Title: Golden Code
Author/Pseudonym: ScrewTheDaisies
Email: herself@screwthedaisies.com
Disclaimer: The following is a work of fan fiction, written purely for the enjoyment of the author and her friends. I do not own the characters and do not profit from having written the story.
Pairing: Neo/Seraph
Rating: NC-17
Summary: After all is done, Neo wants some control over his own future.
Series/sequel: None
Genre: Mainstream?
Warnings: None
Feedback: All welcome

"You do not truly know someone until you fight them," said Seraph, and before Neo could stop to consider the appropriateness of his knee-jerk response to this statement--but not so quickly that he couldn't stop himself from vocalizing it--he thought, _Well, that's _one_ way to get to know someone._

A secretive smile slipped over Seraph's lips.

Neo thought, _Whoops._

His expression becoming again as impenetrable as the lenses of his sunglasses, Seraph said, "Come, she is waiting."

A long time--weeks...months?--passed before Neo thought of that moment again, and of the man with the golden aura.

The program with the golden code. The thought jerked him back to reality. He was having _thoughts_ about a program. He had a hard-on pressing against the thin sheet that covered his body--a hard-on over a _program_.

He rolled onto his side, putting his back to Trinity, who didn't stir.

It wasn't as though he was the first man ever to be intrigued by what was he knew wasn't real. Wasn't that what men did when they looked through magazines packed with pictures of plastic-enhanced women? When they rented videos comprised of choreographed performances and fake orgasms? He blinked in the darkness of the quarters he shared with Trinity.

How did a program react to being wanted?

It wasn't _programmed_ to be wanted. But...there'd been that enigmatic smile, as though Seraph had read his thoughts.

Impossible.

Or...not. What were thoughts but electrical impulses traveling across the moist mass of a brain? Circuits flipping on and off faster than any human could conceive--yet happening ceaselessly in the very brains that can't conceive of it. Electricity was measurable. Detectable. And maybe, for a program with golden code, decipherable. Made only crudely, though--maybe only the intent behind the thought could be read, if not the thought itself.

Neo drew his eyes closed. He wanted Seraph, whose image had risen up in his brain out of nowhere and now would not leave. He wanted to fight Seraph. He wanted Seraph's hard body pressed against his and his body pressed against the back wall of the teahouse. He wanted....

He wasn't getting any sleep like this. He pushed the sheet off his body, then listened for Trinity's movements. Nothing. He slipped out of bed, into his clothes, and, finally, out of the room.

"Don't you ever sleep?" Link asked, looking up from a bowl of porridge he was eating in front of a bank of screens.

"You going to be up a while?"

Link laughed. "I _do_ sleep, you may be surprised to hear, and I was just about to grab myself some after I finished this scrumptious snack." He raised his spoon halfway to his mouth, then stopped, eyed Neo, and said, "Going somewhere?"

"Yeah. You want to send me before you turn in?"

Link shrugged. "No prob." He set the bowl and spoon down, pushed them out of his way.

"You can finish--"

"Nah. That's okay. It wasn't all _that_ anyway."

Neo plugged himself in and settled back, his hands resting on the cool arms of the chair.

"Where to?"

He gave the location and felt Link turn his head, give him a look, but he kept his eyes on the ceiling. What'd it matter to Link that he wanted to visit an abandoned teahouse? Abandoned. Empty. There'd be no one there because that was...too much to expect. So he'd walk the streets instead, his hands stuffed in his pockets, and contemplate the foolishness of his obsession. And then, when Link woke in the morning, he'd get a ride back to the ship.

"Here we go," Link said.

Half a second later, the teahouse materialized around him. A shimmering pyramid of gold solidified into Seraph, sitting cross-legged in the teahouse just as he'd been the first time Neo had come upon him. A smile played at the corners of Seraph's mouth before he said, "It is about time you came."

This time Neo was able to stop himself from turning his knee-jerk response into words, even in his thoughts.

Seraph unfolded from his position. "What did you come for, though?" he asked, walking alongside Neo, behind him. Neo turned to keep the man--the program--in sight.

