WRITE THAT VICTORIOUS AU (also uwu wollte auch eins machen)
sagte diejenige die um 4 Uhr MORGENS über die ganze dating story bei cube gespamt hat (uwu if you ever made the bts version of the victorious au i would never shut up about it)
More Than the Sum of Your Programming
Chris/Darren, PG. Pre-slash.
I'm playing in Mav's sandbox, so this is set much before but still in the same universe as this amazing fic she wrote. Chris is an android and Darren is... well, he's Darren.
Chris lives on the campus, alongside every other 'educational unit.'
He hates the term. He hates that he's reduced to an assigned task and a serial number, and he hates that most of the educators don't even bother to ask his name. Most of them don't even understand why he has name probably. Not all of them - but this isn't the most liberal district in the country. They only have androids because of government grants and because it's cheaper to hire an android they don't have to pay than a living wage to a human being.
Chris does get a wage now, after the last minor android rights victory requiring them to be paid for their work, but it's not enough that he could go out and find his own place to live. He goes home every night to his small little shoebox of a dorm room. It didn't even have a bed originally, just a charging unit - though his restorative sleep mode is just as easily achieved laying down like humans do. Chris has never visited any actual human's home, but he moved in the bed himself just to make it feel more like the homes he sees in photographs and on the internet. He likes to pretend when he walks into his room that he's not still on the campus itself, that his assignment station isn't just one building away.
He likes to pretend that as long as he can, until the moment comes every morning when he has to step outside of his door and take on the role he was assigned - assistant to a teacher of middle school children, treated like a walking, talking textbook by the instructor and like a piece of the furniture by the children.
They had him in with younger ones, once. Chris liked that. They were too young to know he wasn't a real person and so they treated him like one. But he's programmed with grammar and language and composition emphasis, and his skills were wasted on the ones so young that they were only beginning to grasp using letters to make words.
He's in his classroom before the children are finished with their breakfast. Some of the other assistants are milling around talking to each other, but Chris rarely joins in. Most of them seem complacent with their lot in life and Chris can't identify with that at all.
Chris usually goes to check on the other android children before school starts. There are three in the school, from the same family. Androids marrying was legalized years ago but the technology to have children, actual android children that begin with rudimentary program and develop higher awareness and cognition at roughly the same rate as a human child, is very new and very expensive. The siblings range in age but the youngest is only in second grade. She's a sweet little girl with soft blonde curls and big green eyes, picture perfect in that slightly unreal way that the first generation of android children are all prone to being.
None of them are in Chris's classroom, a fact that he regrets. He knows the older ones are bullied by some of their classmates and regarded with wariness or disdain by their human instructors.
He hopes the android assistants in those classrooms are being good to them.
He knows Susan has Darren as a teacher. Chris doesn't know Darren well, but he wishes he did. He wishes his vocal programming didn't glitch and freeze the way it does. When Darren is near, his sensors all start firing with too much information and feeling to process at once, leaving him a stumbling mess.
All because Darren is one of the few human teachers that talks to Chris like Chris is just another person, not something built in a lab only a few years ago
Chris walks slowly by the doorway of Darren's classroom. He smiles a little at the sound of Darren's voice, just on instinct, but then he hears the voice that Darren is talking to - the android girl, Susan. Chris can't resist peeking in the doorway.
She's holding a violin and staring at Darren with big, awed eyes as Darren demonstrates a movement with a violin of his own. She copies him, the sound hers makes not nearly as melodious but a good attempt.
"You are gonna be so awesome," Darren says, sounding genuinely excited. "I was your age when I started learning. Tell you what, why don't you ask your parents if they want you to have private lessons? I can come over to your house some time and start to show you, if your mom and dad are okay with it."
"Really?" She asks, voice high and excited. "I bet they will 'cause I tried to play T-Ball and they wouldn't let me on the team and I cried a lot because I was sad."
"What?" Darren sounds shocked.
"Uh huh." Susan sighs and nods. "They said I had an unfair 'vantage."
"Well, that's dumb," Darren says. "T-Ball sucks anyway, violin is totally better."
"Yeah!" Susan wholeheartedly agrees.
Darren leans in and gives her a hug, a quick little squeeze from the side. Susan is beaming and radiating happiness in a way Chris doesn't think he's ever come close to feeling himself.
The warning bell signaling that breakfast is over. Susan hands the violin back to Darren and scurries to her seat. The other students will be there in just a minute or two, but Chris is still frozen on the spot.
Darren notices him, eyebrows jumping. He walks over. "Hey, Chris. How's it going?"
"Thank you," Chris says, not sure what is compelling him to talk but unable to stop himself. "For how you are with her."
Darren's whole face goes softer, understanding. "She's an awesome kid."
"But you - no one else- with her-" Fuck, there go his sensors again, feeling too much around Darren.
Darren doesn't seem to need him to talk, though. He reaches out and puts a hand on Chris's arm, squeezing slightly. "No problem, man. Seriously. It's what I'd do for any other kid."
Any other kid, like there's nothing that at all different from Susan and the twenty other odd children Darren watches and teaches all day.
The children start to come in and Chris needs to get back to his classroom. He walks away, feeling his skin tingle from where Darren's hand had been and wondering if this is what being in love feels like.
