SAY THE NAME HOES

(this is actually the first time i've gotten to say that. which means it's the first time i've reached chapter seventeen in one of my fics,, yikes)

-

Jongdae sat with his legs curled up beside him, folding a pair of pants across his lap so it looked like a six year old had done it.

By using clothes to dry Minseok's body the other day, he'd left himself a sizable mess to clean up, but cleaning it helped him not think so much. The only thing that bugged him was that he was a mechanic, someone who needed to be neat and particular about things. Why the hell could he literally program a robot to feel emotions, but not fold a shirt correctly?

"So, I never asked you," Jongdae began so he could stop thinking about his clothes-folding incompetence. "How did you get your voice and memory back?"

"That was why I was out in the forest, actually," Minseok replied, eyes on the ceiling above him. His body was splayed out on the floor like a starfish. Minutes beforehand, he'd asked Jongdae for permission to lay like that. Jongdae found his subordination shocking sometimes. "There was something that you told me. It caused me to think my answer was out there."

"You kind of sound like a hippie," Jongdae commented, folding up a soft blue shirt that was his very favorite. It helped him fall asleep at night, especially now that the season had changed and the nights were cold. "Anyway, continue. I want to know how you ended up without a voice in the first place."

Minseok watched Jongdae's hands as he folded away. "Ah, that. You can thank that scum of the earth, Chanyeol," he told him with an edge of bitterness to his voice. "He was stealing bits of my programming onto little memory chips, then removing them from my system altogether. I was able to retrieve them since - thankfully - he's dead."

"Whoa, whoa, what?" Jongdae blurted out, nearly dropping the shirt in his hands. "He's dead? Did you kill him?"

Minseok shook his head. "No. I was beat to that job," he said truthfully, but also kind of like he wished he'd done it himself. "Remember that bear?"

Jongdae quickly realized exactly what he meant by that, and his face scrunched up as he swallowed the weird feeling in his throat. "Oh, man," he remarked, because as much as he hated Chanyeol for being an evil, conniving snake, he was not enjoying this mental image.

"Yes, he was torn to bits," Minseok told him, watching as Jongdae folded the last piece of clothing and placed it in the top drawer. "I was lucky I found the memory chips at all, and even luckier that I knew what to do with them."

Jongdae cringed, unable to stop imagining Chanyeol's ripped remains mixed with dead leaves and dirt and bugs. That alone disturbed him, not to mention how unsettling it was to realize that the whole time, Chanyeol had been breaking in and stealing little parts of Minseok without him noticing.

"Sounds like it," he remarked, his frown lingering. Come to think of it, maybe that dream he had about somebody's bony grim reaper hand clapping a chloroform rag over his mouth wasn't a dream at all. Maybe it was Chanyeol's hand, and he'd done it just to get to Minseok and screw with his life.

Man, what a .

Finally finished with his folding, an enlightened Jongdae dropped to his knees, crawling over like a toddler on a mission so he could splay himself out beside Minseok on the floor.

There was barely an inch between his face and Minseok's side, so he lifted his head in order to rest it on top of the robot's belly. "You know," he said, allowing his eyes to fall shut. "We should name that bear."

"I suppose we've named an animal before," Minseok remarked, looking down at him, which gave him an extra chin or two. Jongdae had to force himself not to laugh. "Alright then. I named the last one. It's your turn, Jongdae."

Jongdae finally let himself chuckle. There wasn't any reason for it, really. He was just happy. "Okay," he agreed, nodding his head. "How about-"

"Wait," Minseok interrupted, face lighting up abruptly. "Toby. Because we found him earlier this month, which is October."

Jongdae had to reach over his own head to give the robot a playful, scolding smack on the stomach. "You didn't let me talk!"

Minseok didn't even flinch. "I can't feel pain, Jongdae," he told him, raising his arm and giving himself an alarming punch in the side to demonstrate. It made Jongdae gasp. "You're not very good at getting the upper hand."

Jongdae just smacked him again, enjoying Minseok's unintentional pun and the fact that he felt nothing. How the whole pain thing never came up, Jongdae had no clue. But now he knew.

