Chapter Text
“Why are there no droids with gustatory sensors?” Cassian spat out his drink.
It had been a peaceful evening, as peaceful as they could ever be, at least quieter than usual. Melshi was out doing a late-night patrol, or at least helping with a late-night patrol as he’d been asked to. Melshi never volunteered for it, and in Cassian’s opinion, he shouldn’t be the one doing them, considering his skill set in other areas, but disagreeing with high command was often more work than just doing it. He had settled as much as he could into the authority he existed under presently, with no Luthen, only those currently managing Yavin.
He wasn’t alone though. He almost never was, even after she left. He had the massive and no longer inherently murderous KX security droid with him. K2SO. After the first month of either referring to him very vaguely or by inconvenient full title, he just called him Kay. While said droid was not altogether pleased about it being shortened to begin with, he eventually figured out shortening names was ‘some form of organic bonding activity which served to make him less threatening,’ in his own words.
Tonight, Kay had been lurking in the corner far quieter than usual and honestly that should have been his clue. He was only ever that quiet when he was running through some stupid puzzle he had decided to concoct, usually with the end effect of bombarding Cassian with any question ranging from ‘why do you consume intoxicating substances if they interfere with your already tenuous relationship to the general,’ to ‘what is the point of keeping more plants when you live in this environment.’ Always sassy, always unimpressed. It endeared Cassian more than it annoyed him nowadays.
Both of those got rather blunt answers, no matter how many follow up questions came after and how annoying those follow up questions were. This wasn’t out of character to say the least, it was just that Cassian had almost forgotten that Kay was there. He lived in a spacious place, at least compared to some on the Yavin base, and Kay had somehow become adept at making himself inconspicuous. Okay, maybe he was only inconspicuous to Cassian. There were only so many times you could be bothered to get freaked out by a towering figure with glowing white optics who you’d seen tear innocent people to pieces before that association was shattered by the simple act of him snarkily telling you he wasn’t impressed by your sulking.
“Why are you choking? It was a perfectly reasonable question, you can’t honestly be annoyed with me, or that surprised,” Kay said, sounding frustrated and almost disbelieving. Cassian turned to his, friend? Weird droid companion? Colleague? Not his problem to figure that out today. It was possible his original instinct was the right one.
He turned to Kay and shot him a slightly bewildered look, and the droid’s faceplate stared back at him with wide, innocent glowing eyes. Not innocent. He was still a security droid, not to mention the way he spoke most of the time could never be construed as innocent.
“Wasn’t expecting it,” Cassian said, voice slightly rough from the way the alcohol caught in his throat. He looked for a few moments at his companion, sitting cross-legged on the floor, turned towards him as he often did. Kay mostly felt like talking, but when he wasn’t he was usually at least staring at something, and that was usually Cassian. Whenever it wasn’t Cassian, it was some object or other of Cassian’s. He’d found the droid before, fans whirring in a rather content way, holding his jacket, almost examining it. Since Kay didn’t particularly understand human embarrassment, he simply began an interrogation over any stain or damaged patch when he realised Cassian caught him.
“Will you answer me, or do I have to repeat myself?” Kay said, ever impatient, and Cassian finally tried to speak again,
“Uh,” Cassian said rather unintelligently, pausing to even think through what sensors Kay even had, it would make sense to not have this one clearly, even visually, Kay didn’t exactly have a mouth. “Droids don’t tend to have anything like a mouth.”
“Most have vocoders,” Kay retorted, as if Cassian didn’t know that.
“That creates voice, voice isn’t the only thing mouths do,” Cassian replied, and really, the sound isn’t exactly coming from the mouth, it just comes out of the mouth. Kay already knows that. Why is he asking this at all? Cassian took another sip of his drink, throat still burning and considered the droid in front of him with some confusion.
“Obviously,” Kay snapped then he waved his hand, “Taste, why do none of us taste? Considering taste is interconnected to the organics' olfactory senses, it wouldn’t be that difficult to manufacture a secondary sensory input implemented alongside the first.” He reasoned, “I have olfactory sensors.” He added, as if Cassian didn’t already know that. As if there hadn’t been countless times where Kay had randomly piped up that the substance he was currently consuming wasn’t conducive to his health or that Cassian should likely clean something due to its obvious smell of rot or disrepair.
