the spark before the dark.
the spark before the dark.
kris/suho - nc-17 - angst - a little smut - 4704 words
robots!AU. it’s the curiosity that pushes him to keep going.
edited: 10/03/2013
Joonmyun opens the door of his apartment, surprised to find his old friend waiting with someone else outside the door. Kyuhyun smiles widely at him.
“Hi Joonmyun. Mind if we come in?” He gestures at the tall figure beside him. Joonmyun nods hesitantly, instantly blushing when he remembers the state of his apartment.
His clothes are strewn all over the place, and Kyuhyun chuckles knowingly. “You never change, do you, Joonmyun?”
“Apparently not,” the younger mutters to himself while picking up the dirty laundry he always neglected. After clearing up the couch, he invites them to sit down.
“I’ll just go to the bathroom, okay?” Kyuhyun stands up and leaves Joonmyun with the tall man, wondering what he should do.
“You are not in my database,” the other person says calmly. The monotone voice and cryptic words say it all; he was not human.
Technology advanced so much that people learned how to create human beings, robots that served the humans by doing all the work that they were supposed to. It was both fascinating and disturbing; many fear the day when the robots would find their own mind and disobey their masters.
The robot on Joonmyun’s couch was clearly not a servant bot with the way it sized everything up with an incessant frown. Servant bots were pleasant, charming and accommodating and this one clearly wasn’t any of those.
“Its name is Kris,” Kyuhyun says from behind Joonmyun. The younger jumps, letting out a nervous chuckle.
“So you still work for SM?” Joonmyun rushes to prepare some coffee but the older man shakes his head.
“Yeah, I’m Kris’s manager. The modeling agency’s lucky enough to have its own manufacturer of model bots, so there’s a ton of bots like it in the agency.”
Joonmyun sits down beside Kyuhyun. “The company’s really evolved since I left.”
“It has,” Kyuhyun says with a lingering fondness. They were close back then, and they’re still friends up to now, but things have changed.
“I need you to take care of Kris for a while. I don’t have any charging cells on me and it’s going to die soon.”
“Battery at 13%,” Kris says at the side. Joonmyun is impressed. These bots were outfitted with sensors that understood humans and their conversations already. When he was still at SM, they had to teach them those kinds of etiquette.
Kyuhyun presses something at the back of his neck and the robot slowly shuts down. “That’ll conserve its battery for a while. It’ll turn back on automatically when it’s fully charged.”
“I have some full cells. I can do it.”
“Thank you so much, Joonmyun. I’ll make it up to you one day.” Kyuhyun rushes out of the apartment and hugs Joonmyun lightly. “I’ll pick it up eventually. Tell it its schedule’s been cancelled tomorrow.”
Joonmyun smiles before turning around and remembering that there was a robot waiting for him. He digs through his drawers and grabs the two charging cells he hasn’t used in a long time.
He remembers his first robot, a mere companion dog. The concept of bots was still vague back then, and there were many things that weren’t clear. One of them was how to charge one. he didn’t know that plugging a bot directly to a socket would short circuit it, and in the blink of an eye, his dog was gone.
He sighs, walking back to the living room with the cells in one hand. He sits down beside Kris and takes one of its large hands in his own. Kris’s hands are smooth like normal humans’ skin, not rubbery like the old versions of model bots.
He slowly opens the charging compartment in its hand, biting his lip in nervousness when he sees the skin part cleanly. It’s never been easy to see a seemingly normal person be dismantled and repaired just like a toy. The cell fits perfectly inside the slot, and he does the same to the other hand.
Kris’s eyes light up and then it closes them again. Joonmyun stares at the face of the bot, admiring the slope of its nose and its soft-looking lips and he sighs. He always dislikes it when model bots are more attractive than him.
He tries to half-drag and half-carry it to the bedroom. The weight of the robot isn’t bulky at all. He feels like he’s carrying a normal human being and he starts thinking again.
Can robots feel?
He hears shifting beside him and he opens his eyes wide. When Joonmyun turns, he’s greeted by the sight of Kris slowly stretching its joints. Or whatever they called it for robots.
“You are not in my database,” Kris says again, and Joonmyun sits up on the bed while rubbing his eyes and trying to stay awake.
“I’m Kim Joonmyun. Your master asked me to charge you. Also, he told me to tell you that your schedule for today has been cancelled.”
The robot stares at the distance, and Joonmyun can almost hear the gears in its head turning. “Command received. Schedule cleared.”
Joonmyun looks at it in awe, admiring the determination etched in its frown and the clarity of the line separating its humanity from its robotic nature. He likes how well it was created and how natural it seems, as long as it isn’t talking, of course.
“My database tells me that staring is rude and generally not a sign of good manners.” Kris’s monotone voice shocks him out of his reverie. Joonmyun laughs nervously before looking away.
“Sorry,” he mutters. “Uh, do you have a human name?”
“Human name? According to my database, robots do not commonly have human names.” Joonmyun stares at it again, enjoying the look of confusion gracing its features. It’s rare that robots don’t know something and Joonmyun starts to wonder again if they really can’t feel the emotion present in their faces.
“Do you have any name other than Kris?”
The robot shakes its head. “My official name is LI5424364. But my engineers tell me that i was modeled after a foreign man named Wu Yifan.”
“Then I’ll call you Yifan, okay?”
“Okay.”
“What do model bots do when they don’t have a schedule?” Joonmyun asks out of nowhere. The robot is sitting stiffly on his couch, reading through a personal memoir of Joonmyun’s grandfather after it announced that every book in the human’s library was already in his database. Joonmyun handed over the thick book with great irritation, but watching the bot skim through the memoir with curiosity in its eyes made the annoyance slowly wither away.
“We wait for another schedule.” Joonmyun sends it an exasperated look. Its database tells it to apologize, but something inside its mind tells it to smirk and it follows the latter instinct. Joonmyun’s expression melts away and is replaced by a blush on his cheeks. Kris does not understand. His reaction is not in its database.
“But seriously, what do you do?”
