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I accompanied Ratthi and Gurathin into their hotel room. Immediately upon entry, my humans stopped holding hands, and in fact split to either sides of the room—Gurathin to the sofa and Ratthi to the bathroom.
“We only have a few minutes,” Ratthi shouted from the bathroom, already taking off his shirt. The mirror reflected his abs and back muscles back into the room, right at the sofa in fact, but Gurathin didn’t look up—he had already withdrawn into his feed.
“I know,” he said.
Ratthi continued to talk from the bathroom, applying products to his hair, buttoning a carefully-selected number of buttons on his new shirt. “We’ll have to make sure not to drink too much—we want to be alert in case the situation changes, or we have to make a quick getaway. I guess that’s why SecUnit’s here, though, right?”
This is why Ratthi’s my favorite human, he acknowledges that while it’s nice to have sober humans, it’ll be me taking over if things go sideways. I mean, that was at least 60% of the reason why I was here. The other 40% was close to making me literally rage-quit.
Calm down, ART said in-feed, from where it orbited the planet, and had access to my auditory sensors.
You’re not seeing what’s happening right now, I told it. If it was, it would probably be losing its mind too. They’re not even–
“And it’s not like anything’s going to go wrong,” Ratthi continued, the scent of his cologne, fresh and clean, emanating from the bathroom. “We’re just going to talk. Should I do all the talking?”
Gurathin grunted. “You usually do.”
“…Oh, I’ve heard you contribute now and then.” Ratthi poked his head out. “What was that you called me earlier? Soshit…”
“Xochitenqui,” Gurathin muttered.
“It’s got to be a swear, right?” Ratthi said, looking highly amused by the prospect, “I just can’t figure out what it means…”
Gurathin ignored this.
I couldn’t contain myself anymore. “You’re seriously not changing for dinner?” I asked.
Gurathin just repeated, with a small shrug, “We only have a few minutes.”
“Okay, so…” Ratthi emerged wearing a crisp jacket covered in a floral print, perfectly-cut to show off his figure (I think?). He stood in front of Gurathin, and addressed him even as Gurathin continued to read in his boring-ass black suit. “You and I will have dinner in the hotel restaurant in the dining suite, the contact will drop in sometime before the fireworks display—SecUnit, you’ll show them where to go, right?”
I nodded. “And I’ll be keeping an eye on the ground floor. That’s where the company would deploy any countermeasures.”
“Okay.” Ratthi swallowed. “We better go if we’re going to pick up the getaway ride.”
Gurathin kept his eyes fixed on empty air. “You go.”
Ratthi and his floral jacket visibly wilted. “You don’t want to ride in an authentic tanka ? They say it's the best hover-skiff on the market! It's a convertible, we could put the top down and--”
“It’s not necessary,” Gurathin said.
“We’ll make sure the suite is ready,” I butted in, firm enough that Gurathin couldn’t object or, perhaps, beg off the dinner part altogether.
“…Okay. Sure.” Ratthi gave Gurathin one last somewhat forlorn glance, then said, “Well, I’ll see you down there.”
Gurathin nodded. He waited for Ratthi to go before he blinked out of the feed, muttered, “Xochitenqui” under his breath (yeah, sorry Ratthi–I don’t know what it means either) and went to grab his toolkit from his bag. I’d placed it strategically right next to Ratthi’s. He didn’t look at Ratthi’s stuff, though.
“You should go now,” I said, with my most serious SecUnit voice. “I need your eyes on the upper level. I’ll meet you there.”
“Fine.”
“Remember, it’s a nice place,” I added. “You have to look presentable for Ratthi.”
“I know.” Gurathin frowned at me, and I wondered if that comment was going too far. But he nodded, and made a half-attempt to fix his hair before he stepped out. I at least waited until he was gone before I groaned and threw myself dramatically down on the sofa.
“He didn’t even look at Ratthi,” I complained to the empty room. “I set that mirror up just right and everything!”
Dr. Gurathin is very respectful, ART replied, Perhaps too respectful.
