Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/544807.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M, F/M
  Fandom:
      Jonas_Brothers
  Relationship:
      Joe_Jonas/Nick_Jonas, Ambiguous_or_Implied_Pairing
  Character:
      Joe_Jonas, Nick_Jonas, Miley_Cyrus
  Additional Tags:
      Sibling_Incest, Consent_Issues, Alternate_Universe_-_Robots_&_Androids
  Series:
      Part 3 of We_Mechanical_Men
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-10-24 Words: 3701
****** The Wide Ocean ******
by orphan_account
Summary
     Nick and Joe's relationship has its high and low points.
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
Summer arrived, and with the weather warmer, Nick became restive, fidgety. He
decided that he needed something to do and joined the town’s soccer league.
He’d played before his diagnosis; played well, winning trophies, but the
upheaval in his life prompted him to leave his team. Now he felt ready to do it
again.
He was excited about taking up soccer and it showed. Coming home from his first
training session, he burst through the front door and bounded across the room
to hug Joe, who’d been waiting for his arrival home. Joe put down his novel and
lifted Nick off his feet, grinning. Nick was flushed and rumpled, his hair
hectic, and he smelt of sweat, grass and dirt. Inhaling, Joe felt warm, as if
without his knowledge his insides had been frozen and were only now thawing.
“Joe! I mean, Joe,” said Nick, assuming a serious face. “I have something to
tell you.”
Obligingly, Joe answered in kind. “What is it, Nick?”
“I am going to teach you something. Something special, something important. I
am going to teach you – how to play the greatest game in the world.”
They went to the local park and Joe watched as Nick dribbled a ball back and
forth.
“There are ten outfielders and one goalkeeper on the pitch per team.
Substitutes wait on the bench. Games are ninety minutes each, split into two
halves with a fifteen minute break in between.” He glanced at Joe a few times
as he spoke.
Joe tried to look thoughtful and nodded at what seemed like appropriate times.
He didn’t tell Nick that he already knew the rules, or that he could easily
learn how to play by himself.
“The ball is always in play except for when an offence occurs, if the referee
stops play, or when it crosses a goal or touch line. To score a goal, the ball
must cross into a goal area with its entire circumference. There are a few more
things you need to know, but let’s get onto basic skills first. Dribbling
involves your foot’s sole, heel, inside and outside. Try not to get in the
habit of staring down, either; in a real game you’ll have to keep scanning the
field. Here, you have a go.”
He kicked the ball to Joe, who watched impassively as it went sailing past.
Birds wheeled and called out overhead. Joe looked at Nick blankly. Nick crossed
his arms. Joe sighed and trotted after the ball.
Dribbling was – unexpectedly difficult. It was only physics, and Joe was
familiar with quantum string theory, but somehow the ball kept escaping his
feet. It took an unreasonable amount of time for Joe to return to Nick.
As he approached, he saw Nick watching him with a hand raised to shield his
eyes from the sun.
“ … and once you get the hang of that, we can try juggling the ball, which is
also good practice for ball control and trapping,” he said, sounding doubtful.
More soccer? That was, that was great. Joe made sure to put on an enthusiastic
face. He didn’t want to disappoint Nick.
Nick winced. “Yeah, okay, let’s head home now.”
Soccer made Nick happy, which was good, but it also meant that Nick had less
time for Joe. He went from spending almost every hour of the day with Nick to
having vast swathes of time on his own with nothing to occupy himself. He
slowly worked his way through Nick’s bookshelf, which had an inordinate number
of speculative books on extra-terrestrial life forms, and practiced playing the
guitar. He also baked a few times. Denise taught him how to knit.
“That’s it, you’re getting it! Oh, but you dropped a stitch here. And here, and
here. Um. Keep trying, sweetie.” She patted his back encouragingly. “You might
want to practice a bit more before trying something harder than a scarf.”
He found ways to keep busy. Mostly, though, he watched the clock and counted
down the minutes until Nick’s homecoming.
