surprise!
disclaimer: i dont own hq
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::
It starts with a shattered plate.
The sound of it is loud, almost rippling through the halls of their near-empty residence. Kenma watches closely as Kuroo swoops down to clean up the mess. The persocom moves quickly though without grace. There's a stutter in his motions, a maladroit shift as his hands fumble to pick up the shards of fine china scattered all over the floor.
"Kuro," his master calls out to him, and the pair of Reuleaux ears perk up at Kuroo's sides. "When did you last change your oil filters?" Kenma asks.
"Two days ago," the persocom replies.
"You're a little…"
"Yes. My apologies," Kuroo says from his position, still crouched over the wood. He knows what this means – where exactly their conversation was heading towards. He opts instead to come clean. "I ran a maintenance check last week."
"And?"
He was malfunctioning.
Kenma eyes him down with concern.
"I heard that the recycling center accepts scrap metals on Tuesdays," Kuro tells the mechanic instead, picking himself up off the ground as he deposits the waste into the dustbin.
::
Kenma sets his arm down carefully on his work table, next to the array of Kuroo's three other porcelain limbs lined up neatly in a row. The persocom watches on silently, observing the process as he sits through Kenma perform a one-man show of his entire body being taken apart and redone.
There doesn't seem to be anything apparently wrong with his actuators, Kenma tells him, so the blond heads back over towards Kuroo's direction before almost roughly yanking open the box to his persocom's main power supply. There's the hissing exhale of steam, of gas, before the scent of rust begins to fill up the air. From his periphery, Kuroo spots a small leak of crude oil dripping along his internal motors.
"Well?" Kuroo prompts aloud, seeing the sparks of wires as Kenma moves them around in his body. "Diagnose me, then. What's my status, doc?"
"You're–" Kenma pauses. Golden eyes scan over slivers of copper, the sheen of the metals peeking out from the gaps in the insulation of worn out wires, "...defective."
Kuroo scoffs, affronted. "I'll have you know that there are at least seven hundred fifty-two thousand references in my online database which say 'special' is the more appropriate and politically correct term."
"Yeah, sure, whatever," Kenma agrees boredly, tone blasé as ever. Kenma's brand of indifference always came off in a way that Kuroo almost feels like he was the one instead who had conceded defeat. The mechanic taps on Kuroo's now-deteriorated control panel twice and moves away to rummage through his drawers. "I'll shut you down in a minute. I just need to back up all of your data first."
"Why?" Kuroo asks. Kenma busies himself and unlatches Kuroo's left ear open, too preoccupied with his work to hear him. The blond pulls out the main cord to hook the persocom up to his CPU. Kuroo calls out to him again.
"Hey," he says. Kenma raises a brow upwards in question.
"Yeah?"
"Why would you need to back up my data?"
"So I can transfer you to a new model?" Kenma stops to blink back at him, confused. "There's no saving your old body anymore, Kuro, if that's what you're wondering. I can't sustain you with just a handful of measly repairs. You're too worn out for me to keep around like this anymore."
"Oh," Kuroo says, and he wonders to himself why the sound of his own voice had grown to become so bittersweet. "I see. I had a feeling it was about time for a change."
"Don't be so dramatic, I'm only changing your hardware so you can get better specs," Kenma scoffs. "You'll still be the same annoying Kuroo once I get you all fixed up."
"But do you really want me to still be the same?"
"Well, I could probably fix up your hair," the mechanic offers with nonchalance, "so you're not stuck with the same outdated hairstyle I designed back when I was a kid still stuck in the 90's."
Kuroo groans in false agony. "Shut up, you love my hair."
"If I could feel the emotion 'love', I would not be feeling it for your hair right now."
"Ouch much," the persocom laughs it off. Kenma ignores him in favor of typing down the codes to trigger a reboot of Kuroo's operating system.
In the meantime, Kuroo takes the chance to let himself continue, all too aware of how Kenma had liked listening to his chatter as he'd fill in the lull in the air. When he was younger, Kuroo remembers Kenma explaining why he had programmed his persocom to be a chatterbox, how he always praised Kuroo's tireless lectures on chemistry despite not actually taking an interest in it. He'd told the persocom once before that his voice often helped take away the weight of the loneliness that often accompanied the endless space of the quiet.
"But you do, Kenma-sama," the persocom tells him warmly, as Kenma directs him to open and close his hands to test his gripping reflexes. Kuroo obliges and continues with his spiel. "You can feel it. You're not like the rest of us," Kuroo says, "You're human."