Tell me about it. When I first met Gurathin and Ratthi, I figured their frequent disagreements were just typical antagonistic human behavior. But then I saw how they stuck together after Mensah’s kidnapping, to the point of helping me out with that murder investigation back on Preservation Station, and I realized that the unnamed thing between them was actually what humans call ‘chemistry’. Ratthi likes everyone, but I noticed since he started hanging out with Gurathin that he consigned romantic exploits to the past. This is absurd, he’s friendly and kind and brilliant and most importantly he takes care of his personal hygiene, all good markers of a good mate. He could do a lot better than an augmented human with no social skills and a face that scares small children.
But I’ve seen a lot of romantic movies and serials, listened to a lot of love songs and read a lot of books. I skip a few scenes here and there, but I’m as close to an expert on this stuff as you can get. Ratthi is one of my favorite humans, and he deserves romantic bliss if he wants it. Gurathin is my least favorite augmented human, but Ratthi likes him, so I guess he’ll do.
How hard could setting up two of my humans really be?
ART was on board (that’s a joke) with my idea from the start. Bots love to pair up their humans, after all, and we started to devise our plan.
It was based around an actual legitimate mission, actually, on a real corporate planet. ART had made contact with a concerned citizen willing to share intel on a transport containing newly-manufactured (read: baby) SecUnits, including how to hijack it. That is, if the contact trusted us (and the contact’s supervisors didn’t figure out what she was up to, and kill everyone to ensure their profit margin). ART would orbit the planet disguised as a corporate transport, while Gurathin, Ratthi and I went down to the planet to meet the contact and convince her to run away with us, rescue the baby SecUnits, etc.
All that was true: I just also told Gurathin and Ratthi a lie about how this particular planet viewed romantic pairs as a signal of respectability, and that they needed to appear in public as a married couple for a few days, to legitimize us in the eyes of our contact.
Ratthi had agreed readily, and even gave Gurathin a friendly elbow to the ribs. Gurathin had glowered, but after I told him it was mandatory for mission success, he agreed, too.
To be clear, I’m not obsessed with pairing up my humans. It just makes sense that they should be together. I’m a SecUnit: why not protect my humans from loneliness if I can?
“It makes no sense,” I complained. “I got them tickets to go to that concert together.”
It was very romantic, ART agreed. Even if they didn’t gaze into each other’s eyes during the romantic song like in ‘Existence is Lovely.’
“And then—remember, I canceled Gurathin’s order of noodles so they had to split?” That was from The Duchess and the Drifter.
ART sent an acknowledgment. It was very gallant, the way that Gurathin insisted he wasn’t hungry.
I suppressed another groan. In the last seventy-two hours I’d provided dozens of opportunities representing romantic moments from the top ten romantic pieces of media of all time. Nothing stuck.
Gurathin was the problem, of course. Ratthi was basically the personification of every idealized love interest that media had to offer, while Gurathin was the textbook definition of a killjoy. My risk assessment module knew how this dinner would play out: Ratthi would be his usual cheerful and receptive self, conversational, cuddly, essentially throwing Gurathin meatballs—while Gurathin sat there reading in his feed and let it all go over his head. I didn’t even need my risk assessment to calculate the likelihood, it was a mathematical certainty.
Now, a lesser construct, some SecUnit with less gumption than me, would take this as a sign to give up. But I’ve been on assignments featuring unresolved sexual tension, where the sad pathetic humans pour their hearts out to anyone who will listen: and that happens to be the SecUnit that can’t talk back or knock the idiots’ heads together or anything. Yeah, I’m not putting myself through that again.
(Okay, so I’m a little obsessed.)
The restaurant was really pretty fancy, the kind of place only managers who wanted to spend a lot of money on their prospective marital partners got to visit. There were actual leather-bound menus and human waiters and everything. The upper-level private dining suites were paneled with windows that looked out over the hotel’s ground floor and lobby on one side, and the scenic hotel gardens on the other. Attack could originate from a lot of places, but any company that tried to take out our contact would at least try to avoid collateral damage to the expensive furnishings.
