Hello! For the reverse tropes writing prompts (if this catches your fancy) — murderbot diaries with fake amnesia and Really nice guy who hates only you
this is really not in the spirit of that second inverse trope, but for mb this was the only thing i could think of, and it was very funny.
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"Gurathin," said Gurathin. "SecUnit, you know it's me."
"I don't think I know that," it said, pleasantly, in an okay but not excellent imitation of its creepy canned dialogue options. "Please present some identification, and we'll see."
Gurathin didn't bother sending his data over the feed again. Murderbot walked away, but left a drone eyeballing him. He resisted the urge to flip the drone off. "Come on," he told it, knowing SecUnit was paying attention. "Let me in."
He watched the SecUnit bend forward slightly to show two of Mensah's kids that it was paying attention to whatever they were saying, and then bend over further to help the toddler up onto a chair. It was just fucking with him now. On the other hand, if the prickly bastard started letting children hug it just to piss off Gurathin, who was the real loser?
It finished spoiling the children and moved over to smoothly de-escalate a brewing disagreement over the punch bowl. Gurathin tried to catch Pin-Lee's eye; she did not cooperate. Gurathin tried to walk through the open door; the hovering security drone took a potshot at him.
SecUnit got roped into conversation with Bharadwaj and her media colleagues. It said something that made everyone laugh. It wasn't scowling. It was faking looking people in the face pretty well; that was just creepy.
It went on like that; Gurathin had never seen it go this long interacting without pissing someone off. Presumably it was venting all of that impulse on him. Ratthi introduced it to his favorite cousin; zi was visibly charmed.
Gurathin goaded the drone into firing two more warning shots before the SecUnit circulated back over to him.
"SecUnit. Come on. You have known me for actual years. I helped you rob a place once."
"I don't recall."
"We met on that planetary survey mission, don't tell me you don't remember that one, it's the reason you're even here." That came out maybe a little harsh, but everyone was letting the SecUnit abuse the power of being entrusted with party security to bully him, he was allowed to be annoyed.
"Oh, were you there? That data must have been lost in a corrupted filetree," it said, with incredibly cutting blandness.
Gurathin groaned. "Okay! Okay. I'm sorry."
It technically counted as a reward when SecUnit stopped giving him the customer service face and switched to the hairy eyeball, which just showed how stupid this whole situation was. It was clearly not satisfied with just that.
"I'm sorry for using your personal name without permission. I wasn't trying to weaponize it or anything, it just slipped out, but I know that's not an excuse and it was a really inappropriate disrespect for your boundaries."
SecUnit kept looking at him. Gurathin knew two other SecUnits now, neither of whom was as supremely weird as this one; that was why he'd started mentally tagging it with its personal name, just to keep things tidy. Of course, if anyone else had done that and made the resulting mistake, SecUnit probably wouldn't have been half so mad.
Gurathin sagged.
"I'm sorry for going through your personal files and using your name against you back during the survey," he mumbled, wishing he kept drones around to control with his brain so he could watch SecUnit's extremely expressive face without having to look at it. "That was really shitty. Rim paranoia isn't a good enough excuse for refusing to see you as anything but a tool of the Company. Okay?"
SecUnit was looking as pained as though Gurathin had stripped naked in its presence. "Yes, fine, you can come to the party just stop having feelings," it said, in its normal voice.
"Great!" said Gurathin. "The spinach puffs had better not be all gone."
"I don't pay any attention to the things humans consume," it said, moving out of his way and taking its drone with it.
"I know," Gurathin acknowledged, rolling his eyes and trooping after it. Ratthi waved enthusiastically at him and Pin-Lee raised her cup in a welcoming toast. Apparently SecUnit's relenting returned him to the ranks of people who existed again. "Believe me, I remember this about you."












