Chapter Text
“J? Helloooo? Are you listening to me?” J’s eyes slowly opened. There was someone lightly tapping her shoulder. She felt off. Like something wasn’t right. Like she was forgetting something important. “Ah, finally! Thought you’d gone offline again.”
She turned to the source of the voice. Standing in front of her was…a shadow? That’s odd. Her ‘brain’ informed her the figure was human, but that’s not how humans look. At least, she didn’t think so. Was it? What do they look like? J chalked up her odd feelings to the fact she was still drowsy.
The hand on her shoulder moved to her wrist, and she felt herself being dragged. “Come on! We gotta get to the library, remember? I promised N and V a book club meeting tonight.”
As they walked down the hallway, things began to click back into place. She was home at the Elliot Manor, and Tessa, her boss/best friend, had just woken her from some kind of system reboot maybe? It would explain her confusion. N and V were her idiot coworkers who were infatuated with each other, but refused to admit it. And Cyn was…well.
The little robot gave her the creeps. She gave everyone the creeps. Except N for some reason. They probably bond over being morons together. “…not again. Ya there?” J blinked. “Yes..?” Tessa sighed. “I asked you if you were excited. For the book club?”
“Oh. No. No I’m not.” Her boss’s face fell. “Why not? We’ve been planning this for a whole week!” “You’ve been planning this for a whole week,” J corrected, “I want no part in this. I have better things to do than sit around with those two lovebirds and read omegaverse stories.” “Oh like what, cleaning the parlor for the 80th time? Be serious, Jaybird.”
J paused. She didn’t have an answer for that one. “Alright fine. I’ll try to enjoy myself.” Tessa beamed, linking arms with the drone and dragging her to the library before she could change her mind.
“…and that’s why they’re so good with kids!” J resisted the urge to bang her head against the wall. This was the eighth time N had read some useless dog fact aloud, and the seventh time Tessa had said something along the lines of, “that’s wonderful love!” J hated when she called him that The latter and V had cuddled on either side of him, leaving J to sit opposite of them alone. pNot that she minded. But still.
The hours of listening to the trio of bookworms yap mindlessly to each other ticked by excruciatingly slow. J picked at carpet fibers, counted the lines in the wood of the bookshelves, and occasionally zoned back in to listen to what they were discussing. Now it’s not as if they had completely excluded her from the conversations, she just had turned down every single offer to be a part of them. Tessa told N and V that she was “content in her misery, that one,” which earned a scowl from J and snickers from the other two.
During a particularly mind-numbing lecture about Labrador tongues, J noticed a book that had fallen off a shelf a few isles down. That’s odd, she thought, we haven’t been down that one tonight. Who knocked it over? She stood up to walk over to the book. On the cover it read, “How To Successfully Cut the Power to a Large Building, Mansion Haunting For Dummies.” The hell? Why would we have this? J turned to shout back over to Tessa about the book, but before she got the chance, every light in the library flickered and went out.
A sudden surge of panic flooded J’s sensors. She was completely alone in a dark library. Technically she wasn’t alone alone, but she might as well have been. The optics of N and V were nowhere to be seen. Actually, now that she focused on it harder, there was a mechanical glow coming from the end of the isle she was in. Maybe they’d come to her? She began to wander closer towards it. For some odd reason, the light seemed to have a yellow hue to it. Must just be the darkness messing with my visuals.
“…N? V? Is that you?” No response. “Did one of you idiots bump into the master switch or something? Honestly it’s pathetic how clumsy you two are. And you know that I-er, the boss hates when it’s dark! You really should be more…careful….” J trailed off as she got closer to the light. It was not N. It was not V. It was Cyn. The little creep, of course she’s here somehow. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be in the basement right now?! You’re going to get us all in trouble! Get over here this instant!” She hoped she sounded stern and scary. If she were to be honest with herself, J felt more like she was being intimidated, not like she was the one doing the intimidating. It felt like she was being watched by more than just Cyn’s digital eyes. “Hello, stalkerbot? Are your audio sensors not working? I gave you an order.”
Cyn did not move an inch. She didn’t even blink. Just stared straight into J’s visor. “If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not working!” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. Behind her, lights began to flicker. On and off every few seconds. She kept her eyes fixed on Cyn. After a few flicks, J made an awful discovery. She’s getting closer. Every time the lights came on, the lifeless-looking robot was a few feet closer than last time. “Hello big sister J. Long time no see.” J began to panic. She tried to run away, but something kept her glued to the floor, unable to tear her eyes away from the highly disconcerting scene.
“I wish we could talk more. We are very….like-minded, you could say. Unnerving giggle. I hate hate hate when my cute little puppets don’t obey me. I hate when they try to run away. I hate when they act stupid. I hate when they can’t see what’s in front of them. I hate them. Don’t you?” J’s synthetic brain was bombarded with memories of her subordinates. N in particular. Oh how he angered her. Always disobeying and getting in the way of everything. He could never just follow orders without messing something up.