Cassian ran a hand over his face, “We taste for a reason Kay, to eat, because we need to digest food to keep us alive,” He repeated, once again knowledge that Kay already knew, Cassian was beginning to wonder if these pointless conversations were the droid’s version of fun and entertainment rather than actual interest in learning.
“Technically, you do not need a sense of taste to eat,” Kay retorted quickly, and Cassian shot him another look, “I don’t want to eat, that would be disgusting and incredibly unhygienic. Integrating digestion, let alone a reliance on sustenance in that way would practically defeat the point of a droid.” He added huffily,
“Why are you asking about taste then?” Cassian asked, shrugging as he spoke.
Kay stood to his full height, clearly agitated enough to move from his still sitting position, looming ominously, “You don’t just taste food. You can taste anything you want to; it just so happens you and other organics mostly focus on consumables.” Kay said, “Although I’d hardly call that drink consumable,” He added sarcastically, looking down at Cassian’s drink with scorn. As much scorn as a blank face could carry that is.
Cassian sighed, glancing up at the droid who now stood above him, wondering if those bright white optics would share the real reason for this discussion, or whether he’d be stuck in the guessing game forever. “Kay, why do you have olfactory sensors?” He asked simply,
If Kay needed to blink or roll his eyes, Cassian was sure he would have just to emphasise how unimpressed he was, “Another way to understand surroundings when parts of the environment are not within any visible field. Invisible gases, distant fire,” He began listing,
“Yes, yes, but do you have associations with those, when you smell a type of flower, do you just know what flower it is, or do you think this flower smells good?” Cassian had already grown to understand that Kay did have things that felt good to do.
To Kay, it felt good to be sarcastic, it felt good to grow his memory bank and databases, to learn and experience new previously unconsidered information, about beings, about things around him, environments. To complete circuits, to unite data, to run algorithms and tests and have them work out oh so accurately. It pleased him, it made him happy. Very bluntly, Kay had announced it felt good to be with Cassian, which certainly took a while to get used to as an idea. He liked Melshi too, Cassian knew that, but he preferred Cassian. When being asked to elaborate on that, for once in his life Kay didn’t. Kay didn’t even think about it though, having a preferred human, he just accepted it as a fact of his existence, no pesky human guilt, anxiety or fear about it. At least none that Cassian knew about it. He hoped there was none.
“I don’t smell flowers,” Kay replied, “I could sense them, why would I need to sense a flower?”
Cassian let out a frustrated sound, “Okay the fire then, does that make you think of danger? How do you feel about it?”
“Obviously, it’s a signifier which connects to a set of variables, more often than not a signifier of danger yet it can indicate merely a nearby settlement.” Kay explained, waving his hands, listing off these ideas by tapping on each finger, “I don’t feel anything about it. Expanding my database and connecting similar scents is appealing in some ways, but individual scents aren’t.”
Cassian took a breath, “When I smell fire, wood fire, I think it smells good, it doesn’t make sense, but I like it, I enjoy it,” He explained softly, he discarded the drink next to him, now practically empty.
“That seems inconvenient at best,” Kay said,
“That’s what taste is, too, I might love the taste of something Melshi hates; it’s all personalised.” He shrugged. He wanted Melshi here now. Melshi could explain this far better than he could, or Bix, she would- Bix had never even met Kay. Her presence surrounded them both here, in this place, their home, yet Kay had never met her. This was Kay’s home now too. Would it have been if Bix was still here? It wasn’t something he had considered before, Cassian hoped it would be, he wanted Kay here, she would like Kay. But she wasn’t coming back. Not until the war was over, if even then, she was gone, and Kay was here and now. He liked Kay. He settled in like he had always belonged there, as if Cassian had always been missing a seven-foot-tall powerhouse of a droid in his life.
