Chapter Text
Max had always felt like more of a suggestion of a person than an actual one. He’d been born in a skin that felt uncomfortable around him and a startling lack of understanding of the inner workings of his own mind. To others, he looked well put together, appearance meticulous and clean. If they were too look closely, they’d notice the uncomfortable set of his shoulders, as if he wasn’t quite sure how to hold his own weight. It was more noticeable in the way he talked, factual, distant and rarely ever easily. He was a bit neurotic, often lost in thought, too busy taking in the things around him to actually interact with his environment. Though he knew it was often frustrating to people, they all seemed to come to some understanding that allowed them to overlook his quirks. They all seemed to reach some conclusion. But to Max, he was a puzzle he couldn’t understand, one that everyone else seemed to have figured out except himself, which was unfair, to say the least. To him, he felt like a person not yet fully formed, unsure of himself, unsure of how to complete the puzzle, hopelessly trying to observe his surroundings, trying to learn.
Max stared hard at the reflection in front of him, trying to discern what about it, what part of him, made people decide he was a person. His skin looked dull under the tinny lighting of the bathroom, olive toned but pale, spotted with imperfections others were fond of calling “beauty marks”, eyes like wet dirt, nearly indistinguishable from the pupils that were blown wide in the dim lighting, searching for something that might tell him what he was, what he was supposed to be. What he wanted to be . But he found nothing.
Cutting his morning ritual short, Max rubbed his wet hair with a towel and smoothed it down with paper thin hands. He pulled on his clothes mindlessly and tried to decide whether or not he felt like stepping out of the bathroom and into a world that knew him better than he knew himself. Wondered if he was prepared to complete his routine and then start the next day anew under self-scrutiny and emotional blindness. He didn’t know. He didn’t know if he ever would.
The door opened up under his hands and he continued into his life like nothing had happened. Had anything happened? It was the same as any other day.
Max tried to calm his shaking hands. The TV that Max did not like but had bought because that was expected of him (and because he needed to know the weather and he sometimes liked to sit and watch mindless shows and pretend he felt something until he sometimes thought he really did), sat on its stand and boasted a replay of the news story covering the android revolution in Detroit which had ended approximately two weeks prior. The President’s practiced voice sounded regretful, empathetic as she announced the temporary citizen status of all deviant androids. Max wondered why the androids had to prove themselves as people when humans weren’t expected to. He still felt like was proving it to himself. Did the androids feel that way too? Max didn’t know.
It was time to go to work.
Max didn’t fully realize that the revolution had actually impacted androids outside of Detroit, Michigan until he was leaving the antique shop where he worked and came face to face with evidence of it leaning heavily against a streetlamp near the shop’s entrance.
Realistically, he’d known there were ‘deviant’ androids all over the country, centered primarily in Detroit, but far more elsewhere than they let on. However, the knowledge of deviancy was far different in theory compared to it standing heavily against a pole with slumped shoulders and loud sobs wracking its whole body.
The singular aspect of Max’s personality that felt tangible enough to solidly hold in his hands was his curiosity. It was something that begged to be satisfied, something that searched for knowledge, some outlet to release into. At times he’d stare at his own hands and the curiosity would gnaw away at him, pleading to understand what lay beneath the transparent skin there. It was the thing that always brought the world around him into sharp focus, not wanting to miss a single detail.
As much as he wanted to step away, as uncomfortable as reassuring another person of their emotional distress - one in which he was not privvy to the emotion’s motivator- made him, his curiosity scorched its way up his throat until he found himself stepping forward, arm outstretched, mouth opened to speak.
The figure spun suddenly and took a jarring step back into the street, before a sound could escape Max’s mouth. He stared at them and they stared at him and snow fell in a hurried frenzy around them both as if it was trying to run away from the sky. Max’s dull brown eyes were heavy lidded against the wind, a sudden spark igniting in his chest that he did not understand. Yellow-red-yellow-red-red-red flashed at Max from the android’s right temple and he took in their tear-stained face and wondered about so many things that they all blended together in a bright mosaic against his eyelids until it became unrecognizable, unable to be translated into words. Instead, he said, “A car is coming.”
The android’s reaction time was excellent considering it didn’t seem to have noticed the car before, and it had scrambled back over to the curb before the car had even rounded the corner.
“Are you a person?”
The android had a shock of blond hair, a straight, delicate nose, a thin face and sunken in grey eyes that scrunched into a grimace when Max spoke. They said nothing and Max thought maybe he’d upset them. He tried again, “do you have a name?”
Their LED turned a cautious yellow, but the sudden absence of the pulsing red made Max think he’d made a better decision this time. Still, they didn’t seem inclined to answer.