Kris stays still for a moment, searching its memory card for activities that aren’t related to modeling. It finds none. “We… wait for another schedule.”
Joonmyun slowly understands that what it’s saying is the truth. It takes him by surprise, and he doesn’t know why because he understands that bots have a singular purpose in their lifespan and that is to serve the purpose they were made for.
Joonmyun stands up. “Yifan.”
No response.
“Yifan.”
No response.
“Kris.”
The robot looks up at him, notices the tension in his spine and the anticipation in his eyes and stands up.
“We’re leaving.”
They find themselves at a movie house. Joonmyun doesn’t know why he spent money on a comedy when he knew that all he wanted to do was stare at Yifan and watch how it would react to the movie.
The robot understands the concept of humor, laughs at the right places and gets louder when necessary. Joonmyun enjoys the parts that it enjoys more and stays silent when it’s silent. The robot notices his reactions and Joonmyun knows it’s thinking of why? Why would the human react with how I react?
Joonmyun smiles when he sees the concentration in its eyes.
Joonmyun passes by his friend Yixing’s art classes and he can see Yifan’s eyes sparkle when it sees the easels and markers and drawing pads all over the place.
“How much for a lesson again?”
He indulges Yifan’s sudden interest in art. He doesn’t want to tell the poor robot that it has the art skills of a newborn baby, but after another self-proclaimed “masterpiece” after the thirteen ones that came before, Joonmyun couldn’t hold back a laugh.
“I thought robots were good at everything,” Joonmyun mutters against a pillow while laughing at the abstract masterpiece that is Yifan’s drawing. The robot picks up the meaning behind his words and frowns even more.
“Model robots are not artist robots. We are good at many things, but apparently I’m not good at art,” Yifan says with its monotone voice, and Joonmyun can detect a little bit of hurt in its voice. He chuckles. He’s so mean that he actually managed to hurt a robot’s feelings, of all people.
He turns his eyes back to the book in his hands, listening the sound of Yifan beside him scribbling furiously in the drawing pad, waiting for it to show its newest drawing and claiming it as a stroke of genius yet again.
Joonmyun decides that it can’t sleep on the couch. The couch is small and his legs are way too long. Yifan reminds him that robots do not sleep, even as it lies down stiffly on Joonmyun’s queen-sized bed.
“Isn’t there a sleep mode on you? Even just a stand-by button?” Joonmyun puts on his oversized shirt and slips in beside Yifan.
“Processing command. Command rejected. There is no sleep mode and no stand-by button in my built-in features.”
“Then maybe you should put effort into shutting down some of your features.” Yifan stares at him before closing its eyelids. Joonmyun could hear the mechanical processes taking place and suddenly stopping, feeling the steady hum of Yifan’s insides halting until the robot is at rest. He could still feel the main battery running, but he knows that this is the closest a robot could get to sleep.
He closes his eyes and shuts down some of his own features, including the one that makes him think.
Joonmyun wakes up to Yifan’s face again; this time, it’s staring at him, and it quickly looks away when it sees that he was awake. The human stretches and stands up slowly.
“My database says it’s polite to say ‘good morning’ to someone who recently woke up.”
“What would you say?”
Yifan stays silent for a moment. “What is my schedule for today?”
“Do you need a change of clothes?” Joonmyun asks after noticing that it’s worn the same shirt and jeans for the past two days.
“My database tells me that it is embarrassing to be seen wearing the same outfit more than once in two weeks.”
Joonmyun bites his lip. “Alright. I’ll borrow some clothes from my neighbor.”
He dashes outside and knocks on his next door neighbor. The door opens to reveal an apartment even messier than Joonmyun’s and a tall male grinning widely at him.
“Joonmyun! What brings you here?” Chanyeol is gigantic like Yifan, and Joonmyun is sure that he’ll have something for the robot to wear.
“I have a robot in my place. Do you have any clothes you can let it borrow for a while?”
Chanyeol smiles. “Of course I do. Let me get some.”
Joonmyun goes back inside his apartment with a bag full of clothes. “This’ll last you for a week or two, at most.”
Yifan grabs a random shirt. It takes off what it’s wearing and slides its arms into the long sleeves. It stares at itself in the mirror in the corridor. Joonmyun could see why it was a model robot; it looked good in anything, even Chanyeol’s clothes.
“This will do.”
Kyuhyun doesn’t pick him up for another three days. He’s apologetic, but Joonmyun doesn’t mind having the robot around. He’s a little restless because of his lack of activity, but he does not disobey his master’s command of staying with Joonmyun until necessary.
Joonmyun’s refrigerator door is filled with random drawings, scrawls and little doodles that Yifan drew while he had nothing to do. The small human feels like a mother, putting up her child’s drawings to show that she was proud of what he did. He was not Yifan’s mother, and he certainly wasn’t proud of the abstract artwork stuck to his refrigerator, but he keeps it on just because Yifan seems to like it there.
Yixing drops by Joonmyun’s apartment one day and stares at the drawings he’s posted all over. “I didn’t know you decided to adopt a seven year old.”
Joonmyun chuckles, taking a peek at the giant charging in his bedroom. “He’s actually older than us, but even I couldn’t see the difference with his drawings and a kid’s.”
“Ah, you’re a little too mean to your adopted child,” Yixing reprimands playfully. Joonmyun just shrugs.
“He’s horrible, but he’s improved! Look at his first work and look at the one he did just a while ago. At least he isn’t color blind anymore.”
Yixing stares at him incredulously. “He?”
Joonmyun doesn’t realize he’s been referring to Yifan as a human until then. He blushes and puts the papers down. “He can act human if he wants to.”
“Just be careful, okay?” joonmyun looks at him curiously. “I wouldn’t want you treating something as a someone.”
Out of curiosity, Yifan presses his lips against Joonmyun’s. The human is fast asleep and he wants to know what it feels like, to express admiration in a more physical way than words and faraway stares like how it is in the movies in his database.
When he pulls away, he sees Joonmyun’s bright blush, even if his eyes were closed. The tiny human very slowly opens his eyes and stares at Yifan. The robot lies down stiffly, as his usual position, and slowly puts himself to his own version of sleep mode.
