Chapter Text
"Don't worry, I won't hurt you."
Jeremiah Francis Sebastian never thought of taking advantage of the rain-soaked waif he’d invited into his apartment.
Afraid of what she’d think, he’d swallowed anxiety down upon declaring that he’d take the couch.
At least her drying smile said she was’t afraid anymore.
The couch untouched in the end, she’d taken his bed while Sebastian ended up falling asleep in the lab as he often did, Nikola and Edison lightly crawling about the table as if they didn’t want to disturb their sleeping parent.
The whirring of a machine was what woke him. Not her, she was as quiet as a mouse. Pris; Short for Priscilla, perhaps?
Made up like a doll with blackened eyes, Pris had asked him how she looked.
Sebastian nervously responded that she looked better as he ran his hand through his light brown hair.
“Well…you look beautiful.” He smiled softly. Even just saying it aloud made him feel like a fool, but he meant it.
Seeing that yellow glow in her pupils, his analytical self knew she was not human then. Only belonging to replicants on earth, they were the artificial being’s eyes reacting to the planet’s pollution. His heart had skipped a little, but the sentimental won out, brushing it off as merely a trick of the light.
The ship carying a rare happiness lost it’s stride when she asked how old he was, what was his problem.
The young woman was blunt, but it was better than tip-toeing around it like most did.
Sebastian told her his age-twenty-five- and about Methuselah syndrome.
It was a funny name. Methuselah of the bible lived for almost a thousand years, while he was lucky to have made it past twenty. At this rate-and with the new arrhythmia of the past few years- he probably had only a decade or so left.
Repeating textbook explanations, Sebastian explained that his glands-thyroid, pineal, adrenal, all of them- grow too old too fast. Pris correctly assumed that he was only on earth because he couldn’t pass the medical exam. Like so many unfortunate souls, Sebastian was left abandoned on the crowded, hollowed world he would never be allowed to leave. All because of the malfunctioning of a gene going haywire before he was even born.
With such gentleness in pink lips and medium gray eyes, Pris pulled him out of the melancholia like shooing a bee off a flower.
She was far prettier than any dead thing.
“I like you…just the way you are.”
It had warmed him to hear such a thing. She sounded so genuine-
“Hi, Roy.”
Sebastian nearly jumped out of his seat when he saw her friend. The replicant scared him. He still did, really.
The blond man-he looked like a teutonic god- moved so silently too.
Still dripping from the rain, the new stranger was unruffled as he complimented his home. The way those bright eyes had run along his face made Sebastian feel anxious. Self conscious. Nervous habit compelled him to fuss with his hair again.
“Sebastian. I like a man who stays put.”
The fervent way the pair kisses had caused a discomforting, tugging sensation through him, prompting Sebastian to get up-to do anything-and offer them breakfast. Head down and without meaning to, the occasionally-clumsy scientist broke the kiss as he slipped between them.
Of the fair-haired pair, Sebastian wasn’t sure who he envied more.
The sun was up, the light filling the windows of his apartment. It looked pretty, but anyone who tried to discern would see only the gray, caustic fog filling the atmosphere during the day.
Shortly after his arrival, Roy-the lower half of his face still blanched by his lover’s kiss- wanted to take a shower, only shrugging a little when Sebastian said there was just a bath. Pris had leaned against the counter, her face angled towards the bathroom. There was a distant look on her white face, as if waiting for her own sun to warm her again.
He knew Replicants needed less food than their human counterparts, but the past three months must not have been easy for the escaped property.
Sebastian wasn't all that surprised when they told him who they were. Flitting about the kitchen for the sake of rare visitors, his mind wandered to other things. Sebastian knew that every colonist was offered a replicant to do what they pleased with. A likely form of slavery coming with it, the scientist felt sad for them. But the more he thought of it, the more sadness was quelled by his fascination, as if they had waited under an adorned tree for him.
His guests were arresting, like visiting angels.
He’d glanced at Roy as he approached the kitchen. Outer clothes shed, Roy walked with a relaxed gait, stretching as he did. With less than a maker’s eye, Sebastian had noticed the curve in the man’s back, the way his broad shoulders shifted inward as he embraced himself.
Even with drying hair, Roy’s was nearly as white as his rats. Nicky and Eddy were supposed to be for bio testing, but Sebastian couldn’t bear to hurt them.
