she continued, eyes still tracing the contour of Rossy's human-shaped body. "I mean, you LOOK so real...god, when I say it out loud though, it sounds really creepy."

This time Rossy's smile faded a bit, and she placed her very realistic hands on her hips. "...I mean yeah, you don't have to say it like I'm some kinda museum piece."

"Yeah, no, I didn't mean it like..." Millie paused, flubbing her words as she recalculated and came up flat. "...well, shit."

Rossy sighed and softly shook her head. "Look, I'm sure you meant it as a compliment, but I'd appreciate it if you just...ignored the whole cyborg thing, okay? I don't mind you being playful, just treat me like you would anyone else."

Millie met her eyes, then quickly cast them back down to the floor. "...yeah, okay. Sorry. I'll try to do better."

She received a nod of approval.

"I mean, to my credit though, I've never seen anyone quite like you," she continued, insistent on rationalizing. "Can you blame me for being curious about your realistic robot arms?"

"Cyborg," Rossy corrected her, enunciating both syllables.

"...right." She took a deep sigh of her own and tried to glance down the hallway, past Rossy's intimidating frame. "God, I'm striking out today, huh?"

"Well...". Rossy's face remained configured in a lopsided frown.

On one hand, Millie was definitely striking out, and Rossy found herself disappointed in her. The girl was sharp in most senses of the word, but maybe Rossy had let her heart-shaped eyes give her too much credit in that sense. As a reborn sentient automaton, Rossy had been in more than her fair share of "hands-on" encounters already, and as such, she'd developed an even more protective ownership of her personal space. She knew she was a cybernetic freak, sure, but she was still very much alive, and still very much a human being deserving of respect.

But, she mused, on the other hand, maybe it's just second nature for a stripper to treat a body like a spectacle. Her entire career is built on being admired by strangers. And she DID apologize, after all...

That doesn't make it right, she told herself, sharply.

...but god dammit she's cute, and I guess I can forgive her if she's willing to admit it was wrong.

"...anyway, what was the other thing you wanted to tell me?"

Millie's words snapped Rossy back into focus. "What? Oh yeah!"

Straightening her spine and proudly extending her hand, Rossy held out the limp and pathetic plastic bag with a beam of pride. "I got you a gift!"

At this, Millie leaned forward with a defeated chuckle. "...and now you're gonna show me up with a gift too? Well shit, now I REALLY feel like an ass."

"Oh, shut up," Rossy scolded, but playfully. "I wanted to get you a little something, cause, well...I saw it, and I thought it was something you might like."

By this point, Millie seemed to have all but given up on her usual dry humor. "...are you for real right now? Oh my god, that's so sweet."

Still not entirely convinced the gesture wouldn't backfire at any moment, Rossy swore she could feel the non-mechanical beat of a heart she didn't have speed up. "...what, is it really THAT uncommon for a girl to show up with a random gift for another girl?"

...smooth, Rossy.

"No, no, it's not that," Millie shook her head as she regained her composure. "It's just...you're the NEW girl! I should be giving YOU a housewarming gift!"

A giggle escaped before Rossy could contain it. "...well damn, when you put it like that, then yeah, I'm totally showing you up, huh?"

"Damn right. Another point for Rossybelle!" Millie grinned, reaching into the bag. "Alright, what on earth did you get me?"

"Okay, so uh...now I hope this doesn't come across as weird or anything," Rossy explained, palms up and ready to defend her decision. "...but you know how we were talking about fashion the other day, and you had your eye on my underwear for some reason? Well, since, y'know, you're a...you have a job that is particularly dependent on them, so...maybe you might...like a pair for yourself?"

She stood stone still as Millie held up the gift to get a better look at it. To describe her present feeling as 'awkward' would be to commit a massive injustice to the word. What she felt was more akin to the gripping terror of a loved one opening the wrong gift on Christmas morning to find the neon pink g-string intended for someone else. The moment froze her completely as she waited for Millie's reaction.

Turning it over once more to fully examine it, Millie finally raised an eyebrow and replied, "...wow, you sure know how to make a statement!"

Rossy's virtual overlay nearly blue screened. "...wh-what's that supposed to mean?"

She received a hearty laugh in response. "Of all the gifts you could have given...".

Her brain felt the way it did when she used to have cheeks that could blush. "Well, I mean...if you don't like it, I can always, uh...return it, I guess. I mean, I could always use another pair of--"

"No, no, not like that," Millie assured her, waving it off with a genuine, heart-melting smile. "This is a great gift. Like you almost KNEW this would be the perfect gift for me."

A sigh of relief escaped out of habit, and then Rossy grinned and added, "Of course I did! I wasn't trying to make YOU feel like an ass, I was trying to make your ASS feel like an ass!"

Millie snorted, giving the underwear another glance. "...guess I'll just have to show you my appreciation by wearing them onstage, eh?"

"I'll be watching for them," Rossy replied with a wink, or at least what she thought was one. Cybernetic eyes were a marvel to behold, but the model she was equipped with weren't set up to process blink commands independently, thus making all winks into blinks.