Anyway, this dinner was my last chance to get Ratthi and Gurathin together, and I didn’t want corporate assassination attempts messing it up. I checked the ground floor and tagged the exits. When I found it blissfully free of muscle or menace, I made my way upstairs to the dining suite.
I found Gurathin lurking outside the suite, using grumpiness to hide that he was too afraid to go in. I basically had to bully him inside. The decor was, admittedly, a lot. I’d had it decked out like the dressing room scene from Ghost of the Musical Theater: flowers absolutely everywhere, even improbable places, until it looked like a hauler bot’s attempt at generative art. I know my friend Ratthi loves flowers, and… well, Gurathin at least isn’t allergic. The smell was pungent, though, even for my SecUnit nose. Gurathin grumbled something and opened the garden-side window, which just made the curtains billow, and he was just about to move some bouquets when Ratthi entered.
See, this is a perfect case in point: there Gurathin was, standing with literal armfuls of Ratthi’s favorite flowers, wind blowing through the window and making Ratthi’s half-buttoned shirt flutter and ruffling Gurathin’s hair. And then Gurathin had to be a klutz and drop the flowers, and Ratthi had to be polite and address the arriving waiter instead.
“What are we celebrating this evening?” the waiter asked politely, as he poured bubbly alcoholic beverages into elaborately-impractical glassware.
“They’re on their honeymoon,” I said, before my two idiots could come up with anything more mundane.
Ratthi and Gurathin stared at me.
“Oh!” The waiter tried to turn his frown into a smile as he turned to me. “And—you are?”
Oh. Were bodyguards not common to bring along on a honeymoon? That had been my cover story so far.
Say you’re their valet, ART suggested.
I folded my arms. “Valet.” The fuck’s a valet?
Gurathin choked–on flower pollen, presumably.
You know. A gentleman’s personal gentlemen? ART offered.
I froze. WHAT.
They may not have them on Preservation, ART mused. Gee, thanks, ART.
Ratthi at least played along and gave me his coat, then reached out to take Gurathin’s hand. Gurathin acted like Ratthi just tried to hand him a baby scorpion until I glared at him, and he let Ratthi interlace their fingers. They smiled at the waiter, as natural as a pair of mannequins.
“Well–congratulations, I’m sure,” the waiter said, then wisely fled the scene. Gurathin immediately took his hand back.
You can see what I have to work with, here.
I took a look at the seating and immediately dropped onto the armchair. This forced Ratthi and Gurathin to squeeze onto the velvet loveseat together. I watched the gymnastics they performed to get seated without touching each other at all. They’re usually so touchy-feely—maybe not hand-holding, but I’d seen Gurathin give a quiet smile when Ratthi just brushed his shoulder. Ratthi normally lights up like a transport on fire when Gurathin merely chooses to sit next to him. What was wrong with them???
“This is like, every single one of my favorite plants,” Ratthi said, taking in all the flowers. He glanced at Gurathin and turned on the high-beam smile. “It’s really sweet of you!”
“It was like this when I got here.” Gurathin cut his eyes at me. “This must have been SecUnit’s doing.”
Asshole. I said, “I think you did it.”
I don’t usually lie, so Gurathin furrowed his brow with extra annoyance at me, and Ratthi believed me without question. Ratthi smiled, mostly to himself. When Gurathin saw it, his frown vanished. In fact, I watched the systems analyst’s face go red. Was that an actual blush?
Wait a second…
“Shouldn’t you be watching the lower level?” Gurathin asked me.
Normally I wouldn’t obey even the shadow of a command from Gurathin, but this time I stood and went to the window overlooking the ground floor. As I got up I made sure to knock over one of the beverage glasses in the process. Liquids feature prominently in romantic interludes, from The Notepad to The Form of Liquid. I pretended not to notice, which sent the humans into a commotion. Since I didn’t have any drones on this mission I watched them eagerly in the reflection of the window as Ratthi, who took the worst of the damage, bent over to blot his fancy trousers. Gurathin watched him do it, eyes lingering on the seat of Ratthi’s pants.