The replicants ended up settled on the rounded chair, Pris sitting on Roy’s lap with her legs pointing the opposite way. Her straight hair nearly as blonde-even dyed to match her paramore’s- the two of them looked made for each other.
Sebastian was sure of what they were now, the scared cat inside running off in the face of barely-stifled excitement. Just from looking one could tell that they certainly were not run of the mill. The male designs more androgynous, Roy was not a pleasure unit like his companion. Far too bright for labor, that only left one. Having a hand in making them, the combat units Sebastian had seen in action were just automated killing machines, their faces solemn masks. Yet Roy could smile. His face carried so much subtitles, the evidence of advanced thought in every expression.
“Why are you staring at us, Sebastian?” Roy asked
The scientist had been bashful with the truth.
“Cause... you’re so different. You’re so perfect.”
Managing to be both rugged and pretty with curves and angles in his face blending seamlessly, to say that Roy was perfect had been no exaggeration.
The creator in Sebastian wished he could look inside them. Just to open them up and see their organic wiring, to find the parts he himself had designed. Tyrell had always cared more for image-what J.F had made exceptionally more life-like-and this time he had outdone himself.
His curiosity peaking, Sebastian couldn’t help but notice the way Roy looked out from the chair, almost as if bracing himself within a hiding spot.
“Nexus 6.”
Even when seeing a hint of wariness from Mr. Batty, the small man failed to stiffle himself as he stepped closer. As if seeing every impulse throughout Roy’s nervous system, Sebastian couldn’t help but smile. “There’s some of me in you.”
His words provoked a flash of anger in Roy’s eyes. Hot to cold, a weariness settled in his face, the sockets around his eyes darkening what pale brows couldn’t. Sebastian dug himself deeper by asking them to do tricks.
Pris was a few inches taller than him barefoot. Even when quoting Descarte, she seemed so whimsically bored of it. Her body was so graceful, and so slender as she did a slow backflip for his sake. His inner child coming out, Sebastian's giggles echoed through the room. Roy would be just as beautiful with white skin. But the tanned hue of his created a striking contrast.
Accelerated decrepitude.
As apt a way as anything he’d ever heard compared to doctors who could never tell him anymore than he knew. Dropping the scalding egg, Sebastian wished he had forever to know them more, but they were running out of time. Like the mercury-addled hatter who offended the concept personified, they were all undue enemies cursed in separate ways.
Roy had big hands like catcher’s mitts. One thumping against J.F’s chest, there was hurt as Roy brought him closer. Real alarm widened the man’s eyes and displayed white teeth as he worried for Pris, as if his own life were worth so much less.
Without experimentation to draw on, the scientist-honed by years of corporate inhumanity- in Sebastian wanted to seek distance, to construct a bullshit response that amounted to, “It’s just the way things are. Them’s the breaks.”
The prevailing sentimentalist, the one who still saw good in everyone, could never say such a thing. All together, they only said that he wished he could.
Roy had stepped back first, asking of Dr. Tyrell as all the glimpsed fear drained away to fill the twenty-five year old instead.
Placing a hand on Sebastian’s thin shoulder, Roy rose to his full height as he smiled again, his voice lowered to a comforting tone. Such beautiful eyes. They were nearly electric in certain lights; The orb’s wearer was magnetic himself.
Sebastian’s eyes-a murkier blue than those of his visitors-were a little wide as the soft grasp remained, leading him into the warm body awaiting him.
Between the replicants as Pris wrapped her limbs around him-her ankles crossed under his crotch- Sebastian’s pulse was racing more, the undercurrent of fear competing with flashes of emotion that were just as primal.
“Will you help us?”
Sebastian had tried not to look at the taller man, but he’d managed a glance, an old sadness creeping into prematurely aged features.
“I can’t.” He wished there was something he could do, but these beings were not toys with loose screws or crossed wires; Even perfect on the outside, they were slowly decomposing just as he was.
His head hung low as Pris grew closer.
“We need you, Sebastian. You’re our best and only friend.”
She sounded like she really meant it. That he had a real friend for once in his life-
"We're so happy you found us."
Roy broke all currents of thought by making him laugh. Smiling bigger than he could remember, Sebastian looked up the to blond man with no trace of unease before realities threatened again.
He’d nearly cried when she kissed the nape of his neck. But as her embrace tightened around him, Sebastian knew-in spite of all instincts telling him to get away-it was alright. He was among friends.