Joonmyun is still staring at him, still wondering if what happened really did happen.
Can robots feel?
Yifan is quiet, even more quiet than usual, and Joonmyun is worried. Usually, he would be drawing on a piece of paper or reading something that he knows is in his database but sticks with because he has nothing to do or watching a movie that he knows is in his database but sticks with because he really has nothing to do anymore. Today he just stays silent and stares outside the window.
“Is there something wrong?” Joonmyun tries to ask.
“What is my schedule for today?” Yifan’s voice isn’t monotone, and Joonmyun can sense the longing in it; the longing for what he’s always known and for the familiarity that he was made for.
“Have you ever thought of lying down more comfortably?”
“What?” Yifan stares at him with an amused look. Joonmyun takes one of his arms, notes the warmth from his artificial skin and places the hand under Yifan’s head. He moves his legs so that they wouldn’t stick together like planks of wood and turns him sideways.
“Isn’t that better?” Joonmyun is drowsy and he slowly closes his eyes.
“No.” but Yifan sleeps more quickly than before.
Yixing visits again one day. Yifan’s in the living room and he stands when he sees the man come in. “Hi,” Yifan says with a little polite smile. The human is gaping at him slightly but Yixing quickly composes himself and smiles back.
Joonmyun magically appears out of nowhere and hugs Yixing from the back. “Hey! You didn’t tell me you were going to visit.”
“Maybe you should keep your extra keys in less typical places so that strangers can’t break in so easily,” Yixing jokes around and pushes lightly at his shoulder.
“I’m sorry for not being paranoid like you, but I actually live in a nice neighborhood, so leave me alone.”
“Battery at 17%,” Yifan says with his monotone voice. Joonmyun looks at him oddly. He hasn’t said that in a while. He leads the robot to his bedroom and grabs the charging cells from the bedside table.
“Is something wrong?” Joonmyun carefully slips the cells in the slots in Yifan’s hand. The larger hands wrap around his. They’re warm and Joonmyun knows that it doesn’t come from the cells charging him at the moment. There’s warmth in Yifan’s hands, and he doesn’t know where it comes from.
Yifan slowly puts himself to sleep and Joonmyun goes back to Yixing, the other human already comfortably sitting on his couch. Joonmyun settles down beside him.
“I really don’t think you should be teaching the robot how to be a human.”
“I’m not teaching him; he just learns on his own.”
The next time Yifan kisses him, they’re both obviously awake. Joonmyun’s cooking something and Yifan is chopping vegetables beside him. He doesn’t eat, but he likes to help out. They wait for the soup to boil, and they’re both leaning on the counter, staring at the pot on the stove.
Joonmyun looks up at him, and he doesn’t know why he let the urge control him, but he presses his lips against Joonmyun’s again. The human’s eyes close and he lets the inexperienced robot clumsily move his lips against Joonmyun’s. Yifan places a hand on the smaller male’s hip, just like how they did in the movies. He starts to think that this could last forever until Joonmyun slowly pulls away and takes a deep breath, returning to the task he was focused on before.
Sometimes Yifan doesn’t enjoy being a robot.
joonmyun pulls his hand out from under his hand and slides himself on it. He places Yifan’s other hand on his waist. The robot flushes a little, and he buries his head into Joonmyun’s hair.
The smaller male sighs and slowly drifts to sleep, comforted by Yifan’s artificially natural warmth.
“Good morning.”
Joonmyun doesn’t expect the warm voice behind the greeting, but he looks up at Yifan and smiles when he sees that Yifan is smiling too.
They’re watching a random movie on the couch when Joonmyun decides that he’s bored.he climbs onto yifan’s lap and kisses him quickly.
The taller male slides his hand on Joonmyun’s waist, letting him take control of the kiss. Joonmyun tangles his fingers in Yifan’s sandy blonde hair, pulling slightly and enjoying the soft moan from Yifan. It’s the curiosity that pushes him to keep going, to see what will get a reaction from the robot and what won’t. He also knows that he wants this, that he wants Yifan in every way that he could.
He pulls away and places his head on Yifan’s chest, trying to listen and see if Yifan has something beating inside of him.
They’re walking in the city, looking for something to do, when Yifan links his fingers with Joonmyun’s. The size difference between them is obvious and adorable and Joonmyun squeezes Yifan’s larger digits with a little possessiveness in it, knowing that he’s the only one who’s done that with Yifan and the only one who Yifan has wanted to do it with.
The taller male smiles slightly, knowing exactly what Joonmyun was thinking of.
Joonmyun pushes him on the bed, pulling off the t-shirt Yifan’s wearing and tossing it out of the way. He takes in Yifan’s bare chest, placing his hands on the bare skin and moving all over, trying to see if the skin will warm up in the way that he wants it to. He sucks harshly at yifan’s collarbone and wonders if there’ll be a mark left there. He kisses down his chest until his mouth reaches the band of Yifan’s sweatpants.
He’s about to take it off when the doorbell rings and Joonmyun panics, jumping off the bed. He bites his lip and sends an apologetic look to Yifan who merely nods and lets him go.
Yifan was made to be as anatomically correct as possible, and he knows why it’s there and why it’s supposed to be there, but he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it. It’s not as if robots can reproduce by themselves in any way other than creating their own children.
Yifan feels the inner fluids rushing down south and he stops the process, calming himself down until his sweatpants are no longer uncomfortably tight and he can breathe without making any unnecessary noise. Joonmyun goes back inside the room, looking completely calm and collected.
“Chanyeol needs his shirt back,” Joonmyun mumbles as he rummages through the bag of clothes Chanyeol let them borrow. He pulls out the said shirt and rushes back out.
He goes back inside, and Yifan is ready for bed. He lies down beside the taller male and they slide into their usual position. Yifan is frowning again. “Is there a problem?” Joonmyun is hesitant to ask, but he knows that Yifan can’t hide anything from him anyway.
