Work Text:
You’re pretty sure that what happens at first is that Nepeta gets worried that her moirail hasn’t made any new friends. Not that she comes to you!! The first thing you know is that Roxy starts visiting more often for tea and gossip, and a lot of the conversation keeps coming back around to the interesting robots Equius has been building. When you realize what the game is, it’s pretty obvious, but you aren’t upset or anything. Roxy’s probably the best human Nepeta could’ve found to help with this, and it isn’t like you’ve gotten tired of making new friends yourself.
The first time you bring up robotics when you’re talking to Roxy, she grins ear to ear, but plays the conversation straight instead of launching into a whole I-know-you-know-I-know routine (which is kind of a shame because you’ve always wanted to try that). You aren’t at all surprised when she suggests that you visit Equius yourself to get firsthand knowledge of all the things he’s been making. And you don’t mind the idea at all! It’s only that you’re not quite sure how to do it.
Roxy doesn’t know how you should do it either, which is too bad. When you ask for advice, she says that she’d probably just bust in there all loud and friendly because ain’t nobody alive who can resist the friendship stylings of the one and only rolal, but that her approach probably isn’t the best for making nice with Equius. You brainstorm a bit after she leaves. It’s an interesting problem to think your way through, and if you can come up with a solution, this should be something nice to keep you busy.
The biggest thing is that you don’t want to give away that Roxy and probably-Nepeta were involved. It’s going to be hard enough to get Equius to open up as it is! Probably anything that embarrasses him will make him clam up, and that’s definitely the trickiest part of the equation, since you're pretty sure that even looking at him embarrasses him half the time. Well, robotics! You definitely do love robots. And one thing that’s been disappointing is that you always thought that when you and Grandpa— Jake, you mean, met up for real, you’d get to make some cool things together instead of having to send parts and letters across dimensions. But you aren’t really sure what’s going on between Jake and Dirk (you don’t think they even know for sure after everything that happened during their game session), but you know you don’t want to jump intp the middle of it.
So robotics is a good start, but you have to be sure you think this through right! You don’t want him to think you’re only seeing him because Jake and Dirk are busy, so you need a reason to want to talk to him in particular. A few of the projects Roxy told you about were fancy prosthetics, which is definitely interesting and you want to learn more, but you’re not sure it’s right for this. That’s just talking shop, not being friendly! You should be going into this looking for some kind of project you can do together, and a prosthetics project isn’t really necessary right now unless you do something drastic (which you aren’t going to do, of course, but you think you’ll tell Roxy that you’re working on a prosthetic head for Dirk to make her laugh).
What other interests does he have? He keeps to himself so much that you’re realizing you have no idea what kind of things he does for fun. You really want to figure out the problem yourself, but after a while you just give up and message Nepeta for advice. The fact that she answers you in about five seconds flat and doesn’t act at all surprised that you’re asking her about her moirail makes you absolutely certain that first, she totally started this, and second, Roxy’s been keeping her posted on her progress. She’s the one who suggests horses (or that you could make a purrfectly adorable kitty robot), and right before she logs off, mentions that she’ll be out of the hive most of tomorrow, so Equius should be free if anyone purrhaps was thinking of visiting ;33
A horse robot is an interesting thing to think about. Every robot you’ve fiddled with before has been either human or humanoid, and those tended to focus on functionality, not on accurately imitating human motion. Now if he’s done prosthetics, he’s probably closer to imitating actual biodynamics than you are, but you’re willing to bet that if he’d done a horse robot like that, Roxy or Nepeta would have told you. By the time it’s tomorrow and you’ve made the short walk to his hive, you’re buzzing with too many ideas to introduce the subject delicately. Instead, as soon as he opens the door, you lead off with, “We should build a horse robot!”
He’s obviously surprised and takes a half step backwards before he clears his throat and replies, “I am afraid that if you have come to speak with Nepeta, she has gone visiting today.”
You take a half-step forward of your own. “No, no, I definitely meant to see you! See, you like robotics, right?” You get a cautious nod. “And you like horses, right?”
“I hold an aesthetic appreciation of hoofbeasts of all varieties, of course—”
You’re grinning from ear to ear, and you know you might be pushing too hard, but you’re still not over this idea, and if Dirk thinks he can outdo you, you’re going to knock him down a peg or two! “How about a robot horse you can ride?”
You can practically see him break out into a sweat! He pulls a towel from his sylladex and mops at his face. “The— Well. The mechanics would be difficult of course. But feasible. How— How STRONG do you think such a robot might be?”