Eventually he found out where Nick’s spending so much of his time. Nick was
distracted when they were hanging out, kept checking his phone.
The fourth time he put it down and slumped, Joe asked, “What is it? You’re all
antsy. Sorry if my company is boring you.”
Nick thumped him. “Shut up, Joe.”
“So what’s your deal then?”
“I’m waiting for a text message.” A smile threatened to break across his face.
He hesitated before adding, “There’s this girl. Her name’s Miley. She’s on the
girls’ soccer team.” He sounded shy, reticent. And happy. He’d never shown
anyone else this level of attention before.
“Do you like her?” said Joe abruptly. His voice sounded flat, without the
inflection he usually took care put in it.
“She’s all right, I suppose.” Nick looked down at his book studiously. Joe
waited for him to continue but he didn’t. The minutes stretched.
Joe stood and walked to the kitchen without a word. He cut and prepared
sandwiches, adding lettuce, tomato, and a few slices of the double-smoked ham
in the fridge. He removed the crusts and arranged them on a plate, and thought,
Nick’s never deliberately lied to my face before. Today he had. The dilated
pupils, the slightly elevated heart rate – they were physiological signs that
he did, indeed, like her very much.
 
“Happy birthday, Mister President,” said Joe into Nick’s ear, voice dark and
sweet. Intimate.
“Ugh, I told you that in confidence; are you going to tease me about it
forever?” Nick squirmed, flustered, but didn’t try very hard to escape Joe’s
grasp.
Joe snuggled in closer and dug his chin into Nick’s shoulder. “I’m not teasing!
I’m encouraging you like the awesome, supportive brother I am.” He dug his
fingers into the space beneath Nick’s ribs and said over his laughter, “I have
something for you. Upstairs. I’ll give to you later.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” breathed Nick.
It was a good day. Early in the morning, Kevin called on Skype and chatted with
everyone for an hour. He spent at least ten minutes telling a long-winded,
convoluted story about a duck and his philosophy professor, and another ten
minutes going, You’re practically a man, now, Nick; you’re a little man, I can
hardly recognise you! That night, the family went out to a nice restaurant for
dinner and they all sang happy birthday after a five course meal, despite how
stuffed they felt.
Joe sat on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, and waited for Nick to
come out of the bathroom. After a few minutes, Nick emerged with his teeth
freshly-brushed. His eyes were smiling as he advanced towards Joe, losing his
jeans along the way. Reaching the edge of the bed, he crawled the rest of the
way.
Joe stopped Nick when he was almost on him. “Happy birthday,” he said again,
pulling his present out from the gap behind him. “Try it on.”
Wordlessly, Nick took the sweater Joe had worked on for the last month. He’d
had some help from Denise, but wanted to do the bulk of it himself. For a while
he wasn’t sure if he’d finish it on time but he just managed. He ran out of
orange yarn three-quarters of the way through and used moss green for the
remainder. He thought the end product was acceptable. It was – fresh, citrus-y.
He admired Nick in the sweater. “It looks good. The left sleeve is a little
short but probably no one will notice. And it’s warm, too, so you can wear it
often in the cold weather.”
Nick gave a shaky smile before inhaling deeply and letting it out. “Thanks,
man, this must have taken you so long. It’s really, it’s really something.”
“I also baked you a cake. I’ve been practicing; it’s sugar-free but I’m pretty
sure it’ll taste all right.”
They kissed for a while on the bed, Nick flat on his back and Joe on his side,
propping himself up on an elbow. The sweater ended up on the floor. He ran a
hand down Nick’s side and under his remaining shirt, brushing his fingertips
against the dimples on the small of Nick’s back. He helped Nick undress fully
and was assisted in removing his own clothes.
Joe lay so that his torso was cradled between Nick’s thighs and rested his head
on Nick’s stomach, listening to its faint gurgles. Nick carded a hand through
Joe’s hair. His nostrils flared: cotton, sweat, young male. Nick’s scent was
changing, becoming stronger, but Joe put the thought aside and focus on
swallowing Nick down.