Something in Millie's half-smile as she tucked the panties into the pocket of her bathrobe suggested she might also have had other plans for them. What plans, Rossy couldn't know, but her expression was clear. It's hard to hide the joy on a face that's just gotten a brilliant idea.

"...hey, come in here for a second, okay?"

Rossy snapped to attention. "...what?"

Millie leaned her head doorward and made her way back into the practice room. "I wanna show you something."

She was sure that she could feel the thumping palpitations of an organic heart set aflutter with possibility in her chest, even though she knew that was impossible. So many possible futures immediately sprang up in her mind, even though she knew THEY were likely impossible as well. Whatever she was thinking Millie might show her, in private, wearing possibly nothing but a bathrobe, after being given the gift of sexy pink panties, was probably wrong.

...but a girl can dream, right?

Guardedly, as if steeling her resolve against the possibility of seeing something too hot for television, she trailed after Millie, closing the door discreetly behind her. She watched Millie sidle over toward a fold-up table that had been set up on one side of the room, out of the way. Standing just in front of the table atop a sleek black tripod sat an expensive-looking camera, angled slightly downward, a green light on the front of it still glowing.

...stop thinking whatever you're thinking right now, Rossy...

Her eyes wandered over to the table itself, which she now noticed was strewn with an assortment of clothes. Well..."clothes" in the sense that they were things a person wore on their body, but probably not in public view. The average person might define these as "clothes" if they weren't quite this small. And if they involved less lace.

Think with your BRAIN Rossy, not your...uh...your chassis...

She kept her lips sealed, but Millie knew how to read an expression when she saw one. She grinned back. "I know what it looks like, but it's not what you're thinking it is."

Rossy shook her head, feigning innocence. "I don't know what it looks like at all," she lied.

That got a chuckle out of Millie, who busied her hands shutting down and packing up the camera. "Well, it's not EXACTLY what you're thinking it is, anyway."

Rossy struggled with how to answer, though her plasticine face remained a perfectly blank slate. She decided to just let Millie answer for her.

"It's for a video project I'm doing," was what she got.

Rossy's brow rose slyly.

"...oops, I mean, not like a cam show or anything," Millie huffed, then smiled. "Okay, fine, guess I can't be cool and mysterious ALL the time. It's for my vlog."

The risen brow remained risen. "...vlog?"

"Video log," Millie clarified, as if Rossy might be unfamiliar with the word. "I run an anonymous vlog series on YouTube about my life as a stripper. I was just trying to get in one last recording segment so I would have time to edit tonight after the show."

Rossy nodded thoughtfully. "Huh. Well, you were right, that's not EXACTLY what I thought it was...sounds pretty cool though, I didn't know you were into video editing stuff."

"Mmhmm," Millie said with a shrug, packing the camera into a duffel bag on the floor. "I take my clothes off for strangers to pay the bills, but it doesn't mean I've dedicated my life to it."

Rossy considered this for a moment, then quickly added, "...oh shit, I didn't mean to, uh, insinuate...".

"Nah, it's fine," she replied, breaking down the legs of the tripod. "You'd be surprised how much people ASSUME though."

"Oh, would I?" Rossy crossed her arms and gave her a studious stare. "I'm no stranger to people being judgmental, remember? They take one look at me and think they know everything about me. They think I'm a hard-nosed cyber punk fresh out of their favorite 80s sci-fi movie, and that my favorite things are robotics and engineering and wondering what it's like to be human. I wouldn't be surprised at all what kind of box people would put you in before they even so much as say hello."

"Exactly," Millie said with a nod, before looking straight up into Rossy's eye. "And THAT'S why you thought sexy pink underwear would be the perfect gift for me, right?"

...ah, shit.

She felt a twinge in the base of her spine and her "muscles" locked up as if bracing for impact. Or at least her brain remembered these feelings, formed them into electric signals, and supplied them to a set of cybernetics that weren't programmed to understand the awkward, jerky body language of someone caught in the crossfire of a verbal call-out. Put simply, her mechanical body ignored these signals, so she didn't visibly react...but in her non-mechanical brain, it felt like someone had just sucker-punched the wind out of a pair of lungs she used to have.

"...w-well, I...uh, you know...?" she sputtered, until she remembered who it was she was talking to here; tiptoeing her way through a conversation to save face was impossible against someone as blunt as Millie. "...alright, fair point, you got me there. But you just said it was a perfect gift, didn't you?"

Millie simply shrugged and zipped up the duffel bag. "Hey, even assumptions are correct some of the time."

She let the moment hang in the air, suspended by her own smug half-smile and the release of the weight on Rossy's shoulders. But once the moment passed, Rossy found herself still wanting more. "So what exactly DOES a stripper vlog about?"

"What do you mean 'what'?"

"I mean, like, what's to talk about, really?" Rossy asked, the creeping sensation of regret already pooling up around her words. "Is it just like, learning sexy dance moves, or like...underwear review shows, or what? Can you even post that on YouTube?"

Millie rose to her feet, hoisting the bag onto the table to pack up the as-yet-unreviewed underwear. "Again, you'd be surprised. There's an audience out there for just about anything you can imagine, if you can find them. And that includes tutorials about how to get into erotic dancing, who to talk to, where to audition, what to expect, how to perfect a routine, all that jazz."