Without warning, Seraph engaged him with an offensive move. And without having to think, Neo trapped Seraph's arms in his.

"No, not for this," Seraph said, lifting his chin. "You did not come to fight today."

"But how else can you truly know someone?"

"Yes. _That_ is what is you came for." With a flash of movement, he freed his arms, throwing Neo's out to the sides. Then he took three steps back. "Take off your sunglasses."

Neo reached up, slid the frames forward, and pulled them off. Seraph watched with faint amusement threatening to overtake his impassive expression. As Neo walked over to the tables to set the glasses down, he noticed that everything was as he--as they--had left it the last time they'd been there. Cups, chopsticks...everything was still spilled across the tables, the floor. It was as though the room had sat frozen in time, awaiting his return. And why not? It was merely code, saved on a hard drive somewhere, ready for recall at any time.

"Now your coat."

With his back to the room--to Seraph--Neo unbuttoned the front of the long cloak. After he slid it past his shoulders, it dropped to the floor with a rustle that made him think of bird's wings.

Neo drew in a sharp breath when fingers--warm fingers, fingers that felt _real_--touched the back of his neck. The back of a neck that had no holes in it. The fingers traveled downward, their sensation changing as they moved from skin to t-shirt, their pressure increasing as they began to work at knots along his spine.

"I am glad you came back," Seraph confided, his fingers reaching the curve in Neo's lower back. He curled his fingers into his palm to expose knuckles that he dug into the stiff muscles in Neo's back. He brought his other palm around to Neo's abdomen to hold him steady.

Could programs desire?

As Seraph's hands worked their way back up Neo's torso, Seraph's body moved closer to him until, as his fingers massaged the sides of Neo's neck, his stomach pressed against his backside.

Could they desire if they weren't programmed to?

And if not, why had Seraph been programmed for this, then?

And why...fuck, why did he desire him back?

One thing was certain--he didn't have the answers to the questions himself. Reaching over his shoulder, he clamped his fingers around Seraph's wrist, pulled it down, and held against his chest--pulling, at the same time, Seraph up onto his toes and firmly against his body. He gripped Seraph's other wrist as well, twisting it. "What's this about?"

The unmistakable ridge of Seraph's cock pressed into him. Seraph's breath teased the back of his ear when he spoke: "This is about us."

"I don't buy it."

"It is not for sale." Seraph shrugged free and stepped away. The heat from his body lingered only a second before falling away as well. "Take off your shirt."

"No." Neo turned. "Take off yours."

With the lift of an eyebrow, Seraph opened his arms and let his white jacket slide off them. The jacket hung from one finger a moment in the air, and then it dropped to the floor.

Neo raised his eyes to Seraph's face and its inscrutable expression. "Your glasses."

Seraph smiled, touched the sides of the frames with his fingertips. "You do not truly know someone until you have looked into his eyes. _That_," he said, "is the true truth, is it not?"

"Take them off."

He did. Warm, approachable, slightly humored brown eyes returned Neo's gaze. And instead of being, as he'd hoped, disenchanted by looking into the eyes of a program, Neo found himself...sucked in.

"See," Seraph said. "I am hiding nothing." He folded the glasses before letting them drop onto the pile of his jacket. Then, without being asked, he plucked the bottom of his shirt out of the waistband of his pants and raised it up, exposing a taut, golden stomach, and then a lean, muscular chest...and then the shirt joined the pile on the floor.

An eyebrow lifted again. "Your turn."

Neo twisted his head, scanning the room. Street noises--cars, pedestrians, the rain--murmured through the front wall of the teahouse. Except for that and the thudding of his heart, the room was silent. Empty. Just the two of them. He returned his gaze to Seraph and Seraph's body, shimmering in the teahouse's dim light.

Neo pulled his shirt over his head, dropped it to the floor. Exposing himself made him conscious of the quick, shallow breaths pushing against his chest. Seraph appeared calmer--not nonchalant, but...composed. Neo's tongue darted across his dry lips.

