I apologize for nothing. Larry and Tuddrussel are pretty obviously just married anyway, man.

Larry slapped Tuddrussel's hand away for what seemed to be the hundredth time, sighing heavily. "For the last time, Tuddrussel, don't touch those!"

"What, why?" the buffoon asked, poking the knobs on Larry's chest again. "They're you're little tuney up thingies, aren't they? Why can't I touch 'em? I wanna listen to some music!"

"I am not your personal radio, Tudd—" Larry was cut off by the sudden blaring of country music coming from his chest. He crossed his arms, muffling the wailing of some old man over his dead dog only a bit. "I find this highly offensive. And not just because this man's guitar playing skills are dreadful."

Tuddrussel slapped Larry on the back, sending him pitching forward. Had he teeth, they would have been gritted in disdain. "This ain't dreadful, this is real music!" Tuddrussel grabbed Larry's hand and tugged him toward his chest, grinning. "Don't it just make you want to dance?"

"No, it does not!" Larry's protests fell on deaf ears as Tuddrussel swung him throughout the room; it took effort to keep the man from using his body to break everything in the room. "Tuddrussel! Put me down this instant!"

Tuddrussel pitched him forward one last time. "All right!" Larry was sent straight into the couch in their den, breaking the lamp on the way and tipping the thing over, falling face first onto the floor. He sat up slowly, raising a hand to his head, and felt static all over.

"Oh... Tuddrussel, y-y-y-you buuuuuh—" His head jerked and he felt electricity course throughout him; his limb seized up and he sighed. "Buffoon."

Tuddrussel leaned over the couch, grinning sheepishly. "Whoops!"

"Juuuust h-help me up—"

"Your, uh, chest thingy is... doin' something?" He pointed at Larry's chest compartment, which hung slightly open, and flinched when an arc of electricity flashed.

"Yes, because yoooou are an irre-re-responsible mess," Larry forced out. "N-n-now help me up annnd get the crescent wr-wrench in the kitchhhhen."

Tuddrussel grabbed Larry's arm and dragged him up, rubbing the back of his head. "Sorry, Larry." They walked into the kitchen and Larry sat on one of their too-low chairs; he tried to cross his legs, but found they were both too stiff to do much good.

"I-in the s-s-s-second drawer," Larry told Tuddrussel as he pawed uselessly through everything except the drawer he was meant to be looking in.

"Oh." Tuddrussel rifled through the tools Larry kept stowed in the drawer until he found the crescent wrench, slamming the drawer shut, apparently heedless of the loud metallic crashing that followed. "So, what am I supposed to, you know, do?"

Larry had no eyebrows, but he had, by some sort of grace, been given the gift of facial expression regardless. His eyes moved in a way that mimicked the way a human might quirk a brow. "You d-don't havvvvve to do anything else, th-th-thank you v-very much. Yoooou've done e-e-e-enough damage."

Tuddrussel crossed his arms (an amazing feat, in Larry's opinion; how anyone could fit those hulking arms over that oversculpted chest it could be little less than a miracle), looking down at Larry like he was a child—an expression Tuddrussel should never, never wear. Not even in the presence of an actual child. "How are you supposed to fix yourself when you can't even talk right?"

"I'll mmmanage," Larry said icily.

"Nah, I think I ought to help you," Tuddrussel said, clapping Larry's shoulder with a hand. It nearly sent him out of his chair and onto the floor. "Just gotta explain to me how this here mess works, that's all!"

Larry sighed. "F-Fine. You n-n-need to open the compartment w-with the wrennnch."

"How?"

"Oh, j-just give it t-t-t-to m—"

"No, wait, I got it!" The cover of Larry's chest compartment seemed to pull too tightly, and then, suddenly, it popped open. Not exactly the gentle, precise movements Larry would have been able to use, but at least it worked. "All right, that was pretty easy! I think I've got the hang of—Oh, whoops."

"W-w-w-what is whoops supposed t-t-tooo mean!" Larry shouted, just before his vision switched to infrared scanning. "O-oh, fannnntastic!"

