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There was something really satisfying about fixing a wall.  Especially when you got to use a gadget you made yourself.  Cisco called it a nanogun, because it looked like a gun and shot a high powered stream of nanite infused gelatinous plasti-metal up to 20 feet with excellent accuracy. 

Cisco shot his gun at a hole the size of his head where the collider wall had bowed outwards from the pressure of the earlier explosion.  The spray stuck to the bowed and torn metal plating, looking grayish, and just a bit slimy.  He rested the gun against the wheeled canister that held it’s “ammo” and consulted the app on his phone.  With a few light taps of his fingers he ordered the nanites to wake up and do their preprogrammed job.   Within moments he could see the sides of the hole coming together.  In an hour or so, no one would be able to tell the there ever had been a hole there.

Another one down, a thousand more to go.

He was just pulling the canister to the next gap when he heard the soft whine of a motor echoing down the pipeline.  Goddamn it, too soon.

Cisco started in on the next crack without looking as Eobard in his motorized wheel chair came around the curve.  Maybe if he looked busy enough on this Eobard would leave him alone.

“It’s looking very good,” Eobard said.  “At this rate the collider will be completely fixed in a week.  You’ve really put your all into this project, Cisco.  Good job.”

“The faster this is fixed, the sooner you go home,” said Cisco, refusing to look at him.   He fiddled with his phone instead.

“So eager to be rid of me?” Eobard asked in a soft voice that suggested he was surprised and a little disappointed.

Cisco didn’t bother to give him an answer.

“I’d really hoped you’d have warmed to me by now,” Eobard went on.

Cisco finally turned and looked down at the bane of his life.   Seeing Eobard with Well’s glasses and wheelchair filled him with a pang of grief.  He missed Wells, even though the Wells he missed had never really existed.

Then he looked away, because looking too long at Eobard inevitably brought with it feelings that he’d never had for Wells.

“But you are right,”  Eobard said, not knowing or caring about the illusion he was breaking.   “The faster I get home the better.  My life has been on hold for far too long.  You have no idea how frustrating it is to be stuck in the past, forced to live in an antiquated culture, in primitive conditions, away from everything I’ve built my life on.  If I’d known that I’d end up spending almost three decades trying to create a simple tunnel in the space time continuum, I’d have never tried to kill Barry in the first place.”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve learned your lesson,” said Cisco, voice heavy with bitter sarcasm.  He grabbed the canister and began pushing it on to the next spot.

“But I can wait a little longer.  Let’s call it a day, Cisco.”

“I’d rather —”

“Leave it there,” Eobard ordered.

Cisco winced as he was viscerally reminded that the nanogun wasn’t the only thing with nanites in it.  The feeling of uneasiness immediately lifted the moment he put down the gun and stepped away.  Apparently he was done for the day.

“Let’s head back to the lounge,” said Eobard.  He turned the wheelchair around and started back up the pipeline.  “I want to talk to you about a few things…. Or do I need to make it an order?” he added when Cisco hesitated.

“No, sir,” said Cisco, crisply, and fell into line at his side.   He tried not to think of the lounge where Eobard’s “control and refinement experiments” with Cisco happened.  Maybe this time all he wanted to do was talk.  It seemed unlikely, but Cisco could always hope.

“Good, because I’ve noticed that you’ve been rather rebellious lately.” 

“In what way?”  Cisco’s stomach grew heavy with dread.

“Well, for one thing, your suggestion of a movie night with Caitlin and Barry.”

“I’m not allowed to watch movies with them?” asked Cisco, letting annoyance cover deeper worries.  “I thought you wanted me to act normally around them.”

“It’s not the movie night per se, it’s the choice of movies.  The Thing?  The Reanimator?  Star Trek: First Contact?  An interesting thematic line up wouldn’t you say?”

“I wanted to give them a choice.”

“As hints go, it’s far too subtle for Caitlin and Barry.  They would have never made the mental leap between the Thing and me taking over Wells.  Nor do you appear to be reanimated.  However, First Contact has nanites turning people into mind controlled robots and that’s too close to home.  So no on the movie night from now on.”

“They are going to wonder why I’m not hanging out with them. I thought you didn’t want them questioning me.”

