Work Text:
It was Saturday, and Miu was spending her day in her dorm room, working on a shiny, new, most definitely lewd invention to wow the world with, as she usually did at the weekend.
She was currently in the planning stage, trying to figure out the logistics of adding a vibrating function, when she heard a quiet knock on the door.
She rolled her eyes, ignoring it as she continued scribbling down calculations in a messy scrawl. Whoever it was would have to wait, her time was fucking valuable, she didn't just show face for anyone who wanted, especially when she was working on something.
There was another knock, a bit louder this time, and Miu groaned, putting her pencil down and reluctantly standing up, and making the short walk to the door and throwing it open.
"I swear to god someone better be dying-" she began, cutting her sentence short when she saw Kiibo, the ultimate robot, standing there.
"I'm sorry for bothering you," he apologised, his eyes looking up at her pleadingly "But I wasn't sure where else to go."
"What, you feeling horny and know that I'm the only person worth fucking around here?" Miu questioned with a smirk in response to Kiibo's vague explanation.
"No! Not that. Something's wrong," He elaborated hurriedly. "My system..." He took an unusually long pause "...Isn't working right.."
Miu took a moment to look him up and down, and upon proper inspection it was clear that something was off about him. His arms hung limp at his sides, unmoving, when he was usually so animated with his expressions and hand gestures as he spoke, and any movements he did make seemed uncoordinated, stiff, robotic. A word that, despite Kiibo's ultimate title, Miu would never usually use to describe him.
The more pressing, and most recognisable problem that Miu noticed about the robot, however, was his internal fan. Its typical silent hum was replaced by a loud WHIRRING sound, an obvious sign of overheating.
Miu frowned. The dorms were always relatively cool, so Kiibo's never had that issue here before, which both confused and concerned her. She placed her hand on Kiibo's chest, near most of his important parts, but quickly yanked it back, almost hissing at how hot the metal was.
"Holy shit Kiibs, you're practically on fire! What were you doing?" She demanded.
"Nothing!" Kiibo replied, finally moving his arms to wrap them around himself defensively "I just stayed in my room. When I power-ed on this morning everything fe-lt off!" He explained, his words starting to lag as he spoke, splitting most of them in half with short breaks and stutters. "Everyth-i-ing feels l-ike it's runn-ing slower, and I'm finding it ha-ha-hard to think." He looked up at Miu fearfully.
"Fuck, okay, uh.." Miu looked Kiibo up and down again. This wasn't normal, that much was obvious. Was it a virus? Miu wasn't sure when Kiibo's database would've been able to pick one up, but she didn't have a better explanation.
"Miu," Kiibo repeated her name, and fuck he sounded so helpless as he said it, in most situations Miu probably would've made a lewd joke about it, but her mind was elsewhere at the moment.
"Shit, Kiibo, give me a fucking second to think!" Miu snapped, a bit harsher than she would've liked.
Kiibo didn't even react for a few seconds, seemingly frozen in place, before he seemed to catch up with what she said, wincing a little "Sorry," he said, and great, now Miu felt bad, when suddenly his eyes went dark and he fucking fell forwards, giving her less then a second to catch him, gripping his thankfully-not-as-hot arms and trying to hold him upright.
"Fuck- Kiibs?? Kiibo are you there???" Miu shook him, but got no response. The small screen on his collar had a frowney face on it before blinking off, and Miu, realising what happened, groaned.
He crashed.
This wasn't good. Not at all.
"For fuck's sake," Miu cursed, readjusting her grip on Kiibo, before dragging him into her dorm.
She somehow managed to take the quilt off of her bed (because hot machinery plus blanket was a fire risk and this situation was already bad enough), before laying Kiibo down on it.
She grabbed the fan she had in the corner of her room typically aimed at her desk chair and positioned it next to the bed, plugging it in to a closer outlet and turning it on in an attempt to cool the robot down a little.
Then, she tried rebooting him. Soon enough Kiibo opened his eyes, thank fuck, and he began sitting up "...What-"
"Hey! Get back down dumbass!" Miu exclaimed, hurriedly pushing Kiibo by the shoulder back down onto the bed "I don't want to deal with you crashing again!" She explained with exasperation.
