Ever since android technology advanced far enough to produce human like machines, international checks had been introduced. They were held twice a year, spreading over three weeks. Every android across each country was scheduled to be brought into the nearest government building and were inspected. Since Taekwoon wasn’t factory produced, there was a lot more paper work involved with his checks, much to Hakyeon’s annoyance. Where regular checks would take no more than an hour, it took more than three days for Taekwoon’s inspection to be completed. Every inch of his coding had to be checked, as well as the properties of his make up. Test after test, as well as form after form. Hakyeon always complained about it the weeks before the checks were due, when he was sent his mammoth pile of forms. Taekwoon wasn’t able to help with any of the forms, since it was against protocol, so all he could do was pull up information for Hakyeon to fill in. It was all very mundane.

The main reason given for the checks was to make sure the Law codes were all still intact, but it was common knowledge the checks were primarily to find black market androids. That meant a whole lot more of a headache for Hakyeon. Taekwoon didn’t really mind the checks, since majority of it he could run his usual programs, but he hated the software checks. He hated the feeling of them rummaging around in his data. It was always so disorganised afterwards, meaning a day of sorting. Hell, absolute hell.

Hakyeon sighed as he dumped the load of forms on his desk.

“I can’t believe they’re doing the checks early this year, I had stuff planned for this week!” He huffed. Taekwoon sat beside him, the file containing all his information pulled up.

“The forms take you no more than two days, you will have time this week,” Taekwoon mumbled, “besides, mine isn’t scheduled until the last day, we have three weeks to complete these.”

Hakyeon glared at him. Rationalising Hakyeon’s complaints never worked, “You realise this means we won’t have Xiumin running your checks? You’ll have some random prodding at you, you should be as annoyed as I am.”

“Fortunately I cannot feel such things.”

“Oh shut up, you complain about the software checks all the time,” the mechanic hissed.

With all his connections, Hakyeon had always been able to ensure they got the same technician every year. Xiumin, as Hakyeon’s childhood friend, was much more likely to let out of date software and worn parts slip, things Hakyeon didn’t have the money or time to maintain quiet as well as officially needed. With the earlier checks, Xiumin would be out of the country at the time, visiting his family. It seemed no one had been properly notified the dates had been moved up.

“I guess I wont be eating this month, your fans alone cost $5,000. my life.”

The groans and swearing didn’t stop for the whole day, and Taekwoon was sure if he were human he’d have a headache by the end of it. But the constant twinge in his chest was as good as one.

---

Taekwoon stood in front of the mirror, a soft smile on his lips. The corner of his lips were pulled up just so, before he relaxed them back to their natural shape. 

Interesting. 

The house was empty aside from the android, and it was eerily quiet. Not that it bothered the stoic robot. Hakyeon was working again, and Taekwoon had opted to stay behind. He didn’t offer much assistance by accompanying him to the office, and Hakyeon often complained about Wonshik and Hongbin slacking off when Taekwoon was around. The logical option was for Taekwoon to stay behind. 

He didn’t mind the vacant house, since it offered him more time and space to complete tasks. He was finally able to file his system properly and back up his data without constant interruptions from the human. The cleaning could be done properly, and the books on the shelf in Hakyeon’s were finally in order. The unorganised books had poked at Taekwoon’s programming to no end. But Hakyeon didn’t like Taekwoon going into his room if he was “just going to clean”, and had told him that he could only go in if he wanted to talk to him or if Hakyeon was out. Finally that barrier of coding had given way. Knowing the shelves were ordered eased the androids mind.

He had run out of tasks an hour ago though, and Hakyeon wouldn’t be for for another two. Usually his system would simply hibernate until he had something to do again, but he was still running a system backup that prevented him from any shutdown. Backups ran in the background though, and Taekwoon found himself almost… bored. So there he stood in front of the mirror, analysing his facial movements.

He was very familiar with the emotional movements of the human face, since Hakyeon made absolutely sure his facial analysis and reading systems were perfect. He could tell the smallest changes in a persons face, and constantly ran this through an emotional reader. Telling the emotions was easy, but understanding them was near impossible. Emotions had far eluded Taekwoon, as did they any android. They simply didn’t possess them. Most androids, himself included, were programmed with simulated emotions, but these were entirely external, through voice and body language. It seemed his programming wasn’t very strong however, as many people commented on his cold temperament. He couldn’t really do much about it, but sometimes he would attempt to replicate the expressions he knew. 

He didn’t often use a mirror, but it offered a good tool for him to read back the expression. Happiness was his most practiced expression, since it seemed it was the emotion people enjoyed the most. The smile he could muster was never big, but he thought it conveyed the expression sufficiently. At least Hakyeon thought so.

“You look good when you smile Woonie!”