Well, well well—Gurathin, you dog! I sent ART. Dog–Am I using that right? Why do human compliments sound the same as derogatory slurs?
It’s not exactly a compliment, ART replied.
Whatever. Seriously, I didn’t know the guy had it in him! Is that why he’s been acting so awkward on this mission—I mean, even more than usual?
Humans do exhibit very strange behaviors when they are in love, and placed in close proximity with the object of their affections.
Tell me about it. This is going to go better than I thought.
I made myself unobtrusive at the window and gave ART full access to my visual as well as auditory systems. Then we waited for ‘sparks to fly,’ as ART says. Would the scene that played out between my humans be more in the style of About Chronology, or Affection, Truly? Maybe things would go like they did in that song The Totality of Me. Whispered conversations over little accidents of fate were pretty common in romance media across the board, I’m sure ART could make a chart….
Sparks, however, did not fly. It was more like watching an ocean liner sink very, very slowly. Ratthi started talking about the stain-resistant properties of different trouser fabrics, which sounded like just the kind of boring stuff Gurathin was into but he said literally nothing. Eventually even Ratthi ran out of words and they just sat there, damp, uncomfortable. I’ve been around a lot of uncomfortable humans but these were my humans, and the effect was excruciating.
Ratthi decided to visit the bathroom to perform damage control. I waited for him to invite Gurathin to help. I waited for Gurathin to go after him, maybe he’d finally realize they could never be apart and say so. But Ratthi just left, and Gurathin just pinched the bridge of his nose.
I asked him, once Ratthi had gone. “Are you secretly a bot, or something?”
Gurathin peeked out from behind his hand. “What?”
“Seriously, ART shows more emotion than you! I go to all the trouble to set up these perfect scenarios for you and Ratthi to–” ugh, did I really have to say it out loud? My face did something gross, “-- get together , and you’re wasting them!”
“Ah.” Gurathin’s mouth tightened. “So you noticed.”
“I would, if there was anything to notice. You could have said something to him, like fifty times.”
Fifty-seven times, by my count, ART interjected.
“Fifty-seven times,” I corrected. Honestly, if Gurathin wasn’t such a shy little fuck this charade wouldn’t have been necessary.
Gurathin just narrowed his eyes at me.
“You could say something to him now! ” I said.
Gurathin allowed himself a measured sigh. “We are operating in an official capacity. Even if I wanted to… press my suit,” he seriously said that, a phrase I only heard in media from about a hundred years ago, “I couldn’t possibly put my friend in that situation.”
“What situation?”
“A situation where he cannot reject advances, SecUnit.”
“Yeah, with how you operate I think that’s the only chance you’re going to get.”
Gurathin resumed his grumpy expression. “Perhaps it is. However, it’s beside the point. Ratthi would never accept me as a romantic partner.”
I was about to tell him that Ratthi was into him, but if Gurathin asked why I'd of course be unable to answer (no idea why Ratthi likes this guy). I said instead, “So you’re going to give up on something you want but don’t have, just because you might not get it?”
Gurathin glared at me. “I know what I’m doing.”
I threw myself back into the armchair and sulked. Ratthi returned, and an awkward silence set in. Ratthi seemed to be waiting for Gurathin to speak (maybe tell him the stain isn’t so bad, Gurathin? Come on, how am I better at this than the augmented human??) But Gurathin just sat there, looking red and miserable. The asshole may have deserved it, but not my friend Ratthi.
“What’s your favorite romantic movie?” I asked them. I know, me, starting a conversation. Needs fucking must, I guess.
“Oh,” Ratthi frowned, really giving it some thought. “I really like Queen of Love .”
“…The one where the love interest kidnaps the heroine until she pushes him down a mountain?”
“It’s not real,” Ratthi said, a little defensively. “I think it’s—fun, in context!”
Hmm. Maybe Gurathin would have a chance with Ratthi if he kidnapped him. Alas, no chance of that, and if he tried to push Ratthi down a mountain I would make him regret it.
