Lifer is staring across the kitchen table. Megan can feel it, right through her faceplate.
"Now you're being weird," she grouches.
"Evil robot," Lifer says dismissively. "Always weird."
Megan scoffs at her, and goes to work, and concentrates very hard on shifting cargo around efficiently and not thinking about anything else at all, squashing any treacherous awareness that normally she doesn't have to work at that.
Anything we need from the store? she texts Lifer on the way home.
A lemon Lifer texts back, and Megan stares at it and stares at it, figures it must be some One Weird Trick for getting your robot face streak-free clean, and puts a lemon in the cart alongside her cereal and a box of eggs. The kid on the register puts through the Respecc Muh Troops discount without Megan even reaching for her ID; it shouldn't feel shitty, to be recognised as a regular, to be part of the community, but it makes her crave a stiff drink, or to be back on a Navy carrier.
"You want me to put this away?" she says, brandishing the lone citrus fruit at Lifer, back in the kitchen, where Lifer is reading a stack of zines about the latest city budgetary proposals; passes it over when Lifer holds a hand out for it, instead.
With deft, efficient hands, Lifer peels it and splits the segments apart, unlatches her face. Megan almost misses it, looking away reflexively, when Lifer puts a lemon segment into her mouth and begins slowly, expressionlessly chewing.
"What the fuck."
Lifer continues stolidly chewing at her own rate. Swallows. Pauses, swallows a couple more times. "Doctor threatened me with nutritionist," she says. "Not happy about vitamin levels. Thinks I might not be digesting supplements effectively. Recommends real food."
"So you jump straight to eating that?"
"Don't want scurvy," Lifer says, and looks pointedly at Megan's own paltry shopping.
"You leave me out of this," Megan warns her.
Lifer grunts.
"Put your goddamn face on, at least," Megan says, trying not to look at eyes, lashes, cheekbones, lips.
"Eating," Lifer points out. "Want me to put the fleshlight face on?" and Megan shudders.
"I'm going to bed," she decides.
"Should eat," Lifer says to her retreating back.
"Not hungry," Megan tells the staircase.
Lifer's knock is, as always, quiet and precise. Megan considers, for a few seconds, pretending she's asleep.
Lifer would, of course, know it's bullshit.
"You want me to stop being weird with you?" she says, opening the door. "You stop being weird with me — oh, fuck, Lifer, why don't you have your face on—"
"Logistics," Lifer says.
"Stop being weird!"
"Evil sex robots," Lifer says, "are not immune to weirdness."
"I don't want to look at you," Megan says crossly, head turned to the side. "I'm not supposed to see that."
"Megan," Lifer says.
"What?"
Lifer turns Megan's head with a hand on her jaw; kisses softly and awkwardly.
"Put your face back on," Megan says, choked, eyes closed, when she gets her breathing halfway under control. "Put your face back on," and waits for the soft click of the latches; then, "No," she says. Opens her eyes, closes them again. Softly kisses glossy black borgface. "You told me," she adds. "You told me, I guess. Hurt your stupid feels, Megan. Well, this is it. This is what — I'm not doing it, Lifer, I'm not getting feels all over you. You won't like it. You don't want it." She pushes off from Lifer's shoulders, hard.
"Megan," Lifer says.
"No," Megan says, turning sideways to squeeze past her out of the room. She's ever-so-slightly unsteady on the stairs, on the way down.
"Megan," Lifer says, from the top of them.
"Don't wait up," Megan says, shrugging into her coat, stuffing keys in her pocket. "I'll crash on someone's couch tonight."
"Megan," Lifer says, a little louder.
"I'm not," Megan says, gripping the front door latch harder than she needs to, and only looking back halfway to where Lifer actually is, "going to be one of your greasy rebuild fetishists," and she closes the door behind her carefully.
Lifer sits and looks at her phone for exactly thirty minutes, then dials.
"Josie," she says flatly, and without waiting for reciprocal niceties, "tell her she's not. She knows what."
Josie lets out a sigh like a deflating balloon, expressing an enormity of incoherent feeling — which Lifer ignores, having consistently cultivated the idea she experiences no enormity, incoherence, or feelings specifically to avoid dealing with other peoples'.
"Don't tell her I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. But tell her she's not."
"Lifer," Josie says.
"Please," Lifer says, tonally telegraphing a great reluctance to have done so. The sheer rarity of the pleasantry from her makes it devastating to deploy. Josie is sweet on Megan, and Megan's gone to her because Megan doesn't really have anyone else to take her troubles to, and Lifer is not unfeeling. She implicitly lies about that a lot, but she isn't.
She's glad Megan has a friend.
But also, Josie and Megan have a shared neurological basis for intimacy, and a history of sexual compatibility, and Lifer is not sitting it out while Megan is emotionally vulnerable and Josie is there for her. If Lifer has to mine every avenue of approach for Josie to slip sideways past Megan's emotional defences while they're mistakenly trained on Lifer, if she has to pop Josie open like a peapod and chew up her insides to keep her from offering herself up as the low-friction alternative to Megan's girl problems — well.
'Evil sex robot' is two-thirds joking, but most people can't clearheadedly distinguish 'ruthless' from 'evil.'
Lifer is ruthless.