Perfect! “I think it’ll be as strong as we can design it! Now, what I’m thinking is that if we design at least the legs to closely imitate actual horse anatomy, then it should be possible to get it to move in all sorts of gaits. A horse that just walks is pretty neat, but a horse that could gallop—”
He backs up further and waves you inside. You’ve never been in this hive before and you aren’t sure many of the others have either. Equius is frowning, but it looks like the kind of frown you get when you’re concentrating really hard on a really interesting problem. He’s folding and unfolding the towel as he thinks it through. “To reach a gallop, all four legs would have to leave the ground simultaneously. Doable, mechanically, but then the main difficulty would be balance, particularly at such a pace. The difficulties—” He starts to shake his head.
“No, we can reduce it to adjusting for one axis at a time! Have you ever tried the mirror approach?” You hardly give him a chance to respond before you’re rushing on. “You make the same robot twice, and see, we’d join them at the shoulder and hip. Haunch? And then they move like mirror images of each other.” You whip a sketchpad and pencil out of your sylladex and make some rough drawings as you talk. “That way they won’t tip over sideways. They might still fall to the front or back, but that takes away half of the stability problems while we work on fixing the rest. Of course it’s still not going to be easy, and we’ll want to start out at walking and trotting, but we’re smart enough to do it.”
While he’s studying your pictures you sneak a peek up at his face, and he’s actually starting to smile! You’re pretty sure practically nobody has seen that before. The jagged, broken teeth are a little freaky from this close, but the way his face lights up when he starts to talk joints and articulation is just the cutest. You’re sitting on the floor for at least a good half hour, passing the sketchpad back and forth and arguing mechanics, and by the time you realize you’re starting to get sore, you’re surrounded by a pile of torn-out, crumpled pages.
Equius apologizes for being an inconsiderate host, and you want to stay and watch the little cleaner drone he calls to sweep up the old papers, but he’s inviting you down to his actual workshop, and you’re just too excited to wait! There’s only so much you can do right away, starting from scratch, but progress is progress! The two of you work until you’re yawning with every other breath, and you can’t tell behind those dark shades, but you think he might be dozing right there at his workbench. You finally excuse yourself, but before you leave, you ask if it’s okay if you come back the next day.
It’s totally fine! And it’s fine the day after that and the day after that. You haven’t actually seen Nepeta once since you’ve been visiting, but when you send Roxy a message, she tells you that Nepeta’s been catching up with her old friends. You get the impression that she didn’t really want Equius to feel abandoned, but you’re kind of surprised you were the one they picked to go make friends with him. You’re having fun, though! The project is super secret right now, but that’s only so you can blow Dirk’s and Jake’s minds when you show them the robot that you’ve been working on. You haven’t even told Roxy any of the details even though she’s totally dying of curiosity. You think you might even have a solution to let Equius ride it without crushing it by mistake.
Both of you have usually worked in metal for your robot chassis. That’s usually okay, it’s durable, but Equius is strong enough that he crushes it the moment he forgets to concentrate. And he’s usually really good at concentrating! But riding a horse is going to be something totally new for him, and you’re sure there will be bugs to work out, and it’s going to take a lot of work to build each of these robots, and you’d really rather he didn’t accidentally crush any of them ever. Silicone isn’t a perfect solution, but it provides an extra margin of safety before he starts damaging important components. If you build the saddle region out of silicone, that’s a soft surface that won’t permanently deform without being squeezed really, really hard. If it was all metal, that would be awfully heavy for the joints and motors to handle at any speed, and any dents in metal as thick as your silicone would be permanent.
Designing the silicone part is tricky! Machining metal is something that both of you have lots of practice with, but silicone is different. Some of the trolls got to use some neat alchemy machines that you and your friends never got to use, so you end up making a day trip over to Sollux’s hive to break down one of your old toys and reconstitute it as the two separate components you have to mix. You have to cast the uncured mixture in a mold the same shape as the final product, or in a shape you can bend to fit. The saddle shape means it would need to bend along two different axes in two different directions, which means you’re stuck designing a mold that bends in two axes in two directions. And you need to make sure that you account for how you’re going to attach the silicone to the metal at the edges. Plain adhesive would work but that’s such an ugly solution, and you can come up with something better!