"There's an audience for striptease career tutorials? Really?"

"Positive. My inbox is overflowing."

"...with dick pics, I assume?"

Millie made a face. "Well, I'd be lying if I said there weren't any...but it's pretty easy to filter through them and focus on the bigger picture. A lot of people are just curious, mostly. Took me a little while to find my audience, but I really can't believe there are that many would-be strippers are out there, wondering if the money is worth the effort."

Rossy nodded slowly, watching her with glowing eyes. "How long have you been at it?"

"Just hit a year anniversary on the vlog a few weeks ago."

"I meant how long have you been taking off your clothes on stage?"

Millie paused, a pair of pearl-blue pantyhose in hand and a strange smile on her face. "...well someone sure is inquisitive tonight, aren't they?"

Hesitantly, Rossy replied, "...yes? I mean, I'll back off if I'm pyring too deep, I'm just...I'm curious, just like you are about me."

The smile widened just a bit. "...you sure you're not just trying to math out how old I am, and whether I qualify as a cougar or a kitten?"

"...what?"

"Kidding," she said with a wave. "I'm just...surprised, I guess. I know there's an audience for what I do, but I don't get to meet a lot of them in person."

Rossy pretended she wasn't discreetly watching every time Millie bent over. "I mean, you're not exactly the type of person you meet every day on the street...you're genuinely interesting to me."

Millie didn't reply, but kept smiling. Something in her eyes seemed to catch the light, gleaming keenly in the soft fluorescent atmosphere of the room. It could have just been a casual glare being amplified by Rossy's cybernetics, like a camera choosing to focus on the wrong object in the picture, but...there was a definite, incontestable enchantment in her expression right now.

...or at least my gay ass sure makes it look that way.

She felt as though more were expected of her, and followed up with, "...anyway, you can tell me if I'm prying too deep."

And, as if solely to ignite the feelings she was trying so hard to keep a lid on, Millie placed a hand on her shoulder and continued to hold her gaze. "Don't worry about it. I'm just glad to meet someone who sees me for both sides of who I am. It's a nice feeling."

Still stunned by her proximity and her glowing smile, Rossy tried hard to play it cool. "...if you think that's nice, maybe you should hang out with me more often."

Millie's smile glowed, her eyes shifting ever so slightly. "...yeah, maybe I should. I think we have a lot we can learn from each other, yeah?"

On the surface, Rossy smiled back, with a pleased, "Yeah." On the inside, she felt as though her processor had begun running hot enough to melt the gray matter of her brain into a mushy soup.

"Yeah," Millie agreed, giving her another pat on the shoulder before releasing her. "Couple of cool, sexy babes like us, staying up late in the secret of the night, unraveling each other's mysterious pasts as we work and live together in the house of whores and outcasts...sounds like a fairy tale, doesn't it?"

Thoroughly charmed by the erotic dancer's wiles, Rossy could only reply, dreamily, "...my thoughts exactly."

The moment ended, but only in reality. In her own private memories, Rossy was sure to be revisiting that moment as often as her biological little brain would allow her to.

Millie, in perhaps the brightest mood she'd been in all week, packed the rest of the equipment into her duffel and hoisted it over one shoulder. "Well, these panties ain't gonna wear themselves on stage. Guess I'd better go and get ready for tonight, eh?"

"Aww, already?"

"Shh," she replied, wagging a finger playfully. "We'll get together again later, I promise. I'll talk to you after I'm done exposing myself."

Rossy nodded and flashed a grin. "You've got yourself a date."

"Imagine that," Millie added, putting a finger to her chin. "I'm slipping into something more comfortable BEFORE we go out."

Rossy chuckled, then pointed to the duffel. "You sure you don't want a hand with that?"

"No worries, I've got it," she said, stepping through the door. "Or did you mean the changing part? I know you're eager to see how great my ass looks in my new underwear, but I'm gonna make you wait until I'm on the stage."

"Damn," Rossy snapped her fingers, a true marvel of modern mechanical engineering. "Well, hope it's worth the wait, then."

Millie just shook her head, laughing softly. Then she paused, taking a moment to contemplate the pattern on the carpet before looking back up at her. "...and hey, thanks."

Rossy blinked. "...for what?"

"...y'know, for the gift..." she answered, meekly. That wasn't an adjective Rossy would normally associate with the young lady, but it was the right word to describe her tone nonetheless. She wasn't entirely sure how to respond, so she just smiled back and nodded.

"...and...for understanding," Millie added, as if she had to force it out. Unlike Rossy, her wholly organic body was not exempt from embarrassing biological consequences, like flushed cheeks and the occasional vocal squeak. Rossy couldn't help but keep right on smiling, to Millie's chagrin.

"Don't give me that look, I'm just...I'm glad to be talking with someone who's interested in ALL of me, and not just...y'know..." she carved an hourglass figure in the air with her hands, "...ME."

To which Rossy could only nod knowingly, thinking quietly to herself...lucky for you, I'm interested in BOTH.