From the office at the end of the hall, a gunshot went off.

Inside the office, a man with dark skin and dark hair in a suit with a white tie was shaking with anger, gun still pointed at the bot before him. The bot leaked oil from its forehead, sparks jumping from the wound. His yellow eyes watched as the man as he dropped the gun from his ringed fingers and fell to his chair behind the desk where he was standing.

The man buried his face in his hands, ignoring the bot before him that was bleeding oil, the black liquid falling into its yellow eyes. The bot does nothing, just stands and watched the dark skinned man, shoulders shaking, face in hands.

More than anything, the bot wants to sooth the man behind the desk. More than anything, the bot wants to hold the man and pet his silky black hair and tell him everything will be alright. 

It’s not that he can’t do that, it’s the fact that the bullet is lodged in the part of his wiring used to move and speak. To save himself, he is shutting down, the process slowed by the bullet, so that he can feel the loss of electricity in his feet, then legs, as it slowly moves upwards.

And it pains him to see the man in the chair in so much pain. It is his job to end the pain, but the only way to do that is to find the one the man behind the desk is in love with and the bot doesn’t think he is ready for that. He doesn’t want to find the mystery person the man who shot him in in love with. It’s not the fact that he will be turned to scrap metal once he does, it is that he wants to have as much time with this man as possible.

This is the seventh time he has been broken.

He doesn’t do it on accident either, this is something he wants. He will be told by the man, the man he loves, to leave, to go find the mystery person. So he will leave and he will spend a day or two around town, and then he will come back empty handed.

Each time he comes back empty handed he faces the man's wrath. Broken parts and oil leaks and bullet wounds. Each time he will be beaten to the point of shutting down, only to wake up to the man leaning over him, fixing him, telling him, I still need you. I can’t find them on my own.

Being fixed, it is the only sense of intimacy he knows he will ever get. This is the closest thing to love as the bot will ever have, these moments he wakes up in a room that’s too bright with the man leaning over him and fixing what he himself had shot or torn or cracked.
 

***

It was in one of those rooms, with the man no longer dressed in his suit and tie, leaning over him with a pair of tweezers and goggles, that the bot had told him. The man had his neck open and was working on the voice box and his black hair wasn’t slicked back and perfect like it was during the day. The man fiddled around in the neck of the bot and with a click the bot felt his mouth and voice activate and, laying on a cold metal table, the man reaching for the next repair part, the bot opened his mouth and said words he thought he had been programed never to say.
 

I love you.

It was out and suddenly the emotions he had been holding back since the moment he was switched on by the same man who stood, frozen, over him were flowing through his circuits and he said it again.
 

I love you.
 

I love you
 

I love you.

He reminded himself of a broken bot, one who would begin to repeat the same thing over and over until it was taken to get prepared. It wouldn’t stop, the words, the feelings, and he did love this man. He did love this man and now it was out and the same three words kept coming out of his mouth.

I love you.
 

I love you.
 

I love you.

The man had stopped moving the first time it was said, and the words kept coming over and over, a desperate plea to return the feeling, and the man stood up slowly. He came to the bots side and reached down, placing his hands on either side of the bots head, and placed his thumbs over the bots two main optics, the yellow lights that are his eyes.

There’s the sound of glass breaking and the bot can no longer see anything. The words were still streaming from his mouth, and soon there is a bang and pain and although he couldn’t see it, the bot knew the man had done something horrible to his jaw.
Then there were footsteps and the sound of a door slamming, followed by the sensation of shutting down from the feet up to save himself followed by nothing at all.

This time, after a large amount of oil loss, to much to keep his body running, the man behind his desk, silently crying, the bot is shutting down bit by little bit. His legs shut off and he falls loudly to the floor, oil making its way across the white marble. Peice by peice he shuts down, eyesight gone, then hearing. But he knows he is laying on the man’s office floor and that he will wake up to the man leaning over him, fixing him. The thought processor shuts down last.

I love you.

Nothing.
 

***

The bot wakes up and can hear the man swearing as he tinkers with the wiring in the bots head. The bot does not open its eyes. he want’s to savor this. Savor his own version of love. The man curses again and then tweak a wire. The bots finger twitches.

The man notices it and grunts in satisfaction. He continues with what he is doing, finishing quickly due to the fact that he knows the bots wiring by now.

There is the sounds of tools being put down and then a noise of frustration. Are you f'ing kidding me?!

The bots arm. The man had almost shot it completely off at the elbow and never remembered it until now, leaving the bot with dripping oil and and dangling wires for days. Not to mention that when that bot had fallen he had fallen right onto it, making it worse. Where his lower and upper arm met was now completely busted and hanging off the table slab.

The man groans and the bot hears it as he picks back up the tools and goes to work once more. The bot dares turns on his main optics and lifts up his head only just a bit to watch the man work. When he fixes him, the man wears a stained sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of thick rimmed glasses that he squints through to see the tiny place where wire meets wire. He is dark skinned and black haired and built and is grimacing at the work before him, but the bot cannot compare anything else in his databanks to how beautiful he is or how strongly he feels for him.

I love you.