Once you settle on the dimensions for the horse body, that constrains what you can do with the silicone. You set out your dimensions, which constrains the metal plate under the silicone, which constrains the foam layer you have to fit (and cast) under that, and finally, you’ve constrained the space Equius has left to fit the components. You’re fiddling with the best way to put your mold together while he experiments with different arrangements of all the bits and pieces you have to fit down there. Bending metal to the right shape for the curves could almost work, but that isn’t always the most precise, especially for a saddle point. And given how thin uncured silicone is, you’re going to have to make sure your mold is watertight almost all over.
Eventually you have to ask Equius what he thinks you should do. You don’t like admitting when you can’t find a good solution to a problem, but this is a collaboration between you two! You’ve done your share of bending metal, and it looks like he has too, but you’ve always done it with machines. You haven’t spotted anything like that in his workshop, but you’re expecting that maybe he’s got other machines tucked away somewhere you haven’t seen yet. Instead he carefully studies your sketches and dimensions, picks up a sheet of metal, and begins flexing it with his bare hands.
You’re kind of fascinated, but also kind of worried. The nice things about machines is that they’re honest and precise. Working with your hands is fun! But you just aren’t sure he’s going to get the kind of accuracy you need, and it’ll be a real shame if you go through the whole mold-making and casting process and have to throw it all away. When you mention that maybe this isn’t the best way to bend the metal, he just looks surprised.
“Forgive me, but then how do you do it?”
You guess that if you when you’re that strong, it is an easier way take care of things! He works the metal carefully. He pushes it almost to the point you need in both directions, stops to measure, and eases it along, carefully and double checking his measurements as he goes, until it’s just the curve you wanted. When you tell him you didn’t think it would work, he gives you one of those rare broken-toothed smiles and tells you he has had a great deal of practice.
You do your own double checking on the curvature measurements while he bends a second sheet of metal for the top of your mold, and there’s only a few tiny corrections you get him to make before you pronounce yourself satisfied. All you have to do now is design the sides for the mold, put it all together, and you can cast the silicone! You’re pretty sure at this point that you’ll just have to use adhesive to stick the mold bottom, sides, and top together. It’s not the most elegant solution, but you need it to be watertight, and welding it would mess up the shape of the silicone.
So you’re trying to hold two big pieces of differently curved metal together while the adhesive sets, and it’s taking both your hands (and a touch of spacey powers, even though that feels like cheating), and of course that’s when your ear starts to itch. You try to flick it against your hair, because there’s no reason for it to be itching right now, but it’s like when you know there isn’t an eyelash in your eye and you have to try to get it out anyways. And then your other ear decides starts to itch too, and finally you give up.
“Equius?”
He immediately sets down the parts he’s fiddling with and stands. “Do you require my assistance?”
“Scratch my ears for me? My hands are full.”
“Ear scratches? I could—ah—”
You wiggle in place and give him your biggest, best begging eyes (you learned from a pro!) because it’s getting worse by the second. “Please? They really itch.”
He’s sweating all over and wipes his face with a towel in one hand while he slowly reaches out with the other. Too slowly! You’re pretty much dying by the time he makes contact, but then he makes up for it by having those awesome troll claws. Human nails are okay and your sorta-human-sorta-dog claws are a little better, but there’s nothing for ear scratches quite like troll claws. He hardly moves, like he’s afraid he’s going to hurt you or something (pffft), but you can lean into him and get him to hit those itchy spots just right.
After a few minutes, you tentatively loosen your grip on the mold and it holds, so you let it go and just focus on enjoying your scratches! You sneak a sideways glance at Equius, and he doesn’t look like he’s upset or anything, and hey. Ear scratches. He’s pretty much completely still except for moving those fingers, but that means you just have to move your head to get his hand right where you want it.
It takes him a little while to realize you don’t have the mold to worry about anymore. You can tell exactly when he spots it because he jumps and freezes. He clears his throat. “If that was suitable—If you have no need of my assistance anymore, then I believe I should—”
“Nooo, don’t stop! Or maybe…”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe you could give me tummy rubs?”
He goes bright blue all over and pulls back his hand to twist and fold his towel (you can hear cloth tearing). It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking behind those shades, but it’s fun trying to figure him out! It’s like trying to solve a tricky puzzle. You roll onto your back and try your biggest, saddest begging eyes again. “Tummy scratches always feel better when someone else is giving them. It’s a fact of life! It’s like how eating a snausage is tasty, but it’s even better if someone else tosses a snausage for you to catch!”
He mutters, “Foolishness. There is no quantifiable difference between the two snausages,” but you think you’re getting to him.
You wriggle a little closer. “I can prove it empirically! After belly rubs. The belly rubs are crucial.”
