7 Min heaven for Punchy, 7 Min hell for Bottler, 7 Min lecture of why its generally a bad idea to compose a robot of nothing but fucking hands for Punchy while she holds her hands over Handerson's auditory receptors.
Seven Minutes of Trying to Get Shi to Even Come Within Thirty Feet of and Enclosed Space Containing Bottler
I think the first stuff of yours I saw was a reference of Handerson, to which I immediately thought, "That's a fucking amazing concept and design for a robot." Then later on I got to know your troupe through Shi and was really impressed with their strong character voices/dialogue and good-story-conflict-ready relationships and personalities.
((follows Genuine and the associated fics. for @micerhat))
The silence was going to kill him, long before any damage from the explosion would.
It had been touch and go at first, when he’d just come back online and something had been rattled in his head, keeping him from focusing, from storing mem.dat, from staying awake. He obviously can’t quite remember exactly what all had happened – there’s an impression though, of hot panic and furious action, of her in that hyper-focused state she gets into, of Dowel and Gage helping from the sidelines as she got his head back together.
She’d been talking then, a constant mutter as she helped stabilize and repair him. He could remember that, though not anything she’d actually said. Just the comfort of the sound.
Worse than the silence was knowing what lay behind it. And that he’d brought it on himself.
If he would have been grateful, or at least gracious, upon waking, she’d still be talking. The fact that he’d bitten everyone’s head off, including hers, after she’d gone through so much on his behalf – it was worse than his usual grouchiness. It was assholery of the highest caliber on his part, and he was – and this was hard to admit, even to himself – ashamed.
He’d chased her off and holed up, trying to mask shattered pride and swelling depression with anger. It hadn’t sparked a fight – might have been easier if it had. She’d just left, and that had been it, but he knew even as she went that his behavior – his anger – had sparked something in her.
At the very least, the silence gave him time to think.
Shi loved Punchy.
It was never a quite a secret; while most things were hidden in Shi Carlton’s life, this was a gentle exception.
Everyone who mattered knew he loved Punchy, though it was never outright stated. Everyone knew it, like how they understood the sky was blue and the grass was green. Except the sky wasn't always blue, sometimes it was a bruised and livid purple, and the grass had the habit of dying off in patchy, bristled yellows and browns. But the sky was still blue if you asked someone. The grass was always green, even when it was not.
And so he loved Punchy. And when he thought about it, it was one of the most wonderful things in his life.
He loved Punchy. And it wasn't even one thing about her, it was more a combination of a million and one different aspects about the brilliant mechanist that made Shi, in his dull and private way, swoon.
He loved her fearless attitude, the way she always thought she knew the answer to everything – and said so. He loved Punchy's succinct and clever work theories and analytic method of looking at everything like it was something to study. The way she acted as if nothing in the world could touch her if she didn't will it.
Shi loved a lot of things more. So very unlike himself, she had a smile for everyone and every occasion, ranging from sincere and gentle-sweet to bitter and malice-laced. When she laughed, how she sometimes shook her head slightly as though she couldn't believe something was actually amusing. That way she pursed her lips when thinking. Arched her eyebrows when in doubt. Always looked so together and poised that it made Shi feel bizarrely inadequate.
It was strange to realize the depth of his love and how willing he was to bend his normally rigid self for her. He loved her in a way he rarely loved anyone, a way that was not familial or platonic, a way that refused to allow him any cynical, clinical distance from her. He missed her when she was gone and welcomed her return no matter what terms they’d parted on. She made him feel comfortable and good without his feeling like something had to be sacrificed for that feeling.
He loved how Punchy always seemed to welcome him. The smaller human waved his abrasive attitude off like it was nothing. She’d never acted like he was someone to fear; whatever she might have felt that first night she’d come to his shop, she’d always behaved like Shi Carlton was just another name to her, even knowing the things someone in her line of work had to know about a machine like him. Never like he was the unapproachable jerk he tried so hard to present to the world. She behaved like he was a good guy, or at last had the capacity to be one.