With a flick of his wrist, Seraph freed the knot in the drawstring of his pants. He pushed them down by the waistband until they reached his lower thighs and gravity took hold of them. He stepped out of the puddle of fabric and stood completely naked before Neo.

His cock pointed toward Neo's chest. His body--nearly hairless--stirred in Neo a need to touch, to taste, to take.... He popped the button on his own pants. His hands, anxious, eager, shoved the pants off his hips. He had to stop, back up, sit on the table behind him so that he could pull his shoes off. Then he was able to rid himself of the tangle of leather around his legs. And then he was finally able to stand, naked, trembling, ready....

"Now we can fight," said Seraph. Neo pulled into a fighting stance, the moves fluid and instinctual, as much a part of him as the blood rushing inside his ears or the warm, liquid ache spreading through his groin.

Seraph came at him. Neo blocked and turned. Attacked. Seraph dodged, then came at him again. Their cocks brushed. Neo cried out with a surge of energy and excitement and threw Seraph against a wall. Seraph grinned. Charged. They grappled, fell across the tables, rolled, slid to the floor, limbs tangled, heavy breaths gasping in each other's ears. They slipped in each other's sweat, grunted, rubbed their cocks against the hot, slick skin of stomachs and thighs.

For a second, Neo tried to think of how he wanted to do it this time--jerk each other off? Go for blow jobs? Go all the way? Seraph pre-empted him by climbing down his body and grabbing hold of his cock with his mouth. Yeah.... His fingertips pressed against Seraph's head. Seraph's tongue pulled Neo's cock in deeper. His hand found his balls. Oh yeah....

***

Neo sucked in a sharp lungful of air. His eyes sprung open. He blinked in the overhead lights. And then the light was blocked by a head. He blinked instead at Trinity's face. She smiled and, in a seductive, knowing voice, said, "Was that the Seraph program again?"

Neo closed his eyes. His mouth was dry, his face damp with sweat. He needed a drink of water and a few hours curled in the comfort of his bed.

"Caught me," he said, blinking his eyes open again, but this time not focusing her gaze on her, or on anything else. Water. He could really go for water.

Trinity shook her head. "And to think...I can remember when it used to be you couldn't keep your hands off _me_...."

"It's just a program." He blinked a few more times--blinking sweat out of his eyes--before considering the possibility of sitting up.

"Yeah, one that drains you--" She leaned in close. "--in more ways than one, mind you, and leaves you a useless--"

Neo jerked himself up. "It helps me sleep, _which_ is what I'm off to do right now."

"Some messiah you are," she said to his back, bitterness creeping into her voice. More quietly she added, "Just like all the rest. What you have, once you have it, is never good enough."

Dragging himself toward the galley for the water that he desperately needed, Neo's brain flashed images of Seraph. His programmed Seraph. "Sparring program" he'd called it when he'd built it, but even then the program had been smarter than him. Even then it had known.

He thought of the last thing Seraph had said to him this time, before he'd shut down the game: "Maybe next time, you will load the real program, find the real Seraph. Maybe next time you will find the courage to see what happens when you don't control all the variables." Again the enigmatic smile. "Or...maybe you will just come back here to me."

On his way back to his quarters, his thirst like the rest of him sated, he considered moving noiselessly by Trinity, who sat at the bank of computer screens, staring, her skin green from the glow of them. But sneaking by would not help to keep life on anything resembling a smooth, even keep.

"Coming back to bed," he asked playing with the back of her hair.

"Nah. I'm up."

"What are you watching?"

"Your Seraph."

He glanced up at the screen, at the familiar code moving on it. "That's not my Seraph."

"Not the one in your sparring program, no." She pressed a key and the screen flipped to a new view. Seraph--the real one; Neo recognized that she had been watching the Matrix itself--was gone. "Night," she said without turning her head. He had been dismissed.

***

Three nights later, accompanied by the sound of Trinity's slow, even breathing, Neo dressed in the darkness. Then, he snuck out of their room.

"Same place?" Link asked as Neo hooked up.

"Same place."

"All right."