Equius still looks skeptical, but you think he’s starting to smile a little. “I am afraid that I do not partake of meat.”
“Wellllll, then.” You grin up at him. “I bet you’d like being currycombed.”
His towel tears right in half. He looks mortified, but you just reach out and snag his hand. “Shhh, only belly rubs now.”
Everything you said was absolutely true, because tummy scratches are so much better when someone else is giving them. And building robots, getting ear scratches, and getting tummy rubs is the best recipe for a perfect afternoon. You’re just getting really into it, and you think Equius is starting to relax, when you hear someone come clattering down the stairs. When you roll over to see who’s there, you’re not really surprised to see Nepeta (really it’s more surprising that you haven’t seen her at all in the last two weeks).
What does surprise you is how when she spots you, she drops to all fours and just hisses. You’re pretty sure that if she had fur, it would be standing on end! And even though you’ve seen Nepeta loads of times before, you’ve never seen her look quite so… chaseable. All three of you are frozen for a moment, and you just can’t hold back anymore. You leap into action!!
It only takes you a moment to get turned over and launch yourself cross the room, but that’s enough time for Nepeta to go tearing off in the opposite direction. She’s fast! Much faster than you. But you’ve got your spacey powers! It takes just a second of concentration to teleport yourself over to wherever she is, but she’s quick enough that you can never teleport and catch her before she skids to a halt and rushes off again.
You’re definitely glad that she’s careful not to land on any of your robot parts. Even when she winds up on a workbench, she only steps on clear spots or piles of books or other things she won’t break. So you have to be careful too! It helps that you can float when it’s important, but that’s distracting you from the chase! You push yourself faster and faster, but Nepeta’s keeping up no problem. Equius is standing and trying to stop your 'f00lishness' now, but you’re both much too focused on each other to listen!!
Finally, what happens is that Nepeta is perched on Equius’s shoulder hissing down at you, and you growl, but it’s only a moment’s thought to teleport yourself up to his other shoulder. You already know she’ll be running by the time you get there, but you aren’t expecting what she actually does! She’s down to the floor right away, but while Equius is still turning and you’re trying to figure out where she’s headed, she hits him in the back of the knees and all three of you go tumbling into one big pile.
It takes a minute for everyone to orient themselves! Nepeta sorts it out first (because she was the only one who saw it coming), but you aren’t far behind. You come face to face with Equius pinned under you and she hisses, you growl, and you can just hear Equius saying “Oh dear.” You manage to keep a straight face for a few seconds, but you can see Nepeta’s mouth twitching, and it doesn’t take long for you to crack, and both of you collapse laughing.
Equius is still frozen underneath you, but Nepeta manages to wriggle an arm around his neck and smother some of her laughter in his shoulder. She’s almost got a straight face again when she asks, “Taking a break from building hoofbeast robots?”
You prop yourself up on an elbow and grin. “We were preparing to collect empirical data on the hypothesis that scratches from someone else are better than scratches from yourself! Someone in this room was a skeptic.”
“A noble purrpose!” She looks down at Equius and solemnly shakes her head. “Maybe he’ll decide to agree with the people who are right after being shown some cold hard evidence. In fact, I’ll even participate as an additional test subject!”
“And with you here, I’m pretty sure that we can prove that getting currycombed by two people at once increases pleasure multiplicatively, not additively. For the sake of science, of course!”
“Of course! Efurryone smart already knows it must be true, but we can be patient together and prove it for him.”
Equius is blushing bright blue again and trying not to smile as Nepeta straightens his glasses. The two of you climb off of him first Nepeta pulls him to his feet. She leads the way off across the workshop, tugging the two of you behind her.
A thought occurs to you as she digs through a drawer. “You know, repeatability is a very important part of the scientific process! Isn’t it, Equius?”
“I suppose—Yes, that is—”
Nepeta’s eyes are sparkling as she grins up at him. “Then we’ll have to carry out lots of experiments. I think today’s schedule just filled up!”
“Not only today’s! We should carry out trials over an extended period of time to prove that results aren’t only conditional on current conditions.” You solemnly shake your head. “I’m afraid we’ll have to run tests every single day for a long, long time.”
Equius clears his throat. “Yes, I do believe that would be best. For the sake of scientific progress, of course.”
He’s still blue all over, but he stops pretending he isn’t smiling as you and Nepeta laugh together and pull him down to the floor. Results conclusively and uniformly indicate that currycombing and ear scratches (and tummy rubs) are basically the best things ever.