The Edge of Life

They have a strange relationship. Batou doesn't even remember how it began. Well, technically, he does remember. He can't not remember. Not in the way people use the phrase to express the importance, the sentimental value, of a memory. The first time they had been together could barely be considered memorable. It is not a stand-alone piece of data behind his memory buffer. Batou can't not remember in the sense that everything he experiences is committed to memory, and he can pull up these memories like program windows in the bland landscape of an OS shell. Where things like breathing and maintaining a stable heart rate are involuntary processes in humans, recording and storing visual and sensory data are involuntary processes in cyborgs.

Batou can access the memory any time he feels like sifting through his cyberbrain, but he rarely does. The memory is what it is. It is a small, almost insignificant amount of data, that has since substantiated so many subsequent reiterations, so many copies of copies of copies, that Batou could almost justify making an independent partition for them. The "Togusa" partition. Of course, all of this would not change the fact that he doesn't understand his relationship with his partner. Re-viewing the memory, playing it back frame by frame, wouldn't change the fact that the memory exists and that it is a part of his life. That it changed what little life he has.

Batou generally ends up coming to the conclusion that it originally arose out of necessity. Necessity and too much time spent with one another in too many life-or-death situations. Situations that are generally more life-threatening for Togusa than they are for Batou.

He remembers – more pieces of data, but older – seeing the same sort of reactions during the war. He sometimes thinks that the war is the root of his feelings for the Major. That the combination of life and death – of seeing Motoko so alive, taking the lives of others – was the trigger. Like the final trigger on a dormant virus. Batou wants to laugh at his logic. Motoko and Togusa have infected him, like a disease.

He isn't even sure what's going on between himself and his partner, this thing, can be classified as a relationship. Not in the romantic sense, at any rate. What they have are flurries of intimacy in the heat of the moments after they have almost experienced death. After they have grasped the hand of the death gods, descended from the heavens or risen from the earth. These moments, jagged and disjointed, loose threads in the uniform weave of the matrix that is their working relationship. Desperation for human contact in the wake of the human condition.

Sometimes their encounters are nothing more than tired smiles exchanged between comrades. Others, Batou and Togusa sit in the cyborg's gaudy yellow sports car, and Batou holds his human partner until the fear and adrenaline raised pulse tunnel vision has faded. All of the human reactions that Batou doesn't have. He can't experience "fear" or "distress" without triggering a mathematical equation to release the necessary hormones.

They don't have sex very often, partially because Togusa always walks away with guilt and shame eating at his insides – more things Batou can no longer feel. He remembers, vaguely and toward the back of his brain casing, what the feelings entail, from having experienced them long ago, when he still had a natural body and therefore had very little control over the reactions. He can't even bring himself to call them emotions anymore. Reactions. That's all they are. Chemical reactions in the human body. And technically, he's right. It's logic like this that makes Batou question the existence of Ghosts. Someone with a Ghost wouldn't think like that.

At any rate, sex isn't something they make a habit of. It has a tendency to generate regret, and it's too much effort. Batou hesitates to even call what they do with one another "sex". It isn't, really. It's a mockery of sex. It's closer to masturbation. Very awkward, fucked up masturbation.

Batou can't actually have sex. It isn't so much that cyborgs as a whole can't commit the act, it's more that Batou doesn't have the parts necessary. He has never felt the need to have reproductive organs installed. The most important "person" in his life is his basset hound, Gabriel, so he doesn't really see the point in them. Maybe, one day, he'll see a reason to buy the hardware and have it installed, but for the time being, it seems pointless.

The most Batou can do is synch with Togusa and, in a manner of speaking, hack his nervous system and pituitary gland. The action lacks the intimacy of actual sex, but it gets the job done. Generally, it gets the job done better; there isn't much room for human error. And Togusa doesn't mind, so Batou does it.

Of course, seeing Togusa like this, feeling Togusa like this – sitting in his lap, nuzzling somewhere around his clavicle, fingernails digging sharply into his shoulders – doesn't really elicit a response. Occasionally, he'll release endorphins, dopamine, testosterone. Whatever he needs to feel more inclined to participate. He gets the feeling Togusa enjoys this more, when Batou does this. Batou isn't sure why. Maybe it's because he's married, or maybe it's just another involuntary human reaction he's long since forgotten. Batou doesn't really mind either way, because, regardless, being with someone, just being close to someone like this helps to erase the loneliness that permeates every crevice of his life.

Most of the time, Batou just watches Togusa. Watches him, outlined in fluorescent orange. "Biological Reaction: Affirmative" briefly scrolls across his field of vision, followed by Togusa's vitals. Blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, neuroactivity, and so on. A warning message flickers on and off, notifying Batou that Togusa's numbers are abnormal. That his blood pressure and heart rate are too high, his respiratory rate too quick. Batou almost wants to laugh.

Togusa is never very loud when they do this. The most Batou is ever able to get out of the other man are muted whimpers and whispers of moans. Togusa doesn't say Batou's name – doesn't say anything, as a matter of fact. Batou feels almost cripplingly perverse for wondering as much, but he's curious whether or not his partner is the same with his wife. If he's louder or quieter. If he's more open, or if he closes himself away. Batou doesn't bother wondering whether or not Togusa is gentler. While he's not violent when they're together, not in any sense of the word, the cyborg has sustained more that a few scratches and bite marks at Togusa's hands.

Regardless of the effort Batou puts forth, it always takes Togusa a few minutes, and even without the hormones or anything else, there is always something about seeing Togusa's body seize up, about hearing him sob out his release. If he were still working on human terms, he might call it erotic. Now he just calls it intriguing. Now, it is just something that triggers something else in him that he can't identify. Sometimes, Togusa will clasp his hands over his mouth in an effort to keep quiet. Batou isn't sure why. Maybe out of a twisted sense of integrity, of oh, God, if anyone finds out we did this in the briefing room, in the elevator, in that stairwell. Maybe he feels like, if he doesn't vocalize it, it isn't real. As if keeping quiet would make it not committing adultery.

Either way, it doesn't really effect Batou. He just does it to stave off the solitude that awaits him everywhere else. Togusa has his own reasons. Reasons Batou doesn't understand. Reasons that have their own, stand-alone consequences.