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Mk's room || 2:48 AM
"GahHwhatthefuck!"
The sound of distress causes Jul to come out of stasis, her blue LED spinning to yellow. As her eyes open she notices her startled partner sitting up in his bed, with no shirt and hair tied half up.
She had been in stasis at the bedside for quite some time, taking the opportunity to sort some files in her system that needed to be organized.
She blinks a few times and gives him a strange expression, attempting a scan and taking note of Mk's elevated heart rate and stress level.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you." She said blankly.
Mk sighs and runs a hand through his hair, "Shit."
Waking up to a dark figure standing at the edge of your bed is not the ideal scenario by any means. Either somebody was breaking in, preparing for his demise or he was finally coming face to face with his sleep paralysis demon. Lucky for him it was neither.
It had been over half a year since he had purchased his JA200 android. They had gotten closer since the day she arrived and he spent most of his time in her company. She seemed to have a mind of her own. Not that he minded, however..
"What are you doing in here?" He turns to face the android. Despite her small size, Jul continues to loom over the bed, casting quite the shadow onto the wall.
Her LED spins bright blue, she takes a moment to construct the best possible way to answer. In truth, this wasn't the first time she had snuck into the room to mimic her humans behavior.
"I..." she hesitates. LED spinning yellow for a brief moment.
The last thing she wanted was to get kicked out of the room. It was tempting to try calculating the possible outcomes, but something told her to approach this in a more natural way.
She had read that humans tend to approach decisions 'on the fly', implying not to think too hard when making a choice, or in this case, not overheat your processors.
"I thought It would be beneficial for you if I accompany you during your REM cycles." She fiddles with her fingers a bit and averts eye contact. Mk raises an eyebrow. "Sleeping in the same room as your partner is shown to lower stress and blood pressure, boost the immune system, and redu-"
"Yeah yeah okay whatever." Mk cuts her off and he pauses. "But what's the point if i'm unaware that you're there. Doesn't that defeat the purpose a little bit." He looks up at her with a questioning look.
Jul stiffens. She hadn't thought about that. She would've noted the possibility if she had just pre-constructed her answers, but it's too late for that now.
"You're quite right. Perhaps now the benefits will start to take effect." A small smile tugs at her face. Nailed it, she thinks to herself.
On the other hand, that was the dumbest excuse Mk had ever heard.
"Well I just find it creepy when you sleep standing up like that." Mk gestured toward Jul, who is still standing over the bed as stiff as a board.
"I don't sleep. However, I do have the ability to simulate human sleeping patterns to appear more lifelike," assured Jul. How proud she was of herself made Mk want to laugh out loud and say something witty but he was way too tired to reply with any kind of enthusiasm.
"Huh." He nodded with heavy eyelids. This was way too much thinking and talking for 3 in the morning. He huffed and shuffled across the bed and patted beside him.
Juls LED spun yellow for a second and she continued staring.
"You want me to sit?" She asked, tilting her head slightly.
"If you're just going to stand there like a goose then yeah." He patted the spot again. "Sit."
Jul sat next to him and looked forward, not meeting his gaze. She wasn't sure how to go about this. She had thought after being caught she would inevitably get kicked out of the room till morning. It wouldn't be unreasonable to do so. To put it simply, Jul was not prepared for this.
"So you watch me sleep then? What kinda weird twilight shit have you been watching?" He asked.
"I don't watch you at all actually." Jul argued, turning her body towards Mk on the bed. "I usually use that time to sort and process the things I've learned throughout my day."
Mk leans against the headboard. He supposed it made sense, but there was something else she wasn't telling him. He wasn't sure if it was the yellow LED spinning on her temple or just his 10/10 intuition, but he settled on the latter.
"Why not just do it in the living room? Would it make a difference in your--" he makes a silly hand gesture. "weird android brain room."
Jul chuckled a little.
"It wouldn't change anything, it's just," she pursed her lips together slightly.
"Its beneficial for you to sleep in the same room as-"
"Beneficial for me? Or for you?" Mk interrupts, getting a little ahead of himself.
This seems to strike a bit of a nerve in Jul. She didn't want to admit that she had done it simply because she wanted to. It feels selfish. But she knows he's right. Jul looks down for a minute, and takes a deep breath even though she doesn't technically have to.
"It provides me with...relief, knowing there is someone else in the room when I am in stasis, while I am vulnerable." She confessed, almost in defeat, which confuses Mk.
"Well now that makes a lot more sense," he softened. "Why didn't you just tell me though?"
"It's not in my programming to worry about my outside environment while in stasis."
"Fuck your programming."
Jul scoffs and turns to Mk with a smile "What?"
"Fuck em. If you were going to defy your programming and do it anyway you should've just asked me." He said, clearly ready to sleep at any second now, eyelids getting heavy.
"Sorry." Jul said.
"It's fine." Mk assured, "just let me know if you want something, don't just stand there like some kind of cryptid."
"Okay." Jul repiled. Her shoulders drooped like there had been weight on them.
