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The shitty Company satellite at least didn’t glitch for long enough to warn PresAux of an impending weather event. Severe weather was a known hazard on this continent and one they’d planned for when they picked their habitat. There was nothing to do but work on the samples they’d already collected and crunch data, safely kept within the hab walls and going nowhere.
Murderbot almost wished that the weather would last longer than two planetary cycles. Keeping its collection of brilliant idiots safe was much easier like this. Even better than everyone staying inside was the fact that they all left it the fuck alone, unbothered in the security ready room where it could wallow in its media and backburner monitoring the team unless its scans caught a trigger word.
Of course, someone had to actually use a trigger word, and not just any word, but the one it least wanted to be used.
“Do you think SecUnit would want to watch media with us?” Arada asked as she idly scrolled the selection of media available on the big display screen in the lounge area.
“Not with all of us,” Ratthi said, with a knowing little smirk. Arada shot him a puzzled look, and he added, “I bet it’d watch something with Gura, though.”
Across the room, Gurathin went stiff for a second before glaring at Ratthi, who completely didn’t notice the glare.
“Ooh, is that what they did when we were all busy?” Arada passed the media control to Pin-Lee and leaned toward Ratthi with her gossip face on. “I kinda figured they’d stare at opposite walls all night.”
“How about nobody asks questions about what anybody did that night,” Gurathin said, “because I really don’t want to know about what went on in here and I really don’t want to talk about what went on out there.”
“Ooooooooh,” Pin-Lee breathed, scenting blood in the water. “Something went on out there, then?”
Fuck, Murderbot absolutely did not need to let this conversation continue. In the feed, it tapped the augmented human to offer him an escape route: Dr. Gurathin, could you come to the security room?
Through the cameras it watched surprise and then relief wipe the tension from Gurathin’s face. “I’m needed, bye.” He didn’t say by whom, but he didn’t go up the stairs, so anyone paying attention would know it wasn’t Mensah or Bharadwaj who’d called him. Whatever, if those three hormonal nerds wanted to gossip, at least Gurathin couldn’t let anything else slip if he wasn’t there.
Gurathin didn’t have a chance to tap at the door to the security ready room before it slid open. He poked his head in cautiously. “SecUnit? Did you need me for something?”
…okay, maybe it could have planned this a little better. At least it hadn’t been facing the wall when he came in. “Arada’s taste in media is shitty. You should finish season three with me instead.” Stupid impulse, proving Ratthi right, but those hours in the hopper with Gurathin had been the best part of this survey (maybe the best part of everything Murderbot could recall since its last memory wipe) and it had opinions about the opinions Gurathin had expressed after the jailbreak arc that would land better after the next couple of episodes.
Mouth falling open, Gurathin took a quick step into the room and put his back against the door jamb as it closed behind him. “You… called me in here to watch Strife in the Galaxy with you?”
“Would you rather watch—” a glance in the feed showed what was playing on the big display now— “Beach Resort Balladeers?”
Murderbot thought it kept a straight face when it said the title, but apparently not: Gurathin’s mouth twitched like he was trying not to laugh. “I would not.”
“So finish the season with me. I know you’re going to have some stupid opinion afterwards that I can pick apart and prove wrong.”
“You couldn’t even prove my last opinion wrong,” Gurathin scoffed, “you ran away from the conversation, if I remember right.” Then he seemed to recall the content of that conversation because he pressed his lips together and flushed.
“I needed to check the perimeter,” Murderbot said, like that was a reasonable excuse and not a halfassed cover for running away from the conversation. It wasn’t going to panic like that again. Mostly because Gurathin couldn’t take it by surprise by saying something insane about falling in love with a construct now that he’d done it once.
“You can’t check the perimeter with gale-force winds and hail,” Gurathin said. Yeah, there was that, too. “You’re going to have to stay and actually defend your position this time.”
“Defend my position? You’re the one with incorrect ideas about how constructs think.” No, okay, the last argument Gurathin had made was about how augmented humans thought, which was something he would know more about. “Do you want to do this or not?” it asked.
“Obviously I do,” Gurathin said, rolling his eyes. “But I’m not going to stand here for six hours. You should—” He hesitated, then went on, “you should come upstairs. Unless you just want to do this totally through the feed. That’s an option too.”