“My name is Max,” he said although he didn’t remember making the decision to speak.
The android stared at him and he remembered searching his own dark eyes in the mirror and feeling swallowed up by the vacancy in them. They had felt more like a stranger’s eyes to him than the sad, unfamiliar ones he found himself looking into now. “Terrence.”
Max felt a sliver of something akin to amusement wedge its way into his ribcage. He huffed out a laugh that felt unnatural against his lungs and replied, “That is very formal.”
Terrence’s quicksilver gaze narrowed even further, “Is that funny?”
Max noticed that the remnants of tears had frozen to Terrence’s eyelashes. Max wondered why Cyberlife had programmed them with tear ducts if they were never intended to feel. Max wondered why he thought the crystals glistening in dark lashes looked beautiful. He wanted to brush his fingers against them. The burning engulfed his insides.
“It’s not funny at all. It’s an old name. Very professional.”
“I don’t like it.”
Max considered this statement for a moment, “how do you know you don’t like it?”
“Because the human that killed my brother was the one that named me.”
A strange twisting feeling wrapped around his stomach. His voice came out much quieter than he’d planned, “You can always change it.”
“I don’t know if I deserve to.”
Max nodded at that like it made perfect sense because to him, it did. There was a long moment of silence punctuated by a howl of wind.
“Please come back with me,” once again his body had acted on its own. He did not know why he had said that, why his voice seemed laced with desperation.
Terrence looked skeptical at best, “Back where?”
Max’s brows furrowed. “I don’t know why I said that.”
“Back where? What do you mean?” Terrence’s LED started to cycle back to red. He looked like he might throw himself into the street again.
The blaze of inquisitiveness in his chest dusted ashes across his throat, pouring out in smoke along his tongue, pushing out his confusion in its desperation. “My apartment. My house. Home.”
Home sounded wrong when describing the tiny one bedroom apartment he lived in but for once he so frantically needed his living space to feel like a home, if not for himself then for this strange, wounded person in front of him. “It’s cold out here. I thought you’d want to warm up if you had nowhere else to go? Until the storm dies down.”
Max had never heard his own voice sound so faraway and unsure. Usually when he didn’t know how to proceed, he kept his mouth shut and observed. But if he did that here, an aching part of him knew he’d be left alone again. Inexplicably, he didn’t want to walk away without Terrence with him.
Terrence seemed wary, but slowly nodded his head. “Until the storm dies down,” he repeated. Max released a breath through his nose and tried to manage a reassuring smile. It definitely came across as tight-lipped, because he registered a fraction of a second where Terrence’s LED flashed yellow and his eyes went blank, presumably scanning Max for a threat, before he clenched his jaw and followed stiffly behind him.
“You have a lot of blankets.”
Max did not look up from his task of covering his sofa. He draped a sheet over the worn old couch and then covered that with a blanket and then neatly placed a pillow at one end. A small stack of blankets sat on the coffee table and reaching over to snag the top one off of the pile, he finally acknowledged the statement. “I get cold easily,” he shifted the smooth, cool material of the down comforter in his hands and felt a bit more at ease, “They’re comfortable.”
He motioned to Terrence to move closer, away from the door, but he merely shot him another weary look.
“I promise I will not hurt you. I have no interest in causing physical harm to anybody. And besides, legal citizen status of all deviant androids currently means that any damages made to you could end up in serious consequences for me if the legislation passed permanently,” Max said because it seemed to be what Terrence was afraid of. “You can take off your wet sweater. I’ll go grab you another one.”
Max and Terrence were around the same height and build- though the android had an inch or two on him- so he was confident that his clothing would easily fit him. He grabbed his favourite sweater, chosen for its softness and warmth, and as an afterthought, flannel pants and a cotton shirt as well. Maybe the android had no need for comfort, but his clothing was soaked through and Max knew enough that even androids had to maintain a certain temperature to function.
“I don’t know if you’ll like these but they’re warmer and they’re dry,” Max said and handed the pile of clothes to Terrence, who still had not moved despite Max’s clear reassurance. He had not displayed any hostile behaviours toward Terrence but still he looked suspicious and tense. The man who named him he’d said… had killed his brother. If that was the only experience he’d had with a human then it made bit more sense. Max decided maybe acting more gentle would get the android to relax a bit more.
“There’s a bathroom over there where you can wash up and change. Hang your clothes over the vent and I’ll wash them later.” Max fidgeted with the blankets a little bit more, straightening them out, smoothing them down, avoiding eye contact with Terrence. “I… You can stay as long as you need and leave whenever you want. You’re welcome to stay but you don’t have to be here any longer than you want to be. You don’t need to trust me, you have no reason to. But I promise I’m not going to do anything to hurt you. It’s… it’s nice having company.”
