Title: Almost Human
Author: @sterekbros (@winchesterekk)
Artist: @evanesdust & @offhanddesign
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: ~69k
Summary:
Synthetics are part of everyday life, with Hale Robotics leading the industry in synthetics for every day living, companions, and police force standard MX combat models.
Stiles is a DRN; his programming is built around Synthetic Souls.
The aim of synthetic soul was to mimic the soul of a human being, allowing a synthetic android to experience feelings & emotions and to form emotional attachments or empathetic bonds.
DRNs have been out of use for decades because they were too lifelike for their human counterparts.
Derek Hale, heir to Hale Robotics, finds Stiles in his junkyard, where he's been a mechanic for the last 24 years. The last thing he expected was the android to be functional, much less it being a Hale DRN, which is the last project his mother had been working on before the fire. And Stiles was unlike any other DRN that Derek had ever seen before… he was so human and lifelike that Derek hated him for it.
Stiles jerked at the word bot and looked down at the table then. The last family that he’d been with had called him that and he’d cut his finger on purpose in hopes that they’d ship him off to a new family. Apparently here wasn't any better than there. His facial recognition scan finished and he kept his gaze fixed on the table as he spoke.
“Your name is Derek Hale,” Stiles said softly. “You’re my maker’s son. You.. kind of have a scar on your brow… it makes your eyebrow hair grow funny,” he explained without looking up at him. He couldn't believe what he’d been called, especially by Talia Hale’s son. “I don't have anywhere to go…” No one wanted or used Hale DRNs anymore and if he wasn't wanted here then he wouldn't be wanted anywhere.