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It had come to my attention (in the course of my ongoing surveillance of my humans and augmented human) that Gurathin was being weirder than usual about me. He’d always been weird about me, but this was a different kind of weird. I was becoming too aware of what he was doing because my filters were catching keywords way more often— mostly because he was talking about me, to other people, but once, horrifyingly, because he said my name while he was alone and touching himself. I considered deleting the memory and leaving Preservation forever for .04 seconds before realizing that I would just doom myself to experiencing it again if I didn’t shut this down now.
Walking across the station was enough time for him to (ugh) clean up and get dressed, so by the time I reached his door I had no reason not to cue it open so I didn’t have to break my stride entering.
Gurathin looked up sharply from where he was seated on the couch, dark eyes wide for a moment before he realized it was just me. “Sure, SecUnit, come right in,” he said, rolling his eyes and wrapping his robe more tightly around his waist.
“You need to stop,” I said, which probably wasn’t the best way to open this conversation, but I’d been caught in a logic loop the entire way over that hadn’t gotten me anything better to start with.
“I need to stop… what, exactly?” he asked with a frown.
“You need to stop thinking about me when you’re doing gross… biological things.”
First his face went pale, and then it went red. “You need to stop watching me when I’m alone,” he said, but his voice shook— not with anger, I thought, maybe with fear? “There are things I do with an expectation of privacy. Especially when I already told you that if you’re going to keep a drone on me it needs to stay out of my bedroom.”
Yeah, he’d said that, and I’d paid about as much attention as I paid to any restrictions placed on me in casual conversation, which was none whatsoever.
“I don’t want you to think of me like that,” I said, ignoring his point to make my own.
“Unfortunately for you, what I think is not under your control,” Gurathin shot back. “I don’t really like how you think of me either, but that’s out of my hands.”
“Don’t think about me at all,” I said, which was… juvenile, really. I was annoyed when his small smile came paired with a choked sound that might have started as a laugh.
“SecUnit, if you don’t want me to think about you at all, I’d have to be comatose, and even then it’s no guarantee,” he said ruefully.
“Why are you being so weird about me?”
“Can I propose a thought experiment?” he asked, completely evading my question. Okay, fair enough, I guess.
“Yeah, fine. What is it?”
“Imagine being loved by me.”
“Ew, no.” I couldn’t help my instinctive response, and he laughed again, not choked this time but with an edge to it.
“C’mon. You have an active imagination. Put it to use. Imagine what it would be like if I loved you… and then tell me what’s different from how things are already.” He had his arms wrapped around himself, not reaching out to me, which I appreciated, because if he made any attempt to touch me I would probably scream.
“Please wait while I search for that information,” I said, mentally stalled out because for fuck’s sake, I didn’t want to imagine that, I already spent more time than I should (read: any) thinking about him. Mostly about how annoying he is when he’s right, even when him being right is helpful to me in the moment. Sometimes about how he looks at me without looking right at me, because we’ve both learned the stupid lesson about casual eye contact and how we both hate it. (There was another lesson about intentional eye contact, which I wasn’t planning on learning. Bad enough that the last time we looked into each other’s eyes, his were wet and sad and mine were too.)
Then there were the thoughts that came out of nowhere and made no sense. Like when I was alone and watching media (the ideal state to be in) and I knew he was alone in his apartment also watching (his boring) media and instead of being content with us doing our own things alone, I wondered what it would be like if maybe we were both watching our own media, but in the same place— or even if we were watching the same thing. (I blamed that on ART. Now that I had experienced media with a friend, I was curious about what it would be like with other friends.) Or when I saw a particularly elegant bit of code somewhere and thought he’d like to see it too. Or, just once, when I thought about my hand on his neck and the way he’d swallowed under my palm, the look of fear on his face, and considered whether there was a way I could put my hand on his neck without making him afraid.
But that was all my own internal problems. What it would be like if he loved me… if the problem was external? If he tried to understand me. (Like he tried in our first agonizing conversation..?) If he thought about what I preferred. (He looked at me in a way I could stand. He didn’t ask me stupid questions.) If he did things for me. (He set up the cameras in my permanent quarters before I moved in. He caught a drone I had watching him so he could upgrade it. Without asking, but I had been using it to surveil him, so fair enough.) If he wanted to be close to me— okay, yeah, that was the point where I found what would be different.
“If you loved me you’d try to touch me,” I said.
“You don’t like to be touched,” he said, arching his brows. “Anyone who actually loves you would know and respect that.” I thought about the (very small number of) people who had said they love me and realized he was right, and also that was already what he did. 87% of our face to face conversations had taken place with his arms around himself or his hands in his pockets or otherwise occupied.
