Chapter 10: Reassignment
The high-tech bed was a landscape of rumpled black leather. Glitch lay tangled in the sheets, the faint scent of their sweat cutting through the room’s usual ozone sterility. Laloz was a warm, solid weight against her back, his breathing deep and even in sleep. One arm was draped possessively over her waist, his hand splayed flat against her lower abdomen.
She hadn’t slept. Her mind was a riot of static, replaying the doctor’s disbelieving words from that afternoon. “Medically impossible… unprecedented case of full uterine differentiation… viability is another question entirely.”
A phantom flutter, tiny and terrifying, pulsed beneath Laloz’s palm.
She shifted, and he stirred, his arm tightening. He nuzzled the back of her neck, his lips warm. “You’re thinking so loud I can hear it,” he mumbled, voice thick with sleep.
“Just can’t get comfortable.”
He turned her onto her back, hovering above her. The city’s pre-dawn glow etched the lines of his face in blue-grey. He searched her eyes. “You’ve been gone all day. What happened?”
This was the moment. The words were ashes in her mouth. “Something’s changed, Lalo.”
A shadow of his old fear flickered across his face. “Don’t.”
“No, it’s not… it’s not about leaving.” She took his hand and guided it back to her stomach, pressing it firmly over the place where the fluttering had been. “It’s about something staying.”
He frowned, confused. His fingers flexed. “You feel… different. Softer.”
She took a breath that shuddered all the way to her core. “I’m pregnant.”
The words hung in the humming silence. His hand went completely still. His expression didn’t change, but his eyes did—they widened, then narrowed, cycling through disbelief, calculation, and a dawning, paralyzing shock. “That’s… you can’t be.”
“The scans don’t lie. Somehow, I am.”
“How?” The word was a cracked whisper.
“The doctor called it a ‘latent biological miracle.’ My body… finished a process it wasn’t supposed to. Started building a home. Because of you.” She gave a weak, helpless laugh. “All that fucking. Your stupid, determined seed. It found a place to root.”
He jerked his hand back as if burned. He sat up, the leather creaking. He stared at her stomach like it was an alien artifact, a hostile piece of machinery he didn’t design. “This is… this is a problem.”
The coldness in his voice was a slap. “A problem?”
“A complication!” He surged off the bed, pacing the dark room. The unfinished robot watched from its corner. “This wasn’t the deal. This was just us. Me and you. Simple. Clean. Now there’s a… a thing. A person. Growing.” He raked his hands through his hair. “What the fuck are we supposed to do?”
The raw panic in his voice ignited her own. “I don’t know!” she snapped, sitting up. “But it’s not a ‘thing.’ It’s a consequence. You don’t get to fuck me raw for months, whisper you love me, and then call the result a problem.”
He stopped pacing. He looked at her, truly looked, saw the fear and anger trembling through her. His shoulders slumped. The fight drained out of him, replaced by a hollow awe. He walked slowly back to the bed and sank to his knees beside it, level with her.
“I’m sorry.” He reached out, his touch tentative, and laid his hand back on her stomach. “I’m a coward. I’m so fucking scared.”
“Me too,” she whispered.
His thumb stroked the soft skin. Then he bent his head and pressed his lips to her abdomen. It was a kiss of apology, of acceptance, of terrified wonder. He stayed there for a long moment, breathing her in.
When he looked up, his eyes were wet. “Show me,” he said, his voice rough. “Show me it’s real.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He pushed her back gently onto the pillows and moved down the bed, settling between her legs. He pushed her thighs apart, his gaze intense, studying the place he’d known only as a site of pleasure. Now it was something else entirely.
He kissed the inside of each thigh, soft, reverent kisses. Then he leaned in, his breath hot against her. His tongue, that clever, knowing tongue, traced a slow, worshipful path not to her cock, but lower, to the tight, hidden entrance beneath. He licked and suckled with a desperate tenderness, as if trying to taste the change, to understand it with his mouth.
She arched, a soft cry escaping her. The sensation was different—deeper, more resonant, as if her whole body was singing on a new frequency. Her cock, neglected, stiffened against her stomach.
“Please, Lalo,” she begged, not sure what she was asking for.
He understood. He moved up her body, aligning himself. His cock, hard and heavy, nudged against her. He didn’t thrust. He just held himself there, his forehead pressed to hers, his eyes locked on hers.
“Is it okay?” he breathed. “Won’t it hurt…?”
“Just go slow,” she whispered, wrapping her legs around his hips. “Love me slow.”
He pushed in. An inch. A gasp. Another inch. A shared moan. He filled her with an excruciating, perfect slowness, a deep, claiming penetration that felt less like fucking and more like a vow. When he was fully sheathed, he went perfectly still, buried to the hilt inside her.
“I can feel it,” he whispered, awestruck. “I can feel everything. You’re so hot. So deep. It’s like you’re holding all of me.”
He began to move. Not the frantic, punishing rhythm of before, but a deep, rolling tide of connection. Each slow, deliberate stroke was a promise, a prayer, an anchor in the terrifying unknown. She clutched at his back, her nails digging in, meeting each thrust with a lift of her hips.
“Tell me you love me,” she choked out, the words torn from her. “Tell me you want this.”
“I love you,” he gasped into her neck, his pace increasing infinitesimally. “God, Glitch, I love you. I want you. I want all of it. I want this.” He drove into her, his cock dragging over a spot so intense it blurred her vision. “You’re mine. This is mine. Ours.”
His words unraveled her. Her orgasm built not as a sharp peak, but as a deep, seismic wave, starting in the cradle of her pelvis and radiating outwards, shaking her to her teeth. She came with a shattered cry, her inner muscles clamping rhythmically around his length.
It tipped him over the edge. With a guttural roar that was part agony, part ecstasy, he pulsed inside her, his release hot and endless, planting himself deep in that impossible new soil. He collapsed atop her, his weight a comfort, his rapid heartbeat thudding against her chest.
For a long time, they just breathed, tangled together in the slick, spent aftermath. The first true light of dawn began to bleed around the edges of the blinds.
Finally, his voice, muffled against her skin: “What do we do now?”
She stared at the ceiling, at the sleek, silent robot in the corner. A built companion, sterile and predictable. Then she looked at the man trembling against her, his seed inside her, a miracle growing in the dark.
“We figure it out,” she said softly. “One day at a time.”
Outside, the city began to wake. Inside, something new had irrevocably begun.