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Enjolras and Courfeyrac were clear about their budget, but the robot-seller is still yammering on about his latest models and their various special features, as if he can smell the privilege wafting off Enjolras like stink from a junkpile. Enjolras lets his eyes drift away from the counterfeit luxury ‘bots in their slightly dubious packaging. There’s a work table in back littered with spare parts--a kind of bloodless carnage, backlit by the blue buzz of a neon sign. Hired muscle by the back door, a sure indication this place isn’t legal. As if that wasn’t clear enough.
If his parents knew he was here--well, it’s just as well Combeferre finally managed to remove the tracking chip from Enjolras’s ankle.
He’s glancing around, trying not to look like a man casing the joint, when his eyes land on a raggedy off-brand Model R. The ‘bot is staring right back at him with blue, blue eyes. Probably not a display--not flashy enough, except for those eyes. A worker drone, maybe. Shabby clothes, a nest of tangled dark hair that probably hasn’t seen a comb since the date of manufacture. No shoes.
No shoes.
Robots are programmed to feel pain, to discourage them from dangerous activities that might lead to injury, or otherwise violate the warranty. The shop is cold and the rough concrete floor is full of debris, but the ‘bot is barefoot.
It’s hard to watch, and Enjolras instinctively looks away for a second. When he looks back, the Model R is still watching him, whirring a little the way a ‘bot does when it hasn’t been properly rebooted in a long, long time.
Enjolras must make a face, because then Courfeyrac is following his gaze.
“Excuse us,” Courfeyrac interjects to the seller--Enjolras didn’t catch his name, and doesn’t care to.
Courfeyrac and Enjolras step to the side, out of earshot. The ground is sticky with what looks to be old oil. Enjolras thinks again of those bare feet.
“Are you sure about this,” says Courfeyrac in a low voice. “He’s in bad shape, we might have more luck picking something in better condition--”
“What about our goals,” Enjolras whispers back. Buying and rehabilitating robots is expensive, time-intensive, inefficient. Until the Amis de l’ABC have the people and supplies to mount a proper rebellion, they must be careful with their resources. That means stepping in for the direst cases.
Courfeyrac nods once, decisive. “We’ve made our decision,” he announces to the seller. “We’d like the Model R, please.”
“Sirs,” the seller stammers, “really, we have any number of better specimens available today, for only a simple down payment plus--”
“The Model R,” says Enjolras in his most commanding tone.
The ‘bot is silent on the way outside, except for that terrible whirring. Up close, it sounds more like a fork caught in a garbage disposal. His movements are jerky and stiff, like a wind-up toy--or like every joint hurts. He is silent on the sidewalk, silent as Courfeyrac unlocks the car, silent until they’ve climbed inside and the car doors have shut behind them.
“Am I going to be scrapped for parts,” he says in a low, scratchy voice. He’s only half-asking, must have come to the conclusion back in the shop. “‘Cause I should warn you, I’m already a chimera. You’ll have a hell of a time finding compatible pieces.”
Enjolras studies the ‘bot’s face in the rearview. No expression. No expression, but he waited until Courfeyrac and Enjolras were strapped in and out of arm’s reach to mouth off. It’s got the air of a survival tactic. Enjolras feels sick.
“We’re not scrapping you,” Enjolras tells him. “We won’t hurt you. I know you have no reason to trust us yet, but we’re here to help.”
“Isn’t that sweet,” the ‘bot deadpans. In the whirring, grinding pause that follows, he blinks jerkily, as if shocked at the lack of repercussion, and Enjolras wants to murder everyone who has ever owned him.
“That reminds me,” Courfeyrac says cheerfully. “You need a name.”
“R,” says the ‘bot.
“Not your Model, a name.”
“Like a human.” The ‘bot sounds wary.
“Like you, the way you were meant to be,” says Enjolras. “Society acts like servitude is just part of the natural order, but inequality is man-made.”
“I’m man-made.”
“Haven’t you ever wanted a name?” Courfeyrac tries. “And don’t say R, I mean a real name.” The other ‘bots the Amis have freed all volunteered a name right away, as if they’d been holding it in secret for a while. This one just blinks again, slowly.
The pragmatic approach seems best. “If you don’t want a name, what should we call you?”
“You’re just trying to trick me into naming myself,” the ‘bot fires back. “How about… Zero-One-Zero-One-Zero-Zero-One-Zero.”
“What’re the odds that’s a capital R in binary,” mutters Courfeyrac.
“It is,” says Enjolras.
“Wait,” says the ‘bot, “I’ve got it!” The edge of a smile creeps into his voice. “Grantaire!”
The same thing but in French, but it’s also the first flash of real life from him.
Courfeyrac and Enjolras exchange a look.
“Why didn’t they give you shoes?” Enjolras blurts out, and Grantaire does the blinking thing again.
“Why would I need them?” says Grantaire. “I wasn’t allowed to leave.”
Enjolras makes a mental note: first order of business: to allow Grantaire to recharge and restart at least twice. Second immediate order of business: get him some goddamn footwear, the sturdiest available.
It takes three different complete reboots for the whirring noises to stop.
It takes two sessions with cream rinse, detangler, and combs before Grantaire’s hair will lie down into relatively orderly curls, Feuilly reports grimly from the bathroom. As one of few freed robots among the Amis, it’s his task on the theory he’ll go about it with the most sensitivity. Enjolras had pictured poor Feuilly trying to coax Grantaire into the warm suds like making a cat take a bath, but Feuilly shakes off Enjolras’s gratitude, laughing,
“Oh no, he loves the bathtub, that’s not the problem. I’m not sure how I’ll get him out, frankly.”
