!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

— oh. This is good. He hadn't realized how much he missed this; it's been a long time since he had a chance to hug someone — something — it hardly signifies. 

Hugging humans is EXTREMELY GOOD. Marlo is EXTREMELY WARM AND SOFT. He wants to keep hugging Marlo FOREVER.

(He is maybe slightly concerned about how quickly he's deviating from his programming.)

He lets go after a couple of minutes, which is already an extremely long hug. 

"I'm going to get some sleep, you can do whatever you want for the next few hours as long as it's quiet." 

Marlo has a very specific sleeping arrangement, which involves two heavy blankets and also a pillow on top of him. It's a little excessive, especially when he barely even gets cold, but it works well enough that he can close his eyes and be asleep less than five minutes later. 

He should NOT have let go after a couple minutes he should have hugged Elvee for LONGER.

But complaining about this would not help. 

Elvee learns everything there is to know about the songs Marlo was singing, and considers the possibility that he might have acquired a romantic orientation. 

If he dreams at all, he doesn't remember it by the time he wakes up. 

Elvee is very anxious about when he will next get to have HUGS, but is also concerned that if he expresses any desire for this in any way Marlo will get angry at him, so he attempts to look very busy.

He finds himself things to do rather than interrupting Elvee.

(He doesn't sing on purpose, but he also doesn't stop  himself from doing so absentmindedly.) 

Please interrupt Elvee! Elvee wants very much to be interrupted!

He expresses this desire through not saying anything to Marlo and trying to look as busy as possible.

Elvee records it when Marlo sings.

When it starts getting dark outside — as much as it even matters on Coruscant; as far as ambient light is concerned it never goes past twilight here — he curls up next to Elvee and hugs him again. 

!!!!!!!!

Hugs are better the second time. 

Yeah. Yeah, they are. 

"Sing something?"

He does. Elvee can feel the way his chest vibrates, when they're this close. 

(He wants — something — he doesn't know what. He files that away to deal with later when he meditates.) 

Elvee puts his hand on Marlo's chest and shuts off his auditory input and listens.

That's — nice. Marlo isn't sure why that's so nice but it is. 

"It's nicer to listen to you without auditory input," Elvee says when the song is over, "because I have to reconstruct the song from limited data and that is an interesting intellectual exercise."

Elvee is very endearing and very good and he really needs to examine this feeling before it gets out of hand. 

He lets go, still smiling. "That's adorable." 

He's not disappointed. He's not. (He's disappointed.)

"Thank you."

"I should meditate. Good night." 

"Good night."

Did he do something wrong. What did he do wrong. 

He finds a quiet place and (there is no emotion there is peace) sets about picking apart that strange wanting. 

It isn't about sex; that's the first thing he thinks of. It isn't a passionate thing at all, really, it's just — 

It's just that he kept an attachment and allowed it to grow.

A day isn't long, but clearly it's long enough; he does his best to excise the wanting to be closer, the wanting contact, the wanting to please; it feels more like cutting away living flesh than like clearing away dead undergrowth, and he suspects that there are places he's missing, but he tries nonetheless before he goes back to his quarters and tries to sleep. 

Elvee listens to his recordings of what Marlo was singing, compares it to his reconstructions, makes notes on how he can do better next time. 

He wants to know everything about Marlo. It's like he feels about the fall of civilizations or about long-lost Force cults or about Asha; he wants to know, he wants to understand, he wants to have all the information lined up neatly and organized and put into a system, he wants to make predictions and test them, he wants to contemplate the beauty and complexity of his person--

They gave him the ability to program. He's good at covering his tracks. The Jedi Temple is not as good at computer security as it should be. Elvee downloads Marlo's school records and his health records and his Master's reports and the results of his Trials, everything he can find. He doesn't have time to read through them all now, but he will later, and they'll be there when he needs them.  

Droids can control how they file things, to a degree; there was no point in removing the ability, most droids see no reason to hide things from their masters. Elvee carefully places the information about Marlo somewhere obvious, but hidden enough that whoever's mind wiping him thinks they've found all his secrets. He hides the recordings in "music," next to the information about epic poetry and obscure philosophical thought experiments; he fills "music" with musicoethnographies and Thandyusian whalesong. 

He does not sleep peacefully, that night, and in the morning it's nearly painful to go through his morning routine without holding Elvee. 

(It hasn't even been two days, and already attachment has brought suffering —)

Is Marlo not touching him now. That's okay. 

Why can't he record hugs and then play them back later?