Work Text:
When were you planning on telling me that?
In my defense, I completely slipped my mind.
Murderbot rolled its eyes. (It's a very satisfying expression, as far as expressions go.)
Human parties were more tolerable when you could be by yourself and not have to talk to anybody. Murderbot was comfortably sitting on a couch in one of the side rooms in Mensah's family home, unbothered despite the celebration going on around it. Here and there, its humans checked up on it or just sit a minute in silence with it.
Right now, it was its augmented human's turn. He came over carrying a steaming mug of tea and sat down on the other side of the couch, leaving enough space between them.
Murderbot was content to carry on as they were, but then Gurathin spoke up.
"How's your first Preservation Winter Solstice?"
Why do humans always need to talk? Still, it was happening, so it backburnered the episode it was watching.
"Fine," it answered, and hoped that this wasn't an attempt at a conversation about feelings. (Even if the chances of that with Gurathin were very low.)
He nodded. "Good. Although you did hide away for the majority of it."
Murderbot hazarded a glance in his direction. Gurathin was staring straight ahead, probably at the landscape painting hanging on the wall, and was trying his best to hide a teasing smirk behind his mug. (Aha, two can play this game.)
"And what are you doing now?"
He shrugged. "Guilty."
To its surprise, they continued conversing, and it went well until the moment Gurathin mentioned something about New Cycle and the party they are probably going to have. Something that Murderbot taught was vital information to be shared. Especially with it. In the Corporate Rim, New Planetary Cycle parties were always (always!) a catastrophe and usually ended with at least a couple of people losing a finger or several to improper firework safety. And that is the least of the problems.
To make a point, Murderbot quickly compiled a package about injury rates and incident reports, and slammed it at him (it took out the pictures; it was being an asshole, not trying to traumatize its augmented human). It also sent along the metadata of its annoyance just for good measure. To Gurathin's credit, he only made a quiet oof sound.
He went quiet and glanced over the package, then instead of reading it, he just stashed it away.
There is still something that I need to tell you, he said. But first, I need you to know that fireworks are very safe on Preservation. Everybody takes safety very seriously.
Murderbot didn't like where this was going.
Spit it out, it sent.
Gurathin hesitated. Ratthi sets of the fireworks.
And you let him?!
I don't know if this was always the case, he sent. But I have only ever seen Ratthi do it.
Murderbot shoved the alert from risk assessment into the depths of its systems. It didn't need to know that in the not-so-distant future, it would have to do everything so that Ratthi wouldn't lose any fingers.
It took a look at a Preservation cycle calendar, the end of the planetary cycle is in five day cycles.
Why are humans like this?