"Oh," Kiibo responded, before his eyes slowly drifted to hers. "...What happ-app-ened?" He asked, his words once again getting caught between letters with glitchy breaks.
"You fucking overheated is what happened," Miu recounted, rolling her eyes as she started unscrewing his metal plating. "And while I tend to have that effect on men, I think you have some sort of stupid virus."
Kiibo looked back up at the ceiling "Makes sense," he mumbled. "I feel we-i-ird."
"Well no shit," Miu commented, poking around for Kiibo's main CPU unit "But you're in luck! The Gorgeous Girl Genius has decided to make room in her very busy schedule, so you can rest assured!" She smirked at her own brilliance.
"Ah, then I ha-ave no reason to worry," Kiibo's lips formed a soft smile "Thank you, Miu."
Miu faltered at that. It's not like he was saying anything she didn't already know, she was good as shit at what she does, it would've been an insult for him to be concerned in her care!!
Just... having someone, Kiibo, tell her out loud he trusts her completely, with full sincerity in his voice as those electric blue eyes of his looked her way? It made her heart do a weird little flutter.
Miu quickly shook herself from her thoughts when she realised she was just sitting still and staring like a moron. It was probably just a heart attack or something, nothing she should think too deeply about. "As you fucking should! Now hold still, I'm gonna do a check on your system, see what I can salvage and all that,"
And without giving Kiibo time to respond, Miu got to work, making sure to be gentle as she did so.
'This is just like a regular maintenance check' she told herself, trying not to think about how silent Kiibo was as he lied there on her bed, the only sign that he didn't shut off being that his half-lidded eyes were still lit, albeit dimly so.
The first thing she had noticed when checking him out (take that choice of words how you will) was how low his battery had dropped, despite how she knew he would've charged himself the previous night - he was very meticulous with his charging schedule. No wonder he was so panicked, Miu thought to herself, whatever this is was literally running his energy into the ground.
As she waited for the system check to give her results - she made a note to find a way to make it faster for the future - she jumped a little when a metallic hand was placed on her knee. Her eyes snapped to Kiibo's, and he gave her a weak smile.
Miu tried to think of something to say, some lewd comment about how his weakened state is making him lack restraint, but the joke never comes, and instead Miu found herself putting her hand on his, the metal feeling warm against her fingers.
She felt his hand squeeze her knee a little, and watched as his eyes droop shut, and he fell into sleep mode.
Miu sighed, making a mental note to grab his charger from his room once she fixes him, and got back to work, the only sound in the room being that of Kiibo's internal fans.
When Kiibo woke up, the first thing he noticed was that he was exhausted.
His battery, despite the fact that he could feel his charger plugged into his side, was the lowest he's let it go in a while, making it hard to keep a steady train of thought.
The second thing he noticed was that he wasn't in his room.
There were a lot of brightly coloured posters on the walls, as well as a few sketches of invention plans that he didn't even want to try comprehending at the moment. 'Miu's room' he realised.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position, and saw the inventor sat at her desk, idly working on what Kiibo assumed was a new project.
"Miu..?" He said, and Miu jumped in her seat before her head snapped in his direction, eyes wide.
"About time you woke up!" She exclaimed, though Kiibo could hear an uncharacteristic amount of relief in her voice, and she walked over to the bed. "You feel normal? Anything weird in your code??"
Kiibo blinked at her "....What happened?" He asked instead of answering.
"You got a virus." She explained, placing a hand on her hip. "Did you plug yourself into somewhere weird or something?"
Kiibo took a moment to consider this. "No, I... the last thing I remember was preparing myself for a system update..." He frowned as he failed to recollect anything beyond that point.
"It must've had something wrong with its fucking code," Miu concluded, dropping backwards into her swivel chair. She draped an arm over the back of it, and then looked at Kiibo with an expression that he could tell was apologetic "I had to get rid of most of your data from after the update, so you probably won't be able to remember anything that happened since," She paused "Sorry about that."
Kiibo, relieved that his lack of recollection wasn't part of a bigger issue, nodded. "Don't worry, I'm sure it couldn't be helped," he replied. After a moment, he started fidgeting with his hands "I'm sorry for any inconvenience this caused," he said sheepishly.
