A Curious Proposition

"Heya, Pokerface~" Melodia called out as she sauntered into the Backroom of the Starship Casino.

"Melodia!" Pokerface greeted, looking up from where he'd been fudging– er, organizing his finance reports. "What brings you all the way out here?"

It was mostly a pointless question. Melodia dropped by the casino at least once a month, and she almost never had a good reason for it. But Pokerface delighted in formalities, pointless or no, and so asked her all the same.

"I've got a proposition for ya, Pokey," Melodia told him, perching herself on his desk. He noted with displeasure that she'd knocked several papers to the floor, but was interrupted before he could complain. "Ya gotta be completely honest with me on this one, ya got that?"

"Why, Melodia," Pokerface replied smoothly, touching a hand to his chest, "I'm always honest."

"I'm being serious here, Pokey."

Pokerface lifted his sunglasses so his eyes could flash two question marks at her. "Alright. I'll... try to be honest, then."

"Great!" Melodia squealed, clapping once. It was at that moment that Pokerface realized that her keytar was nowhere in sight, and he grew truly concerned — Melodia never went anywhere without her keytar. Melodia took a deep breath and asked, as cheerfully and manic as ever, "Do ya want to be my boyfriend?"

"Do I what?" Pokerface asked. His eyes began spinning rapidly, before finally settling on a question mark and an exclamation point.

"Do ya want to be my boyfriend?" Melodia repeated slowly, as if she thought he hadn't heard it the first time.

"So my audio processors aren't malfunctioning," Pokerface muttered to himself. He looked over at Melodia, who was waiting eagerly for his response, and sighed. "Melodia, I am... flattered, really. But why in the world are you asking me of all people?"

"Ain't that obvious?" Melodia asked. His eyes flashed N O in response. She scoffed, throwing her hands in the air. "'Cause I like ya, silly! What other reason is there to ask someone to be your boyfriend?"

Pokerface could think of at least seven other reasons. Doubting that any of them applied to Melodia, however, he listed none of them and instead chose to remind her of a very important fact. "I'm a Droid, Melodia."

"Yeah, so?"

"Yeah, so Droids don't date," he stiffly told her.

"That's not true," Melodia protested. "What about that cute bot that was playing the slots a few months back? Ya know, the one with that kooky eye? She was going on and on about the guys she's been with."

Pokerface paused, searching his memory banks for who she was talking about. He growled when he remembered. "She used to be a Pleasure Droid!" he snapped at Melodia, somewhat offended at the comparison. "I'm a Dealer turned Operator, in case you've forgotten."

"I know that," Melodia said, rolling her eyes. "I'm just sayin', she actually really liked a couple of those guys, even talked about dating a few of 'em. You've got a full range of emotions, haven't ya? If ya can have friends, why couldn't ya have a girlfriend?"

Pokerface considered her point. He supposed, technically, he wasn't incapable of it. Actually, he thought, that wasn't entirely true — there were definitely certain things he was incapable of. "It's true that I can feel affection for others, yes," he admitted, because he'd said that he'd try to be honest, "but that doesn't mean I can feel any sort of sexual attraction. And even if I could, I'm not exactly equipped to follow through on said attraction, if you catch my drift."

"What? OH." Melodia giggled, waving a dismissive hand. "Don't worry about it, Pokerface. My kind can only do that with our bonded mates, and my guy died a while ago." She looked sad for just a moment, before going back to her manic self so fast that Pokerface could almost convince himself that he just imagined it.

Pokerface felt at a loss. He didn't know much about relationships, but he wasn't entirely clueless about them either, and he'd thought that sex was pretty much what separated friends from lovers. "What exactly would being your boyfriend entail, then?" he asked slowly.

"Weeeeell," Melodia began, thinking. "You'd think about me and try to make me happy, and I'd think about ya and try to make ya happy."

"That just sounds like friends to me," Pokerface pointed out skeptically.

"There's more to it," Melodia snapped.

"Like what?"

"Ya couldn't flirt with anybody but me," Melodia told him, crossing her arms.

"I don't flirt anyways," Pokerface reminded her.

"And ya'd have to act upset if anyone flirted with me, or if I flirted with anyone else," she added.

"You want me to get angry at you?" Pokerface asked, puzzled.

"Yes!"

"Why?"

"Because it shows that ya care," Melodia explained patiently.

"But I don't care," Pokerface protested. "Why should I care who you flirt with or who flirts with you?"

"Because I'm asking ya to," Melodia told him. "And it's part of being boyfriend-girlfriend."

"I still don't understand why we can't just stay friends," Pokerface complained. "If you really want someone to stop people from flirting with you, just ask Mo for help. A few days of his sort of trouble, and the entire system will be too scared to ask you out. In fact, why don't you ask him to be your boyfriend?"

"I don't want Mo to be my boyfriend," Melodia whined. "I want you!"

"But why?" Pokerface asked, exasperated. They still hadn't gotten that cleared up. "Why me, of all people? I'm not a complete idiot, you know, I'm well aware that half the system would do just about anything to get with you. You could have your pick, and you picked me? A guy, a Droid, that will probably never feel physical attraction for you?"

