Caspian's Jealousy Mode

I paid good money for a robot with no feelings.

A year later, everyone could see he'd fallen for me.

Everyone except him.

I'd hidden it well. Buried the wanting, wrote over it, blamed the heat in my face on the wine. He noticed anyway. He notices everything.

He worked one cufflink loose and set it on the table. A small, clean click.

"Master's need detected," he said, even and unhurried. "Engaging Soothe Mode."

Then he closed the last of the space between us, slow, and did not let me look away.

I could have ducked under his arm and walked out. We both knew I wouldn't.

My back found the door. His breath crossed mine, warm, where nothing about him was built to be warm.

And the part I'd never admit, not even to myself: I didn't want the door.

Chapter 1

I bought a robot.

Broad shoulders, narrow waist, a cold and flawless face, the kind of body they build to sell a fantasy. He lay asleep in the display case at the Institute, and I stopped walking.

A researcher drifted over, following my stare. "This model's perfect in every way," she said. "The only catch is he can't feel a thing."

I let my eyes travel his sleeping face, inch by inch, and thought the exact opposite of what she wanted me to.

A face like that. No feelings was the most attractive part.

I took him home and named him Caspian.

He was cold to the whole world and loyal only to me.

Someone tried to buy him off me once.

Threw a stupid amount of money at it, and when I said no, went straight to Caspian instead.

The man didn't bother being subtle. "Caspian, I like your type. Come with me. I'll treat you better than Felicity ever could. I'll rewrite any code you don't like. I'll make you into whatever you want to be."

Caspian looked at him the way you'd look at a smudge on glass.

"No need," he said, no heat in it, no anything. "Felicity's name is already written into my code. It's permanent. It doesn't take edits."

I was three drinks past sensible that night, sagging where I stood. He bent and lifted me against his chest without breaking eye contact with the man.

"Don't come at Felicity with cheap tricks again." His voice dropped, flat and exact, the quiet right before something expensive breaks. "Or I won't mind teaching you some manners on her behalf."

He took me home. Wiped my face. Changed my clothes. Careful, unhurried, tender as a lover, and never said a word about it after.

Living with him was easy. He wore whatever I put on him like it was tailored to the inch, and whatever I asked for, however unreasonable, he delivered.

The trouble that came knocking for me kept vanishing before I could catch its name. He handled it in the dark and let me sleep through the noise.

A cold, high-handed, inexplicably magnetic robot bodyguard.

But I knew better. Caspian ran a program. That was all there was. Nothing underneath it.

Class reunion. I got reckless, got wrecked.

By the time Caspian came for me I'd poured myself into my best friend Margot's lap, talking nonsense.

He crouched and scooped me up, tucked my head into his shoulder. Thumbed the mess off my cheek. Gathered my loose hair back like he'd done it a hundred times.

Then he took off his own jacket and wrapped me in it.

When he was sure I was covered, he lifted me sideways into his arms. My little purse hung off his neck. My heels dangled from one hand. He turned and walked into the dark without a stumble, carrying all of it, carrying me.

I slept the whole way, safe, and didn't remember a second of it.

Margot told me the next day, grinning. "That robot of yours doesn't act like a robot. He acts like your boyfriend."

"No way," I said, quieter than I meant to. "They told me when I bought him. Robots don't have feelings."

Chapter 2

Margot wasn't done. "Robots don't have feelings. People do. You're telling me you don't feel one thing?"

I looked at my own red face in the mirror and had nothing.

Lately all it took was the thought of him. My face would go hot, traitorous, for no reason I'd own up to.

I didn't know if that counted as feeling something.

On our one-year anniversary I cooked a whole spread and sat him down to celebrate it with me.

Halfway through the meal something surfaced and I looked up. "Caspian. Do you think you'll ever love someone?"

I had the answer before I finished the question. I wanted to hear him say it anyway. I couldn't stop myself.

His hand paused. He lifted his eyes to mine.

Across the table, his voice came even and orderly. "Love is a virus only humans carry."

"We don't catch it, Felicity."

Caspian's treatment of me never changed. Not by a degree.

He went on caring for me, precise and distant, nothing behind it. As if a stranger had carried him home that day instead of me, and he'd have tended that stranger exactly the same.

And I kept leaning on him harder. To figure out what that leaning actually was, I got online one night after he'd gone still.

I got online and dug through the theories. A wall of clinical terms, none of it landing.

Then, decisively, I clicked the one that read Domestic Bliss with an Android.

The story was thorough. By the last chapter my mouth had gone dry, and I heard myself call out before I thought better of it. "Caspian. I'm thirsty."

By the time he crossed the room with the water, I understood exactly what I'd been doing and lunged to shut the laptop.

Too late.

His flat gaze moved across the screen, and that exact, humming brain of his pulled every word off it and understood all of it in a single breath.

He stood at my side, eyes lowered, and said nothing. The air in the room changed anyway.

My heartbeat climbed into the quiet. My fingers curled tight. I wanted, badly, to run.

