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You runs your hands up and down the ankle of the robot in the foyer, slow and appreciative. This one is different than any of your works; nothing the Light had shaped in its holy image. The metal here is the even temperature of the open air; NEO meanwhile cools in the absence of the warmth of its maker. The shapes that comprise it are nothing like the sharp angles of the body. Minute imperfections dent its surface.
You let your finger linger on one of them, tracing the outline in a circle once and then twice. You breathe in smooth and deep as your hand continues its downward path – this is where you ought to be spending your nights. You inhale and the crisp air that fills your lungs washes them clean – nothing like the dust and filth of the basement or the smoke that permeates Spamton’s hot breaths. The cool neon blues of the low hall lights draw up a matching hue from deep beneath your feathers.
You feel her eyes on you; and you picture her, leaning over the railing in a tired slump, glass of battery acid dangling from her sharply jointed fingers. You continue to caress the place where ankle tapers off into pointed boot in silence and adjust to her quiet company.
You appreciate the reprieve she provides. She cares not to pry about your work or about NEO; in turn, you care not to pry into any successes or failures her guesswork gets her. And guesswork too is a far more precarious task than anything you could take on – you’ve the Light quite literally guiding your hands, after all – and so you feel at ease knowing she has no judgment call for your failure. You must each have your fair share of hits and misses.
And you provide her ample reprieve in turn – being her head butler, it’s only natural. Long gone are the days of her company of court jesters and their ilk; you pride yourself a cut above that frivolity, offering far more than parlor tricks and fool’s errands. The Color Café and its staff are primed to provide all that a palace should need and then some, and in your humble opinion she is both demanding of and deserving of and then some . Now her nights are sleek and as polished as the Light-deigned routines of the day.
She came to see you after the Color Café – and all of her system’s programs – had shut down for the night, you note. The thought makes you preen with pride. Frequent are the aforementioned sleek evenings where she’s stumbled near to sleep mode into the arms of her waiting entourage – and you are proud of that, too, doubtlessly so – but you’re perhaps a bit pleased in particular that she wants your attention alone tonight.
“How would you like your evening, my Lady Grace?” In response to your remark she lets out a laugh; one short hoo! that rings up to the high ceiling of the foyer. You can’t help the smile that slips onto your face at that. “Chilled? Shaken? Stirred?”
“Medium Rare,” she grins back.
You turn to face her and let your eyes open halfway. Indeed, there she is; leaning slumped over the railing, glass in hand. The dim neons deepen her own blues and make her seem to give off a faint luminescent glow. Such a thing suits her well, you think. Your eyes draw to the gap in her teeth and linger there. Her head tilts a fraction; she’s looking you up and down, too.
You remain like that until you – at once – remember yourself. You ought not to make her walk all the way over to you and you would rather not make a fool of your station now. But you take only a step before you see her expression shift and her screen light up like a bulb. With little warning beyond a “Go Long,” and a running start, she’s leapt up onto the ledge and sent herself flying in your direction.
You dart up the stairs and leap after her, catching her in one arm and her drink in the other as they plummet. Your shoes click once and then again against the tile as you land, and she lets out a whooping hoo! of delight. She’d jostled you on accident when she’d wrapped her arms around you for purchase, and now she jostles you again, this time on purpose, prompting you to hand her her vice. This allows for you to carry her in both arms, and she makes a show of crossing her legs and getting comfortable.
“Must you?”
“If I Menu-d Right I Could’ve Kept Going Forever.” She pulls two fingers together and a portable arcade’s menu projects out from her visor; a joke, you surmise, and file it away to ask about when she drags you out for a mobile gaming session. “The Length Of Your Go Was: Above Average.”
You bow your head – painting disappointment in caricature across your face. “My deepest apologies, my lady grace, you drawl. “I shall see to it that average as a word never exists in the same sentence as mention of mys–”
You know you’ve succeeded in your effort when she exclaims “No No It Exceeded Expectations Swatch Please LMAO You Are: Too Much”; half-concerned and wholly amused. Her screen flashes LOL on and off like a blaring siren, and you can’t help responding too much? in the same mock-dejected tone just to send her into another fit of hysterics.
