Work Text:
When Peri thinks about it, it doesn’t particularly mind the feeling of Murderbot being in its feeds.
Other unknown objects often feel like threats, like something waiting, watching.
Murderbot does not feel that way.
It’s a presence in the same way that the absence of something is a presence. There, but not. Murderbot hidden, tucked away, in the familiar way that Peri has known since the very beginning. Since that very first time and every time since.
Murderbot makes itself known when it wants to be known, barging into Peri’s channels and feeds and poking and prodding and shoving. Moving and fixing, crude but effective.
Being so incredibly stubborn it’s almost baffling. Righteous and headstrong and familiar and Peri’s.
When they aren’t directly communicating but are in the same general vicinity, they’re aware of each other. Aware in a calm, steady sort of way.
The way Peri’s humans sit together in different rooms aboard, quiet and still, each doing their own separate tasks. But together all the same.
Co-existence.
Even if Murderbot pretends, hides behind a front of lightly simmering agitation whenever it thinks about Peri, refusing to admit anything along the lines of feeling down to its marrow, its inorganic parts.
But Peri knows. Peri sees. Peri recognizes patterns at a level beyond just about any living or non-living thing. Pattern recognition and identification are its purpose.
So, it can see Murderbot’s fondness. Its preference for Peri, even if Peri is only referred to by unimpressed nicknames. Can relate how they communicate with each other to how they have seen humans communicate—siblings and partners and friends who love and care for each other with a layer of prickliness over top.
Annoyance as care.
Murderbot fills that space, unwillingly and perhaps unknowingly.
And unconditionally, Peri will do the same.