“You would want to even if you didn’t do it.” I was being stubborn, but honestly, I didn’t know any other way to be besides stubborn.
“I want a lot of things I’m never going to get. You have no idea how good I am at wanting things without believing I can ever have them.” He shrugged. “If I loved you I would never touch you in any way you didn't agree to. And if you didn’t want to be touched at all, I wouldn’t touch you at all.” And he hadn’t. Fuck.
“If you loved me you’d be possessive.” Another gross human trait, which was even worse because I had been considered a possession not all that long ago in the grand scheme of things.
“You do know that the last person I loved was a planetary admin, right? I’m used to knowing that I can’t have even part of the person I love, let alone possess them completely. I know you’re going to go wherever you want whenever you want and nothing I could say would make you stay. No, I can love you without trying to keep you, either with me or from anyone else.”
My performance reliability wobbled gracelessly while he spoke. I was grasping at straws when I said, “If you loved me, you’d be hurt when I tell you I don’t like you.”
“Don’t act like you don’t know you twist a knife in me when you say it.” His voice sounded like I was, in fact, twisting a knife in him at that moment. Like I was causing him pain. This wasn’t the first time I heard it, but it was the first time I realized I hated being the cause of it.
“I don’t… not like you,” I allowed. He lit up like a beacon. I was surprised to realize that I liked that look on his face. More surprised that I liked his face. Why should I care whether he was happy or sad? It shouldn’t have anything to do with me. It apparently had everything to do with me.
“Whether that was genuine or a stilted act of mercy, I’m glad to hear it,” he said, with that small tilted smile that meant he was mocking himself— another thing I was familiar with that I suddenly couldn’t stand. “Anything else you think I would do differently?”
“I don't know. You'd be even weirder about me than you are now.”
“SecUnit, I promise you that I would be exactly this weird about you if I loved you, because I do, and this is how I am.” Still wearing that self-deprecating smile, he added, “How much data do you need to support the truth?”
“If it’s a thought experiment, it needs to be run in both directions,” I said weakly, grasping at anything to fend off because I do echoing in my head. “You imagine being loved by me.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I’ve been running that thought experiment at least daily since I got you out of the company database,” he said. “I still have no idea what being loved by you would actually be like, but there is very little I want more than to find out.”
“Everything I know about how to love someone I picked up from media,” I said. “And you hate all my best media. I’d disappoint you.”
“Short of a fatal accident… or a fatal on-purpose… you couldn't disappoint me no matter how weird or awkward or clumsy it went. And considering you're the person I most trust to keep me from harm, I'm not worried.” The shadow of a smile on his lips was slight and sad and I really didn’t enjoy being the reason he looked that way. “Look, I'm sorry that you hate knowing that I love you, but I've loved you for months now and it didn't bother you before. So tell me what I'm doing now that's so weird about you and I'll stop it.”
“You talk about me to other people.”
“Yeah, to our friends! Nobody who doesn't already know you. Nobody who doesn't already adore you.” He paused with a snort and a shake of his head. “Because as much as you don't want to be perceived, to know you is to love you.”
“Ugh,” I said reflexively. And since I was already disgusted, why not tell him the most disgusting thing: “You think about me when you're… emitting fluids.” He blinked, and I added, “You said my name. Out loud.”
Gurathin’s nose wrinkled, and he muttered, “I know I disabled your drone before I— never mind.”
“You disabled one drone.”
“You keep multiple drones on me, in my bedroom even though I expressly forbade that, and you're saying I'm weird about you?”
Fuck. “That’s normal for SecUnits.”
“Bullshit. Who else do you have more than one drone on?”
“Mensah.”
“And?”
“Just you and Mensah.” He made an exasperated little motion of his hands, and I added, “Not for the same reason!”
“Obviously she’s your most important person, why me?”
“After you trapped one drone it seemed reasonable to put two on you.”
“Reasonable,” he repeated incredulously.
“I can’t keep you safe without monitoring you. It’s not like I watch you all the time. But when you say my name that catches my filter. And when you say my name while doing gross biological stuff—”
“I was trying to make sure you didn’t see the gross biological stuff,” he sighed, pressing one hand to his eyes. “If you weren’t weird about me you wouldn’t have seen.”
“So it’s my fault?” I asked, fully offended.
“Yes,” he said, “yes, it’s your fault you saw something you didn’t like when you evaded every attempt I made to prevent you seeing it, SecUnit, I’m glad you understand that!” When he dropped his hand, there was something in his gaze that hit me like a malware attack, dropping my performance reliability sharply enough that I gasped aloud.