Ratthi tapped the toe of his shoe against Gurathin’s. “What about you?”
“I don’t know.” Gurathin looked like he was going to be sick. “ Joleo and Renette .”
“The one where everyone dies?” Ratthi protested.
“It’s not real,” Gurathin protested right back.
“No, I appreciate your melancholy streak,” Ratthi said, but I interrupted.
“Both of you are wrong! It’s When Kari met Foley .” Obviously.
“Everyone says that,” Gurathin said with an eye roll.
“Sorry, SecUnit, we didn’t know there was a right answer,” Ratthi laughed. “Okay, okay: what’s the funniest movie you’ve ever seen?”
I blinked at him like he was crazy. We were talking about romance, not comedy! Also, I’m not a part of this conversation! I was supposed to be standing off to the side, pretending not to notice while they shared an intimate tête-à-tête, or whatever the kids are calling it. But Ratthi’s always so friendly and inclusive to everyone, even SecUnits. It was just as hard to tell what he was really thinking as rock-faced Gurathin. I saw it now: the problem was on Ratthi’s end, too.
That’s probably why I didn’t figure it out earlier, honestly. Humans don’t need to make media about this kind of tragedy. The universe was already full of sad lonely people that never share their true feelings.
The waiter returned with dinner. Ratthi grabbed Gurathin’s hand in a way that was almost violent. Gurathin made sure to call Ratthi that untranslated insult of his when Ratthi did his level best to replace the waiter in terms of hospitality. In short, a trainwreck.
I turned to the window, dissatisfied with the entire mission.
When the time came (it couldn’t come fast enough), I went to collect the contact and bring her to our suite. I had a vague lingering hope that we’d come in to find Ratthi and Gurathin engaging in the kind of activities I tend to fast-forward through in media, all their hang ups resolved. But they just looked even more depressed than before. The contact was nervous and didn’t look any happier to see my humans sitting there so awkwardly.
“Y-you celebrating something?” she asked, sitting down in the armchair, looking around at the flowers as if they held hidden assassins.
“It’s our ‘honeymoon’,” Gurathin muttered, rather unconvincingly.
“Oh!” The contact blinked, then shrugged. “I thought you were friends.”
“No, we’re…wait.” Ratthi cocked his head. “You thought we were just friends? And you still agreed to meet with us?”
Uh oh.
“Of… course?” the contact gave a quivering laugh. “I mean, to each their own, it doesn’t matter either way to me…”
“It doesn’t matter ?” Gurathin said, and spun toward me, which was totally breaking character. He really ought to show some professionalism.
“Why should it matter?” the contact asked worriedly.
“We just, uh, heard it was culturally significant here,” Ratthi said—a little breathless but at least managing to sound normal about it.
“Oh—no, no.” the contact said. “Not that I know of, anyway—it’s a big planet!”
“Never mind,” Ratthi said firmly, “Why don’t you tell us about this SecUnit transport?...”
The contact talked, but Gurathin continued to stare at me. I watched this horror serial one time where a human looked just like that before he burst into flame, uh—well, I thought that was just movie magic at the time but you never know…
“…Is everything okay?” the contact asked, because of course she noticed the human about to commit constructicide right in front of her.
“You know,” Ratthi’s voice pitched up. “Uh—I think he might be allergic to one of the dishes?”
“I’m not allergic,” Gurathin barked.
“Maybe I better go,” the contact said, rising.
“Don’t,” I said. Yes, watching my carefully-crafted scheme fall apart in front of me was absolutely riveting, but I still had 47% of my processing power focused on the ground floor, and I just heard a very telling footstep from one of the hotel entrances I’d tagged earlier. I went to the window and saw something I wanted to face even less than Gurathin’s wrath. “CombatUnits. Two: north and east doors.”
“I have to get out of here!” the contact yelped. Gurathin grabbed her before I could.