His other arm, the one not broken, the fingers twitch ever so slightly as he picks up the sensation of the mans warm hands touching his artificial skin and slowly his smile grows ever so slightly before he rests his head back against the cold metal slab of a table, staring at the ceiling. I love you, he thinks, ready and willing to suffer the man's wrath once again.

***

The day after he is fixed for the eighth time, he is called to the man's office. The gun is there on the desk, as it always is, and the man is sitting straight and perfect as the bot stands before him.

I want you to go take a look at yourself in that mirror over there.

The bot obeys without a word, and goes to the full length mirror the man has on the back of his office door.

Take a good look at yourself. What do you look like?

The bot has ken doll dirty blond hair. He has high cheekbones that you can see because the plates that build his cheeks and jaw stands out. His artificial skin is fair and there is a beauty mark on the left side of his nose. His metal lips are pale. He has yellow eyes.

You know I can destroy you, then take these same parts and give each one to a different bot that I sell.

Yes, the bot knows that. This man he has fallen in love with is his creator and the creator of all the bots that are sold around the world. Bots to be used as employees, as friends, as children, as family. Bots that have come far enough to feel human emotions, feel anger and sadness and happiness and love.

I love you.

The man watched the bot watch himself in the mirror. Then he stands up and grabs the gun in one ringed fist as he comes over to stand behind the bot. He doesn’t point the gun at the bot or move any more than he already has. Instead he nods at the door. Go. And know that if you don’t find them this time, you’re scrap metal.

The bot does not nod, just obeys, opening the door and shutting it behind him before leaving the building and doing yet again what he has been told to do for nine times now.

***

The bot finds the person the man wants. Unlike failing a mission, it is on accident. The person he is looking for crashed into him as he was passing the college campus.

He knew it was the person the man wanted because the person had ken doll dirty blond hair. He had high cheekbones. His skin is fair and there is a beauty mark on the left side of his nose. His lips are pale.

His eyes are green.

The bot stops and looks at the person, realization crashing over him like the tidal wave a bot like him is never allowed to go near.

The time he told the man he loved him the man had broken him and stormed away. He had heard those words coming out of this persons mouth. He had broken the replacement, the one he knew was not the one he wanted.

The bot was built to look like this person.

Suddenly, the bot just wants everything over with. The person is also still standing there and the bot grabs him by the wrist and begins walking back to the office.

I love you.

He was not programmed with the ability to cry. He got everything but showing sadness. And as he drags this person, this person he was built to resemble no accident, he keeps telling himself that the sensation of liquid building up behind his eyes is just oil leftover from the injury the man had fixed the day before.

***

The person objects the entire time the bot is taking him back to the man, screaming at him and demanding an answer. And the bot just turns off his ability to hear, still telling himself that he cannot cry, the liquid behind his eyes is oil from a poorly done repair job. 

He takes the person up the grand staircase and into the skyscraper. Into the elevator and to the top floor. Down the hallway and into the man's office. He wants everything to just be over with.

The man looks up and the bot shoves the person forwards, taking a step back. The man's eyes go wide and he stands up from his chair behind the desk, placing his hand on the edge to keep himself steady. The person looks at the man with the same shocked expression.

And suddenly they are in eachothers arms, both crying. The man presses his face into the person's neck, saying something. The bot gently touches his own neck with the tips of his trembling fingers.

The person is soothing the man. He is holding the man and petting his silky black hair and tell him everything is alright. At the same time he is still crying and between his words of comfort he is saying, I thought you were dead.  And the man is sniffing and replying, And I thought you were gone.

The bot is telling himself now more than ever that what he is feeling behind his eyes is just oil. He is trying to look anywhere but at the person he looks like and the man he loves, but that is the only thing he can see. A sudden flash catches his attention as the person continues to pet the man's hair.

A ring.

An engagement ring.

In that moment, the bot knows what heartbreak is.

From behind his eyes the oil finally starts to flow. It streaks down his artificial skin, leaving black marks, and he finds himself suddenly hating the person. He hates the person, but he will not, can not, hurt him. He can not hurt him for he is making the man happy. The man has never been anything but anger, but now he is smiling and even laughing.

The scene is to painful to watch and the oil is coming faster now, racing down his face and dripping onto the white marble floor. An internal and somehow self caused injury. He would not be wanted anymore, would not be needed any longer. A dull ache throbbed in his chest and as the two before him kissed, he softly touched his own lips. I love you, he mouthed with the person.

And this could be it. The bot wishes, oh how he wishes, that it would just end here. End here and stop his misery. But his wishes have never come true and they don’t begin to now. Instead, the person jabs his thumb over his shoulder at the bot. What are we gonna do about that thing?, he asks, still with his other arm around the man's waist.

The man shrugs. I was only using it to remind myself of who I was looking for. It’s scrap now. I don’t need that piece of junk anymore. And he smiles down at the person as if hes the sun and moon and this time when he grabs the gun off the desk and aims it at the bots head, the bot knows that this time there will be no white light and metal bed to wake up to, that the man will not be bent over reparing him, that he won’t be repaired at all.

I love you, he whispers, softer than a summer breeze, just before the top of his head bursts open with the crack of a gunshot, spilling out circuits and wires and oil everywhere, leaving him with nothingness as his body crumples to the floor.