Church/allison oh god what
Fic/drabbles, um.
Both Church/Allison, except uhhh, set in this AU kind of thing a friend and I are doing. The tl;dr summary is essentially the Director was playing super-secret-scientist again and had found a way to copy the minds of the Freelancers implanted with AI, based on the data he was getting back from studying them + the fragments. Thus begins him playing all sorts of Dr. Frankenstein and we kind of curbstomp science, with him getting access to flashclones and copying the minds of Freelancers, making them AI. SO YEAH THIS MAKES NO SENSE TO ANYONE BUT LARISSA PROLLY oh well.
Church goes through endless attempts at recreating her before it works. Papers strewn about the room, experiment after failed experiment until he feels like maybe he’s nothing more than a dog chasing its tail.
The first few aren’t even worthwhile-- scrap, though he hates to think of them ( her ) as that. He deletes them, purges the fragments, and starts again, because he has to do this right, he has to make her right. Nothing else will do.
The middle few copies fail halfway through-- Church hasn’t perfected the process, can’t figure out what it is that he’s doing wrong in the code, but he’s nothing if not persistent.
( He’s just making breakfast for them the morning that he inserts her chip into the new body, when it just gives out, the crash of a glass of milk heralding the subsequent thud as her legs just give out and she crumples to the floor. Breakfast is burned, and he barely has any time before she simply shuts down, no words, no movement, just everything down at once like someone turned her switch off. )
The last two copies are so close that when they fail, he spends the entire night with his forehead pressed against the computer, unable to dare to look at these any longer, unable to look at any more ones and zeroes, and figure out why he can’t make her her, why he can make copies of all the other Freelancers, but why she keeps failing-- why he keeps failing.
( He gets a whole nine hours out of the second to last one. Four days, but it’s not quite right, and he can’t put his finger on why. It turns out it doesn’t matter, because just when she manages to convince him that no, she really does want to train, and yes, she really can handle it, she’s having a seizure on the floor of the training room, shaking and gasping and clawing at his arms in an attempt to hold onto something. Just as quickly as it begins, it’s over, and Church is left just staring at her, shaking, wondering why he can’t do this. Why can’t he do this? )
The final copy punches him when she wakes up.
( She’s right, this time.
He grins through the bloody nose, and the entirely unapologetic way she stands there, sheet wrapped around her body, messy red hair, ever a force to be reckoned with, and asks him what the fuck is going on, and when the hell did he get it in his mind it was his right to play God.
Church is still grinning as he explains, adjusting his glasses, pressing tissues to his nose to stop the flow of blood, but he doesn’t even care, because he knows-- he knows he’s done it right this time. )
______
It’s nearly two AM when Allison convinces him to come to bed-- it’s not so much convincing, either, as it is a hand at his collar, jerking, until he pays attention.
“Yes, my dear, I--” he starts, and laughs, faintly, when she releases it only to grip the front of his shirt, tugging him firmly out of his chair, and he follows, still laughing quietly as they make their way to his bed. She pays the cat that shares her name only the slightest bit of attention, pushing it off of her pillow with a sigh, ignoring its hiss and the way it trots off, tail straight in the air, clearly offended. “You two would get along, were you not so similar.”
Allison’s as impatient as ever, making a noise to let him know she’s heard him, sliding his glasses off ( Careful, please, I only have one pair right at the moment-- ) and settling in his lap with a noise, throaty and quiet and familiar, so much so that he has to stop a moment, lifting a hand up to up her cheek, smiling faintly.
“--more sentimental shit, huh?” Allison asks, kissing his palm with a little shake of her head, smoothing her hands over his chest, fingers working to undo every button.
Someday, he thinks, he might update her body, transfer the chip into another form-- one older, more mature, though he realizes that she’ll likely not really go for that. She was ( is ) at her prime, like this-- the world couldn’t hope to take her down and he’d envied her so fiercely for it, for her strength. Updating would do little good besides irritate her, and he does plenty of that already.
Church tips his head in to kiss her, and he never, ever forgets how easy this is, how easy it is to slip into the habits of twenty-plus years ago, Allison settled in his lap, pushing a hand down into his pants to stroke him, slow and easy, knowing just how to make him react, how easy it is to get him hard when she’s working at it.
The moment, he thinks, would be ruined by anyone else, when Allison leans in, mouthing a kiss at his jaw, laughing quietly while she speaks. “You’re getting old,” she drawls mockingly, curling a hand in his hair, arching her back when he shakes his head and presses a kiss to the swell of one breast. The rest of what she was going to say is swallowed back while she bites down little needy noises, squirming in his lap, pleased that she doesn't even have to say more teeth, before he's doing it, sucking a bruise just over where a scar would be, were she in her own body.
“Yes, well, we cannot all be so lucky as you, my dear,” Church murmurs, and is entirely unsurprised when it takes just a few moments before he’s spilling all over her hands and his thighs and she’s wiping it off on his pajama pants with a sigh.
“You owe me double.”
Church slides his shirt off the rest of the way, curling a hand in her hair as he presses a kiss to her knuckles, chuckling quietly. “As if I would expect anything else.”