Chapter Text
Dan had never been a fan of commitment. He’d talked about it with Brian, his boyfriend, and they’d discussed the idea of marriage and their future at length. It was just…difficult for him. Settling down with one person for the rest of his life sounded nerve-wracking and there were just too many variables that could ruin everything for them. They were happy together, so why throw a wrench in the plan?
It took years for Dan to open up to the idea of possibly letting Brian “tie him down.” But Brian was a family man and he wanted Dan to be in his life forever. He just needed to wait until Dan was ready. And after a while, Dan became more okay with the idea.
“Is everything okay?” Dan huffed, crashing into Brian’s office. There was hardly ever a need for Dan to visit Brian while he was working. The two did their own work on their own sides of the laboratory and Dan would often have to check Brian’s schedule before he could drop in to see his own boyfriend. Grump Laboratories didn’t run itself, after all, and Dan had his own secretarial work to tend to.
“I have to tell you something immediately,” Brian said. Dan was by Brian’s desk before he could even get the sentence out.
“Yeah, that’s what I was told. Are you okay?”
The worry faded from Dan just from looking at Brian. There was a new glow about him, like he was about to tell Dan the best news in the world. In fact, thinking about it, Brian had been like this all day, even before they’d gotten to the lab this morning. Dan considered. Could it be—?
Brian waved some papers in front of Dan’s face. “I got the reports this morning, Dan. It turns out there is a way to put human sentience in a computer.”
Dan’s face fell. In fact, Dan’s face crumbled. This couldn’t possibly be what Brian was so happy about. Not this.
It must have been obvious. “Dan, babe…Don’t look at me like that. I know you’re not crazy about the idea, but you’re just not thinking about how useful it could be.”
“I really don’t want to have this conversation right now,” Dan gritted out. “I just—I need more time before you just spring something like this on me.”
“Nothing’s final,” Brian assured hopelessly. “There’s plenty of time.”
“But you’re already decided what you’re going to do once it’s fully operational.”
“Dan—“
“Brian, I don’t want you to do this.” Dan had never said it so outright. There had never been so much certainty in anything Dan had ever said.
“Just think about it for a while,” Brian pleaded. “For me.”
Dan left the room without another word.
A year. It’d been a year since BRIAN had been online. Dan sat in yet another meeting, his usual blank stare falling on the empty chair across the long table from him. No one bothered to snap him out of it anymore. There was always someone that could give him a briefing later.
An assistant’s speech drawled on in the background as Dan stared, absentmindedly twisting the wedding band around his finger. The golden ring reminded him of the happiest day of his life, which Dan clung to desperately. The day he thought Brian had changed his mind and just decided to settle down with Dan and be together. The last day that Dan had hope.
The sharp scraping of a chair across the ground snapped Dan into a brief moment of consciousness. He tuned into the conversation for a moment, expecting it to promptly fade out again.
“The fact of the matter here is that we’re running out of test subjects,” the nervous presenter said. Dan’s eyes snapped up to the man’s face, watching as he nervously gestured to numbers on a projector. “We just can’t sustain the amount of testing the lab is asking for. BRIAN is…retiring the subjects too quickly.”
Dan sneered at the word ‘retire.’ He knew all too well what it meant, but it was just company jargon that made investors happy. It didn’t sound nearly as threatening as what it really was.
“How can we recruit subjects any faster? We’ve nearly run out of willing volunteers,” another man said.
“We just need one good one,” a woman replied. “Just one that can actually wrap their heads around the test chambers.”
“And where are we going to find someone that can do that?”
“I’ll do it.” The ring on Dan’s finger was practically burning against his skin as he twisted it roughly. “Send me in there.”
The entire room grew dead silent. It wasn’t like Dan to joke around—at least not anymore—and no one had even realized he was paying attention. “Sir,” his assistant began nervously, “that’s a bit risky, isn’t it?”
“I don’t care,” Dan said plainly, finally looking somewhere other than the chair across from him. “I’ll beat his tests. Just give me a gun and I’ll go in there today.”
“What about the evaluations and the—“
“Put me through whatever. But get me into those test chambers.” Dan stood from the table, a roomful of eyes following him as he marched to the door. This was hardly like Dan, even now. Some of the older employees would have said it was more like something Brian would have done. “Let me know what I have to do before the end of the day.”
And with that, Dan walked out of the meeting, leaving behind a stunned silence.