“If they start to question, let’s let them find out about us.  Shall I make it obvious?  I could take you out for coffee at Barry’s favorite spot.  We could hold hands across the table.”

Cisco stopped and closed his eyes as if hoping that would shut Eobard out.  But then opened them again and caught up because open defiance only lead to explicit orders and Cisco had had far too many of those.

“What was the point in that, anyway,” asked Eobard, as if idly.  “You want me gone as much as I want to be gone.  You know if they find out they’ll only try to interfere with the plan.   Or maybe it was really a message for me, telling me that you are still angry about our arrangement.”

“Our arrangement?” said Cisco.  “Our arrangement?  I’m your slave.  I’ve never had a say in any of this.”

“It was better than the alternatives.”

“Only for you,” said Cisco.   

He knew for a fact that at least one alternative had been heaps better than this one.  He was getting visions (“vibes” Eobard called them) every now and then, mostly of a universe where Eobard was safely tucked into one of the metahuman holding cells.  If only there was still a way to make that happen….

Unfortunately, Eobard not only knew of these visions, he knew more about them than Cisco himself.  They came from a timeline Eobard had somehow erased and ever since had been making sure wouldn’t repeat.

“So, that’s what you wanted to talk to me about,” said Cisco after a moment.   “No movies or I’ll be punished with public displays of affection.  Okay, I get it, loud and clear. I can go without watching movies with my friends for a few weeks.”

“And there is something else.  I’d expected when I shared my lab with you that you would be fascinated with my research with nanites.  I hadn’t expected you to repurpose them for your gun.  That’s cutting a bit too close to our secret as well.  I know you like to share your inventions with Barry and Caitlin.  Don’t with this one.   I don’t want them thinking of nanites at all.”

“May I keep using it?” Cisco asked.  “Because if not, it’s going to take a lot longer to fix the collider.”

“And I will have the enjoyment of your company for a few more weeks,” replied Eobard.  “But no, your gun is fine.  Continue working on the collider, just keep your work away from Caitlin and Barry.”

“I already have been,” said Cisco.  The last thing he wanted was either of them asking why he was repairing the collider.  They wouldn’t approve of starting it up again and potentially causing the same problems that turned Barry into the Flash … and himself into whatever he was becoming.   

Cisco had misgivings about it himself.  He knew how much destruction Eobard’s path back home could cause.  At the same time, if it worked, it would put Eobard far enough in Cisco’s future that he’d never have to deal with him again.  It seemed rather selfish to want to save himself over protecting the city, but, perhaps the silver lining to the whole being a slave bit was that he didn’t have the option to be noble about it.

“You’ve turned into a far better obfuscater than I thought,” said Eobard fondly.  “A hidden talent.”

“And you are more up on old movies than I thought.”

Eobard looked up at him with with a slight wry edge to his smile.  “A hazard of repeating the same years.  You end up with a lot of time to fill.  Plus, watching them made me feel, in a small way, closer to you in the decade before we could be together.  It certainly was far less risky to my reputation than hanging around a middle school stalking you.”

“That’s creepy, man.”

“Though you were an adorably precocious ten year old, I must say.”

“Really creepy.”

Eobard laughed.  “You can thank me for the laptops your class were given in 6^th grade.  Primitive though they were, it seemed the best way I could shape you at the time.”

Getting that laptop had been one of Cisco’s most treasured happy childhood memories.   His parents would never have spent that kind of money on something Cisco wanted.  Even having to share the laptop with Dante hadn’t dimmed his joy.  He’d taught himself to program on that that beauty.  And now all those memories felt soiled.  He felt a pang of horror for his innocent ten year old self being in the sights of a monster like Eobard.

Cisco saw the lights of the Metahuman cells peek out around the gentle curve of the pipeline.   He was always paranoid when emerging from the supposedly unused areas of the complex.  The edge of the 24/7 surveillance zone was just ahead and if either Barry or Caitlin happened to be looking at the monitors up in the cortex, they’d be very curious what he and Eobard were doing together in that section.  Better they leave independently.

  “So…” he said, hoping to end the conversation before they arrived at cells and perhaps forgoing a trip to the lounge at all.   “Is that what you wanted to say to me? No mentioning nanites in any form with Caitlin and Barry?  You’ve convinced me.  I’m on it. I promise not to clue them in on what you did to me.  Are we done?”  He stopped to let Eobard go ahead.