“I know I can do it and I have the capabilities of doing so, but I feel as if I’m not ready and being unprepared is a feeling that is not in my database.” Joonmyun knows the bit about the database is a lie, just an excuse to hide the fact that Yifan really isn’t ready for something like that. Maybe it’s because he’s not a companion robot, maybe it’s because he is a robot; it doesn’t matter. Yifan isn’t ready.
Joonmyun scolds himself inwardly, berating himself for doing something without considering that Yifan isn’t human. It hurts to think about it again, to remind himself that as nice as their life is now, Yifan isn’t his.
“My battery is really low.” Yifan’s voice is weak and lethargic, a clear sign that he barely has any juice left. He looks around for his charging cells. “Where are the cells?”
“I’ll get it in a while, just wait. Put yourself on sleep mode or something,” Joonmyun yells out from the living room where he’s cleaning up.
Yifan sees the cells charging in the sockets. He doesn’t hesitate at all when he pulls it out, but he immediately regrets it when he feels the shock running through his body. Slowly, his systems all shut down, and he’s left as nothing.
Joonmyun enters the room with a smile, but it immediately drops when he sees Yifan on the floor, charging cells in his hand. He rushes to his phone and calls the mechanic quickly, begging them to hurry.
“Please, Yifan. Don’t die on me.”
The only news he receives is from Kyuhyun.
“I can’t believe you did that to my bot! You tried to turn it into a human? Don’t you understand why these robots were created? They were made to replace us from the jobs that we don’t want, to serve as objects and placeholders. That’s why there were many kinds of robots made with different purposes. If you want a boyfriend, go get a companion bot. But don’t go around, turning model bots into your own personal partner when it has a purpose that it was made for!
“Kris is going back to you for a day or two, and then I’m going to take it back and wipe its memory card and database of everything you’ve made it learn.”
Joonmyun keeps his eyes down the entire time, letting the older male shout at him. He knows he deserves it, and he knows that he did wrong.
Yifan goes back to him that night, and they spend almost the entire time lying down and saying little. He doesn’t know if Yifan can detect the sadness in him, the hesitation in his movements.
Joonmyun crawls up above him, holding Yifan’s face in his hands. “If I tell you I loved you, how would your database tell you to respond?”
“I love you too.”
“How would you respond?”
Yifan pauses for a moment.
“I love you more.”
Joonmyun couldn’t hold back after that. He kisses Yifan like it’s the last time it could ever happen, and the fact that it probably is the last time he can drives him to press and move quicker and closer. Yifan moves at Joonmyun’s pace, taking off their clothes in a blurry haze of desperation and need.
Yifan knows what pleasure feels like. He knows how the sensation is supposed to be, with the peak somewhere near the end until it slows down and leaves you spent and contented.
As he thrusts into Joonmyun, kissing him deeply and obeying his every moan of “harder” and “faster” and “more,” he doesn’t feel the pleasure building up inside of him, like how his database tells him it should be. He only focuses on Joonmyun, on making Joonmyun feel good, on helping Joonmyun reach that peak of pleasure. He only focuses on the man underneath him, mercilessly clawing at his back and moaning loudly without caring if someone could hear them.
He brings Joonmyun to the edge without touching him and as Joonmyun slowly calms down, Yifan pulls out, collapsing beside the smaller male. He tells the fluids to stop moving downwards and he calms himself down.
Joonmyun instinctively curls up beside him, tangling their legs together. Yifan feels like this moment could last forever, like something permanently imprinted in himself that he could never forget simply because it’s too precious to be lost in the monotony of his life.
He begs to anything in the world to make this last forever.
Yifan is dressed in the clothes he met Joonmyun in. He doesn’t know why because Joonmyun has never made him wear those ever since they first met. He sits down on the couch stiffly. The atmosphere is heavy and uncomfortable and he doesn’t know why.
He does know why when he sees Kyuhyun going inside the apartment. He sees Kyuhyun shout at Joonmyun, but the words don’t go in his ear and it’s just a messy blur of meaningless words. The two humans shake hands and Joonmyun looks away. Without having to see, Yifan knows he’s tearing up.
“Kris.”
No response.
“Kris.”
No response.
“Yifan.”
Yifan stands slowly, trying to slow down time in some way. It doesn’t work and Kyuhyun grabs his arm and pulls him out. Joonmyun doesn’t wave goodbye or do anything. The younger male stares out the window and waits for them to leave.
“After this, he won’t remember you or anything related about you. You will be a stranger to him, just like most of the people in this world. Just don’t do anything stupid like call him Yifan or cause unnecessary attention because there’s no point. You don’t exist in his database.”
A year passes and Joonmyun is happy.
He's happy because he’s busy and he enjoys being busy and doing things that he loves.
Sometimes he sees things that remind him of Yifan, like Chanyeol and his gigantic clothes.
Like the horrible drawings hidden in a box under his bed.
Like the charging cells that he’s hidden away to stop reminding himself of the time he almost killed Yifan.
He’s happy because he wants to be happy, and the desire for something always yields results.
“Joonmyun!” Minseok yells out. He drops the clothes he’s trying to style on the model and hugs the younger male. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Great, actually. The business is doing well.” Joonmyun smiles brilliantly. Minseok nods before smiling and going back to work.
Joonmyun looks at the back stage scene right before a fashion show. It’s hectic and people are yelling at each other everywhere; it reminds him of why he left.
He walks a little more and he knows he shouldn’t have walked into a tent when he’s face to face with Yifan again.
The robot is wiping his hands with a wet towel, trying to erase what seems to be marks of multi-colored markers. The tall male looks up from his hands and makes eye contact with the petrified Joonmyun.
He smiles a little. “Hi Joonmyun.”
A/N: wat
okay so as usual the title has nothing to do with the actual fic and it's 2 am and i'm still awake writing this and oh god i can't believe i finished this in 341 mins aka 5 hrs and 41 minutes aHAHAHA my sanity is slowly fading away
and right after i write something fluffy, i write a long angsty piece wow this totally hasn't been a roller coaster of emotions for the past few days /sarcasm
i need to get a life oh god
kris/suho - nc-17 - angst - a little smut - 4704 words
robots!AU. it’s the curiosity that pushes him to keep going.
edited: 10/03/2013
Joonmyun opens the door of his apartment, surprised to find his old friend waiting with someone else outside the door. Kyuhyun smiles widely at him.
