a/n: This is possibly the weirdest shit I have ever written. Also, it's unbeta'ed. So many reasons not to read it.

"Elizabeth, you have to understand. I was acting on orders from Mr. Weyland." His voice was as soft as always but he added enough inflection to convey sincerity.

"When you mentioned my father's death; when you talked about my God abandoning me? That was under orders from Mr. Weyland?" she spat at him, her eyes flickering to where his head sat on the console of the alien ship's bridge. His body lay on the ground ten feet way, his neck flickering as he spoke, his hands twitching slightly, reflexively.

He sighed, "I shouldn't have said those things. I wish I could take them back." His blue eyes stayed fixed on her, pressed against the curved black wall, her hands buried in her hair and her body twisted into as small a space as possible.

She didn't respond and he continued giving verbal directions to the ship in the guttural language he had learned on his two years aboard the Prometheus before she awoke, before the black vases and the death of her boyfriend and his master and everyone else aboard. Before he betrayed her.

He understood that she didn't trust him now so he paused to translate what he was doing every few minutes. He wasn't sure if she cared; she never responded. But several days ago she had remarked that she had no idea whether he was ordering her eggs for breakfast or ordering her death.

He had done a thorough scan of the ship and he found some mediocre food stores and some type of bathing hall. He had directed her to both and she had explored hesitantly, not sure if he was leading her to danger.

"Your fears are absurd, Elizabeth. Then I would be trapped here with no one to put my body back together. Not to mention that I care for your well being. Quite a bit." She had glared at him scornfully then but he saw something else in her dark eyes. When she looked at him she hesitated, her eyes losing focus for a split second, but of course, it was like an hour to him and he could replay it over and over for analysis. Desire?

He was aware of his appeal to those of both genders. It had been part of his design. But that Elizabeth would feel that way made him reconsider his entire strategy. He had showed his hand, of course, by putting the ship on verbal command mode, proving to her that he didn't need a body to run the ship. So perhaps he could convince her that she wanted him intact for another reason.

He ran a search in his database for chemical aphrodisiacs that he might have been able to synthesize out of available materials but determined that he couldn't do so without her help and that she possessed the knowledge base to determine what he was doing.

He realized that he was limited to more crude methods of increasing arousal hormones and was disappointed that he hadn't spend more time exploring this topic while he had access to the data back on Earth.

Positive social interactions, physical attraction to another and the arousal of maternal feelings all had the potential to increase levels of oxytocin in Dr. Shaw. He decides that the last is too risky, lest she sees him as infantilized or it triggers issues arising from her atypical pregnancy and be reminded of his role in it.

David combed his data base of literature and movies to determine actions that the female sex would see as sexually attractive, remembering, of course, that he was limited to the use of his facial features only.

He didn't completely discount his body, however. He increased the temperature in the ship, hoping to accomplish the dual purpose of increasing her level of arousal, as increased temperature will do with 76% probability and necessitating an alteration to her wardrobe.

The increased temperature posed a danger to his body, however, since he couldn't monitor the effect of overheating as well as if he were whole, so he asked her to remove the outer layer of his exploration suit.

Elizabeth did so reluctantly and only after he swore that he was wearing sufficiently modest clothing underneath. Which he saw as encouraging since it meant that she saw him as a man and not a machine. Who would care about having the inner parts of their transport pod or carbon dating tool exposed?

He felt…odd watching her hands move across his body. He watched her carefully avoid his sexual organs but she couldn't seem to resist moving her fingers up his abdomen from his waist, blushing when she realized that he had seen it. It felt vulnerable and yet it was a way to increase the feelings of intimacy between them so he perceived it as worth it. She was clearly just as affected since she retreated from the bridge immediately and stayed away for the next day, the longest she had done so since they first boarded the ship after the events on LV-223. His body lay in his grey t-shirt and thin cotton pants, his bare feet still nearly eight feet away.

The next day she returned, her eyes flickering between his head and his body, clearly not wanting to look at either. It frustrated him so that he managed to jerk his head wildly enough that his hair fell into his face.

