Work Text:
Tessa stared despondently into the mirror of the vanity, paying no attention to the way the worker behind her constructed her curled black locks into flawless braids.
She donned a navy gown, the dress pooling at her ankles as she sluggishly swung her legs to-and-fro. The garment was adorned with various opal gemstones, a larger one in the centre of the dress’ collar.
“I don’t want to go to this event,” she suddenly declared, earning a pause from the drone behind her.
“What?” J asked, as if she hadn’t heard her right.
“My parents,” Tessa clarified, “they’re so adamant on pairing me with a boy. They’d mentioned off-handedly a boy and his parents are attending this one and they want me to meet him.”
“I thought you liked romance, Boss,” J hummed, “it’s mostly what you read in the library, anyway.”
“I do,” she mumbled. “Just… not with a guy—especially the guys they’ve tried to get me to fall in love with in the past. My parents would never accept that, though.”
“Oh,” J murmured, “so, with a girl?”
“Yeah,” was Tessa’s answer—but it wasn’t the truth. She wanted to say with you. Anything that could convey how she truly felt, but the words lodged stubbornly in her throat. J hummed in response, moving to squeeze the human’s shoulder.
A rather awkward—at least on the human’s end—silence followed, J braiding the girl’s hair with deft fingertips. Tying off the last braid, J reached over Tessa’s shoulder, grabbing a bow that was similar if not identical in colour to the human’s dress. In the middle held a gemstone that was embedded into the fabric—opal.
She settled the bow into Tessa’s hair, standing on her tippy-toes as she adjusted the accessory.
“It’s done,” J announced. “I can go look for a pair of heels to match the dress and bow, no—”
In that moment, everything seemed to boil over, and a confession came tumbling out of Tessa’s mouth.
“I want it to be with you,” Tessa blurted before she could stop herself. Oops. She didn’t seem to realise the gravity of what she’d just admitted until she looked over her shoulder to see J staring at her, hands suspended mid-air and neon white eye-lights hollow with an unreadable emotion.
“You—” J stammered, uncharacteristically at a loss for words as she sputtered under Tessa’s gaze. “You want what to be with me, Boss—?”
“The whole romance carry-on,” Tessa said. As soon as the words left her mouth, she balked before hurriedly stammering, “I’m sorry, J—that was uncalled for. Crap, I’m so so sorry—”
“No,” J tersely squeaked, “I—I feel… I feel the same way.”
A heavy silence followed her words. The worker’s screen flushed with neon white, her gaze averting to the floor. The words lingered in Tessa’s head. I feel the same way. They—they both loved each other.
“But,” oh God, “you’re a human and… I’m a drone, Tessa. Sentient or not, we’d never get away with thi—”
She was promptly silenced as Tessa whisper-shouted, “I don’t care!”
“J, I’ve never—” she started. “I have never cared whether you were a robot, or a human, or whatever. Hell, I wouldn’t even care if you were a worm!”
The pause that followed was particularly awkward.
“Well, dating you if you were a worm would probably actually be weird, but that’s not the point,” Tessa said. “My point is I don’t care if you’re a drone and I don’t care if we’d never ever get away with this. I love you, and I want to be with you, if you want to be with me.”
J blinked once, twice, then thrice.
“If we both want this, there’s nothing stopping us,” Tessa told her. “That being said; do… do you want to do this?”
Instead of answering her verbally, J leaned over and pressed her lips against Tessa’s, hands settling on her shoulders. The cold of J’s mouth was the first thing the girl noticed—though, she didn’t exactly mind. If anything, it was a welcome sensation.
The human reciprocated, one of her arms snaking around the worker’s waist and pulling her closer. Her fingers dug into the fabric of the maid uniform as J deepened the kiss.
Tessa’s thoughts blurred as their impromptu kiss carried out, the world around her seeming surreal. This was, decidedly, not what she pictured herself doing at this time, but she wasn’t complaining. Not at all.
At some point, she felt her back collide with her mattress, the worker breaking the kiss to climb over her. She straddled Tessa’s waist, resuming the kiss with a renewed passion. One of J’s hands found itself in Tessa’s hair, gripping at the curly locks tightly.
Tessa let J do her thing, deepening the kiss before letting J take over. She gasped into the kiss when J’s free hand pressed into her chest, grasping at the fabric of her navy ball gown. The human’s legs hung over the edge of the bed, encased by the worker’s legs.
Minutes flew by like hours before J finally pulled away, panting. A flush painted her visor, appearing as if she’d had a bag of flour chucked full force at her face. Her bangs were askew and slightly obscuring her eyes, and she sighed before brushing them out of the way.
“Hah…” she breathed. “That was…”
“Intimate?” Tessa finished for the other.
“Yes,” J said curtly. She took stock of the girl’s appearance, hollow eyes flitting over her. Her hair was messy and the upper part of her dress was ruffled.
“We need to redo your hair,” J mumbled.
“I guess we do,” Tessa giggled, sitting up and watching J walk back over to the vanity, simultaneously smoothing out her dress. “We got a bit carried away.”
They spent the next ten minutes redoing Tessa’s hair and smoothing out her dress, hurriedly rushing to the ballroom. However, they ran into N and V on the way, the duo looking positively stumped as they took stock of J specifically.
“What?” J snapped as they balked. N eventually gave her a proper answer to their fumbling.
“…Why do you have Tessa’s lipstick smeared all over your mouth?” he asked, tilting his head in a puppy-like manner.
Oh.
Oh.