“Hi Joonmyun. Mind if we come in?” He gestures at the tall figure beside him. Joonmyun nods hesitantly, instantly blushing when he remembers the state of his apartment.
His clothes are strewn all over the place, and Kyuhyun chuckles knowingly. “You never change, do you, Joonmyun?”
“Apparently not,” the younger mutters to himself while picking up the dirty laundry he always neglected. After clearing up the couch, he invites them to sit down.
“I’ll just go to the bathroom, okay?” Kyuhyun stands up and leaves Joonmyun with the tall man, wondering what he should do.
“You are not in my database,” the other person says calmly. The monotone voice and cryptic words say it all; he was not human.
Technology advanced so much that people learned how to create human beings, robots that served the humans by doing all the work that they were supposed to. It was both fascinating and disturbing; many fear the day when the robots would find their own mind and disobey their masters.
The robot on Joonmyun’s couch was clearly not a servant bot with the way it sized everything up with an incessant frown. Servant bots were pleasant, charming and accommodating and this one clearly wasn’t any of those.
“Its name is Kris,” Kyuhyun says from behind Joonmyun. The younger jumps, letting out a nervous chuckle.
“So you still work for SM?” Joonmyun rushes to prepare some coffee but the older man shakes his head.
“Yeah, I’m Kris’s manager. The modeling agency’s lucky enough to have its own manufacturer of model bots, so there’s a ton of bots like it in the agency.”
Joonmyun sits down beside Kyuhyun. “The company’s really evolved since I left.”
“It has,” Kyuhyun says with a lingering fondness. They were close back then, and they’re still friends up to now, but things have changed.
“I need you to take care of Kris for a while. I don’t have any charging cells on me and it’s going to die soon.”
“Battery at 13%,” Kris says at the side. Joonmyun is impressed. These bots were outfitted with sensors that understood humans and their conversations already. When he was still at SM, they had to teach them those kinds of etiquette.
Kyuhyun presses something at the back of his neck and the robot slowly shuts down. “That’ll conserve its battery for a while. It’ll turn back on automatically when it’s fully charged.”
“I have some full cells. I can do it.”
“Thank you so much, Joonmyun. I’ll make it up to you one day.” Kyuhyun rushes out of the apartment and hugs Joonmyun lightly. “I’ll pick it up eventually. Tell it its schedule’s been cancelled tomorrow.”
Joonmyun smiles before turning around and remembering that there was a robot waiting for him. He digs through his drawers and grabs the two charging cells he hasn’t used in a long time.
He remembers his first robot, a mere companion dog. The concept of bots was still vague back then, and there were many things that weren’t clear. One of them was how to charge one. he didn’t know that plugging a bot directly to a socket would short circuit it, and in the blink of an eye, his dog was gone.
He sighs, walking back to the living room with the cells in one hand. He sits down beside Kris and takes one of its large hands in his own. Kris’s hands are smooth like normal humans’ skin, not rubbery like the old versions of model bots.
He slowly opens the charging compartment in its hand, biting his lip in nervousness when he sees the skin part cleanly. It’s never been easy to see a seemingly normal person be dismantled and repaired just like a toy. The cell fits perfectly inside the slot, and he does the same to the other hand.
Kris’s eyes light up and then it closes them again. Joonmyun stares at the face of the bot, admiring the slope of its nose and its soft-looking lips and he sighs. He always dislikes it when model bots are more attractive than him.
He tries to half-drag and half-carry it to the bedroom. The weight of the robot isn’t bulky at all. He feels like he’s carrying a normal human being and he starts thinking again.
Can robots feel?
He hears shifting beside him and he opens his eyes wide. When Joonmyun turns, he’s greeted by the sight of Kris slowly stretching its joints. Or whatever they called it for robots.
“You are not in my database,” Kris says again, and Joonmyun sits up on the bed while rubbing his eyes and trying to stay awake.
“I’m Kim Joonmyun. Your master asked me to charge you. Also, he told me to tell you that your schedule for today has been cancelled.”
The robot stares at the distance, and Joonmyun can almost hear the gears in its head turning. “Command received. Schedule cleared.”
Joonmyun looks at it in awe, admiring the determination etched in its frown and the clarity of the line separating its humanity from its robotic nature. He likes how well it was created and how natural it seems, as long as it isn’t talking, of course.
“My database tells me that staring is rude and generally not a sign of good manners.” Kris’s monotone voice shocks him out of his reverie. Joonmyun laughs nervously before looking away.
“Sorry,” he mutters. “Uh, do you have a human name?”
“Human name? According to my database, robots do not commonly have human names.” Joonmyun stares at it again, enjoying the look of confusion gracing its features. It’s rare that robots don’t know something and Joonmyun starts to wonder again if they really can’t feel the emotion present in their faces.
“Do you have any name other than Kris?”
The robot shakes its head. “My official name is LI5424364. But my engineers tell me that i was modeled after a foreign man named Wu Yifan.”
“Then I’ll call you Yifan, okay?”
“Okay.”
“What do model bots do when they don’t have a schedule?” Joonmyun asks out of nowhere. The robot is sitting stiffly on his couch, reading through a personal memoir of Joonmyun’s grandfather after it announced that every book in the human’s library was already in his database. Joonmyun handed over the thick book with great irritation, but watching the bot skim through the memoir with curiosity in its eyes made the annoyance slowly wither away.
“We wait for another schedule.” Joonmyun sends it an exasperated look. Its database tells it to apologize, but something inside its mind tells it to smirk and it follows the latter instinct. Joonmyun’s expression melts away and is replaced by a blush on his cheeks. Kris does not understand. His reaction is not in its database.
“But seriously, what do you do?”