It took a while to accept he liked Kay, he fought against the idea for a few months, so focused on the idea that he should be afraid, be angry at him for Ghorman, for every other encounter he’d ever had with KX unit. But, that wasn’t Kay, and even if partially, some of it was Kay, what choice did he have? He was a new person-droid now, a new being, he made his choices and there was no fucking way Cassian could ever see him making any choices that aligned with what his body did on Ghorman. Kay was curious, he was annoying and sarcastic, and he was oh so overprotective of Cassian. His body flowed and moved in a strangely graceful way, he twitched or jolted when annoyed and Cassian found it funny. He was aware of his height and Cassian’s body in a way that could be considered thoughtful, considerate. He was certainly beyond any droid Cassian had encountered before, maybe that’s why Cassian found it so easy to call him a friend.
Kay’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts, having gone silent for a moment before speaking again, “You’re saying my sense of taste would be like my sense of smell, useful as a tool for detection but not rewarding as yours is.” If anything, he sounded disheartened by the announcement, although Cassian didn’t know what else Kay would want taste for if not for data, the same as smell.
“I can also taste and smell things that cause me discomfort, you can’t, and you don’t have to taste, you don’t have to eat, it’s a trade-off and possibly one you’re winning,” Cassian reasoned with him,
“You are still able to have a wider sensory experience,” Kay retorted, then let out a laugh, or something akin to a laugh, he sunk down next to Cassian now, making himself more level with the other, turning to face him, “It seems even more irrational because I can do so much you cannot.” Kay’s hands strayed to Cassian’s, fingers drifting over his hands lightly, so lightly. It took a while for Kay to realise how to be gentle, he wasn’t built that way, but now he knew how to barely graze Cassian’s skin.
Light as a feather, it made Cassian’s skin prickle, and he shivered as the droid’s durasteel hands drifted up his exposed arm, “I have sensors more powerful and memory more accurate than you, I can see infrared, I can measure your exact temperature, heartrate, blood pressure, I have a far greater visible light spectrum than most organics, my strength, I’m unaffected by violence the way you aren’t,” He continued listing thing after thing as though it would fix it, wanting what he wanted now.
“Kay it’s normal to want what you can’t have,” Cassian sighed, moving against Kay’s metal, his joints, turning his hand up to catch Kay’s, fingers brushing over the sensors he knew lay on the droid’s hands. Gently, Cassian ran his hands back and forth, eventually settling his own hand on Kay’s wide palm, leaving it to lie still there.
Kay had explained the positioning of his sensors before, it hadn’t been particularly relevant at the time, but his hands were the most sensitive part of his frame, having far more intricate and delicate senses there. In his own words, it was displeasing to have them touching what he did not choose to touch. Yet he allowed Cassian to touch his hands at his own will, just as softly as Kay had run his fingers over his arm. The rest of Kay could feel touch, yet only in a dull and somewhat distant way. He was sensitive internally in order to prevent creating a mess of his systems, he was sensitive in his hands, and his faceplate and arms had slightly more feeling than the rest of him.
“I take offence to that, normal to organics.” Kay replied, but he didn’t pull away from Cassian’s touch, he never did, in fact, more often than not, he leaned into it.
He’d never really asked about touch, he’d once asked why other organics tended to hug their crewmates after a mission, the simple explanation of a rush of endorphins and a positive association with the feeling was enough to appease him. But Cassian found he had begun mimicking elements of touch, even ones Cassian didn’t know how he’d seen. He brushed shoulders, he poked and prodded, he gave gentle pats, he even, like now, just touched for the sake of it. He didn’t ask why and how Cassian touched, he merely took it in and processed it as another dataset.
This was somewhat new, though not wholly original to today, Kay had begun his fluttery light touches mostly when they were entirely alone. The first time he’d done it, he looked at Cassian almost expectantly, as though waiting for Cassian to ask why he was doing it. But Cassian never asked, he hadn’t wanted to break the spell at the time, it felt so good to be treated like something real and breakable after, after everything, and he wanted Kay to explore, to learn, to be comfortable with him. Clearly, Kay enjoyed this motion, it pleased him that Cassian allowed it and even played into it at times. Kay liked touch, he liked processing the information it provided when it was on his own terms. he liked Cassian, it was a benefit to both of them.
He smiled, quiet and soft, and leaned against Kay’s arm, cool and hard against him, “Of course,” Cassian let him have that, he looked up at the droid, Kay was still staring at him, it never unsettled him, in fact it was comforting sometimes. How strange that was, a comforting imperial droid. He let his eyes fall shut, he was safe,