Max didn’t know if that was the right thing to say, but he found that he really meant it. He coughed awkwardly and walked into the kitchen to make himself something to eat. After a moment, he heard the bathroom door click shut and he heaved a sigh of relief he hadn’t known he needed.
What are you doing, Max West? Why are you doing this? Common courtesy? It’s not like it’ll cost anything to house him for a night or two. Unless he’s injured. Oh my god I never even checked to see if he was wounded, what are you thinking?
The microwave dinged, announcing that his cup ramen was done. He blinked himself out of his own head, breathed out once through his nose and rummaged around in a drawer to look for a fork, a spoon, something, but he realized he’d forgotten to do the dishes again. His left eye twitched when he finally managed to find chopsticks. He was glad at least it was something meant to be eaten with them rather than mashed potatoes or something equally as inconvenient.
When he crossed the threshold back into the living room, it was still empty. Max swallowed but resigned himself to sit on the floor at the foot of the couch to avoid upsetting the meticulously placed blankets, suddenly feeling like that part of the house was no longer his. For the night, at least, the couch was Terrence’s. He managed to plow mechanically through the majority of his cheap dinner when he started to get really antsy.
Did Terrence run away? Did he mistake the click of the bathroom door with the front door? No… his front door made that ungodly groaning noise. He’d have known. Was he injured after all? Did he need thirium? Had he bled out? Max had never kept an android. He didn’t have anything that could help him. He didn’t even quite know where the nearest Cyberlife shop was. Maybe a half hour away? Did Terrence shut down? Should he have taken him somewhere he could get help? Why had he done this? Why couldn’t he breathe ?
Max shot up from where he’d sat, ignoring the bloom of pain as he jostled the cheap coffee table with his knee. He found himself in front of the bathroom door, picking at the hem of his sweater and feeling as though he’d just run a marathon. His skin felt too hot. What was going on?
Max raised a trembling hand to softly rap at the door with only his fingertips, careful not to make it too loud or sudden in case Terrence was sensitive to loud noises. Max didn’t know anything about how he’d been handled before he’d stumbled upon him on the street.
When no sound came back to him, Max’s heart rate spiked with anxiety. “Terrence?” He murmured in a voice that felt too dry, too cracked and wrung out.
After a moment, he heard a shuffle from inside and Max felt his stomach drop from where it’d tried to lodge itself in his throat. “Is everything okay?”
Nothing, again.
“Are you hurt? I-I don’t have anything other than bandages but I can call in a favor from a friend, she might know what to do. I can’t believe I never asked, I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
Silence greeted him, this one more deliberate, more careful. Max’s hands were shaking in earnest now. Would Rachel even have what he needed? He didn’t know who else would at this time of night if not her. Why wasn’t Terrence answering him?
“Are you okay?”
Halfway through the last word, the door slowly creaked open. Terrence was wearing the clothes Max had given him and he looked softer, rumpled, more human. His hair was brown now, Max noted numbly, but aside from that, nothing seemed out of place. Terrence scratched thoughtlessly at the place where his LED met synthetic skin. “I’m not injured, Maxmillian.”
Max flinched. He must have gotten that information when he scanned him. Nobody had called him that in almost ten years. “Max. Just,” a deep breath, “it’s just Max.”
Terrence eyed him but said nothing. It seemed he was trying to keep his face carefully blank. Even with Max’s pajamas on, the expression rendered him more inhuman. It was a much more precise vacancy than the one Max caught in his own reflection. Programmed detachment, one perfected over some time, an empty distance not driven by exhaustive emotion but one that implied he was devoid of emotion entirely. For a second, Max’s lungs felt constricted at that familiar look distorted in in Terrence’s eyes. He’d never met someone who shared that feeling of emptiness, had never seen the look mirrored in another person’s eyes. The similarity was thrilling and also… sad. Max had never liked that look much, had just come to terms with it, still feebly attempted to bring life to his own gaze. He felt paradoxically relievedworriedconfused to see it on a stranger. Terrence’s face remained seamlessly impassive as Max struggled with his contradicting feelings until a downward twitch at the corner of Terrence’s mouth disrupted the mask of neutrality and righted the walls around them. His LED flickered red-yellow-red again. Max had yet to see it turn blue.