But Eobard  stopped as well and looked Cisco over thoughtfully for long enough that Cisco started to feel really uncomfortable.

“No, you don’t want them knowing,” said Eobard at last.  “It’s not about them at all, is it?  You want to be able to cure yourself, by yourself, with no one else — especially me, I suspect — knowing.”

Cisco felt his stomach drop.  Eobard was close to the truth.

“You take my invention, you work with it, manipulate it, learn to program it, all under the guise of doing something so useful to me, that you know I won’t object. But you hit a road block.  You are missing some crucial information.  The nanites I used on you don’t respond like the ones in your gun, even though by all your calculations they should.  You feel comfortable with machines, but the human body is more of a mystery to you.  So that’s where your logical mind turns to find fault.”

Cisco’s mouth went dry and his body tensed.  He knew he was cringing like the guilty man he was.

Eobard went on, a confident smile forming on his face.  “That’s when you decide to show Caitlin a movie as a natural way to broach the subject of how to deal with a nanite infection.  She’d cheerfully tell you everything you wanted to know about hypothetically curing the Borg and be none the wiser of your situation at the end of it.   You’d take that information back to the lab and finally create the device that will turn the nanites inside you off.  Isn’t that right?  Tell me.”

“Yes,” Cisco blurted through gritted teeth.

“And then you’d be free to betray me.   You’d tell the others who I am and what my plan is.   The three of you would gang up on me and put me in one of those metahuman cages just like you see in your vibes. That was your master plan.”

Cisco felt his face go cold and the edge of his vision turned grey.

“I’m a genius, Cisco.  Of course, I know.  It can’t be done.  It’s not a fluke of biology, or a lack of insight that’s keeping you from being able to program your own nanites.  I anticipated you’d try.  Before I injected you with them, I programmed them to be only responsive to me, in person. Not a recording.  Not a digital manipulation.  Not a dream.  Not a vibe.  Only the real me.  You will never be able to turn them off.”

Cisco felt humiliating tears start to well in his eyes.  He turned his face away from Eobard and looked down the dark pipeline from where they’d come.  He hadn’t had much hope, but it was some.

“Now, now, don’t take it that hard.”  Cisco felt a warm hand on his bare arm.  He shrugged free of it.  “Once I’m gone, no one will be able to order you around.  The nanites will go inert. There is an end to this for you, if you are patient and play nicely.”

It was the same ray of hope that had been there from the start.  Give Eobard everything he wanted, swallow the fact that he was never going to be punished for his crimes, and eventually he’d tire of Cisco and go on to better, badder things in the future.  But “playing nicely” was so, so hard.

“I believe that Barry and Caitlin have already left for the night, but if you wish, you can run ahead to the lounge.  Take a shower when you get there, get your head straight.  But not too long a shower, ten minutes tops.  Then we’ll finish our discussion.  Oh and Cisco — no side trips.”

Cisco felt the nanites processing the orders.  He had a choice — supposedly.   He could stay where he was with Eobard, or he could head to the lounge at a pace of his choosing.  But there was no going anywhere else or doing anything else, and if he did choose to stay, Eobard would simply make the order more explicit.   So, no choice really.  Just like everything else in his life for the last two weeks.

Cisco made a face and headed off at a fast walk to where the time vault lay hidden.

When he was just out of one camera’s range and not quite in the next, he put his hand on the wall and felt for a tingle.  A moment later, the wall pealed back in stripes to let him through.   The tingling feeling grew more intense, there was a sense of pressure on his mind, as if the visions were waiting to take over and make themselves known.  He had the briefest glimpse of Caitlin and Barry standing in the vault, looking at the article still projected on the wall.

The nanites prodded him onwards, through the door to the secret lab. Here the tingling abruptly dissipated.  What ever vision had been starting to form went with it.  Thank god.

Of all the useless powers he could have developed, seeing other might-have-beens must be the worst.  Why couldn’t it have been turning himself into poison gas? That would have rid himself of these nanites quick.   Eobard as well. So far his power was just one great big tease. He had no idea why Eobard thought Cisco should feel grateful for it.

