#christopher samuels

Ash

He was floundering, multiple systems failing as he watched more hydraulic fluid pour out of him. He remembers your anguished cries and the sight of your hands pressing against the wound in an attempt to plug it, white blood seeping out from between your fingers.

And now, he's warm. When he opens his eyes, he finds that he's been moved. His head is resting on your thigh, and you're sitting with your back against a wall. Your figure takes up most of his vision, head bowed and lips parted. Your deep, even breathing suggests that you are asleep. He feels your hands- one on his chest and the other loosely curled over his scalp- protective of him despite your inherently vulnerable state. He analyzes his surroundings without moving. Various tools of medical and mechanical purpose are scattered around the two of you. His hand drifts toward the wound site, expecting a gouge and finding duct tape instead. Your engineering background proved useful- a simple diagnostic shows that all systems are in the green- but your surgical skills left something to be desired. He laughs at his predicament, the sound coming out more like a ratcheting warble than a real chuckle, and it wakes you.

Your voice drips with relief and something else- something unexpected. Affection.

"Oh, thank god."

The hand on his head moves in a predictable arc over his scalp. You're... petting him? Moments ago (or was it hours?) you'd discovered his true nature, but you've fixed him, anyway. And now, you're looking at him the way you would a sick patient- a human patient. He stares up at you, unsure of how to categorize the fluttering feeling in his stomach and the waves of positive feedback that seem to crest with every pass of your hand through his hair. Perhaps you are more essential to him than he'd previously thought.

Bishop

Pain, malfunction, leakage, severance, critical failure.

Blackness. And then...

Reboot.....05%

His senses come back to him one at a time. He assesses his body. Multiple connections have been haphazardly reestablished. Fluid pumps are only running at 2/3 pressure, and he notes a particularly fragile spot on one of the lines in his abdomen. He's alive. Not quite fully functioning, but alive nonetheless. Something shifts to his right, and it takes more power than usual for him to open his eyes. Is this what people mean when they use the term 'sluggish?'

He's in medbay, and as his head lolls to the right, he recognizes the top of your head, barely visible over the edge of the cot you've apparently laid him out on. One of your arms is resting on the table, and as his auditory processors finally boot up, he hears your soft snores. His limbs are twitchy- he doesn't have enough power to send full electrical impulses to them- but he's still able to shift his right arm and brush the backs of his fingers against your bicep. You jolt awake and turn to face him, bloodshot eyes filled with relief and sorrow.

"I'm sorry," You whisper, holding his hand in both of yours and placing a shaky kiss to his knuckles, "I did the best I could-"

So it was you who had patched him up. You, with barely any medical knowledge in regards to humans, who did all that you could to keep an android from dying.

"You've done more for me than any human ever has. Thank you."

Your eyes fill with unshed tears, and something within him stutters at the sight of it. He's never known such selfless love.

Call

She's glad, in a way, when she powers on and looks around the cramped room to find that she's in her own quarters and you're the only person with her. Glad that there's no one else there to witness her failure. The injury was unshakeable proof of her inhuman origins, and she remembers shame. Intense shame at being found out. You're puttering around her quarters- in the middle of making yourself a cup of coffee, by the looks of it- and she can see how tired you are in the way that your shoulders droop and every breath comes out as an exhausted sigh. She tries to sit up, and something tugs in her back. She can't feel pain, but she can tell that any further movements would strain whatever injury she's sustained. Slowly, carefully, her hand drifts toward her back, fingertips prodding the area. The hole has been haphazardly patched with something like silicone, and when she pulls her hand away from it. her fingers come back mildly sticky. Curious, she touches a fingertip to her tongue. Superglue. You've patched the hole in her torso with melted silicone and superglue.

She can't help herself- she snorts at the ridiculousness of the situation. You jolt, muttering, "Oh, jesus-" as some of your coffee sloshes out of your mug and onto your hand. You ignore the spill in favor of setting the mug on the counter and rushing to her side, wiping your hands on your uniform as you go.

"I-I'm sorry," You sputter, "I didn't know if your skin was organic or not, and I had to make a seal 'cause I figured you probably didn't want any water getting in-" You pause and make a vague gesture at her torso, "-in there."

There's so much worry, so much care in your eyes, that she feels her throat getting tight. It's difficult to talk around it.

"You're not... You don't think of me any differently?"

"Why would I? You're still just Call."

Something eases in her chest- the constant tension of keeping a mask in place temporarily dissipating at your words. Just Call. That's all she's ever wanted to be.

