Faulty

For all those who do not know, in the otome game, Syo has a heart condition and Ai is a robot. Enjoy!

It was slightly ironic that Ai had a name that meant love, the precise thing that his state of the art electronic brain couldn't process.

For someone who cost millions of dollars to build and several years of extensive research to get right, his inability to feel the strong emotion was viewed upon with a certain sense of…. Failure.

Failure was intolerable, especially for such an advanced artificial intelligence such as Ai.

It was so frustrating, why couldn't he just feel? Why did he have to be so cold?

Not being able to love did bring along another feeling. Crippling loneliness.

Another irony that had cropped up in his life. Ai was constantly surrounded by people, from his pestering bandmates (well actually, it was just Reiji), to his kouhais, managers, choreographers, etc., Ai was always simultaneously in company on the outside and isolated on the inside.

His systems were even more frayed as of late. He seemed to be unable to analyze or organize the deep thoughts in his head, leading to jumbled messes of frustration like he was going through right now.

"OI! AI! ARE YOU EVEN THERE? HELLO?" There was a loud sound resonating in his ear. A hand waved in front of his vision.

Ai snapped out of his trance and looked at the thing that had made enough noise to bring down a building, standing in front of the backdrop that is his. The sound's origin was a person it seemed. More specifically a loudmouthed, ill tempered chibi roommate in a fedora.

"I called you at least ten times, but you were still spaced out. And you say I'm the one who's constantly distracted." Syo pursed his lips childishly.

Syo Kurusu himself was another bundle full of contradictions that had landed into Ai's life. The short boy poured his heart into everything he did, as if to make up for his dysfunctional anatomic heart. It was cruel that fate's cards dealt Syo so much life and vigor contained in a frail shell.

According to the information Ai had gathered, Syo must have been told by doctors to never live past the age of twelve, but the boy was so headstrong that he continued to defy the odds by not only surviving past the age of fifteen, but thriving.

Ai never showed it nor would admit it, but he held a sort of admiration towards Syo for his determination and perseverance against adversity. When told that he would be bedridden, he managed to learn karate. When told he would never make the jump across the fallen bridge, he worked day and night to make the stretch. Although Ai himself had never witnessed Syo's feats of headstrongness and relied on secondhand information, it didn't mean that he couldn't feel the boy's sense of conviction as if he were witnessing the events live.

"Are you spacing out again? Hello? What's wrong with you today, you're usually not like this. At least pay attention for a couple seconds!"

Okay, Ai felt both admiration and annoyance when it came to Syo, especially when he was being impudent and disrespectful towards his senpai, such as in this exact moment.

"For your information, I was not 'spacing out'. I was going through and organizing my data before you interrupted me" Ai retorted with a lie.

"Pfft, well excuse me for being slightly concerned about you staring at your coffee cooling for the last twenty minutes."

Ai felt the cool coffee cup in his hands. "Ah, well…" He put the now lukewarm coffee on the night stand and fingered his bedspread looking for another excuse to make.

Syo rolled his eyes. "Anyways, I should be leaving now. According to your schedule, I should have left for the library to study three minutes ago."

"No, I request you stay. I want to have a talk with you."

What had come over Ai?

"But the schedule!"

"I will grant you permission to deviate from the schedule for today."

"Umm okay." Syo cautiously sat next to Ai on the ridiculously large bed. It really was unfair. Why was Syo shoved into the corner with Natsuki who was by far too gigantic to be stuffed in a bunk bed that was made for ten year olds (although Syo fit comfortably), while Ai took up a good three-fifths of the room with his weird chrome furniture and spacious bed.

Syo noticed that his senpai was gripping the sheets of the bed a little too tightly, his smooth flesh on his knuckles turning an even more pale shade of porcelain. He then saw that Ai's head was down, dark shadows covering his face.

Syo immediately wanted to know what the problem was so that he could help fix it. He was going to help Ai get back on his feet, no matter what it was he was bummed out about.

"What's wrong? You seem to have something on your mind."

"You are being unusually considerate. I always took you for a bit of an egotist." Ai murmured, eyes still glued to the ground.

Syo felt a hot blush creep onto his face. "Do you want to talk to me about what's wrong or not? You're the one who asked me to stay." He sputtered out.

Ai's voice softened until Syo could barely hear it. "I want to know what you did to me."

The blush instantly slipped off his face and was replaced with a look of confusion. "Huh?"

The teal haired boy looked directly into the blonde's eyes. "I want to know how your award show performance managed to throw my systems into such disarray. After the show, I can't stop thinking about love and my desire to feel real emotion. I want to recreate that warm feeling inside of me, like I felt during the performance. I want this sorry excuse of a heart to do its job." And with that, Ai reached up to his eyes and wiped off the moisture with the sleeve of his purple sweatshirt.

Here was Syo's usually cooly distant and composed senpai spilling out his insides out. Frankly, it was making him a bit uncomfortable to become Ai's confidant.

Syo tentatively put a hand around the slender boy's shoulder as an attempt of comforting. He was yet again shocked when Ai leaned into his touch, his body surprisingly warm.

Syo could feel the blush making a reappearance on his face.

He let out a nervous laugh and scratched the back of his head with his free hand.

"But senpai, I don't understand what any of this has to do with me though."

Ai poked a finger to Syo's chest. "You."

A startled Syo stuttered "M-me what?"

"You with half a heart who loves to much, and I with a fully functioning one who cannot love at all." Ai's tear coated eyes glistened like the sun on the sea when they looked into Syo's. "Cruel, isn't it?" Ai put his hand on Syo's chest, directly on top of his heart.

"Not really. I prefer to think of it as a way for me to work harder. Knowing that I have a time limit really puts things into perspective."

Ai could feel Syo's uneven heartbeat underneath his fingers.

"I try to love life best I can. To work as hard as I can, to have as much fun as I can, to be passionate as much I can because one day….. I might not be here to do all those things. I want to make up for all the emotion I might not experience."

Ai's eyes widened. This was the first time he had ever heard Syo be anything less than confident.

Syo took the hand that was on his heart and gripped it in his. "But that's too grim." He looked into the raw, tear stained eyes with a soft smile. "What I think your problem is that you're finally tapping into your previously undiscovered well of potential feeling. And who knows, maybe one day, if you work hard enough, love might be in there somewhere."

With an unexpected motion, Ai wrapped his arms around Syo and pulled him into a hug. As Syo hugged back, he understood what called for this act. His senpai wanted someone to hold, to confirm that despite what he was made of, he at least had the potential to be human.

Syo heard a soft murmur in his shoulder "We are not faulty. Merely different, we just have to work hard to overcome our problems. Right?"

Syo buried his nose into Ai's hair and took a deep breath. Mint.

"Right."

I hope you liked it! Writing it, I felt like I was constantly falling on and off track, but I managed to finish it!

Please rate and review!