But then Eobard thought Cisco should feel grateful for the nanites as well.  Eobard’s judgement sucked.

The tide of his orders pushed him along to the lounge.  As soon as the door opened, a wave of warmth hit his body.  The lights flickered on as he stepped over the threshold. 

Inside, the kitchenette was the same as always, sleek and dark and spotless, but gone was the long leather couch.  Cisco had helped Eobard dispose of it only three days after being taken over by nanites.  It had become impractical for their “studies” as Eobard called them.  In it’s place was a decidedly un-sleek full-sized bed, which made that end of the narrow room look cramped and unbalanced.

It was the only jarring element in the place.  The only thing Eobard had ever compromised his tastes on.  And, as far as Cisco could tell, the only thing Eobard hadn’t really planned on years in advance.  He’d thought their “romance” would be solely a public show.  Of all the ways Eobard could have been wrong….

“No clothes in the lounge” had been one of the first standing orders Eobard had given him, so as soon as the door closed behind him, he began to disrobe.   There was no shame or self-consciousness in the act, thanks to Eobard explicitly telling him not to be.  This, like the sultry warmth of the room, was Eobard’s attempt to convince Cisco that, contrary to all evidence, he gave a damn about his comfort.    

It was easier not to fight.  Fighting felt terrible and it didn’t make a difference anyway.  What happened in the lounge stayed in the lounge.  And when Eobard left for good, Cisco would demolish this lounge and all it’s memories.  But while Eobard was here, the lounge was his Enterprise and his will was captain.   Cisco was just a passenger for this miserable ride for as long as it lasted.

That ride took him to the bathroom, and the unavoidable calming shower.

Cisco leaned his head against the tiles of the stall and let the water sluice down his back.   He breathed in steam and tried to relax and put himself in the right headspace.  Whatever happened, happened and when it was done, it would be done.

Maybe it would only be talking this time.  No.  It wouldn’t be. It never was just talking and it certainly wouldn’t be now that his defiance was uncovered.

Too soon, Cisco saw the bathroom door open and Eobard ducked his head in and said, “It’s time.”

Cisco turned off the water, grabbed a towel and opened the bathroom door.

The rule said that Cisco had to be naked in the lounge, but Eobard was under no such compulsion.  Yet when Cisco looked out from the bathroom, Eobard sat on the edge of the bed, bare as the day poor, late Harrison Wells had been born. 

Cisco breathed in deep and steeled himself against a wave of desire.  Goddamn it.  Why did those nanites have to work so well?

Eobard was handsome.  He was fucking gorgeous.  He was Cisco’s type down to a T.  And Cisco knew exactly why.   All those “tests”.  All those “adjustments” Eobard called them.  All to perfect just the right balance of attraction and sanity.  Intellectually, he knew that Eobard could have looked like anything, anyone, and he’d feel exactly the same as he did now.  But it didn’t matter, because it felt so genuine that it was impossible to imagine how he could have not seen it before.  The long legs, the lean body, the curve of his narrow jaw, it all sent shivers of pleasure to Cisco’s groin.

Eobard smiled at him.  “You look very nice.  You’d look better without the towel.  Take a step into the room.”

Cisco stepped forward and the towel dropped.  Just like that.  He didn’t even have to think about obeying, it just happened.

A look of indulgent expectation lit Eobard’s face.  “Much better.  Sometimes I think I’d like to keep you naked all the time, but it would be too impractical.  You were a beautiful man even before I put those nanites in you.  But now… now you are perfection.  My creation.”

Cisco felt anger burn his stomach.  “My parents created me.  You just took me over.”

Eobard scoffed.  “They never valued you as I have.  What did they do?  A moment of passion.  Nine months of unconscious, bestial gestation. Followed by years of reluctant sacrifice that took their attention away from the child they loved most.  I’m the one who shaped you where it counts.  I gave you a gift.  I made you.”

“I made myself.  You don’t get to take credit for me.”

“Vibe.”

“Don’t call me that.  I hate that name. It makes me sound like a sex toy.”

“It’s the name you gave yourself.”

“I was a lot more innocent in that timeline.”  Cisco turned away.  He couldn’t be this mad and this attracted to Eobard at the same time.  It split him in two.

