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The moment the door to her on-station living quarters closed, Ayda could feel exhaustion wash over her almost like a physical thing. She fumbled for the lights with suddenly thick feeling fingers, and once they flickered on, threw her coat carelessly over a chair rather than taking the extra seconds to hang it up on its designated hook. “Ugh,” she said while rubbing at her face. She could swear she fell asleep standing for a microsecond when she blinked too long.
She’d struggled to sleep well recently, at best getting about 4 and a half hours of (often interrupted) sleep each of the last three nights. It wasn’t the worst it could be. She’d still been able to function well enough today while seeing her family off this morning after their week-long visit, during her half a work day, and through a casual dinner with some co-workers. However, the second she was alone (well, not quite alone, but SecUnit no longer registered in her tired mind as someone she needed to be fully mentally online for), the drowsiness she’d been pushing to the side hit her full force.
She stepped into her living room, the fact that she was going to bed immediately and the offer that SecUnit could watch media here if it didn’t want to go back to its own apartment halfway to her lips...
Everything about the moment processed out of order.
She was being plucked out of the fall before she registered she was tumbling forward which she knew was happening before the pain from smacking her foot managed to make it up her nervous system to her brain.
“You should not have taken the intoxicant,” SecUnit said in that frustrated tone it always got when it noticed stupid humans doing stupid human things to their stupid human bodies. (It was similar to a tone she used on it when stupid SecUnits did stupid SecUnit things to stupid SecUnit bodies.)
“I had one,” she pointed out. “With food.”
She had tripped on a horse shaped wheeled toy one of her children had left. Unlike similar toys from the Corporate Rim, it was handcrafted out of solid heavy wood and was superior in every way except, of course, when you tripped over it.
“On top of not sleeping,” it argued. Of course, it knew. It had even commented on it earlier in the day and suggested she not go to the dinner. Apparently her ‘resting heart-rate’ was ‘elevated’ indicating ‘stress’ to her ‘autonomic nervous system’. (She had accused it of wanting her to go home so it could make her watch some movie about horses it had watched last week and kept sending her messages about instead of sitting through a boring human dinner. She still believed this.)
It did not put her down, still holding her off her feet with a solid grip on her waist. With anyone else (even Farai or Tano unless she was much, much sleepier than this), she’d probably be protesting at this point. However, there was something about having fallen off a cliff cradled in someones arms as they used their own body to shield yours that nullified any sense of embarrassment at being held by them.
As her heatrate started to calm from her almost trip, she found herself feeling even more weary from the draining of adrenaline. So, even when SecUnit shifted her slightly and began carrying her off to her bedroom, she still couldn’t find any protests.
Despite the short trip, she was struggling to stay awake by the time they entered her bedroom. SecUnit clearly did not care that she was in day clothes (and honestly, she couldn’t care less herself), because it settled her into bed fully clothed and covered her with a sheet.
Tano had used the pillow under her head the night before and the scent of Farai’s favorite body-wash was still on the air, so her muddled brain got a bit confused when a hand brushed the side of her cheek and she leaned into it.
A moment later she pulled away with a start. “Sorry,” she said.
“It’s fine,” it said. It pulled its hand back slowly instead of flinching like it sometimes did when someone leaned in too close. “That…” it trailed off and took a breath. “It’s not… horrible,” it concluded. This was not the first time it had said something similar, and even though the offer wasn’t voiced this time, she still responded the same way she always did.
“I don’t want you to do things ‘not horrible’ for you simply because you think I want it,” she said, turning her head so her face pointed at the ceiling instead of in its direction. She assumed that would be the end of it since that had been the end of such things every time before, and it was silent for a long moment. It was silent long enough that she’d started to let her heavy eyes drift shut.
The bed shifted next to her and she blinked her eyes back open, though she didn’t turn her head to face it again. “It’s…” the word trailed off as it failed to find a way to continue its sentence. She could see out of the corner of her eye that it had sat next to her on the bed, its shoulders square as it resolutely faced away from her towards the wall.
It was silent for a longer stretch this time, but she didn’t even think about closing her eyes. She would have stopped breathing if she didn’t know it would notice and grow worried.
“There were only three types of situations where I’d have skin to skin contact with a human before you,” it said. She could tell it was a plural ‘you’ meaning the entire PreservationAux team and not a ‘you’ referring just to Ayda by the tone of its voice. It always had a hint of fondly exasperated confusion in its tone when it refereed to them all as a unit even after all this time. When it spoke only of Ayda, its tone was different.
“The most common,” it continued, “was when a client ordered me to restrain or harm another human or occasionally another SecUnit. Sometimes it was to nullify a legitimate threat. Sometimes it was purely for their amusement. More often than not, it was some mix of the two, but it was all the same to me. Similar, but different was when a client ordered me to let them touch me. That was almost always for entertainment. One could say curiosity for the gentler ones.”
Ayda did her best not to react. It was all information she knew or guessed both from her own assumptions and research and from little pieces it had sprinkled through conversations over the years, sometimes even more explicitly than it was saying them now. It still made her angry. It still made her sick to her stomach.
Had they been some of the ‘gentle’ ones when Rhatti had first tried to lay his hands on its shoulders, when Arada had first tried to hug it? Back before they’d understood that pings on the feed and smiling while staring over its shoulder and air hugs were the most appreciated ways to communicate their affection?
“The third type of situation was when I was doing my job,” it said, “the good part of my job,” it clarified. “When I’d protect or save someone. When I’d provide medical aid. I never minded that.” Ayda knew that, had known that before she’d known anything else about it including its opinion on touching and being touched. She’d known it from the moment it had offered an elbow to help lead Volescu out of a crater while holding Bharadwaj’s bleeding body together and she’d seen it again and again up to and including it saving her from her own exhaustion drunken feet and carrying her to bed minutes ago.
“When it’s you,” it said, and that was a ‘you’ that applied only to Ayda. The tone still held fondness, but (usually) none of the exasperation, and had something else that was hard to identify or at least hard to label. It sounded like how it had felt to step into her apartment 10 minutes ago and finally be alone, except she hadn’t been. “When it’s here with no one else around, it’s a fourth type of thing. It’s... most like the third type of situation I guess, but it’s different,” it said, “because you’re not in danger or hurt and I’m not getting shot at or almost eaten by something, and…” it paused for a second, “when you pull away it’s not because now that the threat is over, I’m the scariest thing in the room again. So… it’s not… horrible.”
And again, it had said such things about such things many times before, but this was something else. “Really?” she asked.
“Yes,” was its reply.
“...Okay,” she said, and then she stretched out the arm closest to it, letting it fall palm up on the bed a few inches from its side. After a few hesitant seconds, she felt two fingers press carefully into the center of her palm.
It was nice. It wasn’t nearly as intimate as curling as up in bed with Tano and Farai, cuddling with her kids during movie night, or even hugging her friends after a difficult day, but it struck a similar cord in her chest.
When she closed her eyes again, she could feel that it was still there. Another wave of exhaustion hit her then, that ancient instinctual part of her from thousands of years and light years away telling her someone else was on watch now, and that she trusted them, so she did not need to be vigilant. She could rest.
“You,” she yawned, “feel free to leave if you need to.” Another yawn. “or you can lay down at any point if that’d be more comfortable. I don’t think I’m going to be awake much longer.”
“Good,” it said. “You need to sleep.”
Yes. She did need to sleep. So, she did.