"Because I like ya," Melodia repeated her reasoning from earlier. "And, and you've got a pointy sense of humor. And ya like me, ya like my crazy and my danger and ya don't even want to get in my pants! And ya never get too mad at me when I betray ya — oh, which reminds me, we can't do that no more."

"What?" Pokerface was caught off guard first by Melodia's rambling and then by her sudden change in tone. "What can we not do anymore?"

"We can't betray each other," Melodia clarified. "If we do, then we've gotta break up and we can't be friends and we have to have a huge fight to see who has to leave the Mob forever."

"That seems like a rather harsh penalty, Melodia..."

"Well, it has to be," Melodia told him. "Otherwise we'd betray each other anyways, I know us." She giggled. "It's one of those things I like about you."

"That I betray you?" Pokerface asked. He had thought that the current conversation would eventually begin making sense to him, but the longer it went on the more confused he got.

"That ya betray me a little and I betray ya a little," Melodia began softly, "but we never really hurt each other, and we were always friends again afterwards." Melodia sighed, frowning. "I really like being your friend, Pokey. I don't want to ruin that. If ya really don't want to be my boyfriend, then we can just forget about this, okay?"

Pokerface's bowtie spun as he thought. "I'm still not entirely sure just what you're asking of me, Melodia. So far, it seems the only behavioral change on my part would be to prevent flirting towards or from you. I'm not an expert on this topic, not by any means, but that doesn't exactly sound like a boyfriend to me."

"We'd also go on dates," Melodia told him excitedly, her mood apparently picked back up by the fact he was genuinely considering it.

"And dates would entail..?"

"Us doing something together, just you and me," Melodia explained. "Not too often, we've both got busy schedules, but maybe once a month or something."

"So... Exactly what we do now," Pokerface concluded. He ignored Melodia's pout, continuing, "Can't we just be friends who don't like flirting with others, then? Because that's what this sounds like to me."

"But I wanna tell people that you're my boyfriend," Melodia tried.

"You could tell them that anyways," Pokerface suggested with a shrug. Neither of them were very honest people, after all. It was one of the things he liked about her.

"It's not the same." Melodia slumped a little, looking uncharacteristically put out. She brightened again a moment later. "Wait, I know something I wanna do with ya that friends don't do! Come here for a second."

He obediently moved closer to her, letting her hands guide his face even closer. A moment later, his sensors registered their faces touching, and then she was pulling away again.

"Did you just kiss me?" Pokerface asked, confused. Droids didn't really... Well, they just didn't, really.

"Yeah!" Melodia confirmed, excited. "Did ya like it?"

"No," Pokerface answered, still trying to keep his promise of honesty. He regretted doing so when her face fell.

"Well, did ya dislike it?" she asked.

"No." Pokerface shrugged. He felt more-or-less neutral about the sensation of her lips pressing against the metal of his mouth. Though, he supposed he could admit that it was interesting, at the very least.

Melodia perked up a little. "Would ya be upset if ya weren't allowed to let anyone else do that with ya?"

"No..?" Pokerface shrugged again. He didn't particularly like his actions being restricted, but it wasn't like he'd ever done it with anyone before this, and he had no real interest in it anyways. He wasn't against Melodia doing it, though, even if he still didn't understand why she wanted to.

"There ya go, then!" Melodia nodded decisively, as if she'd made some grand point. "No letting each other flirt with anyone else and no betraying each other, we tell people we're boyfriend-girlfriend, and we only kiss each other. That's definitely not just friends."

"I suppose it's not," Pokerface agreed. He thought it over. "This... will make you happy?"

"Ye-p!" Melodia nodded rapidly, grinning.

Pokerface sighed, leaning on his desk. His eyes spun until they landed on two hearts. "Consider me in love, then."

"Yay!" Melodia squealed, throwing her arms around him. "You're the best, Pokey."

"Of course I am," Pokerface replied, letting her hug him. Inwardly, he smiled to himself. He still didn't really understand this dating thing, but Melodia was happy and he didn't have to change his behavior too much, so...

After a moment, Pokerface hummed and said, "Melodia?"

"Yeah?"

"Can we stop being honest now, or is that part of being boyfriend-girlfriend too?"

Melodia cackled. "Yeah, yeah, we can go back to being lying jerks again."

"Why, Melodia, I have no idea what you're talking about," Pokerface told her, snapping his sunglasses back on. "An honest businessman like myself never lies."

Melodia fell off the desk laughing.

Later, inside the caverns of Brim*Star, Pokerface approached Melodia and held out an object. She took it, discovering that it was a plushie animal with a ribbon around its neck.

"I asked around," he explained. "This is good boyfriend behavior. Say thank you."

"Thank you," Melodia responded, smiling.

Pokerface nodded, pleased with himself. He pressed a kiss to the side of her head, though he didn't have lips so really he was just touching his mouth to her hair, before wandering off again.

"What just happened?" Hardware asked, blinking in the direction Pokerface had gone.

Melodia ignored him, squeezing her new plushie with a happy little sigh. "He does care..."