“Cisco.  I’m sorry to upset you.  I do care about you. Believe me.”  Cisco heard the bed shift as Eobard lay back.  “I don’t want  to fight.  Let’s table the conversation.  Come to bed.”

“I thought you wanted to talk,” said Cisco, even as he turned around and climbed onto the sheets next to Eobard.

“We are talking,” said Eobard, reaching for him and curling a hand around his neck.   His fingers gently played with Cisco’s hair in a way Cisco wished didn’t feel so good. “But you know I want more.  And I think I deserve it, considering what you were up to.  Betraying me.  I deserve some compensation for your attack on me.”

When Cisco didn’t answer, Eobard spoke again:  “I know you enjoy my touch as much as I enjoy yours.  Perhaps one of these days I can dispense with the orders.  But if it makes you feel better to have the choice be mine entirely, than so be it.  Kiss me, Cisco, the way you know I like it.”

Cisco rolled into Eobard’s arms and sought his lips.  Eobard liked it when he kissed him softly at first, gently rubbing lip to lip in a dry, teasing way.  Then as Eobard’s breath quickened, Cisco went deeper, sucking Eobard’s upper lip between his teeth, licking it delicately with his tongue.  Eobard’s hand drifted to Cisco’s shoulder and tightened, pulling Cisco harder against his thin chest.  His mouth opened, and Cisco let him breach his lips with his tongue.

It felt good.  It always felt good.  Like a drug that melted everything else away.  Goddamn but Eobard knew how to kiss, how to touch, how to make every nerve in Cisco’s body spark with pleasure.  For a man who’d been celibate for longer than Cisco had been alive, he made love like a pro.

Eobard’s hand stroked Cisco’s side, firmly enough not to tickle, softly enough not to hurt.  His fingers traced the lower edge of  Cisco’s shoulder blade, massaging the tense muscles, before following the valley of his spine down to his buttock.  This he grabbed and slowly pressed, driving Cisco’s groin harder against his own.  Eobard was hard, his length pressed against Cisco.

“Make love to me,” Eobard whispered into his cheek, before pressing his mouth once more against Cisco’s.  The kiss was passionate but brief.  “Pleasure yourself with me.”

Cisco arms and legs came alive, stroking, gripping, rubbing skin to skin, capturing Eobard’s thigh between his own, the shafe of Eobard’s leg hair against his cock was amazing.  Lust uncoiled like a snake in his belly. His skin felt hot, sensitive, receptive.  His cock was hard and needy.  Eobard was felt good against him.  He could grind his way to completion, it would be so easy, except….

“Don’t come until I say,” Eobard whispered.

Cisco moaned in frustration, but continued to grind. It felt so good, he couldn’t stop. Eobard planted small kisses against his cheeks and chin.  Finally he said, “Give me some room, I want you to ride me.”

Cisco pulled away immediately, allowing Eobard to roll onto his back.  Eobard’s eyes stared at Cisco with a fevered heat of lust.  He didn’t look away even as he reached over to the grab a bottle of lube from where it was tucked between the headboard and the mattress.

“Just a minute,” Eobard said, and then poured a dollop in his hand.  Cisco watched in fascination as Eobard’s long fingers slid smoothly over his erection, spreading the lube liberally around.  “There you go.  This should be enough — you are relaxed enough to take me.  You’ll feel nothing but pleasure.”

Cisco already felt himself relaxing, readying. His anus itched in anticipation of being stretched. “Come ride me, Cisco.  Ride me so it feels good for you.”  Eobard lay back and waited.

Cisco climbed over Eobard’s legs.  Holding the slick cock in a steady hand, he guided the head to his entrance, he grunted to loosen himself and lowered himself carefully on it.  There was a moment’s resistance, but then the head was in and there was nothing but a delicious sense of pressure and friction.  He eased down to the base in one slow stroke and felt stretched and full.  With a grunt of effort he rose up a few inches and then pushed himself down, feeling every inch Eobard had to give him to the fullest. Then he did it again, and again, in slow steady movements that rubbed his rectum walls in ways that felt unbelievably good. 

Cisco was hard as rock.  Hard as iron.  He grabbed his cock and squeezed before Eobard’s hands pulled his away.