"Elizabeth, I think I've found some clothing, if you'd like to change." He showed her a map of the ship on hologram and pointed out the small store room where either bedding or clothing might to be stored.

She had to approach him to see it and when her eyes fall upon the lock of hair she reached out to brush it back. He saw hesitation when her hand was still a foot away from him but she continued and brushed her fingers against his head, pushing the hair back.

It was a moment he was prepared for and he parted his lips and exhaled warm air onto the sensitive inside of her wrist. She froze in the act of pulling her hand away and her gaze fell to his mouth. He scans her heart rate and the degree of dilation of her pupils. Combined with her temperature he was satisfied that his plan was working.

"Are you quite well, Elizabeth?" Use of her given name combined with decreased decibels and timbre in his voice was intended to inspire a feeling of emotional intimacy and the illusion of physical closeness. He exhaled again and made eye contact with her. 'Perhaps there is something I can help you with?"

She shuddered and he wished he could access the olfactory sensors that resided in his body.

"No, I… I will go investigate." She took a step back and her brow slanted in a slight frown. 'Thank you, David."

It was fortunate for him that he has determined how to access most of the chambers visually because she stayed away for hours again after this. But the data he was able to glean was invaluable.

She brought several of the robes she found in the small cache to the room she had been sleeping in and built a small, makeshift bed. She had been unwilling to use the Engineer's bed's, despite his encouragement and she had been sleeping on the floor with her suit as a pillow. After tearing several feet off of the bottom of another robe she went to the bath chamber and shed the clothes she had been wearing since their departure and stepped into a dark, round pool and began to languorously wash herself.

He questioned, not for the first time, the extent of his programming. He was not programmed to have feelings, only to understand and present a facsimile of them. Yet he did, as much as he has attempted to deny it. He clearly had felt anger towards Dr. Holloway and the other members of the crew for their rudeness to him. He admired his creator but felt insulted when he announced to the crew that David had no soul. He resented Miss Vickers for her hostility and attempts to control him. He could have filled a book with his feelings for Elizabeth: curiosity, fascination, jealousy, disappointment, pity, admiration and fear.

But should he add to that attraction? The word floated in his head as he stared at her wet, naked shoulders and the joy on her face at soaking in the water. Without his full functioning it was hard to tell.

She rose from the bath, facing away from the visual sensor, and clothed herself in one of the engineer's off-white robes. She returned to her room and lay down on the platform she had turned into a bed.

As he watched she closed her eyes and adjusted the robe around herself and under her head. She moved restlessly for several minutes before finally opening her eyes again with an exasperated sigh and exhaling a whispered, "Fine!" to herself.

His eyes widened curiously as he watched her readjust her robes and then slip her hand into the folds of the material. It took him a minute and a sweep of his database to realize that she was touching herself intimately. Her eyes had closed again and one hand moved over her covered breast as another slipped down between her legs.

After first congratulating himself on the success of his plan, he began to list possible responses and their repercussions. If he allowed her to continue she would establish a precedent for seeking sexual gratification and could possibly be convinced to seek it with him, necessitating his repair. But then she would be sated and who knows how long it would be before she sought relief again?

He decided that interrupting her pleasure would be best, as it would leave her impulse ungratified. Then, for reasons he wasn't sure of, he continued to watch her for a moment.

Her face flushed and her lips parted. His display had no sound but he was sure he could guess that she emitted heavy breathing and perhaps vocalizations. He could only see the movement of the fabric to indicate what she was doing between her legs but as she continued her hips began a rhythmic sliding in counterpoint.

As her back began to arch slightly he decided he needed to act. He gave the command to sound the emergency alarm in the level she was on. Her eyes popped open and she jumped out of the bed with a frown. He shut off the monitor and awaited her arrival on the bridge.

"What is it, David?" She walked into the bridge wrapped in her shortened Engineer's robe. He fixed an apologetic smile on his face and answered her.