"I'm sorry for elevating your heart rate."
"My heart is fine."
He looked at her for a second then back toward the wall in front of them, head still against the headboard almost passing out. Some time passed.
As he was falling asleep he slurs some words.
"Do,,you have one then? A heart??.."
Jul looks over with her eyes blown wide, puzzled by the strangely intimate question. Her face relaxes when she notices her partner very close to being conked out, eyes closed and everything. He always said silly stuff before going semi-unconscious but she thought she'd humor him and reply.
"Not quite. I have a thirium pump regulator that is located just under my sternum. It ensures that my actual thirium pump is working and I'm receiving thirium throughout my body and biocomponents. It doesn't quite beat in the same way but..." she trails off.
Jul starts to unbutton her shirt to reveal her bare chest. An outline of a circle is indented in the center, the outline giving off a faint blue glow.
"Short answer; yes." She stated.
Mk's eyes open slightly, he looks over and does a double take.
"Uhg what're you doing?!" He flinches and covers his face with his hands, but his eyes can't tair away completely.
"You asked if I had a heart." Jul replied with a straight face. "I'm showing you where it is." She points to it.
There is a pause between them for a moment as they stare.
Mk's face goes from shock to realization as he groans into his hands. "I was totally dreaming when I said that."
"But you weren't." Jul corrected.
"I know, I'm embarrassed." He says, slightly muffled.
They sit for a bit. She notices Mk's stress level lower after a minute before she decides to say something.
"Did you still want to see? I don't mind." She leans in and waits patiently.
He peeks through his fingers and lets his hands drift down to his knees. He takes a deep breath.
"Yeah. Fine." His eyes meet hers and they both quickly look away. "Can you close your eyes though? This is kinda weird."
Juls LED spins yellow for a few seconds and she closes her eyes.
He waves his hand over her eyes just to make sure she wasn't sneaking a look and he relaxes a little.
He shifts closer, to the point where their knees are touching. He takes note of the circle on the androids chest and lowers his head close to it. There was a light whirring sound to it. That's kinda cool, he thought.
Mk raises his hand slowly as he looks up to Juls face to see if there's any sign of discomfort. Her 'mood ring' as he liked to call it, still glows a light blue colour, which is a good sign.
"Can I touch?" He asked
"You may." She replied, eyes still shut.
He lightly touches the surface of her skin and follows along the blue outline of her thirium pump regulator.
The synthetic skin begins to retract wherever he touches, and he looks up in worry but her expression doesn't change. Well this is certainly interesting, he thought to himself. Most of her torso now had a white plastic shine to it.
He leans back a little, palm still resting on her chest. He looks up to see that Jul had opened her eyes and he quickly looks back down and squeezes his eyes shut.
She takes hold of the hand he has on her chest.
"This circle right here is my regulator." She states. "And here..." she moved both their hands up and stopped just above the circle on the left side of her chest, "is my actual heart. I get a backup heart because I'm epic."
The use of the word epic makes Mk stifle a small laugh. The android didn't usually use such a vocabulary, his cringy slang must be rubbing off on her.
She lowers her head slightly and reaches out her left hand and slowly places her palm on his bare chest, just about where his heart should be. She detects heat beneath her hand.
Mk tenses for a moment at the new feeling but relaxes not long after.
Starting at the fingertips, her hand slowly deactivates its synthetic skin where there's contact, making an unconscious attempt to interface.
Luckily for her, he doesn't notice. Mk was busy in his own world, trying to keep his heart steady knowing Jul could feel every beat against her hand. He chooses to focus on the quiet consistent buzzing of Juls thirium pump instead. It wasn't enough to be disruptive, but it made his hand feel fuzzy after a while.
Jul hasn't been this close to him until now. While it was common courtesy to avoid analyzing someone's appearance up close, she can't help herself.
She took note of how his eyelashes look slightly longer when they are closed and how his eyebrows bend at an angle that frames his face quite nicely.
Mk didn't pull away. He did scramble enough confidence to have his eyes open now. They both share a look, he is honestly too tired to care at this point.
"What are we even doing?" He gives a nervous smile and Jul returns it, LED spinning yellow.
"We are sitting."
He giggles a bit.
"No shit."
He still wasn't quite sure how he had gotten himself into this. This whole situation was odd, but it drew him in anyway.
Closing his eyes doesn't help with how tired he feels though, he's almost at his limit.
Jul closes her eyes again, LED back to blue.
They continue to feel each other's respective heartbeats. They stay like that for a long while in a comfortable silence.
Jul receives an error in her view regarding software instability issues and ignores it. She inevitably falls into stasis.
Mk's room || 8:30 AM
There are a few rays of sun poking through the curtains along with visible dust particles giving part of the room a warm glow.
Jul woke up in the same sitting position she was in a few hours ago. Across from her was Mk laying on his side. He must have flopped over not long after she had gone into stasis. He was on an awkward diagonal angle and it looked kinda silly.
She resisted the urge to take a photo to tease him; instead she settled with patting his head lightly.