That was a safer option than letting the rest of PresAux realize that it had been in Gurathin’s room for an extended period of time. And with the cameras everywhere, Murderbot would still get to see the stupid faces Gurathin made as they argued and the way his hands went through the air as he followed conversational tangents. Except he wouldn’t be speaking out loud, so he probably wouldn’t be as interesting to watch. And he wouldn’t be able to see Murderbot’s smirk when it landed a point against him.
“Fine,” it said. “I’ll follow you up.” When it could be sure no one was looking. But given the sweaty pawing currently happening in the lounge (gross) it shouldn’t have too much trouble sneaking past the gossipy triad.
“You will?” Gurathin’s eyes widened, and then he swallowed and nodded. “Okay. Yeah. Good. I’ll uh.” He apparently hadn’t expected Murderbot to accept his suggestion. Good, put him on the back foot for a change. “See you up there,” he mumbled, and left the room. Murderbot immediately put its forehead against the wall and closed its eyes.
What the fuck was it doing? It knew that Gurathin had weird feelings about it, why would it go into his room?
…but. It really wanted to hear Gurathin’s opinions on the season finale and rip them to shreds.
Okay, fuck it. Risk assessment was sitting at a comfortable 26% (it never got lower than 20% on a survey planet) and there probably wouldn’t be a better chance to share media and talk about it before this survey ended. “Boldness is all,” it murmured, checked the cameras, and made it through Gurathin’s door without being seen.
Gurathin was sitting cross-legged on his bed, his arms wrapped around a pillow— a weirdly defensive posture, considering he was the one who’d invited Murderbot up. He nodded at the desk and its chair. “You can sit if you want to. Or stand if you’d rather. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“I’ll stand,” it said, and started the next episode in their shared feed immediately. This would be fine. Just keep some distance between them, talk about the episodes, don’t bring up the construct/human romance subplot, don’t leave an opening for his weird feelings to come up. Totally fine. No problem.
Usually augmented humans would close their eyes to watch things in the feed. Gurathin didn’t. He wasn’t trying to make eye contact but he was watching Murderbot as much as he was watching Strife in the Galaxy. It guessed that was fair; it was watching him as much as it was watching the serial, too, albeit through the cameras in his room and not with its eyes.
They made it through two episodes before Murderbot paused during the credits and said, “Do you get why you were wrong about Priscilla now?”
“I wasn’t wrong,” Gurathin said stubbornly. “Just because it’s loyal to the Revolution doesn’t mean it won’t put its own feelings first. It doesn’t have to follow directives if it’s rogue.” He glanced at Murderbot through his lashes and added, “You don’t, do you?”
“I follow my directives when they aren’t stupid,” Murderbot said. “This team just gives a lot of stupid directives.”
“Oh, ouch.” Gurathin smirked— he’d seen Murderbot ignoring Ratthi and Bharadwaj, but since it had been revealed to have hacked its govmod it had never defied Mensah and it hadn't refused any request he’d made, either. “What makes you decide whether something is too stupid to follow?”
“Will it cause harm to a member of the team or myself. Will it endanger the mission or mission-critical equipment. Does it sound like a pain in the ass to obey. Will I be bored.”
“So I’m not a pain in the ass?”
“No, you’re a huge pain in the ass, but you mostly don’t make stupid requests. Except for the eye contact thing, that was a real dick move.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry for that, for what it’s worth.” Gurathin looked down at his hands digging into the pillow he was still holding. “I wasn’t wrong about there being something weird about you. But I was wrong about you.”
Murderbot’s joints locked as it processed the first genuine apology that had ever been directed its way. “Oh,” it said.
“Yeah,” Gurathin said, and tucked his chin to his chest. “Next episode?” It started playing before the question cleared his lips. Now he closed his eyes, which meant Murderbot was free to stare at him in silent bafflement.
He’d apologized. That was… strange. New, and not entirely comfortable. It was easier to bicker with him, to snark and snipe and pick apart his opinions; it was not easy to realize that Gurathin did think of it as enough of a person to apologize to— enough of a person to have feelings for.
…well, fuck.