David 8

This wasn't how it was supposed to play out. You were supposed to be trapped beneath the fallen rocks. You were supposed to be critically (but not fatally) injured and therefore unable to finish the mission, and he was going to remain at your side for the duration of your recovery.

Instead, his instincts had betrayed him. He'd heard the telltale sound of pebbles cascading from the weak point he himself had created in cave ceiling, and he'd pushed you aside- away from the danger. Something landed on his head and tore part of the neck away from his right shoulder before blackness descended upon him.

Your tired, worried face fills his vision, bloodshot eyes scanning his form as you adjust something in his neck. He feels a connection being reestablished, and suddenly, he's able to control the rest of his body. A few of the wires have been mismatched- when he attempts to lift his left arm, his right foot kicks out instead- but he's awake. He's awake, and he thrills at the way that you light up when you realize that he's looking at you. You murmur encouraging words and smooth his hair away from his face, your touch hesitant and surprisingly gentle. His voice is modulated and unfamiliar to him when he tries to speak- another repair to add to the list.

"Where are the others?"

"Sent them ahead to finish the mission without me," You murmur, "Didn't want to leave you alone."

Some oily, dark thing within him preens at your words. You stayed behind to help him? He has you to himself for the foreseeable future, and his weakened condition is already planting feelings of protectiveness and affection in you. He makes a show of attempting to sit up, and you're quick to plant a hand on his chest and push him back down onto the bed. He allows it- revels in your worried coos and offers of assistance. Perhaps his plan was a success, after all.

Kirsh

His hearing comes online first, and he's greeted by the sound of distinctly human snores coming from somewhere to his left. Odd. He replays his footage of the incident in an attempt to orient himself. Isaac's frantic shouts, a low hum, his hand locking around the handle of the enclosure's one entrance, and the closest thing to pain that a synthetic can feel- 10,000 volts breaking a fiery trail from his fingers to the actuator in his shoulder. Something sizzles, explodes... And then, he shuts down in an attempt to protect the rest of his systems.

His eyes open, the lids feeling a bit twitchy, and he immediately spots you. Slumped over in a desk chair, hair and uniform in a state of disarray. He props himself up on his elbows, and something flickers in his mind- a barely-there stress warning. He cranes his neck to look at his right shoulder and can't help the heavy sigh that escapes him. The skin around the joint is charred, and it's been peeled away to reveal the structure beneath. Artificial sinew and wiring have been repaired to an... almost workable state- evidently not by a registered engineer. There are colorful stickers on the damaged skin, arranged in a halo around the injury.

"The um... The kids put those-"

"I can see that." He deadpans.

"Boy didn't want to call in an engineer. Said you'd be fine, but I... I just..."

"You just...?"

He stares you down. He finds that he's oddly grateful for your intervention, but something in him revels in this awkward interaction. He wants to hear your excuse firsthand. He wants you to close that loop for him. Your embarrassment is obvious in the way that you hastily card your hands through your hair and avoid eye contact.

"I don't like seeing you hurt." You mutter.

He thinks, How adorable, and files his odd reaction away for later study.

Samuels

Multiple error messages flash behind his closed eyelids. He's running three degrees too cold; a few of the circuits in his arms are non-responsive; there's a leak... somewhere... and a weight on his right thigh. His dermal sensors are flaring up, an irritated area on the left side of his chest. He remembers the explosion and the gigantic chunk of rebar rocketing toward him, tearing through artificial skin and muscle...

He forces his eyes to open and tilts his head forward to assess the damage. The rebar is nowhere to be found. Something like gauze has been packed into the hole in his chest, and black electrical tape has been wound around him to keep the wound covered and insulated. The irritation he's feeling is the adhesive tugging at the hairs on his skin. The mysterious weight, he discovers, is your head resting on his leg. He takes a moment to scan your form.

You're on your back, hands resting idly on your stomach. Your chest rises and falls with each even breath, and he can see your eyes shifting beneath their lids. Your hands and some of your chest are covered in dried hydraulic fluid, and there are traces of gauze and rubber stuck to your fingertips. You had moved him. The makeshift bandage was your work. He was just an android- one of many- but you'd still gone through the trouble of patching him up in the only way you knew how. As if he'd had a life worth saving.

Shakily, hesitantly, he brings his hand toward your head- brushes some of the sweaty hair away from your face. You stir, but you don't wake. Your lips part around a soft sigh, and your head tilts until your jaw is resting in his palm. He's badly damaged, but he's alive because of you. He feels grateful. He feels cared for. He feels like an individual instead of a copy of a copy of a copy.