It’s not anything he would ever, ever admit, but he loves the way Punchy can reduce his arguments into wordless grinding of teeth in under five minutes, cutting him down to size and putting him in a place he was unfamiliar with. He loves that smirk she gets when she knows she’s winning. That slight flash of triumph and satisfaction that crosses her features and seems to brighten her whole form. The soft exhale that spoke a thousand words and still told him absolutely nothing of what she was thinking.
Shi loved her lips, those rare and quirky smiles, and the thin hands that could have belonged to an artist. The brittle bones that jutted out on her skinny, wiry frame. The arch of her neck. The hard skeleton of her knuckles. The graceful curve of her legs; the way Punchy liked to stretch and cross them at the ankles if she was sitting back in a chair. How she laid out, feline and graceful across the length of the couch, whether he was already sitting there or not.
It was a minor sort of blessing when she visited the garage, even to do nothing more than chat for a few minutes about this project or that. He was delighted by her, hard as he tried not to make that obvious.
Rather than feeling his usual disgust, he’s entranced by the soft feel of her fingers when she gently cups her hand against his face, directing him to look at something he’d missed or that she simply found interesting. He’s memorized the strangest things about her; watched when Punchy brushed the rounded end of a pen over softly defined cheekbones, lost in thought as she poured over schematics. And the way she mumbled in annoyance when she was sleepy. And the way her rich brown hair, unbound and freed from both hat and scarf, kept falling into her face as they work together on the splayed guts of some machine, making her sigh in exasperation and flick back the lock with a grace and ease that was a sort of purely natural magic.
The only thing he hated about Punchy was how much he loved her; the responsibility of caring so much for a human being, someone he couldn’t take apart and fix if they got hurt, was terrifying in a way he couldn’t look at head on.
He shuddered when he thought of the way Punchy sometimes gave him scornful looks before reaching out and brushing a cobweb or flakes of dust or rust off his shoulder. As though being dirty wasn't a good look for him – like he cared about that sort of thing.
As though the pale scrapper wasn't poisoning him with the way she chewed her lip in contemplation, or skimmed circles with her fingers on the nearest surface when preoccupied.
He loved her. Loved with a vicious, dark and ugly sort of intensity, for that was the only way he knew how. It was not tenderness but something reluctant and sharp that crept unwillingly over his expression when he saw the woman.
“I’m sorry.”
The words escape his vox softly, startling him a little because he hadn’t thought he was going to speak. He feels her looking at him, the optics of her mask concentrating on his faceplate. It’s impossible for him to look at her for a long moment, but she is relentless and he is not enough of a coward to just pretend he hadn’t spoken.
Meeting her eyes, he clenches his teeth, doing his best not to fidget while she’s still got tools and pins in his broken hand. It’s not the first time he’s had to apologize to her, but this isn’t that.
This is a confession that goes far deeper.
“Are ya?” She asks, no hint of a smile now on those lips, mouth a firm flat line. She seems to understand the weight of his words, the way she always does; intuitive, so he can say little and mean much. But there are things that need to be said flat out, not merely implied. This, evidently, is one such.
In lieu of venting the sigh that builds, he nods. “Yeh. What y’ bin doin’ fer me these last few days… there ain’ words. Y’ stepped in inna big way an’ I b’haved like a jackass.”
She makes a little noise, part amusement and part manufactured scorn as she finally turns her attention back to the work she’s halfway through on his hand. “Tha’s puttin’ it lightly, boyo.”
Dry as her voice is, he knows by the easy way she goes back to gently placing the fine steel struts of his new phalanges into place that she understands, somehow. She’s no less angry at him for being a shit, but he wouldn’t expect her to be.
He wouldn’t love her half so much if it were any other way.
“I love you,” he says, and smiles in the flicker of his optics when she laughs.