The blond's face pinches with disgust. Kuroo stops balling up his hands into fists since he's figured he'd done enough to pass the test.
"You don't need to use an honorific," Kenma reminds him.
"I thought it was respectful," Kuroo counters. He tilts his head in question. "You don't like it?"
"No," Kenma frowns. "You make it sound like I'm a god."
"You created me, didn't you? Doesn't that make you worthy of the title?"
There's a quick shake of his head. "A creator is not a god."
"It's practically the same thing."
"Programming philosophy into you was a mistake," Kenma rolls his eyes.
Kuroo shrugs and bats his eyelashes in a mocking fashion. His expression softens slightly as he flashes Kenma a cheeky, teasing smile. "Was it?"
::
"Welcome back," Kenma greets him as soon as Kuroo comes to. "How are you feeling?"
"Hi," Kuroo answers dumbly. He watches as Kenma attaches — or reattaches? – his hip with his left thigh. The blond sneaks in a few drops of oil at the joints to lubricate them, and Kuroo slowly feels the sensation creep back into his legs. Kuroo runs a personal scan over his system as he lets Kenma focus on reassembling the rest of him.
"System scan complete," Kuroo announces. "All programs operating at an efficiency level of a hundred percent."
"Great," Kenma answers, satisfied. He looks almost pleased with himself. "Do a self scan every two weeks and let me know if you ever drop down to an eighty so I can upgrade you."
"Alright, I–" Kuroo winces as he feels Kenma tighten a screw turned clockwise on his right arm.
"Ah, sorry. Too much?"
"A bit, yeah."
Kenma loosens up the earlier connection. The persocom lets out a sigh of relief.
"Better," he says. "Thanks."
Kenma nods. "I realize I never got to answer your question properly," the blond tells him. "I saw you were worried when I was going through your files earlier. Why would you think I wouldn't want you to be the same?" Kenma wonders, brows furrowed as he tries to make sense of Kuroo's thoughts.
"I don't know," the persocom argues feebly. Kuroo stares down at a fixed point onto the floor. "I was old and worn out," he shrugs, "and I figured, maybe it was time for you to move on from me and progress further."
"But I could always update you?" Kenma explains, "I have your files backed up in my database anyway so it was never going to be a problem that your body would grow too old for me. Modifying your parts was always something we could easily fix. And if ever that wasn't enough, then I could always just build you all over again."
"But if we're talking about efficiency, then Keiji and Koutarou could always help you better," Kuroo bites out, almost frustratedly and through gritted teeth. "As for companionship, well, I'm not human so–"
"I don't get it."
"Huh?"
"I don't get it," Kenma repeats to him in response. His forehead creases in the same way it usually does when he's trying to figure out a new algorithm, or when he's too immersed in troubleshooting codes whenever Kuroo would catch him staying up late at night, too caught up in the hells of programming.
"Sorry, then," the android amends, "maybe I was unclear. Let me break it down for you. What I mean is–"
"No," Kenma cuts him off firmly.
He looks at Kuroo straight in the eye, almost as if searching for something deeper within. Kuroo wonders what his owner hopes to find in a manufactured pair of synthetic amber glass irises. The persocom says nothing and simply stares at him back.
Kenma frowns harder.
"I don't understand you at all," Kenma tells him, softly and with hesitance. "Do you really think I could replace you, Kuro?"
"Yeah, well...no, but, you know, I just–" A pause. Kenma waits patiently for the persocom to recalibrate his strings. "I just thought maybe I was...holding you back, somehow," Kuroo admits at last.
"You're mistaken," Kenma remarks, cutting off his train of thought. He crosses his arms over his chest, "which is odd, since logic shouldn't be a problem for you."
"It isn't, but–"
"Kuro."
"Yes?"
Warm hands reach out to cup cool porcelain cheeks. Kuroo feels Kenma cradle his jaw in his palms and lets himself bask in what he imagines would be the warmth of the sensation. Kenma tilts his gaze up to look at him and Kuroo obliges, without restraint, just lets Kenma's hands lead him for the rest of the way.
"I can't imagine myself fitting together as well with anyone else," Kenma says quietly with just the hint of a smile. "You promised me forever, didn't you?"
"That was scripted," the persocom rebuts, though at this point, Kuroo realizes, it's probably already futile. "I mean, you programmed me to say that, Kenma. You put those words into my mouth."
" Hm, " Kenma hums absently.
But you're right, Kuroo admits to his promise in the end. I did.
::
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heres another chobits au bc i couldnt get over it ahah thank you for reading i hope you enjoyed!