“Trust me, you’re safer with it,” Gurathin said, nodding to me. “Though, is it safer with us…”
“Oh, please,” I growled, as I shoved a console-credenza-shelf type thing—I don’t know, it looked heavy and expensive– in front of the door. “If you two just communicated your feelings I wouldn’t have had to do anything. Get down behind the sofa.”
The humans obeyed at least, though now they were yelling at me.
“I knew this felt suspicious from the start,” Gurathin said. “You, volunteering to be a third wheel?--”
“I don’t know what that is, so there,” I snapped. I backed away toward the sofa as the footsteps thundered up the stairs towards our suite.
“SecUnit, this is serious,” Ratthi said, all calm and sad and apparently oblivious to the CombatUnits about to bust through the door. “Making people pretend to be a couple is not a practical joke! You could really hurt someone’s feelings!”
“So you’re not a couple?” the contact asked.
“Do we really have to talk about this now?” I said before they could answer.
“Yes!” Ratthi nodded firmly. “We’re both very disappointed in your behavior, aren’t we, Gurathin?”
“Try pissed off,” Gurathin muttered.
“You shut up,” I told him. He could have played this out just fine but no, heaven forbid he share a single true feeling—
“We’re not your toys, you can’t just smush us together and say ‘now, kiss!’” He folded his arms.
“ART is a bad influence on you.”
“Hey, why don’t you just--”
Then the door exploded and I had the sweet release of fighting for my life to get me out of that awkward conversation. It was just the one CombatUnit, and with some extra weapons ART had designed for me I was able to neutralize it fairly quickly and with no further damage to the suite.
When I came back to the sofa I found Ratthi and Gurathin arguing with each other over the poor contact, who had her eyes closed like she was trying to melt into the carpet.
“…And don’t speak for me,” Gurathin snapped, “You’re always speaking for me—!”
“Were you ever going to say anything?” Ratthi replied.
“I might if you didn’t talk over me!”
“What is wrong with you? You have been acting so weird this entire trip—”
“Oh, like you haven’t? You’ve never held my hand before and now that’s all you want to do–”
“If you ever mentioned what was so wrong with holding your hand, I might have stopped! Instead you’ve just been calling me names that are too rude to even translate–”
“You’re the one that assumed it was an insult!”
I’m starting to think this mission was ill-advised, ART said in the feed.
You think?! I sent back.
Of course, I was able to arrange things much better when I set Karime up with her significant—
I don’t want to hear it! “Come on,” I said, and started to direct the humans toward the garden-facing window, while I remotely hacked the skiff and got it ready to catch us.
The interior window shattered. Suddenly the second CombatUnit was in the room with us.
Okay, Plan B. So as not to be accused of playing favorites, I grabbed both my human and my unaugmented human and stuffed them into an armoire-wardrobe-dresser-type thing at the back of the suite, which also looked heavy and therefore protective. Then I got the contact and tossed her out the garden window, catching her neatly in the skiff. When the CombatUnit rushed toward her I was there to slam into its side. This fight took a little longer, for some reason. I think hearing my humans fighting kind of hit me harder than I expected. Ratthi and Gurathin argue all the time, and that's normal for romantic shows (I mean have you seen It Happened One Cycle?), but it’s never been personal like that.
Maybe I fucked everything up?
When the CombatUnit finally dropped, and I dragged both of them over the balcony edge into the skiff (and calmed down the contact who was a little annoyed that I threw her out a window) I returned to the armoire.
Maybe when I open these doors, they’ll be kissing? I asked ART hopefully. It would be gross, but it would be better than the arguing.
I felt ART wince in the feed. When I opened the door I found Ratthi contorted around Gurathin so as not to touch any part of him in the cramped space, and Gurathin standing there with his hands tucked into his armpits. They filed out silently.
Yeah, I fucked everything up.
Thankfully they were not angry enough at me to prevent me from flying the skiff toward our rendezvous point with ART. The contact sat in the back, nervously poking the shut-down CombatUnits, which left Ratthi and Gurathin squished in the front seat with me. As I said, I’ve seen a lot of romances, and let me tell you, the long silent skiff ride is never a good sign. By all rights it ought to be raining. I’m glad it wasn’t. Ratthi looked especially sad in the rain and Gurathin would just look like a drowned microfauna.