"I apologize if I alarmed you, Elizabeth." Use of her name to encourage social bonding. "I was ascertaining if the alert systems were working in case of an emergency." He moved his eyes deliberately from her still-flushed face down to her body. An indicator of reciprocated sexual interest to encourage her advances. She was, by merit of full use of her body, the only possible instigator between the two of them.

"I didn't interrupt anything, did I?" As the question slipped from his mouth he realized his misstep. Her brown eyes narrowed at him as she, even in her addled state, figured out what had happened. She flushed darker, possibly in anger?

"What would you have interrupted, David?" She looked at him, her eyes calculating.

Before he could answer she spoke again. "You've been watching me, haven't you? You must have visual contact, how else could you see that it was some type of fabric in the store room." She shook her head. "And the temperature?"

"Elizabeth, I had no intention of…" he trailed off as he watched her move to where his body lay. She crouched down by his feet next to his body. His bare feet twitched slightly as they sensed her proximity.

"Did you think I would put you back together so we could...fuck." Curious. Elizabeth was hesitant to speak so crudely but the word or the idea has an effect on her. Her pupils dilate again and he can hear her heart rate increase. She glanced down at his body and stretched out a hand and slid it up his thigh.

She glanced back up at him. "I'm not sure that I need to." Her hand reached his penis and she stroked it through the thin grey fabric. "Your body has some automatic responses. I'm sure this will only be perceived one way by your sensors."

She was right. His designers assumed that the only reason someone would touch him there was to initiate sexual contact. There is a built-in response. He could see himself grow and harden under her fingers.

He had no context with which to navigate this situation. "Elizabeth," he begged. "Please."

"'Please' what?" she purred from her kneeling position. She stretched out another hand to his waistband and pulled his pants off of him. It was difficult for her given his size and lack of assistance but she managed. He just watched, aghast.

"I am not sure…" He had no idea how to finish the sentence. "I'm not sure that you should attempt intercourse with my decapitated body"? Clearly, that was her intention. "I'm not sure why you are doing something so cruel and perverse"? He knew the answer to that. Hadn't he poisoned her lover, caused her to be impregnated with an alien fetus, mocked her, stolen her cross, attempted to seduce her, violated her privacy in countless ways since the day he first encountered her? He knew exactly why she would do this to him. It was a perfect and inconceivably twisted revenge.

She fixed him with her fierce gaze as she straddled him, her robe still covering her and draping across his lower torso. She reached down between his immobilized legs and shifted herself until she could, he assumed, slide onto him. She gave out the moan that he had been unable to hear while he spied on her and tilted her head back with pleasure.

"Elizabeth." His utterance of her name hung in the air between them as she moved on top of him, at first slowly and hesitantly and then, finding her rhythm, faster.

Her robe slipped off her shoulders and he could see the tops of her breasts, flushed and shiny with sweat. The panting noises coming from her increased and took on a higher pitch as he could only watch, transfixed.

Finally, trembling and throwing her head back, she found her release and when the jerking of her hips subsided, she slumped over him, her hands braced on his frozen shoulders. She pulled herself up off of him and straightened her robe.

She approached the panel where he sat, staring at her in…awe? He could hardly tell what to feel about what she had just done to him. Maybe disgust or anger. All his observations and his limited sensory and analytical data were flooding his head. He would need time to process.

"You couldn't orgasm, of course," she said to him, huskily, a smile on her face he couldn't interpret. "That would probably require a directive from here." She reached out and tapped his forehead gently. Then she tenderly ran her finger down his cheek. She glanced back to his body.

"I'll dress you later. I'm suddenly quite sleepy." She yawned, covering her mouth and giving him another mischievous smile as she sauntered out of the bridge.

He stared at his half-clothed body lying on the floor. He should have been angry at her for what she did. Clearly it was intended to humiliate him. She took liberties with his body, mocked him and left him stripped, exposed.

Exactly as he had done to her.

He had clearly misjudged Elizabeth Shaw for, again, she had confounded his notions of what she was made of, what she was capable of doing.

He left the visual sensors off that night and let her sleep in peace. He watched the stars and awaited her return.