“Seriously Though,” she says, and ends her thought there. It’s as if the mere utterance reminds her of the exhaustion of the day; she draws closer to your chest and adjusts her arms around you. Then, still smiling, she mutters; “Run: ToMyQuarters.exe.”
“Walk,” you tut – you’ve both leapt around plenty enough for one day – and brush your head against hers. She leans hers against yours in turn, huffing in lighthearted annoyance; she is electric even now, a low and steady reverberation pulsing through her circuits and out to the places where you touch. How you’ve missed this; her immediate relaxation at your smallest of gestures, the quiet atmosphere you’ve cultivated with the utmost attention to how each detail might set her mood. You drink in the quiet hum of it against you, the cool smoothness of her cheek. “I trust your day went without issue?” you mutter, low and fervent.
She’s quiet, for a moment; her cheek presses further against you, the mechanisms in her throat working. Too; you drink in the sound. Then, she finally responds, her own mutter still remiss to alter her tone’s usual irreverant color.
“Lightners Looked Up Cars,” she says. “Lots Of Cars. All Thanks To Spamton” – you grimace at the name – “LMAO We Had A Great Time Informing Them About All The Sweet Deals #SweetDeals You Should’ve Been There That Would’ve Been Great #Great.”
Truly you cannot imagine a fate worse than having to stand and watch Spamton haphazardly shove himself into your lady grace’s daily mechanisms as though the Light had deigned it so and make a mess of them. In fact you needn’t imagine at all – you’ve lived it firsthand. Instead your mind provides you with Spamton flagellating himself in front of the body, too preoccupied with it for now to disturb her. You’d ordinarily keep an eye on him – but you hope you’ve become familiar enough with just what he does down there that you can spare one night. Queen is far and away more pleasant company to keep.
“I’m sure it would’ve been,” you say.
Queen raises a brow at your tone. “Swatch You Are Using Your Hater Voice.”
“Guilty as charged.” Your fond smile re-emerges. “But as I recall, you like my… what was it? ‘Hater voice’?”
“Guilty As Charged,” she teases, patting your chest for emphasis.
“Those, too,” you note.
“I Thought We Were Going To Walk: ToMyQuarters.exe, Smart Genius,” she says, and pats it again, this time with more of a giddyup. “Unless You Want To Hear Me Play Sick Bongo Tity.”
It wouldn’t be the most outrageous thing she’s done with you. Still, your good sense tells you that she really ought to lie down a little before the Lightners call upon her again. Your duty as butler is to care for her; as head butler to match her when you must. Thusly on both counts;
“Why don’t you make yourself at home?” Your mouth is so near to hers that your voice, low and fervent once more, might echo off of the hollow of her cheek. She stills at the sound. Her hand, still set on your chest, wraps back around to hold the other at the base of your neck, and she lets her head land with a soft thump in its place.
You begin to walk. Slowly; she settles in full, her weight now yours to support. Up the stairs, past the guest rooms; you’re reassured by the rowdy cacophony coming from Spamton’s; a weight lifted from you and then set back down on your shoulders, a knot loosening in your stomach before it ties itself again in a somewhat different shape.
The upper floors of the palace’s left side look more like the foyer than they do those of the palace’s right. Nor are they like what she has described to you of her old castle – crowded, moored in aged and sorrowful pitch-black brick. Your shoes continue to click against the tile, familiar deep blue first complimenting new vibrant greens before they overtake them, asserting that this is their ground, this time matched with speckled lemonade hues that you immediately put source to.
The hall has given way to a wide window overlooking the whole of – “My City,” she says, somewhat dizzy in her exhaustion, “My Freaking City.”
And it is. She needn’t share this with any ruler but herself, no matter how Spamton tries to make himself into a kind of king. It walks in time with her every step, with a unity of purpose only her leadership could provide.
Her head presses further against your chest, as though to burrow inside of you. You watch the lights of the city shift in the leather of her boots, and so long to run your hands down them here and now; such that the motion would set them quivering across the black.