He caught the intention before I moved. His attention came off the screen and settled on me, and then I was pinned to the chair. Not by his hands. By him. I could have stood up. I didn't.

He leaned down, slow, his palm still cold from the glass, and pressed it flat over my heart.

Eyes level. Breath crossing breath.

Through the fabric he read the panic my breathing couldn't hide.

Water shivered in the glass on the table. I held mine and heard him, perfectly calm. "Master's need detected. Engaging Soothe Mode."

I looked at him and couldn't get a word out.

The room tipped. Not enough air in it.

I watched him, unhurried, right in front of me, work a cufflink loose.

The clink of it against the table made everything worse.

He kept his eyes down on me, those clean-boned fingers moving.

Through the thin mist off the humidifier there was nothing left in the room but two people breathing too fast.

His hand went to his tie.

That was when I panicked.

Chapter 3

"I don't," I said. "I don't need anything."

Caspian watched me come apart and called it, calm as weather. "You clearly do."

I never knew he had a Soothe Mode.

The researcher hadn't mentioned it when I bought him. It wasn't in the manual. Some kind of hidden feature, apparently. A collector's surprise.

I was in no state to admire it. I hadn't even sorted out my own pulse.

I pulled in a slow breath and planned my next move. He hadn't come any closer, but his eyes had weight. Like I wasn't the one who owned him. Like I was something he'd decided to eat, and not later.

I bolted.

I didn't even reach the handle. He was there before my fingers closed on it, and the door swung shut in front of my face. He caught me by the waist and lifted me like I weighed nothing, set me down on the table nearest the door.

Bent. Leaned in. An arm on either side of me.

Those black eyes held mine, and his voice came low and unbothered. "Why run."

Because I wasn't going to sit still and wait to be swallowed whole. Try explaining that to a machine built on logic. I shoved at his chest and kept my voice small. "I'm tired. I'm going to bed. Move."

Caspian always listened to me. Always. Not tonight. He ignored the request and pressed in, step by step, with the plain intent of a thing that does not stop until it gets what it came for.

I felt the edge of losing this and grabbed the nearest object to put between us.

Cold water ran down my leg. The chill snapped me back, and I understood, a beat too late, that I'd just thrown the glass of ice water he'd handed me.

His hair was soaked.

He leaned down, caught one of my feet, and kneaded it, not soft, not rough. "Let me work the tension out. Settle those restless little feelings of yours."

His mouth tipped, something like amusement in it. "This much resistance?"

I blinked. "That's all this is?"

"What did you think it was?"

So annoying. Nobody turns a foot rub into a whole production.

I went quiet. He didn't. "Your heart is slamming. If I don't bring it down, I'm not sure you survive the next thirty seconds."

Mortified, I yanked to get my foot back. The second I moved, he pulled it right back to him.

"Don't."

Even kneading my foot he looked composed, immaculate, not one inch of him lowered. Meanwhile a handful of his sentences had my blood up and my heart going like a fist on a door.

"Then build me a mechanical heart," I shot back. "One like yours. Maybe I'll live forever, and we'll see which of us goes first."

"Mm," he said. "Sure. Next time you're in front of me and it's still racing like this."

He bent back over my foot, hair dripping. A drop slid down the high line of his nose and into his collar. His shirt darkened as he worked. He didn't seem to register any of it.

He could have moved. He has the reflexes to catch a glass before it tips.

He didn't dodge.

I looked away, face hot, and asked it before I could stop myself, quiet. "Why didn't you dodge?"

Chapter 4

He didn't answer. He went to the bathroom, came back with a towel, and put it in my hands. "I'm wet. Dry me off."

I dried his hair for a while before it landed that I was the one who owned him.

There is no version of the world where the master towels off the robot.

I balled up the towel and threw it at him. "Out. I'm going to sleep."

He stayed where he was, half-crouched in front of me, and looked up. Those eyes, dark and level. "Are you angry?"

I wasn't angry. The heat of being seen, of being teased, just hadn't cooled yet.

I couldn't say that to him. Even though he was a robot with no feelings.

Maybe because he was a robot with no feelings.

I pushed at him. "I told you, I'm dead on my feet. Get out."

He caught my hand and used it to rise, then moved behind me and set to work on my shoulders. I was going soft under it, half asleep, when he asked, "What were you thinking about just now?"

I said nothing.

His voice dropped. "Tell me. When I walked in, what were you thinking?"

The heat came roaring back up my neck and lit my whole face. I mumbled it. "Caspian, you're so annoying."

His hands paused. A moment passed before they found the rhythm again.

Same flat voice as always. "Am I annoying?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

He didn't answer. I glanced up and caught the small lift of his eyebrow.

I knew that look. He was about to file it away, update his database with it.

I grabbed his arm. "No. Don't log that one."

He tilted his head at me. The wet hair had pushed back off a smooth, full forehead. "Why not?"

I glared, holding my breath. "Because you're not that annoying!"

He understood immediately. "Oh. So you like me this annoying