Miu scoffed "Please, if I thought you'd be wasting my time I would've slammed the door in your face," she commented. Kiibo still seemed troubled, however, and Miu frowned at that.
"And.. uh. You're always worth my time.." She mumbled shyly, her face heating up as she forced the words out.
Kiibo's eyes widened a little, feeling both flattered and embarrassed by the compliment. To hear that from Miu... made him really happy. "Thank you." He managed a more confident smile. "For everything."
Miu, still flustered, waved her hand dismissively at him "Yeah whatever, it's nothing-" She replied hurriedly. "And- you can stay here while you charge for a bit- if you want. Unless you're desperate for a private moment to jerk off to the image of my massive-"
"Staying here sounds nice." Kiibo interrupted, smiling weakly at Miu.
She was silent for a moment, staring at him in a way that made Kiibo think she was trying to get a look into his mind. She then diverted her eyes away from him. "Okay, cool." Her voice betrayed her still-flustered attitude through its tone, but Kiibo had the decency not to point it out.
And then silence filled the room, with Miu looking back at her laptop and Kiibo sitting on her bed. He watched as she typed away, before her fingers eventually slowed to a stop and she looked back at him, causing Kiibo to quickly look away as not to be caught staring.
"I can't focus with you just fucking sitting there like that." She commented, and Kiibo saw that she was once again blushing. But before he could even open his mouth to apologise, she continued "Lets watch a movie or something."
She then stood up and picked up her laptop, before joining Kiibo on the bed, being careful not to accidentally sit on his charging cable as she did so. The two were sitting close enough that their bodies touched as she placed the laptop on their laps. Kiibo's internal fans whirred louder, and he could feel his face growing warm, though this time it was nothing to do with the virus. "S-sounds good!" He stuttered out, to which Miu promptly huffed out a laugh in response.
He watched as Miu pulled some film he had never heard of up on her laptop, and as it started, he felt himself relaxing, the words of the film starting to mesh together into an incomprehensible yet comforting buzz. 'This is nice,' he thought. Just being next to Miu, enjoying each other's company.
He wanted to stay like this forever, to always have her by his side. He felt safe, being with her like this. And he knew that it wasn't just her understanding of technology and machinery that made him feel this way, but also the way spending time with her felt, the way that she saw him as more than just a robot.
She made him feel like a normal teenager.
He could only imagine how she'd react if he were to say that out loud. She'd probably call him a sap and laugh, she might even get embarrassed, despite how graphic she liked to be with her words sometimes. His eyes drifted away from the screen and towards her, her pale blue eyes that knew so much, and her long, golden hair that curled in ways that framed her face wonderfully. He couldn't help himself from thinking about how beautiful she was.
He wanted to tell her so, but by that point his systems had started to lull him back into sleep mode so that he could charge quicker, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to stay lucid. He felt himself smiling, and his last thoughts as he drifted off were that he was in love with her.
Miu's focus on the movie was lost the moment she felt Kiibo's head fall onto her shoulder. As her eyes locked onto the now-sleeping figure beside her, she let out a breath she hadn't realised she had been holding.
It was… scarier than she'd care to admit, seeing Kiibo like how he had been earlier. And while she knew that she was more than capable of removing computer viruses, she was unable to shake the nagging anxiety that had settled into her brain, showing her images of him not waking up, of the bug destroying him, of her destroying him trying to stop it.
But none of that happened. Her eyes focused on his, which were currently dim and displaying a black line striking through them to make them look closed. Much better to the dark nothingness they had been earlier.
She felt her face heat up, since when was she the type to watch people in their sleep?? That job belonged to perverts, like Saihara.
But… it was strange, how much of an impact he had made on her life. As much as she loved to sing her own praises, there weren't many people who actively sought out her company, so to have someone, especially someone as special as Kiibo, enjoy spending time with her… she really appreciated it.
She let out a sigh as she paused the film and turned her laptop off. God, she was becoming such a sap. She found her body leaning more against Kiibo's, simply enjoying the intimacy of the moment. It was foreign to her, slowing down and just appreciating life from a standstill, rather than trying to optimise every second of the day. But she found that she didn't hate it, when it was with him.
She hoped that in the future she could continue to be someone he'd lean on, in both the chaotic and quiet moments.