“No, we don’t want to stimulate you too much, too soon.  Concentrate on my cock, how good it feels inside you.  You love how I feel.”

Cisco loved how Eobard’s cock felt.  It was hard and unyielding, veiny, pushing, rubbing against his prostate.  Even the idea of it drove him wild with lust and need.  This was ecstasy.  He drove his body against Eobard’s cock, lifting higher and pushing down harder, until sweat dripped from his nose and his thigh muscles twitched with exhaustion.  Every jabbing thrust edged him closer to an incredible orgasm.

“Ah, slow down a bit,” cried Eobard.   “I don’t want to come too soon.”   Reluctantly Cisco slowed.  “Slow, stop, just stop there.  Leave me inside you.”

Cisco’s body was trembling with the effort of holding still.  Eobard’s cock teased him in a maddeningly frustrating way.  He needed it to pound him.  He needed to move.

“Have you self pleasured since the last time you were here? Be honest.”

“No,” said Cisco through the receding haze of pleasure.

“Good.  I’d rather you didn’t.  Not until I’m gone.  I’d make it an order but there is a chance that my opening to leave will happen at an unexpected point.  I’d much rather you be able to pleasure yourself to the memories of me than to have your sexual needs drive you into the arms of some unworthy lover as soon as I’m gone.”

“I won’t,” Cisco promised. Fear put an edge on his pleasure.  “Please don’t make it an order.”

“You have no idea how beautiful you are right now.  Hot and needy, gasping for pleasure on my cock.  Needing my cock.  You make me want you so much.  You make me so hard for you. Tell me what you feel.”

“Needy.  I want to come.   Please let me come.”

“Yes, beg me, I love it when you beg.”

“Please.  Let me fuck myself on you some more.”  Cisco shivered.  Part of him distantly knew that he was debasing himself but, oh, he didn’t care,  he didn’t care.  All he wanted was to come, nothing else made a difference. “Please, please.”

“No,” said Eobard smugly.  “Off.”  Inside him Eobard’s cock seemed to grow even harder.

Cisco lifted himself off, savoring the last bits of friction as Eobard’s cock left him.  His anus twitched and tingled, but he was empty.  Orgasm was farther away than ever. 

“What did I do wrong?” asked Cisco.

“Nothing,” said Eobard.  There was a flash of movement and suddenly Cisco felt himself on his back and Eobard’s hands pulling his knees to his chest, leaving him open and vulnerable.   “I want to fuck you, fast.  Lie back and take me.”

Without pause or foreplay, Eobard thrust himself back in and drove hard.  If Cisco had been able to feel pain, he probably would have hurt, but the nanites translated everything into pleasure and that’s all he felt.  Eobard’s pace was far faster than Cisco’s had been, though thankfully nowhere near as fast as he was capable of.   He was pushing in as deeply as possible with every thrust. Rough as hell and completely unstoppable.  It was all that Cisco could do to remain completely still and take it.

“Getting close,” gasped Eobard.  “I want you to come with me.  Feel my cock, Cisco.  Feel how hard it is for you.  I’m going to come inside you so hard.  And you are going to come with me.”

Cisco was lost in a blur of sensation. He was climbing to the top of a cresting wave, any thrust now would be the one to bring him over the top.  He was so close — on the very edge of orgasm just waiting for that one final hard push.

“Coming,” said Eobard.  “Come, Cisco.  Come for me, hard,” he ordered in his next breath, taking Cisco’s dripping cock in his hand and giving it a series of quick pumps.

Cisco felt a warmth and an extra slickness that made Eobard’s final thrusts feel even more divine, but it was the sudden intense stimulation to his cock that set him off.  And he was coming, riding the long jags of intense pleasure as he shot come across his and Eobard’s chests.

Eobard leaned in and kissed him roughly.  “So good, Cisco.  Having you under me.  It feels right to me. It’s where you belong.”  Then he pulled his softening cock out and rolled away to lie limp on his back, a picture of languid satisfaction.

Cisco stretched out again.  Through the thick, sticky feeling of satiation, he felt the inevitable post orgasmic let down.His mind came to him in pieces, starting with the pungent smell of sex, the wrinkles in the sheets, the sound of Eobard breathing softly beside him.  The ache of muscles used too hard and stretched too far for too long.  The hollow sense of disgust and resignation for his situation.

