Jay frowned as he rummaged through the cabinet looking for something suitable as a breakfast. He found, instead, an empty box of cereal and a couple of wrenches that he had misplaced about a week ago.

"Good morning, Jay."

He jumped. He'd almost forgotten about Tim. A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. It was really nice to hear someone else's voice in the morning.

"Good morning, Tim."

"Sleep well?" Tim was sitting on the metal work table where he had been "born", watching Jay with a bored look on his face.

"Er...yeah. You?"

Tim rolled his eyes.

"Yes, I slept wonderfully and I had the strangest dream that I actually spent the entire night watching you toss and turn."

Jay cleared his throat and turned away to hide the fact that he was blushing. Now he felt kind of stupid. Of course Tim hadn't slept, Jay hadn't installed any kind of "Sleep mode". He made a mental note to get on that though, he had no idea if Tim could overheat and what kind of damage that might do.

"Well, I still need to eat so I'm going to go out to the store. I'll be right back, okay?"

"Oh...okay?" Little red question marks flashed in Tim's eyes, drawing a goofy grin from Jay.

"Oh, right! I forgot you could do that!"

"Do what?"

"Your eyes...you know what, it doesn't matter don't worry about it."

"Do what? What did you do to my eyes?" He repeated tensely , following Jay over to the door.

"I made them more...expressive, ok? Chill out. Why are you following me?"

"I'm coming with you, dumbass."

"Why?"

"Because." Tim huffed.

"Because...?" Jay felt like he was aggravating Tim, but he really didn't understand why he wanted to come along. The city was kind of dingey and rusty and gross. There wasn't much to see.

"What makes you think you're the only one capable of being lonely? Besides, I'm not going to let this workshop become my entire world. I want to see what else there is."

"Jay?" A familiar voice made Jay look up from the receipt he was checking over.

"Oh, hey Alex." His heart sank a little.

"Hey man! It's been a while. Still wasting time on that robot or...?"

"Actually, he finished me." Tim stepped into view. He had walked out of the store holding an armful of grocery bags. Alex's eyebrows shot up and after a moment he nodded approvingly. Jay gave a short, nervous laugh.

"Yeah, I'm pretty proud of him. His name is Tim. Tim, this is Alex. He's a good friend of mine."

"Hello." Tim extended his free hand for Alex to shake.

"Impressive." He circled him once, leaning in occasionally to look at each joint.

"Is this really necessary?" Tim growled, stepping away from the hand that was prodding his neck roughly. "Stop touching me, damn it."

"Did you feel that?" Alex said flatly, ignoring Tim's obvious discomfort.

The question marks were back in Tim's eyes. "Feel what?"

"This." He placed his hand on the bot's shoulder again. Jay bit his lip.

"Alex, maybe you shouldn't..."

"No, I didn't." Tim hissed, swatting his hand away with a low snarl.

"Oh. Too bad, that. That would have been really impressive. Couldn't figure out a nervous system, Jay?"

"I could install a nervous system." he huffed, his ego slightly bruised by the criticism. He turned to Tim. "If you want one, that is."

"Yeah, I'd like that actually." Tim had fixed Alex with a stern, narrow-eyed glare.

"Well then, Jay, you'd better hop to it."

As they started to walk back to the shop, Jay heard Tim mumble something about wanting to "smack that sly grin from that bastard's face".

Jay liked Alex, he really did, but he also wanted to punch him in the face a lot. He had worked for hours, no, days on end to make the perfect pseudo-human. Perhaps he should have known better than to expect Alex to just be supportive. Although he was Jay's only real friend, he always had something negative to say. To be fair, it did fuel Jay's drive to improve his skills, but it was still frustrating.

Tim didn't seem to like him nearly as much.