Kris stays still for a moment, searching its memory card for activities that aren’t related to modeling. It finds none. “We… wait for another schedule.”
Joonmyun slowly understands that what it’s saying is the truth. It takes him by surprise, and he doesn’t know why because he understands that bots have a singular purpose in their lifespan and that is to serve the purpose they were made for.
Joonmyun stands up. “Yifan.”
No response.
“Yifan.”
No response.
“Kris.”
The robot looks up at him, notices the tension in his spine and the anticipation in his eyes and stands up.
“We’re leaving.”
They find themselves at a movie house. Joonmyun doesn’t know why he spent money on a comedy when he knew that all he wanted to do was stare at Yifan and watch how it would react to the movie.
The robot understands the concept of humor, laughs at the right places and gets louder when necessary. Joonmyun enjoys the parts that it enjoys more and stays silent when it’s silent. The robot notices his reactions and Joonmyun knows it’s thinking of why? Why would the human react with how I react?
Joonmyun smiles when he sees the concentration in its eyes.
Joonmyun passes by his friend Yixing’s art classes and he can see Yifan’s eyes sparkle when it sees the easels and markers and drawing pads all over the place.
“How much for a lesson again?”
He indulges Yifan’s sudden interest in art. He doesn’t want to tell the poor robot that it has the art skills of a newborn baby, but after another self-proclaimed “masterpiece” after the thirteen ones that came before, Joonmyun couldn’t hold back a laugh.
“I thought robots were good at everything,” Joonmyun mutters against a pillow while laughing at the abstract masterpiece that is Yifan’s drawing. The robot picks up the meaning behind his words and frowns even more.
“Model robots are not artist robots. We are good at many things, but apparently I’m not good at art,” Yifan says with its monotone voice, and Joonmyun can detect a little bit of hurt in its voice. He chuckles. He’s so mean that he actually managed to hurt a robot’s feelings, of all people.
He turns his eyes back to the book in his hands, listening the sound of Yifan beside him scribbling furiously in the drawing pad, waiting for it to show its newest drawing and claiming it as a stroke of genius yet again.
Joonmyun decides that it can’t sleep on the couch. The couch is small and his legs are way too long. Yifan reminds him that robots do not sleep, even as it lies down stiffly on Joonmyun’s queen-sized bed.
“Isn’t there a sleep mode on you? Even just a stand-by button?” Joonmyun puts on his oversized shirt and slips in beside Yifan.
“Processing command. Command rejected. There is no sleep mode and no stand-by button in my built-in features.”
“Then maybe you should put effort into shutting down some of your features.” Yifan stares at him before closing its eyelids. Joonmyun could hear the mechanical processes taking place and suddenly stopping, feeling the steady hum of Yifan’s insides halting until the robot is at rest. He could still feel the main battery running, but he knows that this is the closest a robot could get to sleep.
He closes his eyes and shuts down some of his own features, including the one that makes him think.
Joonmyun wakes up to Yifan’s face again; this time, it’s staring at him, and it quickly looks away when it sees that he was awake. The human stretches and stands up slowly.
“My database says it’s polite to say ‘good morning’ to someone who recently woke up.”
“What would you say?”
Yifan stays silent for a moment. “What is my schedule for today?”
“Do you need a change of clothes?” Joonmyun asks after noticing that it’s worn the same shirt and jeans for the past two days.
“My database tells me that it is embarrassing to be seen wearing the same outfit more than once in two weeks.”
Joonmyun bites his lip. “Alright. I’ll borrow some clothes from my neighbor.”
He dashes outside and knocks on his next door neighbor. The door opens to reveal an apartment even messier than Joonmyun’s and a tall male grinning widely at him.
“Joonmyun! What brings you here?” Chanyeol is gigantic like Yifan, and Joonmyun is sure that he’ll have something for the robot to wear.
“I have a robot in my place. Do you have any clothes you can let it borrow for a while?”
Chanyeol smiles. “Of course I do. Let me get some.”
Joonmyun goes back inside his apartment with a bag full of clothes. “This’ll last you for a week or two, at most.”
Yifan grabs a random shirt. It takes off what it’s wearing and slides its arms into the long sleeves. It stares at itself in the mirror in the corridor. Joonmyun could see why it was a model robot; it looked good in anything, even Chanyeol’s clothes.
“This will do.”
Kyuhyun doesn’t pick him up for another three days. He’s apologetic, but Joonmyun doesn’t mind having the robot around. He’s a little restless because of his lack of activity, but he does not disobey his master’s command of staying with Joonmyun until necessary.
Joonmyun’s refrigerator door is filled with random drawings, scrawls and little doodles that Yifan drew while he had nothing to do. The small human feels like a mother, putting up her child’s drawings to show that she was proud of what he did. He was not Yifan’s mother, and he certainly wasn’t proud of the abstract artwork stuck to his refrigerator, but he keeps it on just because Yifan seems to like it there.
Yixing drops by Joonmyun’s apartment one day and stares at the drawings he’s posted all over. “I didn’t know you decided to adopt a seven year old.”
Joonmyun chuckles, taking a peek at the giant charging in his bedroom. “He’s actually older than us, but even I couldn’t see the difference with his drawings and a kid’s.”
“Ah, you’re a little too mean to your adopted child,” Yixing reprimands playfully. Joonmyun just shrugs.
“He’s horrible, but he’s improved! Look at his first work and look at the one he did just a while ago. At least he isn’t color blind anymore.”
Yixing stares at him incredulously. “He?”
Joonmyun doesn’t realize he’s been referring to Yifan as a human until then. He blushes and puts the papers down. “He can act human if he wants to.”
“Just be careful, okay?” joonmyun looks at him curiously. “I wouldn’t want you treating something as a someone.”
Out of curiosity, Yifan presses his lips against Joonmyun’s. The human is fast asleep and he wants to know what it feels like, to express admiration in a more physical way than words and faraway stares like how it is in the movies in his database.
When he pulls away, he sees Joonmyun’s bright blush, even if his eyes were closed. The tiny human very slowly opens his eyes and stares at Yifan. The robot lies down stiffly, as his usual position, and slowly puts himself to his own version of sleep mode.