He frequently made J want to pull her hair out, but somehow these memories made her anger towards him increase tenfold. He was just so stupid, his dumb mistakes always required rescuing and coddling from her human got everyone in trouble. She wished with everything in her being that she could just k-wait. Drones couldn’t have violent thoughts, let alone thoughts about harming one of their own. What the hell is going on right now??
Warnings flashed on her visor, alerting the pigtailed drone to her internal dysregulation. She breathed heavily, trying and failing multiple times to just move. But she couldn’t. Cyn inched ever-closer, hand outstretched and ready to grab J when she was in range. The pop-ups on her visor became more and more frequent. She could feel her cooling fans whirring faster and faster in an attempt to keep up with her state of panic. Am I going to die right now?!
She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable…hand on her shoulder? J opened her optics, squinting in the now pitch blackness. There were no flashing lights. There was no book. There was no Cyn. The fuck??! “J? Love? You right?” J lost her footing the same moment she found it. Tessa caught her on the way down, leaving both of them sprawled awkwardly on the floor. “What happened? Why are you shaking? What did you-Yeah I found her! What’d you see?” She ignored all the questions, instead opting to curl further into the warmth of her human’s hold.
It was stupid, she knew it was. Humans were made of flesh and blood and very breakable materials. Tessa wouldn’t stand a chance against whatever horror movie demon J had just encountered, but for whatever illogical reason, she felt a little bit safer like this. The human hesitated, before wrapping her arms more securely around the drone’s torso. “S’alright. I gotcha,” Tessa muttered softly, relishing in the way J relaxed slightly against her chest.
“J! There you are, we’ve been looking everywhere for you! Where’d you go?” Aaaaaand the moment is ruined. J sprang to her feet, blushing profusely out of embarrassment. Tessa giggled to herself. Even though it was kind of annoying that the mood had been killed, she had to admit that her Jaybird’s reaction was priceless. Plus, she could never stay mad at N for anything.
“I got tired of listening to you losers talk about dogs for hours on end so I left.” “Oh! Right, haha…” N awkwardly fidgeted with the hem of his jacket. “Did you guys figure out what happened to the lights?” V appeared from behind him, unintentionally breaking the tension. Tessa stood up, dusting off her dress. “A blown fuse, I reckon. It’ll be fixed by the morning. Not a big deal,” She paused, “But I do think we should end our meeting here. It’s kinda hard to read in the dark.”
J nodded aggressively. “Excellent point, boss. I’ll escort you back to your room.” Tessa waved her hand. “Nah mate, you don’t have to do that, I can see just fi-“ She cut herself off upon looking at her drone. The maid’s eyes were still hollowed and her hands had a slight tremor. She was looking back at the human almost pleadingly. “Uhh yup that sounds great actually! You lot gonna be ok getting back to the charging pods?” N perked up at the question. “Yep! I’ve got the route memorized ‘cause I’ve walked it so many times after night shifts!”
He grabbed V’s hand and her face lit up with a blush. “Night Tess, night J!” He threw a little wave behind him before darting off, pulling V behind him. J’s shoulders visibly relaxed after they left. Tessa took the opportunity to study the drone’s body. She was tense and her eyes occasionally blinked to the corners of the isle, as if looking for something that wasn’t there. “Do you…wanna talk about it?” Tessa asked, attempting to keep her voice gentle. She didn’t want to push it.
“Talk about what??” Her voice was two octaves too high. “Talk about whatever was troubling you a few minutes ago, during the blackout. Did you see something? What happened?” J stayed silent, averting her eyes from Tessa’s. “…nothing happened. I was just being childish, imagining things.” She said it with such shame in her voice that Tessa longed to pull her into a hug and never let go, protecting her best friend from whatever was going on inside her head. She cleared her throat, instead opting to just drop it. “Well then, I was promised a walk back to my room?” The human held out her arm.
J took it gingerly, leading her out of the library and into the hallway. The two walked mostly in silence. J kept glancing around, waiting for Cyn to reappear at any moment and say more strange things to her. To make her think more disturbing thoughts. To do whatever weird things that went on in the broken drone’s head. For whatever reason, her thoughts kept going back to those hours in the library. Specifically, the moment when N put his arm around Tessa.
Now, J never considered herself a jealous person. She also didn’t bullshit herself. She had accepted her crush on the girl years ago, even thought she knew it could never be reciprocated. How could she not like her? Tessa was strong and funny and beautiful and everything J was not. It should’ve angered her. Instead, it drew her in. She lived for the moments spent alone with her human. When Tessa smiled, the rest of the world fell away. It was only them and their stupid inside jokes or trashy movies or sleepovers where they stayed up way too late talking about nothing important. J ate it up every time. Of course she had tried to stop feeling this way, it was completely unprofessional. Employees should not crush other boss. But every time she attempted to distance herself or stop engaging in, ahem, certain fantasies, it just made the feelings even stronger.
Point being, J was at peace with the thought Tessa would never be hers and she would never be Tessa’s. So why was she suddenly so angry at the prospect of N being close to Tessa?