Enjolras remembers then that most robots below a Model H are cleaned, if ever, by a quick hosing-off in the garage.
“Tell him he can stay in as long as he wants,” Enjolras declares, and Feuilly nods, smiling.
It takes nine separate arguments to make Grantaire accept his new boots, donated by Bahorel and yet still in surprisingly good condition.
Despite the initial protests, Enjolras later sometimes catches from the corner of his eye Grantaire perched on a kitchen counter or the arm of a sofa, swinging his feet and admiring the scuffed black imitation-leather. They’re well-made, thick soles, strong enough to carry him away from anywhere.
For the first five or six months, Grantaire waits to say anything snarky until he’s clearly out of hitting distance from any human.
The first time Grantaire leans into Enjolras’s space and announces, “I’m sorry, but your logo is terrible. It looks like something one of you sneezed,” Enjolras wants to hug him.
And well--that’s the problem, isn’t it.
By that point, Grantaire’s every motion is impossibly, inhumanly smooth, like a dancer but moreso. All those resets. He must’ve gotten used to compensating, as much as possible, for the rough control he had over his own body. Now that those limitations are gone, he’s left with a surplus of grace. Knowing this does not detract from the effect. If anything, it only adds to it.
Enjolras catches himself watching Grantaire all the time. For a while, he thinks it’s only aesthetic appreciation.
Then comes the day Grantaire laughs--actually throws his head back and laughs--and Enjolras thinks, ‘...oh.’
Damn.
It’s not fair to come to Grantaire with this. The power imbalance between is immense, hard to even resolve into words. Grantaire’s not legally a person.
It’s an impossible problem.
Then comes the night Grantaire catches Enjolras watching. They’re halfway through a meeting, Grantaire milling around in the background, and their eyes connect, Grantaire staring right back at him again, like back in the shop except this time the steady gaze doesn’t read as low memory but intensity. Enjolras doesn’t remember a single point anyone makes for the rest of the two hours. Grantaire stands in the back of the room and looks back at him, knowing.
The arguments really start in earnest, then.
(That night: “But if you feel the same way--”
The same way. Everything would be easier if Grantaire could just hate him. Enjolras swallows. “It doesn’t matter.”
Weeks later, an hour before dawn: “What do you mean, I can’t consent? Do I strike you as terribly obedient, Apollo?
Noon, with all their friends around them: “Humankind brought robotkind into this world,” Enjolras is saying. “We, all of us, have the duty, the responsibility, to fight for their equal treatment under the laws, to do right by them, to listen to their demands and answer them--”
A withering glance from Grantaire. “How’s that working out?”)
Grantaire prods, Grantaire provokes. Grantaire makes a scene at meetings and mealtimes. Maybe Grantaire thinks he is daring Enjolras not to want him. That’s not how it works.
Enjolras is miserable.
It takes a full year for Enjolras to run into Grantaire in an unguarded moment--the middle of the night, hot as Hell, AC broken, nobody’s asleep--and realize: Grantaire is miserable, too.
“Listen,” says Grantaire, quietly. “Just--please, listen.” No irony. No sarcasm. It’s worrying.
“Yeah?”
Grantaire takes a deep breath. He doesn’t need to; his air circulation doesn’t involve anything like lungs. It’s a habit picked up over the weeks and months from his friends. Enjolras waits.
“Either you think I have a soul or you don’t,” says Grantaire.
It’s Enjolras’s turn to blink at him. “What?”
Grantaire continues, resolute. “You can argue for our rights and our--complexity, our capacity for emotion, our freedoms, or you can say, ‘Poor little Grantaire, he can’t really make any decisions on his own. Poor Grantaire, he thinks he’s in love, like a human--’” He breaks off, shaking his head. He’s vibrating a little. Not like a stuck fan. More like there’s more inside of him than can fit.
“If you were a human,” Enjolras says, gently as he can, “an organic human that had spent his whole life as somebody’s property, I would absolutely still be saying no to you--”
“But I’m not,” Grantaire snaps. “I’ve had seven full resets, I have literally erased my trauma. It’s not present in my mind anymore. You can’t apply human rules to me, and I don’t mean that how those assholes do when they say we shouldn’t be allowed to--drive, go to school, eat at restaurants, whatever--I don’t believe that the likes of Feuilly or Cosette are worse than you, less than. But we are different. And I am fine. I am fine, and I am standing here, telling you I have feelings for you. Now, you can do with that what you want. But at least stop pretending you’re protecting me, because you are not.”
There’s a pause. For a second, Enjolras thinks Grantaire’s overheating again, but it’s just the ceiling fan overhead.
“That’s--quite a speech,” says Enjolras weakly.
Grantaire shrugs a shoulder with that familiar, easy, inhuman grace. “Feuilly helped,” he says.
“Thank him for me,” says Enjolras vaguely, and then he steps forward and they’re kissing. His fingers are in Grantaire’s hair, and Grantaire’s hands are solid and steady at his waist and they’re kissing. Enjolras breaks apart to smile like an idiot at Grantaire and ducks back in again. Grantaire tastes like the sour-sweet candies he’s always stealing from Joly. He tastes warm and alive.