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The first time he experienced love had been when Sole had taken him stargazing in an abandoned observatory. He hadn’t much cared for the distant lights high up in the sky, but that had changed when they explained the constellations and their names, the planets disguised as stars in the sky, and how they spun on their axis around the sun. He found himself watching them as they fell asleep next to him, head on his shoulder and lightly snoring. His chest tightened the longer he looked at them, and for a while he was worried there was something wrong with him.
But that wasn’t the case. The longer X6 traveled with them, the more he felt it, and the more he questioned human-like feelings.
Sole was unaware of what was happening to him until he described it to them.
Love was an unknown concept he didn’t understand. None of the scientists had shown any synth love—not even Eve. But he knew that Eve had a love for a child and dfather that wasn’t supposed to be there, and didn’t expect anything in return. He felt intimidated by it one day, felt the feeling ease when Sole had requested he return to the Institute until they came for him—but it didn’t ease in a good way. His thoughts had been on them for the past three days, he had taken an assignment to put his mind to work, but that didn’t help the hollow pit he felt in his chest. He examined himself, bringing a hand up to his chest to feel if he had a hole blown through him, relieved that he didn’t, but it left even more confusion. He didn’t understand why being away from one person made one so… empty.
When Sole returned, they greeted him with a kiss on the cheek, and the hole in his chest filled with warmth. He stood, frozen on the spot, and if Sole hadn’t brought him back to himself, he probably would have let out an unholy scream of confusion. Why were these things happening to him? Did they feel it too? Is that why they kissed him? Because they felt the same way he did?
X6 had let them take him somewhere—the house that they’d rebuilt and made it feel like a home. They sat him down and told him that if he felt uncomfortable, he could tell them. But he didn’t, and wrapped his arms around them and buried his face in their chest. Sole had been taken by surprise, not expecting the courser to do anything since they’d brought him here.
They took his shades off of his forehead, putting them on the coffee table next to them. Are you alright? They asked him with a look of concern written on their face.
He explained that human feelings were extremely foreign to him, and told them of the hole that was in his chest while they were away, and how it filled and warmed when they kissed him on the cheek. They had only laughed, a light and airy giggle, and told him that it meant that he missed them without realizing it.
Truth be told, he wanted to understand what Eve felt for Alan. He wanted to understand what love felt like. Each time he found himself in Sole’s presence, they would always greet him with little hugs or kisses that always took him by surprise until he was the one that initiated and surprised them. When the sun had set, they always found themselves sleeping next to him, or on him with an arm wrapped around them protectively with a pensive look on his face while he watched the sky around them light up into hues of pink and gold.
Love was something of a mystery he couldn’t completely understand, but he liked it. He liked that it didn’t confuse him anymore—that he could understand what the scientists feared if synths felt love.
If synths felt love, they would be unstoppable.