After a too-long pause, Max sighed, “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Terrence’s LED slowly cycled to yellow at this. He was back to saying nothing. Max should have been okay with this, he liked the quiet, was used to it. But that hopeless part of him was searching for something in Terrence. Maybe he was helping Terrence for selfish reasons, to sate his own curiosity, to help unravel the puzzle in his head a little bit more. He felt guilt gnaw at him despite the fact that he had no ill-intentions for his house guest. But then, maybe he was wrong. Maybe Max was capable of curiosity for the sake of just knowing , maybe there was no real motivator for it. Maybe he could just want for no reason at all. The notion felt foreign to him.
“The couch is all set for you. You can uh, watch tv if you’d like. If you need to rest, I’ll close the curtains and let you warm up, recharge a bit.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Max’s jaw clicked shut at an almost painful speed. It was his turn to be unresponsive.
Terrence, it seemed, was far more persistent. He’d stopped a couple feet behind Max, staring at him intently as his host busied himself with the corner of the pillowcase as if he hadn’t already perfectly smoothed it out.
Max chewed on the inside of his cheek, I don’t know.
“ You don’t owe me anything.”
Maybe not, but you looked so small out there in the cold. You deserve more than what you’ve been given. More than I can offer. I’m just being selfish here. I don’t know what I’m doing.
“Maxmillian.”
Max pressed his fingers into his eyelids and tried to sort out the mess in his head. It took a moment of carefully slotting his thoughts away into mental folders before he let himself speak. “I don’t know.”
“... I don’t get it.”
“I don’t know, Terrence. I just wanted to. I saw you and I just wanted. I wanted to help you. I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well that makes two of us, huh! I don’t know what to tell you. Believe it or not, not every human is well-versed in this sort of stuff.”
“What sort of stuff?”
“Emotions. Motivators. People. ”
“But you’re a person.”
Max grit his teeth and glared down at the now cold cup noodles. “How do you know that?”
“You’re human.”
Max felt like Terrence could see right through him. Maybe he could. Maybe he could scan right through to Max’s mind. Maybe he noticed the gears churning frantically and he was purposely sticking a wrench in to sieze them up. “You of all people should know that being human isn’t the criteria.”
Terrence tripped up for a moment. The reprieve gave Max a chance to turn the line of questioning around on its heels. “How do you know you’re a person?”
He had meant it to give back some of the pressure Terrence had laid on him, but his voice sounded sincere. A small, sad part of him hoped that Terrence could give him an answer. He didn’t even know how long Terrence had been deviant, but it was definitely less than the twenty eight years Max had been alive. And yet Max still hadn’t figured out how to feel like a whole person.
“I don’t,” Terrence said simply. Max nodded. Of course, he knew that. Not in the same way that Terrence did, but he knew about that feeling. When he spoke again, though, his words struck something strange and warm in Max’s chest. “But I know I can be.”
Terrence finally moved to sit down on the couch. It seemed to be an olive branch of sorts, a peace offering, a degree of vulnerability. Max accepted by settling back down on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table, a safe distance away from Terrence. He wasn’t sure if it was for the android or for himself.
Max grabbed his ramen and stirred aimlessly at the few noodles left in the broth, flinched a bit when the chopstick scraped against the styrofoam in a particularly awful way.
“You shouldn’t eat that. One serving is five hundred calories. It has an unhealthy amount of sodium for your build, approximately 59.8%- and 26% of your recommended intake of carbohydrates. Loading on carbs and sodium later in the day without exercise can lead to pre-diabetes which will progress to type-”
“It was just what I had laying around, Terrence.”
They were both quiet for a minute. Max sighed for the umpteenth time since they’d gotten home, “It’s not even really that good. It’s just cheap.”
Terrence nodded slowly. Max glimpsed his LED cycling a rapid, uncertain yellow. He looked surprised at himself. Maybe it was a habit. Max never kept an android, but he knew Terrence’s model. The PL600 was a popular caretaker android. It was probably just an instinct to coddle.
Max stood, careful not to bump into the table this time. “I’m gonna do some chores. Feel free to use the television or something. Sorry there’s… not much here.”
Terrence blinked. The light at his temple was laced with red for a passing moment before settling back down to solid yellow. He looked conflicted.
“Do you- would- shoul I help?”
Max was already shuffling to the kitchen, tossing the cup into the trash and clearing away dishes so he could fill the sink with soapy water. “No. You should get some rest.”
While the water rose, he pulled the trash bag from the container and tied it off, setting it aside for now. After the bag was replaced, he poured some detergent where the spray of the faucet splashed into the slowly filling tub. He needed new sponges. He bent to look for a fresh one under the sink, but found none.
Guess I’ll just use a rag for now.
When Max straightened up, he chanced a glance over the breakfast nook at Terrence and looked away just as quickly, a flush spreading up his neck.