"You know, " the mechanic began after a small silence, wrapping his shirt tightly around himself in the chilly room. "I don't remember making you sassy or competitive. Where did you get that from?"

Grinning and curling his body up tightly like thread around its spool, he waited for his answer.

But moments rolled on, and the robot laid still and silent.

Slowly, Jongdae's smile melted from his face. A response was long past due, and it was enough for his brain to invite a bit of anxiety in. Jongdae neck was stiff as he tilted his head over to look at Minseok's face.

It felt like he was in a nightmare when their eyes met, and Minseok's were blank and void of their glow.

It was like he was reliving the horrible experience from just days ago all over again. Mere seconds felt like they would never end as he stared at Minseok, and Minseok looked back, yet never saw him.

Gray pupils and a lifeless face. That sight truly had been burned into his nightmares just nights ago, and now he feared he'd never be free of it.

Jongdae's throat was tightening up. What do I do?

Turns out he didn't need to know the answer to that question. Because then, just like that, the robot's eyes flickered back on like the lights after a power outage, and Minseok blinked like nothing had happened.

Jongdae continued to stare, the sinking feeling in his chest being eased by the blue that shined on him in the dark of the room.

Minseok, on the other hand, didn't seem at all aware of what just happened. "Jongdae, I have something I wasn't truly able to ask you," he brought up suddenly, laying his head back down on the floor.

Jongdae - who was trying to shake off this disturbing blip in their conversation - studied him, searching for any sign that he realized he had just shut down for a second. As he often did, Minseok remained oblivious. "Alright, hit me," Jongdae finally replied, giving in.

Minseok seemed puzzled by that remark, but tried to follow orders nonetheless, and Jongdae winced as he earned a punch in the arm, one that was probably meant to be gentle. And it would have been if Minseok wasn't so goddamn strong. "Ow! What is with you and punching things today?" Jongdae whined, rubbing his bicep. "Maybe you can't feel pain, but I can."

Minseok cocked his head. "But you said to-"

"Minseok," Jongdae sighed, shaking his head and trying not to smile. That robot sure made him smile a lot for someone who wasn't even aware he was funny. "That's a figure of speech. It means you should tell the other person what you're thinking."

The robot blinked. "Oh."

"Anyways," Jongdae steered the conversation back in the right direction, grabbing onto Minseok's hand and teasingly imprisoning it so he couldn't punch anymore. "What do you want to ask me?"

Because of course, he was curious. Minseok asked him things often, but somehow, this seemed more important. More like something Minseok had pondered over a longer period of time.

Minseok allowed his head to tilt pensively, his eyes lingering on the ceiling above him. "That word. Love," he mentioned quietly, like the word eluded him more than anything else. "You said you'd tell me what it means."

And with that, Jongdae's mood took its final turn for the worse. This was when he allowed his palms to rub his face, trying to work out the stress underneath his skin. This is the last thing I want to talk about with him.

Their proximity did him no favor as he started to try and articulate the root meaning of everything he felt. "Well, I mean. It's this, like," he muttered, memories running through his head. "Feeling. I don't know, it's kind of weird."

And it's really weird if you feel it for a robot.

"An emotion?" Minseok questioned, tone raising a bit in understanding.

"Not quite," Jongdae responded, glad that Minseok couldn't see the dumb look on his face. "But sort of."

Minseok placed his palms on the floor, pushing himself up so he sat up straight. It was a slow movement, so Jongdae's head would fall very gently into his lap. "So if your book said you were 'in love' with me, what does that mean?" he asked.

And there it is. The dreaded question is back.

"It means that I have to go to sleep," Jongdae returned quickly, shutting his eyes and curling his body into an even tighter ball. "Right now. Goodnight."

"It's seven o'clock, Jongdae," Minseok reminded, leaning in to cast the blue light over Jongdae's face in the dark so he could still see it through his eyelids.

The mechanic kept his eyes squeezed shut, refusing to speak, and not just because he could feel Minseok's breath on his face. There was an endless list of things he'd rather talk about than this, and yet he knew he'd made it this mysterious concept in Minseok's mind. Something that he would never stop wondering about if Jongdae didn't explain.