Joonmyun is still staring at him, still wondering if what happened really did happen.
Can robots feel?
Yifan is quiet, even more quiet than usual, and Joonmyun is worried. Usually, he would be drawing on a piece of paper or reading something that he knows is in his database but sticks with because he has nothing to do or watching a movie that he knows is in his database but sticks with because he really has nothing to do anymore. Today he just stays silent and stares outside the window.
“Is there something wrong?” Joonmyun tries to ask.
“What is my schedule for today?” Yifan’s voice isn’t monotone, and Joonmyun can sense the longing in it; the longing for what he’s always known and for the familiarity that he was made for.
“Have you ever thought of lying down more comfortably?”
“What?” Yifan stares at him with an amused look. Joonmyun takes one of his arms, notes the warmth from his artificial skin and places the hand under Yifan’s head. He moves his legs so that they wouldn’t stick together like planks of wood and turns him sideways.
“Isn’t that better?” Joonmyun is drowsy and he slowly closes his eyes.
“No.” but Yifan sleeps more quickly than before.
Yixing visits again one day. Yifan’s in the living room and he stands when he sees the man come in. “Hi,” Yifan says with a little polite smile. The human is gaping at him slightly but Yixing quickly composes himself and smiles back.
Joonmyun magically appears out of nowhere and hugs Yixing from the back. “Hey! You didn’t tell me you were going to visit.”
“Maybe you should keep your extra keys in less typical places so that strangers can’t break in so easily,” Yixing jokes around and pushes lightly at his shoulder.
“I’m sorry for not being paranoid like you, but I actually live in a nice neighborhood, so leave me alone.”
“Battery at 17%,” Yifan says with his monotone voice. Joonmyun looks at him oddly. He hasn’t said that in a while. He leads the robot to his bedroom and grabs the charging cells from the bedside table.
“Is something wrong?” Joonmyun carefully slips the cells in the slots in Yifan’s hand. The larger hands wrap around his. They’re warm and Joonmyun knows that it doesn’t come from the cells charging him at the moment. There’s warmth in Yifan’s hands, and he doesn’t know where it comes from.
Yifan slowly puts himself to sleep and Joonmyun goes back to Yixing, the other human already comfortably sitting on his couch. Joonmyun settles down beside him.
“I really don’t think you should be teaching the robot how to be a human.”
“I’m not teaching him; he just learns on his own.”
The next time Yifan kisses him, they’re both obviously awake. Joonmyun’s cooking something and Yifan is chopping vegetables beside him. He doesn’t eat, but he likes to help out. They wait for the soup to boil, and they’re both leaning on the counter, staring at the pot on the stove.
Joonmyun looks up at him, and he doesn’t know why he let the urge control him, but he presses his lips against Joonmyun’s again. The human’s eyes close and he lets the inexperienced robot clumsily move his lips against Joonmyun’s. Yifan places a hand on the smaller male’s hip, just like how they did in the movies. He starts to think that this could last forever until Joonmyun slowly pulls away and takes a deep breath, returning to the task he was focused on before.
Sometimes Yifan doesn’t enjoy being a robot.
joonmyun pulls his hand out from under his hand and slides himself on it. He places Yifan’s other hand on his waist. The robot flushes a little, and he buries his head into Joonmyun’s hair.
The smaller male sighs and slowly drifts to sleep, comforted by Yifan’s artificially natural warmth.
“Good morning.”
Joonmyun doesn’t expect the warm voice behind the greeting, but he looks up at Yifan and smiles when he sees that Yifan is smiling too.
They’re watching a random movie on the couch when Joonmyun decides that he’s bored.he climbs onto yifan’s lap and kisses him quickly.
The taller male slides his hand on Joonmyun’s waist, letting him take control of the kiss. Joonmyun tangles his fingers in Yifan’s sandy blonde hair, pulling slightly and enjoying the soft moan from Yifan. It’s the curiosity that pushes him to keep going, to see what will get a reaction from the robot and what won’t. He also knows that he wants this, that he wants Yifan in every way that he could.
He pulls away and places his head on Yifan’s chest, trying to listen and see if Yifan has something beating inside of him.
They’re walking in the city, looking for something to do, when Yifan links his fingers with Joonmyun’s. The size difference between them is obvious and adorable and Joonmyun squeezes Yifan’s larger digits with a little possessiveness in it, knowing that he’s the only one who’s done that with Yifan and the only one who Yifan has wanted to do it with.
The taller male smiles slightly, knowing exactly what Joonmyun was thinking of.
Joonmyun pushes him on the bed, pulling off the t-shirt Yifan’s wearing and tossing it out of the way. He takes in Yifan’s bare chest, placing his hands on the bare skin and moving all over, trying to see if the skin will warm up in the way that he wants it to. He sucks harshly at yifan’s collarbone and wonders if there’ll be a mark left there. He kisses down his chest until his mouth reaches the band of Yifan’s sweatpants.
He’s about to take it off when the doorbell rings and Joonmyun panics, jumping off the bed. He bites his lip and sends an apologetic look to Yifan who merely nods and lets him go.
Yifan was made to be as anatomically correct as possible, and he knows why it’s there and why it’s supposed to be there, but he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it. It’s not as if robots can reproduce by themselves in any way other than creating their own children.
Yifan feels the inner fluids rushing down south and he stops the process, calming himself down until his sweatpants are no longer uncomfortably tight and he can breathe without making any unnecessary noise. Joonmyun goes back inside the room, looking completely calm and collected.
“Chanyeol needs his shirt back,” Joonmyun mumbles as he rummages through the bag of clothes Chanyeol let them borrow. He pulls out the said shirt and rushes back out.
He goes back inside, and Yifan is ready for bed. He lies down beside the taller male and they slide into their usual position. Yifan is frowning again. “Is there a problem?” Joonmyun is hesitant to ask, but he knows that Yifan can’t hide anything from him anyway.