Well, if they were disappointed in me it was nothing compared to my own disappointment in them.
Okay, okay, and myself.
“I’m—” Come on, Murderbot, you can do it, “—Sorry. Okay? I just wanted you to be happy.” I mean I’m supposed to be the depressed one around here.
Seriously, though. I did feel kind of terrible. I certainly hoped my stupid scheme didn’t entirely destroy their friendship.
“It’s alright,” Ratthi said, of course. Ratthi is so nice. I thought about even letting him hug me, until Gurathin spoke.
“It’s not alright.” I didn’t look at him but it was a near thing, and from the corner of my eyes I saw him push back his hair, which was getting whipped around in the wind pretty badly (Ratthi of course looked great). “I shouldn’t have put SecUnit in a position where it felt it had to act on a situation that should have been resolved by me.”
…Wait.
Was he?--
Oh, shit!
“Resolved?” Ratthi asked. “By you?”
“Yes.” Gurathin looked white as a ghost, or maybe an old actor from a faded black-and-white film. When he pitched his voice low and soft like that it was a lot less annoying. “Though you might have helped, too.”
“I… I didn’t know you liked me,” Ratthi said. His face was slack, wide-eyed.
“I don’t like you,” Gurathin snapped, grumpy and annoyed again, “I’m in love with you. Who wouldn’t be?”
“Oh, I can be pretty annoying,” Ratthi laughed, breathless. “All the handholding…”
“Handholding is just very, ah, charged, in my culture,” Gurahtin mumbled, pushing his hair out of his face. “I wouldn’t mind holding your hand, perhaps, in private.”
“Oh!” Ratthi blinked. “I thought you thought I was boring!”
“I could listen to you read a directory,” Gurathin said. “But you’re not boring. You know so much—I see a room full of too many flowers, you see it and immediately know all their names. You make my world bigger.”
“Really? I–I didn’t even get to tell you about them. But I just wanted to give you your space–that was why you called me that, wasn’t it?… Shochit–Xochit–”
“Xochitenqui,” Gurathin said, and there was an actual smile on his lips.
“Yeah, I was I was probably being annoying, totally deserved it–”
“It’s not an insult. It’s a metaphor for a person with eloquent, poetic speech. ‘Flower-mouth.’”
“Flower-mouth!” Ratthi gave a breathless giggle, inches from Gurathin’s cheek. “And here I figured I talked too much.”
“I don’t talk enough,” Gurathin breathed against his lips.
“OKAY!” I cut in. I was gripping the steering yoke so hard I’m pretty sure my fingers left grooves. “Great! You’re… together! You can stop talking now!”
“SecUnit,” Gurathin admonished, though he was still smiling unnervingly. “After all your hard work, you don’t want to hear us talk about how much we love each other?”
“Yeah,” Ratthi said, laughing, “After all that romantic media you’ve been watching?”
I squinted at him. “Don’t tell me you guessed what I was doing?”
“I mean, the Duchess and the Drifter thing was pretty obvious. I’ve seen a lot of those shows, too. I’m sure you can’t wait to hear all about our–!”
I muted my audio sensors and focused entirely on the airspace ahead of me.
These things tend to work themselves out, ART told me. It hacked my systems just so it could turn the radio on in the skiff, and soft twinkly music filled the air.
Shut up, I snapped. Of course it could be all smug, sitting up there in space and not sharing a skiff with humans in the act of falling in love
(Let’s not think about all the humans that fell in love inside ART’s walls, okay? I can’t handle it.)
You’re a very caring SecUnit, ART said, probably because no one else would. And maybe I wouldn’t play matchmaker with my humans a second time, but…well, I’m glad it turned out okay this time.
Then I accidentally caught Gurathin and Ratthi kissing in the side view mirror and regretted all my choices. At least most romantic media had the decency to fade to black.