"Sorry, I got it! Just gotta flick this little thing back over there." Tuddrussel reached in with his hands this time, the wrench forgotten in the other, and Larry's sensors flared up. As Tuddrussel fingered around his circuitry, his vision swiftly flipped through the various channels he had installed, grids and colors appearing and disappearing without warning. "There we go," Tuddrussel said, and Larry's vision went back to normal after he heard a soft click.

"T-T-Tuddrussssel," he said quietly, "I th-think y-yooou should—"

"Don't you worry, Larry, I've got a hang of these doohickeys now; I'll have you fixed up just as soon as I figure out what the heck this thing is." He reached further into Larry's chest, pushing roughly past wires and delicate metal pieces, and his finger brushed the inside of Larry's back. "There's a little button back over here, I'm not sure what it's for." He circled the rim of the mysterious button; his arm fit so snugly inside of everything that Larry was half sure he wouldn't be able to pull it back out.

"I d-d-don't think y-you shhhould push it," Larry said frantically. He would swear he could feel his wires nearly popping out of their connectors, could feel the minuscule screws that held his most vital components together slipping by some strange force; perhaps there was something magnetic inside of Tuddrussel, as the result of some terrible radiation incident when he was a child, or just the sheer amount of awful food he ate from suspicious places, or maybe—

"Nah, I think it'd be a good idea to push it; it might fix you!" Tuddrussel pushed the button and Larry's body tensed, his hands gripping the seat tight enough to crack the plastic beneath them, his heels digging into the ground hard enough to press into the very foundation. He could see data flying before his eyes, and the jumps in vision returned as all of him, all of his programming, seemed to reset itself. It was a cleansing sort of feeling, like the way a human acquaintance had described drinking after a long day to him: A rush downward that slowly but surely permeated his entire body, as though it were traveling through veins that didn't exist. Or maybe his veins did exist, and he had been human the entire time, because nothing else seemed to be able to explain the rush of joy that went through him.

He felt Tuddrussel's arm pull away from his chest, and saw him looking down with concern (probably more for his own possible consequences than for Larry's wellbeing, but he couldn't bring himself to be angry), and then in the next instant he slumped forward. He was in the dormant state that maintenance men would activate when they repaired common, service level robots. He had only been in it twice before, and like both of those times, it felt like he'd spent an eternity buried beneath the sand before Tuddrussel woke him up again.

"Uh... Larry?"

"Well, you managed to reset me. Fantastic job, Beauregard, truly." Larry snatched the crescent wrench from Tuddrussel's hand, holding it close to his still-exposed chest.

"Hey! Don't call me that!" He glared at Larry, then straightened up in surprise. "Hey, I fixed you!"

"You fixed my ability to communicate, but you most certainly did not fix the broken pieces inside of my chest. By the way, you're an idiot for shoving your arm into me when I was shooting electricity everywhere, Tuddrussel; you do realize that you could have killed yourself, don't you?"

"Uh... No?"

"Just get out!"

"But—"

"Out, Tuddrussel, I can repair myself from here on." Larry tapped the wrench against his hand until Tuddrussel shrugged and trudged out of the kitchen. He waited ten seconds, then slumped in his chair, holding his hand to his forehead. "What on earth just happened?" He shut his eyes, and suddenly felt Tuddrussel's hand inside of him all over again, brushing tantalizingly over that reset button. "Oh, no."

He supposed, as he reached into his chest compartment with the wrench, that he would just have to be more careful. Larry couldn't risk getting broken enough that Tuddrussel would do that again, no, of course he couldn't take advantage of him like that. It would be improper.

"I would enjoy it, tho—Oh, God," Larry hissed as he flinched at his own thought and brushed the wrench against the same circuits Tuddrussel had brushed against and the end of it touched his button and oh, no, he was too far gone to care. "Tuddrussel? I changed my mind, I need help. Get in here."

As his partner stomped into the kitchen, Larry comforted himself with the fact that, well, there was no Hell for robots anyway.