Archive of Our Own

"It's not that I don't want a domestic robot," Brendon said. He shot a look at the robot at his side. It stared creepily back at him.

The shopkeeper folded her arms, her expression mulish. "Is good robot," she said. "Is made for special design."

"Um." Brendon shuffled away as the robot tried to take his coat for the seventh time since he'd entered the shop. "No, um, I get that. He's really ... he's quite special. Is, um. The roses? Are they part of the design?"

"Should let him have your coat," the shopkeeper said. "He sulk if you not."

Brendon looked at the robot. It looked back, its creepy dead eyes still staring appealingly at him. Like creepy dead puppy eyes.

Brendon bit his lip.

The robot twisted the brim of its brown Derby between long metallic fingers.

Brendon broke. He reached for his wallet. "What other things make him sulk?" he mumbled.

The shopkeeper looked smug. "Is good robot," she said. "Special design."

"So," the interviewer chirped, "what's it like to be the only robot in the band, Ryan?"

Ryan looked at him. "Cyborg," he said. His voice was a level monotone – his vocal chords were made of a silicon-titanium compound. "I'm a cyborg. I have robot parts." You could only hear that he was pissed off if you knew him well.

The interviewer didn't know him well. He grinned at Ryan, warm and confidential. "Right," he said. "What's that like? Having robot parts?"

Brendon leaned forward, one hand on Ryan's knee. "It's fantastic," he said. The interviewer looked startled. Brendon winked. "Like," he said, "I don't know if you can picture what I'm saying here? But he goes like the energizer bunny, dude."

Brendon had never been so glad to escape a planet in his life. He settled back in his seat, shifting the ship into prep stage for warp.

"Are you telling me your winning personality didn't make you friends and influence people?" Ryan asked. His voice sounded warm and amused as he added, "Preparing for warp."

"I'm saying," Brendon said, "That the entire planet was insane." He tugged down the battered star guide from the hatch above and checked his coordinates for the Penelope System (the ship's internal nav system had been hinky since Mischa III). "Anti-matter syringes!" he said. "Who thinks an anti-matter syringe is an appropriate way to greet a galactic traveller?"

Ryan was silent. Then, "You said you were going to look for paying passengers," he said. A couple of lights lit up on the display, an uncertain pattern. "I prepared the guest rooms." He paused. "There were mints on the pillows."

Brendon grimaced. Their finances could really have done with the kind of cash injection paying customers provided. He shook his head, mentally tightening his belt. "Not this time," he said. He patted the console, grinning at the disgruntled way the lights lit up again. "It's just you and me, baby."

Ryan laughed, a huff of electronic sound that was Brendon's favourite thing about the ship computer. "How did you not charm the locals?" Ryan wondered.

Brendon's grinning reply was swallowed up as Ryan took them into warp.

Brendon blinked, hard. "No," he said. "No, you don't – you don't understand." He twisted his hands together, staring at the cyber-medic. "He's not just – he's my friend. You can't tell me you can't get him back."

The medic looked sympathetic. "I'm sorry," she said. "I really am sorry, but the sensors have corroded. There's almost never anything we can do about that, except convert for scrap."

Brendon looked at the still form on the table. Ryan's limbs were awkwardly bent, lacking any command from his processors. His brown eyes were wide and unblinking. Brendon couldn't see any sign of awareness in them at all.

"I'm sorry," the medic said again. "Every test we have says that his neural systems are working perfectly, except for the external sensors. He's fully conscious, he just – he can't get out of his own head."

Brendon clenched his hands. Almost never anything we can do, the medic had said. Brendon shook his head. That meant there was a chance.

He wondered whether it was his imagination that Ryan looked as though he was drowning.

"You should come with a manual," Brendon muttered. "Do you have an on-switch? If I'm going to be in love with a robot, I think I should know where the on-switch is."

"I'm not a robot," Ryan said absently. He frowned, looking up from his sidekick. "Did you just say you needed a switch to turn me on?"

Brendon scowled. "I turn you on just fine," he said. He hesitated. "Um. I do, right?"

"Mm," Ryan said.

This was what Brendon meant. Ryan never gave anything away, and god, if – if Brendon even knew when he was doing something right. That would help a lot. In the old days Brendon had been able to ask Spencer for translations of Ryan's subtle expressions and inflections, but these days Spencer mostly laughed at him.

"For example," Brendon said, "you say you love someone; they say 'Hmm'. If it's a normal person, you know you're supposed to go and jump off a cliff, right. But for weird robot-like people?"

He paused, hopeful.

"Hmm," Ryan mumbled.

Brendon slumped.

It was twenty minutes later, and Brendon was coming back from the kitchen with a soda, when Ryan lifted his head.

"Wait," Ryan said. "Wait. You –?" Ryan bit his lip, his smile startled and shy. "You love me?"