Not long after, he felt Nick fill his mouth, spilling with a gentle sigh. Salt
and musk and a faint, underlying sweetness. He kept it in his mouth for a
moment, just tasting, before spitting delicately into his hand.
He held Nick, and felt that strange, melting warmth in his stomach again. He
ran a self-diagnostic test that revealed all systems were functioning normally.
Did all humans feel this when they were with someone they loved? The result of
neurons lighting up and synapses firing, sending a message of animal comfort to
the brain. He knew what love was, intellectually; there were millions of books
and films and sonnets on the subject. What he did not know was if he was
capable of experiencing it. He regarded the solid weight leaning into him for
long, quiet minutes.
But after that day things between them returned to the way they were earlier –
Nick was busy, preoccupied, and Joe found himself left to his own devices more
and more often. He found ways to pass time and waited, because he knew he had
to be ready for when Nick would next need him.
Miley visited the house. She had a long, tawny mane of hair that caught the
sunlight, warmed with it. Joe was sprawled on the carpet, putting together a
puzzle he’d found in the cupboard, when she and Nick tumbled through the front
door.
“ – I said, Noooo, daddy, oh no, but of course he went and did it anyway, and
you can guess how well that turned out. Parents! What are we supposed to do
with them – oh! Hi!” She stopped, grinning, and looked back and forth between
Nick and Joe. “Is this … ?”
“Hey, uh, yeah. Joe, this is Miley. Miley, Joe.”
Joe put down the puzzle pieces and stood. He shook her hand. “Hi, Miley, nice
to meet you. I didn’t realise you were coming over.” He shot a quizzical look
at Nick, who only shrugged.
“It was a last minute thing, you know. So, Joe, you’re an android, right?” she
inquired in a prosaic tone.
As it turned out, she knew a surprising amount about AIs and spent several
minutes quizzing Joe on his specifications. Nick leaned against the wall and
tipped his head back, listening.
“I’m considering studying computer science in college. It would be cool to be
an AI developer. That, or a singer.” She waved a negligent hand.
Nick and Miley helped Joe finish the puzzle before they started on video games,
and Joe got to know the person who’d so occupied Nick’s thoughts and time the
past months. She was gregarious, had eclectic taste in music, liked Stevie
Wonder and Radiohead – Nick made a face like he was being hit over the head
with something – and extremely good at Halo. She won by a large margin, but
accepted the victory with grace, which raised her in Joe’s estimation.
When she’d left, Joe said, “That was Miley.”
“Yep.” Nick picked at a loose thread on his clothes.
Joe turned off the game console and left the TV on. “I like her.”
They watched the news until Denise came home. Joe let himself absorb the
information without concentrating; he could review it later. Instead, he
watched Nick and thought about how the things Kevin said were true, despite the
eye-rolling they engendered from Nick: Nick was growing up. He had always been
precocious, fiercely independent, and with every day he was maturing. Soon, he
wouldn’t need anyone, anything. Just himself.
His eyes were focused on the screen, his face intent, a line of concentration
between his brows. He was so serious.
“Want to go upstairs? I want to see your etchings.”
Nick choked on a laugh. “Sure, Joe. Um – sure.”
All the way up to Nick’s room, Joe felt the weight of Nick’s gaze on the back
of his neck. He went and sat down, let Nick close the door and come to him.
Tilting his chin up, he watched Nick’s throat work.
“Are you all right?”
A nod.
“Good.” He pulled Nick into his lap, kissing him as he did so because he knew
Nick liked that, and he would always do what he could to make Nick happy. Nick
was eager, wrapping his arms around Joe’s shoulders and pushing back like he
wanted to dive right into him.