But although Jongdae was smart enough to know that, he was also one to put things off.

"Does it have something to do with your life before you came here?" Minseok asked suddenly, his voice climbing in intonation as he sat up straighter than before. It was like that idea answered so many of the questions he'd never asked out loud.

Jongdae frowned. His life before he came here. That topic still confused him. There were little fragments that he knew, but they didn't all fit together in chronological order. Long term memory was never his forte when he was younger. From the parts of his life he could remember, he could understand why he had always repressed things, but it caused him to be unable to grasp them now.

"Jongdae?" Minseok murmured, leaning further forward to see if the mechanic had actually fallen asleep like he said he would.

"Yeah?" Jongdae replied halfheartedly, his attention elsewhere. The past was a easy web to get caught in when it came to contemplation, and the fact that he didn't really remember much of it didn't help.

Now that he was finally thinking about it, there was something far in his past that hung just above his fingertips and taunted him. It was a huge part of his life, he could tell. So huge that it was probably the reason he was even here.

"If this, 'love' causes you stress, I won't mention it anymore," Minseok assured him, trying to figure out why Jongdae suddenly seemed to be miles away. "But you have to tell me that."

Jongdae finally opened his eyes, and when he reassumed his position in this room, he decided that he belonged elsewhere. There was something he needed to know, and he couldn't find it laying on the floor of his bedroom. "No. There's something else," he told Minseok, grunting as he got up on his feet. "I'm going out for a while. Stay right here in this spot."

Jongdae walked with purpose towards the door, a new and heavy question rolling around in his head like a bowling ball. After all this time, he was determined to learn at least some of the truth.

But before he could leave to chase after that truth, he heard a small, "Wait," coming from behind him.

Jongdae paused in his spot, determination sinking to the floor. Minseok sounded nervous. It was something he hadn't heard in a while. Even with fear programmed into him, Minseok usually remained very collected, holding onto the calm look in his eyes.

Jongdae turned back, and sure enough, the Minseok with the shadow of doubt over his body sat there, as if waiting to see his face one last time. "Something wrong?" he asked him, frowning, because there clearly was.

The robot had such a weird look on his face. Jongdae just couldn't figure it out. "Put this on your wrists," he urged, tossing a small vial of clear liquid to Jongdae, who was lucky he was better at catching things than folding clothes. "Toby will trust you if he smells it. I don't want you to end up like Chanyeol."

While the mechanic didn't have the slightest clue what this liquid was or where Minseok had gotten it, he had really come to trust the robot. That was the main reason he nodded and did as he was told so willingly.

To him, it didn't smell like anything, but it felt nice on his skin. Smooth and slippery, like soap. Maybe it was something that Luhan put together years ago, and Minseok just happened to carry it around for safety reasons.

Either way, Jongdae really hoped it was effective, because once he got out there, he wasn't stopping for anyone. There was a new fire in him, one that insisted he find out once and for all who that bastard was.

"Jongdae."

Just as he was turning to leave for real, Minseok's uneasy voice brought his feet to a halt for the second time. For a moment, Jongdae wondered if it would be a mistake to leave him alone with his thoughts. Something about the way Minseok said his name made it clear he was worried about more than just Toby.

Even if Toby had proven himself to be pretty dangerous.

"Yeah?" Jongdae replied, turning around again to give Minseok his best look of consolation.

The look on Minseok's face had only grown more worried than before, and he had inched towards Jongdae, like he wished he could either stop him from going, or go along with him. "How do I know you'll come back?" he asked, eyes big and innocent.

And with that, Jongdae understood.

Suddenly, he wasn't in a hurry anymore. His itching impatience had disappeared in a matter of seconds, allowing his feet to carry him back to Minseok with a mind of their own. Turns out, every part of him knew what he cared about most.

Jongdae looked him calmly in the face as he crouched down in front of him. His words were gentle, much like the way he placed his calloused hands on an anxious Minseok's shoulders. "Because I'm not Luhan," he said, eyes holding nothing but honesty that he hoped his companion understood. "I'm me, and I'm not going to leave you."

-

not sure what that was lol. but hEy look at me not taking 8 months to update!!