“Are we done here?” Cisco asked.  “Can I go home now?”  He tried to rise from the bed.

Eobard reached out an arm to hold Cisco down.  “So eager to leave.  You know, one of these days, you’ll admit how much you like the sex we have.  Even though I make you do it, part of you must find it as satisfying and stimulating as I do.”

“You’re completely deluded,” said Cisco.  “You’re so far up your own ass, they had a picture of you in my Psych text book under the term ‘projection bias’.  It’s a wonder you accomplish anything.”

Eobard sighed.  His hand drifted upwards to Cisco’s cheek.  “Do you know why I let you insult and belittle me?  I could order you to stop, you know.”

“You like it that I fight you,” Cisco hazarded.  “It makes me more exciting to your sick perverted mind.”

The hand reached farther up and teased a strand of Cisco’s hair. Then Eobard pulled himself up on one elbow to look down at him.   “Quite the opposite.  I prefer you smiling and cooperative. You are so much less attractive when you are being surly and rebellious.  It’s tempting to simply order you to be happy.”

“Don’t,” said Cisco tightly.   “If you go messing with my emotions like that, I won’t be me anymore.  I’ll be a pod person.  You can’t want a pod person.”

“Oh, I trust that I’ll hit the right balance, with enough experimentation.   It would solve a lot of problems for me and you.  I would have a lover who wasn’t trying to stab me in the back.  You wouldn’t feel so angry and ashamed.   We could have all this, but without the danger, pain, or humiliation.  It would be very pleasant for both of us.  All it would take would be for me to say the right words.”

“Please don’t.   I can shut up.  I’m good at shutting up.”

Eobard continued to pet his hair, thoughtfully.  “The problem is that you are just too distracting.  I want to spend all my time with you.  Inventing together, talking about the world, having sex.  When you leave me to be with your friends, I just want to watch you enjoying yourself.  I have things to do, Cisco!   I can’t be spending all my time obsessing over you!”

“I agree.” He didn’t want to think too hard about Eobard spying on him with his friends. The obsession was sounding bad.

“That’s why I let you back talk me,” said Eobard.  “To make it easier for both of us to let go.   Eventually, I’m going to go back to my own time, and you will be centuries dead when I arrive.   I don’t think I could bear that if you weren’t a pain in the ass.”

“But I am a pain in the ass.  You are right to be annoyed with me.”

“And I wouldn’t want you grieving over me, once I leave.  It would be really very easy to break your heart to pieces, but I don’t want that.”

“I’ll be fine, trust me,” said Cisco with more confidence.  “Don’t worry about me.”

Eobard looked slyly thoughtful.  “If I took you with me, you would eat up far too much of my time.”

“I would,” Cisco agreed.

“But maybe it would be worth it.   Having you with me.  Having this, forever. The longer we are together the harder it is thinking of us apart.”

Cisco felt a cold fear thrill through his middle.  “Please. You promised.  You leave and I get to be myself again.  That was our arrangement.”

“But I can make you so, so very happy.”  Eobard’s finger softly traced Cisco’s lips.

Cisco pushed the hand away.   “I should go.  You’ll forget about this crazy idea when I’m gone.”

Cisco tried to get up again, but this time Eobard grabbed him by the hand and pulled.

“You are right, I have to let you go.  But not yet.  Stay the night with me, Cisco.  Sleep with me here in the lounge.   If I’m only to have you for a few weeks, I want to make the most of them.”

Cisco felt the nanites grip on him grow firm.   He lay back on the bed and let Eobard cuddle him close.

The room grew silent except for the soft sound of their breathing.  After a minute Cisco realized that Eobard had already fallen asleep.

He was a mess, but there was no getting up, at least not until he’d slept next to Eobard or Eobard woke up and told him to.  That’s the way the nanites were.  Probably it was best to doze off and get it over with.  At least the time would go by quickly.  He wasn’t going anywhere.

All he could do was hope that in the morning Eobard would sober up and put aside this sudden, scary bit of sentiment.  Because the only thing worse than being forced to fall in love with a monster was having that monster fall in love with you.