Joe helped him out of his clothes and soon he was hovering over Joe again,
knees planted just outside of Joe’s thighs. The hair on Nick’s body was less
downy than it had been, more wiry now. Nick’s underwear was caught around one
leg but he didn’t seem to care, so Joe ignored it too. The main thing was that
Nick was smiling, looking dazed and happy and focused entirely on Joe.
In the films and television shows Joe had seen, people generally progressed
from kissing straight to intercourse. He thought about this and contrasted it
to his own experiences with Nick. He wondered, Did many humans have sexual
relations with androids? Probably. There were movies out there about people who
fell in love with androids and had their feelings reciprocated. Those androids
were always a little off, subtly wrong, more of a romanticised version of an
android than anything true to life. Joe had tried to watch one of those movies
with Nick, but ended up turning it off when Nick had started to look ill.
Nick squirmed and pressed himself eagerly against Joe, anywhere he could reach,
making hungry little noises. He ground down against Joe, thighs shaking. He was
bigger than he used to be, had grown before Joe’s eyes. What would Joe be doing
if it weren’t for Nick? Cleaning some stranger’s house, working security for a
second-rate businessman? He hadn’t been built for imagination, but he did not
think anyone in his position could imagine themself anywhere else.
Just the feel of Joe’s hands of Nick – between his shoulder blades, on the
small of his back, the cut of his hip – was enough to draw strong reactions
from him. Joe thought clinically that Nick’s future partners would be
uncommonly lucky to have someone so responsive; it was as if he existed for
this.
Nick groaned low, the sound coming from his chest, and hid his face in Joe’s
shoulder so Joe could only see the sweat beading on his temples. Joe threaded
his fingers through Nick’s hair and pulled his head back to see his expression.
His mouth was slack, pupils dilated.
“I want you to jerk yourself off.” Joe said the words very, very quietly.
Nick closed his eyes and nodded. His eyes slid shut. Joe kept his hand in
Nick’s hair.
A low, heart-felt sound escaped Nick when he put his hand on himself. The head
of his dick was flushed dark, shining and wet, peeking out from his fist. Joe
watched as he jerked himself slowly. On the down stroke, Nick’s hips jolted,
straining forward, desperate and wanting. Nick chewed the inside of his lip.
“Okay, okay, that’s good. Can you let go now? I need to see you, just for a
minute.”
He tensed, but removed his hands. His dick jutted, straining for Joe; it was
reddening, the veins standing out more. Joe ran a finger down big vein on the
underside of it and laughed a little as it flexed. A fat, clear drop of pre-
come slid down the shaft, and once it hit the base, he leaned forward to nuzzle
Nick’s mouth.
“Perfect. You’re perfect,” said Joe, lips buzzing, and made Nick wrap his hand
around himself again, just hold himself for a while.
“C-come on, Joe, stop messing around.”
“Hold on, just one thing first.” Joe placed his hand so that it overlapped with
Nick’s. He whispered, “Now let’s do it together.”
Nick’s fingers dug into Joe’s upper arm, his palm pressed sweaty against Joe’s
bare skin, as they stroked Nick off. He kept shifting restlessly,
distractingly, but Joe didn’t let their hands stop. Nick tried to speed up but
Joe kept the pace sweet and relentless, not too fast and not too slow, as Nick
gradually lost it, his breaths coming loud and ragged. He made helpless, hurt-
sounding grunts when he spilt, belly quivering with each hard surge.
After, Nick was sated, and they lay in a pile of limbs for seventeen peaceful
minutes. Then Nick’s message tone blared out and he was rolling off the bed,
grabbing his mobile. He grinned as he read the text and sent one back before
jogging down the hallway to the bathroom.
“Who is it?” Joe called out, though he knew the answer.
“Miley. Her dad just came home with tickets to the premiere of the new Bond
movie.”
Three hours of doing nothing much later, Joe shut himself down for the night.
His eyes opened in the early hours of the morning, and with his thermal imaging
he saw the Nick-shaped lump beneath the bed covers. He didn’t get up; he had
plenty of time.