The teahouse materialized, and Seraph along with it. That same Mona Lisa smile. The same impenetrable sunglasses.

"Here you are," Seraph said.

"Here I am."

"I have been waiting."

"Oh?"

"Your messenger told me to be here."

Neo stopped mid-stride, his mouth open. Yes, his program had been developing almost on its own--or, rather, fed by his subconscious, but....

"Messenger?"

"Yes. Your...girlfriend?"

Not funny, Trinity fucking with his program.... He looked around suddenly, looked for the first time at the code beneath the surface of everything. This was not his program. This was the teahouse...inside the Matrix. He yanked his attention back to Seraph. The real Seraph.

"Did she say anything else?"

Seraph sat cross-legged still, his arms loosely folded, his hands tucked into the wide sleeves of his jacket. Withdrawing his hands from his sleeves, he held forward a piece of paper. "She said to give you this."

Neo unfolded the note. On it in familiar block letters was printed, "Go to hell."

He looked at Seraph, who said, "It seems that I am actually the messenger in the end."

Neo folded the note, slipped it into his pocket. "So, you've delivered the message."

"Do you remember...." Seraph came to his feet. "Do you remember when I said that you do not truly know someone until you fight them?"

"Yeah." He glanced toward the door. When he turned his head back, Seraph was only two feet in front of him.

"I know you."

"No, you don't."

"Come with me," Seraph said, pulling a key from his pocket, turning toward the door.

"Where?"

Seraph pushed the door open, then looked back. Bright, pristine light from the hallway of back doors spilled into the dim teahouse.

"Come. He is waiting."

"Who?" Neo asked, taking a step forward. His heart picked up speed. Who? But Seraph had already passed through the door.

"Who?" he asked again when he joined Seraph in the hallway. Seraph glanced over his shoulder, but continued walking until he selected another door. He pushed his key into its lock.

Neo grabbed his shoulder. "Damn it. Who?"

"Whoever you think." With the tips of his fingers, Seraph nudged the door. A wind grabbed its edge, tearing it open, and then assaulting them in the hallway. Neo looked over at Seraph whose white jacket flapped in the gale. "After you."

Neo ducked his head, lifted his forearm. He tried to peer beyond the wind, but it tore at his eyes, making them water. He pushed his head down again and, against the wind's fierce resistance, forced his way into the room.

The door closed behind him and all went quiet.

Neo lowered his arm.

The room was gray--the gray of storm clouds. The air was gray. He looked behind him, but aside from the door, there was nothing. "Seraph?" He gripped the knob, pulled the door.

And found himself looking once again into the teahouse.

"What have you found?" asked the streaming gold code that sat cross-legged in the room.

"You?"

"I do not hear certainty."

Neo narrowed his eyes at the walls, the tables--at Seraph. Studying the code. It wasn't his. But it wasn't the Matrix, either. He glanced back into the grayness of the room he hadn't yet stepped out of. Then, turning back to the teahouse, he gripped the door frame. "Where is this?"

Seraph held up his key. "Do you want to try another door?"

"I want to know what's going on." He stepped over the threshold, letting the door to gray nothingness close behind him.

"What were you before Morpheus?" Seraph asked. "Do you remember?"

Thomas Anderson. Miserable. Alone. At odds with the word. Seeking....

"What were you before _Trinity_?"

"Do you want to get to the point?"

"What were you before they came in and told you who you would be?"

"I'm leaving." He turned toward the door.

"They got what they wanted, didn't they?"

He jerked the door open. And found the teahouse. Seraph. No smile, just the reflected flash of the room's weak light in the lenses of his glasses. Seraph reached up and removed the glasses then, folded them, set them in his lap. Then looked up at Neo again.

"What did they want?" Neo asked.

"For the prophesy to come true."

"And did it?"

"They got what they wanted."

Neo stepped through, closed the door behind him once more. "So?"

"So how long are you going to let them keep you now?"

"They're not--"

"She is."

Neo stuck two fingers into the pocket that held her Go to Hell note. "Apparently, she's not."