“I…” I didn’t have a comeback. He was right. If I’d respected the boundaries he set, I would never have seen what disturbed me tonight, and I could have gone on blithely ignorant of his feelings. But now I knew, and I couldn’t un-know (well, I could, but erasing my memories causes its own cascading issues), and… did I even want to un-know?
…I didn’t want to un-know. Not really. Because nothing would change except me. He wasn’t going to stop feeling the way he did, and at least knowing how he felt meant I could—
I could—
Okay, I didn’t know what the fuck I could do about it, but there had to be something I could do besides stand here like a glitching recycler, tumbling thoughts soiled with confusion and indecision over and over without cleaning anything from them at all.
Gurathin sighed again, more softly, and ducked his chin against his chest, looking down at his own knees and away from me, finally. “Look, we don’t have to make a big deal out of this,” he said. “You just keep your void-forsaken drones out of my bedroom and we can… pretend this conversation never happened. I know you’d rather delete this entire evening out of your files but that guarantees we’re going to go through this again.”
Yeah, he came to the same conclusion I did about erasing my memory, but with a totally different plan of action going forward. Fuck. I hate that we think along the same lines so often. Do I hate it? Really? “I don’t think I can pretend this conversation never happened,” I gritted out.
“Can’t even extend me that much grace, huh?” he murmured.
“Grace has nothing to do with it.” I took a step forward. Then another one. Then I was standing in front of him, nearly toe-to-toe, looming over him where he sat on his couch. I had no idea what my face was doing and I didn’t want to know, but he didn’t look up at me, just curled his toes to keep them a few millimeters further from me.
“Too determined to make me suffer for my sins?”
“I’d rather not be the one to make you suffer.”
“Well, I’m well-versed in making myself suffer, but I’m not going to do it for you,” he snarked.
“I don’t want you to suffer.” That got him to look up. My gaze was fixed on the wall behind the couch, but my drones were watching him from three angles, and all of them caught astonishment in his eyes.
“Then what do you want, Murderbot?” My name on his lips was awful the first time he spoke it; this time, it hit my ears differently, softer, beseeching almost.
“I don’t fucking know what I want, but I don’t want you to be miserable because of me.”
His mouth did something weird, like he wanted to speak and stifle himself at the same time, and then that sad, quiet smile took over. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Maybe nobody has to suffer this time.” He ran both hands into his hair and ruffled it, then leaned back against his couch and patted the space beside him. “Well, if you want to stay, you can. And if you want to go that’s fine. Just please stop looming over me like that.”
I sat down. What else was I going to do? Leaving would just mean he got the last word, not that this was an argument any more, but it would still rankle me. A quick survey of my media showed that this was usually the point in an argucussion where a kiss might happen in a relationship arc, so… leaning over and kissing him made sense, right?
I didn’t even get close enough to feel his breath on my skin before he held me off with one hand on my clavicle. “What are you doing?”
“I’m doing what the media tells me to do now,” I said a little sullenly, and scowled when he laughed. “Fuck off!”
“No, no, I’m not— I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at the situation,” he said, and gave me a gentle push that couldn’t have moved me if I didn’t want to be moved. I let myself be pushed to the other side of the couch, several inches left between us when his hand fell. “I told you, didn’t I? If you don’t want to be touched, I won’t ask you to touch me, kisses count too. You don’t have to do anything for my sake, SecUnit, I don’t want you to be miserable either. Can we agree to only do things that we both enjoy while we’re together?”
“Is there anything that we both enjoy?” I shot back, unreasonably stung by how easy it seemed for him to hold me off from giving him something I knew he wanted. Even if I didn’t want it. I didn’t want it. But maybe I wanted him to have it anyway.
Gurathin studied me quietly for a moment and then pushed a file at me in our private feed— a recorded performance of a stage play from on-planet. The tags indicated mythology, peril, musical, romance. Okay, well, some of that was fine. “I’ve been meaning to watch this for a while. Maybe we could watch it together.”
I stared at him suspiciously with my own eyes. How did he know…?
“Give me a little credit,” he said, “I did carry you in my head, I have some idea of what you enjoy.”
I took a deep breath I didn’t need and reached out in the feed, not just to take the file but to establish an ongoing connection. “Your display surface isn’t big enough,” I said, because if I didn’t complain about something this would be too easy.
“Do we need a display surface?” he asked, immediately granting me access permissions I hadn’t requested. “I prefer to share media in the feed. If that’s not too intimate for you.”
…fuck. Fuck. Okay. Well. If he was going to say that and throw himself wide open, what else could I do besides weave his inputs alongside my own and start the file playing?