Watching Nick was an activity that could occupy him for hours on end. He gazed
at the strong, straight line of his brother’s nose, his narrow jaw; he
considered the slopes of his cheekbones. He drew from his memory bank the image
of Nick’s flushed face, colour high in his cheeks as he gripped Joe tightly.
He listened to Nick’s soft, snuffling breaths and waited in the darkness.
 
“What happened?” The distance between Joe and Nick was eaten up in a few
strides.
Nick had his back against the front door, hands pressed flat against the wood.
He shook minutely. Joe held his face in his hands and turned it this way and
that, as if by doing so he could divine what was so terribly wrong it made Nick
look utterly blank, shock-y. His skin was clammy to the touch.
“She has a boyfriend, an older guy. He thought I was – he warned me off her.”
He curled his lip as colour began creeping up his neck. A muscle jumped in his
clenched jaw. Joe didn’t have to ask who he was talking about.
“Did he need to warn you off her? You spend a lot of time together.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Nick tightly.
“Nothing. It was just an observation. What did he do?”
Nick folded his arms over his chest, rubbing himself. A defensive posture. “He
got some of his friends and they, you know, pushed me around a little.” He
sounded angry.
“Ah.” Joe sucked in a breath. “You should sit down.”
He guided Nick to an armchair and gave him a glass of water. Nick gulped it
down thirstily, and then two more refills. Once his colour was better, Joe
headed for the front door. The door was open when Nick’s voice stopped him.
“Where are you going?” His voice was small, too tentative by far.
Joe conjured up the hazy image of an overgrown thug, the one who’d done this to
Nick. Who thought he could push Nick around without repercussions. Joe thought
of all the damage he could inflict before someone saw him and pulled him off.
“Out.”
Nick flung himself forward and out of the chair, wrapping his arms around Joe
as if he could really stop him if Joe didn’t want to. “No, Joe, don’t! You
can’t do that, they’ll take you away from me! Look, I’m fine, I’m not even
hurt. I’ll – I’ll tell someone, I promise I’ll sort this out.”
He stopped moving toward the door and focused on Nick clinging to him, his face
a scant inch away. Brushing a lock of hair out of Nick’s face, he studied his
expression. He said, “You’re so different now. I don’t understand you anymore.”
And, “I wish you’d tell me what’s changed.”
Nick let him go and took a step back, watching Joe with that considering, dark-
eyed gaze. That was Nick, always thinking.
“You’re so – you make me want things,” he said in a low voice. His face had
that intent, habitual frown that brought out one specific reaction from Joe: to
erase it as quickly as possible. If Nick continued this habit of brooding he
would begin to develop wrinkles in his twenties.
“Things I can’t have. Things that aren’t – ” Nick took a breath. “I want too
much, I know.”
The thought of him being unhappy was ... disconcerting, Joe thought was an
appropriate word. Unacceptable. “What do you want?” he asked.
Nick said nothing.
“What do you want?” he repeated. “Tell me. I’ll do it, I’ll give it to you.”
The clock ticked quietly in the silence. Nick kept staring at him, looking
pained. Joe was used to Nick’s changeable expressions by now, knew what he
looked like when he was experiencing emotional anguish. Though Joe was almost
certain Nick was not physically hurt, he ran a quick thermal scan just to be
sure. It proved his hypothesis correct, that whatever was bothering Nick was in
his own head.
Nick said nothing.
“Will you a least tell me if you’re still going to hang out with Miley?”
“I don’t know.” Nick shrugged and looked away.
Later, when Joe sat in a chair by a window on the upper floor, he saw Nick bent
over in the back yard, opening two small, white boxes. Nick had been out for
half an hour, his explanation being that he had “errands to run”. Leaning
forward so that his forehead pressed against the cool glass, Joe watched as
Nick carefully lifted plain, porcelain plates out of their foam nests and
systematically smashed them, one after another.
End Notes
     DR SNAUT: We seek contact and will never achieve it.
     – Solaris, 1972
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