Chapter Text
Máximo turns thirteen in 2021, he’s not very social and he doesn’t have many friends. There’s no birthday party, no sleepover, nothing like his sister’s big bashes. He wants nothing to do with people anyway, they all look at him with pensive stares.
They call him a, “precocious child.”
He’d rather not be a child at all, everyone knows Max wants this day over. Possibly that's why his dad comes home excited on the night before his birthday. In his arms is a large box, larger than Máximo, he really hopes it's not a dog. Dogs are too active, too much, too fast. There’s no air holes too, he really hopes his dad isn’t that stupid. When everyone falls asleep he approaches the box carefully. He hears no whimpering or breathing so that’s a good sign. He fiddles with the paper, frowns at the crinkles he makes then smoothes it. Then he tries to lift the box to no avail. He ends up dragging a pillow and blanket by the box sleeping next to it.
Máximo awakes chewing on his sleeve absent-mindedly, he hides the wet by rolling it over his wrist. Neither of his parents are awake but his sister is on the couch scrolling her phone. He looks to her and then the box, she smiles oddly at him.
“What do you think it is Maxy?” She coos.
He knows it's not out of meanness her babying, it comes to her like air, sometimes it is meant to be cruel. To dig deep and hurt him and put him in his place, a little kid. Although now is not one of them, he notes.
He sits up next to her cradling himself to her, “I hope it’s not a dog,” he mutters.
His sister laughs and pats his head gently. He listens to the monotone of Instagram and Tiktok waiting. Máximo lets the birthday procedures go on, the special breakfast, the other gifts, thank you cards, and then finally the big box. He reaches up on his tip toes and pulls the paper from the top. Calm at first then stubbornly, crazed. It’s a plain long cardboard box. Max frowns.
His dad hands him a box opener much to his mom's worries. He cuts it open and pulls to fully open it. There staring back is a boy: a boy with closed eyes, tall, a hardset jaw, pink cheeks, freckles dusting around his face, fluffy hair, and thick eyebrows. Máximo’s sister laughs incredulously and Max freezes.
“What the hell is that?” She yells.
His mom is also looking like her husband has kidnapped a teen boy.
“This is Valent1n73, Valen for short, he’s a model my company has been working on,” His dad now feeling a bit red.
His father had been working in electronics for decades. Engineering and manufacturing new products like simple limb prosthetics to organs. This Max recalls sometime in the middle of the night seeing his dad hunched over his desk muttering about the android. Recalls maybe hearing him say something over dinner. Never did Max give it much thought till now.
Everyone’s in commotion talking and arguing with his dad but Máximo. He looks at Valen, studies the thing, studies him. The only way to describe him is a boy, but to thirteen year old Max the thing already looks like a man. Somewhere between the stages of adulthood with its height and broad shoulders. Max tries his best to reach up to his neck where a necklace with numbers 73 is dangling carefully. Tugs on it with pursed lips, it does nothing. He presses the nape of its neck and the android perks its eyes open.
His eyes are like an ocean, with blues and greens, all cool and calming. It’s surreal and doesn’t even look real, his eyes are also cold, void. It blinks and raises an eyebrow looking at Máximo. Max looks back staring carefully, unashamed for once at eye contact. The thing isn’t human, it, he can't judge Max. It holds out its hand with long fingers extending out and Máximo shakes it. Firm and tense as Valen continues collaborating he assumes, as his eyes won’t leave Max.
“I am Valentín, trial number 73, I am here to be your friend.”
–
Valentín is weird, and not in that he’s not a real human but in the way that he’s nice. Máximo is used to boys with frowning faces and disdain in their eyes. People think he can't pick up on those ques but he can. With Valen, the android has neutral, feelingless eyes and expresses mainly with his eyebrows. The first thing it does upon meeting Max is smile. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes but Máximo likes that.
He spends quite a long time asking questions. Most of them are quite simple, he doesn’t feel like getting existential on his birthday. The robot seems to never get tired though, Max likes that.
“It’s time for dinner!” And he realizes how much time he has spent hushed with Valen.
Máximo goes to exit his room and he waits for Valentín, if he were like an actual friend this is when there would be another plate at the table. Instead there isn’t even a chair for his android, Max frowns. Valentín seems to pick up on it and with quick work makes their table of four become five. The barstool is pressed up next to the opposite of where Max usually sits.
When he sits his sister looks at him bewildered, but sits across. Valen sits too with perfect posture and a lean towards Máximo, only looking at him. He’s not dense, he can see his family’s discomfort with the metal participating at the table. He puts his sleeve in his mouth waiting for food til a thought comes in his mind.
“Can you eat?” Max asks, looking at the piercing, perceiving eyes.
There is no judgement, no disappointment for him not knowing, and no disgust.
Just a simple reply, “If you’d want that.”
Max likes that.