“I know I can do it and I have the capabilities of doing so, but I feel as if I’m not ready and being unprepared is a feeling that is not in my database.” Joonmyun knows the bit about the database is a lie, just an excuse to hide the fact that Yifan really isn’t ready for something like that. Maybe it’s because he’s not a companion robot, maybe it’s because he is a robot; it doesn’t matter. Yifan isn’t ready.
Joonmyun scolds himself inwardly, berating himself for doing something without considering that Yifan isn’t human. It hurts to think about it again, to remind himself that as nice as their life is now, Yifan isn’t his.
“My battery is really low.” Yifan’s voice is weak and lethargic, a clear sign that he barely has any juice left. He looks around for his charging cells. “Where are the cells?”
“I’ll get it in a while, just wait. Put yourself on sleep mode or something,” Joonmyun yells out from the living room where he’s cleaning up.
Yifan sees the cells charging in the sockets. He doesn’t hesitate at all when he pulls it out, but he immediately regrets it when he feels the shock running through his body. Slowly, his systems all shut down, and he’s left as nothing.
Joonmyun enters the room with a smile, but it immediately drops when he sees Yifan on the floor, charging cells in his hand. He rushes to his phone and calls the mechanic quickly, begging them to hurry.
“Please, Yifan. Don’t die on me.”
The only news he receives is from Kyuhyun.
“I can’t believe you did that to my bot! You tried to turn it into a human? Don’t you understand why these robots were created? They were made to replace us from the jobs that we don’t want, to serve as objects and placeholders. That’s why there were many kinds of robots made with different purposes. If you want a boyfriend, go get a companion bot. But don’t go around, turning model bots into your own personal partner when it has a purpose that it was made for!
“Kris is going back to you for a day or two, and then I’m going to take it back and wipe its memory card and database of everything you’ve made it learn.”
Joonmyun keeps his eyes down the entire time, letting the older male shout at him. He knows he deserves it, and he knows that he did wrong.
Yifan goes back to him that night, and they spend almost the entire time lying down and saying little. He doesn’t know if Yifan can detect the sadness in him, the hesitation in his movements.
Joonmyun crawls up above him, holding Yifan’s face in his hands. “If I tell you I loved you, how would your database tell you to respond?”
“I love you too.”
“How would you respond?”
Yifan pauses for a moment.
“I love you more.”
Joonmyun couldn’t hold back after that. He kisses Yifan like it’s the last time it could ever happen, and the fact that it probably is the last time he can drives him to press and move quicker and closer. Yifan moves at Joonmyun’s pace, taking off their clothes in a blurry haze of desperation and need.
Yifan knows what pleasure feels like. He knows how the sensation is supposed to be, with the peak somewhere near the end until it slows down and leaves you spent and contented.
As he thrusts into Joonmyun, kissing him deeply and obeying his every moan of “harder” and “faster” and “more,” he doesn’t feel the pleasure building up inside of him, like how his database tells him it should be. He only focuses on Joonmyun, on making Joonmyun feel good, on helping Joonmyun reach that peak of pleasure. He only focuses on the man underneath him, mercilessly clawing at his back and moaning loudly without caring if someone could hear them.
He brings Joonmyun to the edge without touching him and as Joonmyun slowly calms down, Yifan pulls out, collapsing beside the smaller male. He tells the fluids to stop moving downwards and he calms himself down.
Joonmyun instinctively curls up beside him, tangling their legs together. Yifan feels like this moment could last forever, like something permanently imprinted in himself that he could never forget simply because it’s too precious to be lost in the monotony of his life.
He begs to anything in the world to make this last forever.
Yifan is dressed in the clothes he met Joonmyun in. He doesn’t know why because Joonmyun has never made him wear those ever since they first met. He sits down on the couch stiffly. The atmosphere is heavy and uncomfortable and he doesn’t know why.
He does know why when he sees Kyuhyun going inside the apartment. He sees Kyuhyun shout at Joonmyun, but the words don’t go in his ear and it’s just a messy blur of meaningless words. The two humans shake hands and Joonmyun looks away. Without having to see, Yifan knows he’s tearing up.
“Kris.”
No response.
“Kris.”
No response.
“Yifan.”
Yifan stands slowly, trying to slow down time in some way. It doesn’t work and Kyuhyun grabs his arm and pulls him out. Joonmyun doesn’t wave goodbye or do anything. The younger male stares out the window and waits for them to leave.
“After this, he won’t remember you or anything related about you. You will be a stranger to him, just like most of the people in this world. Just don’t do anything stupid like call him Yifan or cause unnecessary attention because there’s no point. You don’t exist in his database.”
A year passes and Joonmyun is happy.
He's happy because he’s busy and he enjoys being busy and doing things that he loves.
Sometimes he sees things that remind him of Yifan, like Chanyeol and his gigantic clothes.
Like the horrible drawings hidden in a box under his bed.
Like the charging cells that he’s hidden away to stop reminding himself of the time he almost killed Yifan.
He’s happy because he wants to be happy, and the desire for something always yields results.
“Joonmyun!” Minseok yells out. He drops the clothes he’s trying to style on the model and hugs the younger male. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Great, actually. The business is doing well.” Joonmyun smiles brilliantly. Minseok nods before smiling and going back to work.
Joonmyun looks at the back stage scene right before a fashion show. It’s hectic and people are yelling at each other everywhere; it reminds him of why he left.
He walks a little more and he knows he shouldn’t have walked into a tent when he’s face to face with Yifan again.
The robot is wiping his hands with a wet towel, trying to erase what seems to be marks of multi-colored markers. The tall male looks up from his hands and makes eye contact with the petrified Joonmyun.
He smiles a little. “Hi Joonmyun.”
A/N: wat
okay so as usual the title has nothing to do with the actual fic and it's 2 am and i'm still awake writing this and oh god i can't believe i finished this in 341 mins aka 5 hrs and 41 minutes aHAHAHA my sanity is slowly fading away
and right after i write something fluffy, i write a long angsty piece wow this totally hasn't been a roller coaster of emotions for the past few days /sarcasm
i need to get a life oh god