Seraph's eyes twinkled as he said, "Apparently, you do not know women." He slipped noiselessly to his feet and approached Neo. "But then, you never really wanted to." He laid a hand on Neo's cheek.

Neo's gaze ran to the walls again, the floor, the beams. The code. Which teahouse was he in now?

"But," Seraph said, "what do you give up if you say sayonara now and separate yourself from them?"

He was back in the Matrix now.

"What do I give up?" Neo said, looking down into the brown eyes of the real Seraph. His chest tightened.

Seraph's lips touched his.

He put his hands against Seraph's chest. "You're a program." Not real--not able to leave this maze of bits and bytes and return with him to the real world.

"What is real?" Seraph asked, his lips brushing Neo's chin as he spoke.

Neo's eyelids slid closed. He swallowed. He was with the real Seraph and the real Seraph--

"What you had with Trinity, was that real?"

Neo dug his fingers into Seraph's shoulders, ready to push him away, but he didn't have to. Seraph stepped back, brandishing the key between his thumb and forefinger. "Come on."

Neo followed this time, through the door, down the hall...into another teahouse, but this time they were not alone.

"Is that real?" Seraph asked as they stood just inside the doorway watching themselves naked and sweaty on the floor. Seraph's hand reached for his, squeezed. "What you felt there, was that real?"

"What do you want?" he asked Seraph, a little too loudly, a little too sharply. Both his naked self and the naked Seraph looked up. The Seraph that held his hand tugged him back into the hallway.

And in the hallway, he jerked his hand free. Held his hands up. Took a step back. "What do you want from me?"

"Only one thing."

"Which is?"

"Live your life." He turned. Neo watched him walk down the neverending hall, the soles of his shoes not making a sound.

Neo looked back at the door they had come through. It was cracked. He nudged it open. Gone were the pair of grappling look-alikes. Gone was the teahouse. He turned his head to see how far ahead Seraph had gotten, but found the hallway empty. So he turned back to the room that the door had opened up to.

He found himself standing in the Neb. Trinity leaned over his body--not the body he was standing in right now, but another body. She said, "The Oracle told me I would fall in love."

He took a step closer toward the scene.

"And that that man...." She squeezed the hand of the other Neo, the one who was plugged in and not responding. "...the man that I loved, would be the One. So you see," she said. Her eyes flickered up. He felt the shock of her seeing him, but she didn't react as though she had. Her eyes turned back to the other Neo. "So you see, you can't be dead, because I love you."

He watched Trinity kiss Neo's lips and felt nothing, but the open door behind him.

"It is too bad you never noticed that the Oracle said you would love her back," Seraph's voice said, surprising him. "You instead assumed."

Neo felt Seraph's hand on his shoulder. He watched himself lurch back to life on the chair, under Trinity's hand on his forehead. Opening his eyes to Trinity's caring, believing, willing eyes. They'd made it easy to assume.

"You saved the real world. Now come back to mine."

Strong fingers massaged his shoulder. He let himself ease back against the chest behind him. Seraph's other arm came around his waist.

***

"Trinity?" Link said, concern showing loud and clear in his voice. "Trinity!"

"What?" She appeared next to him, her hand on his arm. "What is it?"

Then she looked down at what he was looking at--Neo.

Link reached back and flipped a switch. The sound on Neo's monitor came on--a high, never-ending tone.

"Trinity."

She put her hand on Neo's chest.

"What the fuck happened?" Link asked.

"No one lives forever," she murmured. Her hand...Neo's chest...neither moved. She glanced over at the bank of monitors where the code for the Matrix streamed endlessly. Her eyes quickly picked out Seraph and, walking alongside him, a new companion.

"Or at least most of us don't," she amended. She met Link's eyes. "You might as well unplug him. And I'll--I'll go tell the others."

She left the room feeling shaky. She had played the one card she'd had.... And he'd played his hand differently than she'd hoped. But....

He'd defected. That didn't mean there wouldn't be more like him. If there was anything she'd learned, it was that there was always another One. She would wait, and they would find him. And she would fall in love. And it would be better this time.

===

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