Beep!

aka the fake robot fic

~

The sad thing is, Kris had actually practiced his beeping.

He’d been nervous as hell at first, ready to beep at Adam’s every move – and Adam did move a lot – but he’d caught on pretty quick that while there was constant touching, it wasn’t at all about what Simon had implied. There were no twisted sex games, no sexual slavery of the robotic kind. In fact, Adam was nice and polite to his robot. He seemed to actually love it.

Which made Kris feel like scum, to be honest. He’s never been the lying type, and if his mama knew what he was doing with Adam here... well, let’s just say his next Christmas present would be black and lumpy.

Kris stayed with Adam for six weeks, by the end of which they had fallen into a routine – music, cooking, movie nights... The times in between when Adam was out doing his thing, Kris spent staying in and counting the minutes until he came back. He knew it was unhealthy, he knew it was going to come back to bite him in the ass, but he couldn’t help it.

He had stayed too long. He’d gone native in the worst way.

He wanted the robot’s life. He didn’t want to leave.

And of course, that’s when Simon called and told him that robo-Kris was finally fixed.

The fucker had the worst timing in history.

~

Kris’ apartment smells musty and the dishes he’d left in the sink seem to have developed some mysterious life forms on them.

Kris doesn’t care.

He doesn’t even have a suitcase with him. He left everything Adam bought him at the mansion – none of it was ever meant for him, after all; it was all meant for the toy Kris, the fake Kris, the KR5000... the Kris that gets to live with Adam.

Kris lets himself fall onto the bed.

He quit his job today. He has nowhere else to be. And he also sort of had a breakup. He has every right to be depressed.

So he cocoons himself in the sheets, and he mopes.

~

Kris wakes up spooned against Adam.

It’s nice. Adam doesn’t do this all the time, only for special occasions – like when he had a particularly bad day, or when he’s too tired to sleep. Kris is surprisingly okay with being Adam’s life-sized teddy bear. It’s incredibly comforting.

Kris snuggles closer, enjoying the way Adam’s arms tighten around him in response, and mumbles, “Hey.”

“Hi,” Adam breathes into his hair, dropping a kiss there.

Kris doesn’t really want to move, but he turns in Adam’s arms anyway, because the cuddling is so much better when he can tuck his face into the crook of Adam’s neck – but as he turns around, his eyes open a slice, and he notices the ceiling... of his own apartment.

He freezes.

“Oh,” he says.

He feels Adam nod. “Yeah,” Adam tells him. “Oh.”

Kris considers scrambling out of the bed, but it’s his bed, and if Adam had wanted to strangle him, he could have done it while Kris was asleep, so... so he should probably sit up and explain instead.

“I didn’t... Adam.”

“Answer me one thing, Kris,” Adam says, ignoring Kris’ failed attempt at communication. “How stupid did you think I was?”

The lack of venom in Adam’s voice breaks the ice encasing Kris’ limbs and he finally manages to turn.

“I didn’t!”

“You actually thought I couldn’t tell the difference?” Adam asks, sounding incredulous.

“Um,” Kris says, feeling his face heat up. “You knew?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Adam says and pushes him off the bed.

~

Adam is distraught over the bump on Kris’ head, but Kris is kind of glad for it; his thoughts are much clearer now.

Looking back, everything falls into place and it all makes perfect sense; the way Adam had constantly stared at him that first week, and then the way he’d settled suddenly, started talking to Kris more and more, touching him without that tiny bit of pause. At the time, Kris had thought he’d finally got the character down and that Adam’s suspicions had been allayed. But apparently, Adam had figured it out.

“You were completely different!” Adam says, a frown pulling his whole face down. He’s holding a bag of frozen peas on Kris’ head and he talks mostly to Kris’ hair, but Kris can see his face just fine... and he can’t look away. He had thought about this, he’d considered telling, but he’d thought Adam would be furious.

Adam isn’t furious. Kris doesn’t know what that means.

“Look... it was never meant to last that long, and... and... I had to agree to it, or I would have been fired.”

Adam clucks his tongue. “Why did you quit if you didn’t wanna lose your job?”

Kris sighs. “Is there anything you don’t know about me?”

“Not much,” Adam admits, amused. Then he continues, his voice lower, more serious, “I don’t know why you’d leave without saying goodbye.”

Kris shakes his head; Adam steadies the bag of peas, his other hand cupping Kris’ chin.

“You had your – your Kris back.”

“How could you even... he’s nothing like you! He doesn’t even look like you!”

“You mean I don’t look like him,” Kris corrects him. “He was there first.”

Adam huffs and lets the peas drop. “You’re an idiot,” he says, plopping down next to Kris on the couch.

Kris shrugs. He doesn’t understand where Adam is going with this conversation. He has an idea – but it feels more like a farfetched hope than anything else.

“He – it... it’s been a good friend to me, I’m not saying it hasn’t, but that was more about my loneliness than anything it brought into the relationship. It doesn’t have a personality, Kris. It has preset moods, choices... it’s a toy.”

“It’s supposed to be me,” Kris says, thinking of all the questionnaires they’d made him fill out, all those hours of videotaping his facial expressions. Kris had watched it interact with Adam when they told him to impersonate it – they did seem pretty alike to Kris.

But Adam is shaking his head no.

“No. It... it’s like... it’s like a snapshot of you. It’s pretty and I loved the idea of it when I first saw it, it was fascinating, but after a while, I realized it was... it’s kind of empty.”

Adam is looking at him like he should understand, and Kris would love to, he would... except, no, he doesn’t get it.

“Like, do you remember when I asked you about pears? You said – ”

“They make my tongue fuzzy,” Kris supplies.

“Yeah,” Adam nods, smiling like a lunatic. “I’d asked that before. Only, it didn’t know.”

Kris blinks at him in confusion. “You like me better because of my fuzzy tongue?” It’s not like there had been anything involving tongues between them.

Adam rolls his eyes. “No. Yes. I mean. There is no comparison, because you’re real. It’s your tongue that doesn’t like pears and your mom who taught you how to cook and your childhood in Arkansas that makes you miss mountains – ”

And it’s Kris’ slightly shaken brain that translates Adam’s little speech into I love you and tells Kris to shut him up with a kiss.

There are no fireworks or singing birds, but there’s also no beeping.

It’s the perfect kiss.

~

“See, this,” Adam says two hours later, lying tangled with Kris in his musty old bed, tracing Kris’ smile with a finger.

“What?” Kris asks, making the fingertip slip to the side.

“This smile. This is your Adam smile. The robot Kris didn’t have an Adam smile.”

Kris bites his lip. This is way too sappy for a first date. If he starts talking to Adam about these things, then he’ll end up telling him about his new-found freckle obsession as well. Or how he’d called his mom to ask for new low-fat recipes a couple of weeks back. Or, God forbid, about all those times he’d stayed up watching Adam sleep, his face soft and washed clean.

That would not do.

So Kris does what any self-respecting ex-fake-robot would do.

He smiles prettily and says, “Um. Beep?”

The End

October 31st, 2010