A small beep sounded in Taekwoon’s head signalling the backup was finished. He sighed, knowing he should probably hibernate, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Though he had no task to complete, he wanted to do something. He wanted to fill his time rather than hibernate. He had a little less than two hours before Hakyeon would be home, so what could he do? He tried to think back on all the things Hakyeon did when he was bored, but that usually just involved whining to Taekwoon. But he remembered the books he’d cleaned up earlier. They would likely be strewn around the room again soon, since Hakyeon read so much. There was a thought.

Going back into Hakyeon’s now tidy room, Taekwoon scanned the bookcase, searching. Many of the books were very worn, the spines cracked and the binding weak. Hakyeon called it love but to Taekwoon it was just mistreatment. Some of the books didn’t even have their covers. Why Hakyeon took so little care of them was beyond Taekwoon, since physical books were pretty much a rarity. The whole bookcase of books was probably worth more than Hakyeon made in a year. 

Taekwoon sought out the most worn book, the one that had been read a thousand times. There it was, a truly battered book. The title no longer existed on the destroyed spine, but Taekwoon’s analysers could pick out the faint remnants of ink. 

The Great Gatsby

Taekwoon had heard the title a couple times, mainly when Hakyeon spoke about it, but it had come up a couple of times in his research over the years. He never read much about or around literature, since his main focus was medicine and mechanics, but the title came up more often than he’d expected. It was quiet an old book by any means, but it seemed it was still quite popular. He’d often thought about finding out why. He gave a small sigh and picked the book out of the shelf, carful not to further damage the destroyed cover.

“Worth a try.”

---

“How often does it hurt?”

Taekwoon processed for a moment; searching for the occasions he’d felt the strange twinge in his chest. He found it, the numbers coming together in his head instantly.

“Thirty times in the last two weeks,” he said. He was sat on the workbench, electrodes attached to his chest, with Hakyeon standing before him. The small pulses of the electrodes tickled his nerves lightly and his mouth twitched. It was quite nice the feeling, an addition to his usual energy.

Hakyeon frowned, “Wow, that’s quite a lot. Does it happen every day?”

“Yes,” Taekwoon replied, “Usually in the afternoon when I read.”

Hakyeon hummed and nodded, looking down at the tablet in his hand. The diagnostics Hakyeon could do were far more advanced and accurate than the self-checks Taekwoon could run. Mostly they could only check surface and serious nerve damage, and some software faults. Just enough to notice anything seriously wrong. Pain was an aspect of these diagnostics, although not as strong as human pain and a great deal easier to control. But it was an extremely effective alarm, and Taekwoon found it quite interesting. Though he knew it was unpleasant, watching Hakyeon stub his toe or prick his finger was fascinating. He loved that entirely human sudden and momentary lack of control. He didn’t quite know that. The pain almost always ran in the background, separate from his processing. It never clouded his thought process, only increased with the severity of the damage. Sometimes Taekwoon would try to bring the pain forward to see what it was like. He could never pull it far, but it was fun to feel that slight give in his control. Hakyeon would probably be quite mad if he knew this was what Taekwoon did when he was damaged. Hakyeon hated the pain aspect. He would often comfort Taekwoon when he repaired him, and always injected an anaesthetic. It really wasn’t necessary, but many engineers used it nonetheless, most likely to ease their morality, which was even more interesting.

“Well I don’t think it’s software,” Hakyeon hummed, “I’m just going to run a scan on your chest.”

The pulsing increased a little, the hum through his body rising in pitch. It was so sweet and high, and rattled Taekwoon’s nerves in a delightful way. His mouth twitched again. He loved scans. Loved being connected with something in tune with his being that spoke in the same electric waves. 

His chest twinged again.

“It just hurt again,” Taekwoon spoke softly. Hakyeon looked up from the scan, worry in his eyes. 

“I’m sorry Woonie, I’m trying to find the problem but I can’t find anything on the scan yet. Does it hurt a lot?”

Taekwoon quickly shook his head no. The twinge was nowhere near painful. It felt more like a small electric jolt through his chest, like a minor energy overload. It made his chest feel tight and clammy.

Hakyeon sighed, putting down the tablet and leaned on the bench.

“The scan hasn’t picked anything up, the nerves all look very stable. Is there anything else it could be?” Hakyeon sighed, his brow pinching in thought.

Taekwoon really couldn’t think of anything. He’d spent quite a while searching for anything which could cause the twinge, but all he found was the possibility of nerve damage. He’d looked for other cases like his, but there were very limited and admittedly mostly sketchy results. He’d found a few posts on some more underground sights but all were theory and almost entirely legends, about ghosts in the machines, of androids with unbound parts. Of souls. He hadn’t paid them too much attention, but the soul theory was interesting. That sight was bookmarked for him to read later.

“There is nothing more I can think of,” Taekwoon replied, eyes trained on Hakyeon.

He’d dyed his hair recently to a dark red, and the newness of the colour was obvious even to human eyes. But it was nice, a comfortable shade and Taekwoon liked it. It suited Hakyeon better than the garish and badly dyed blonde he used to have. The coppery red hair shone pleasantly under the light, and the acute lenses of Taekwoon’s eyes could pick up the individual light fractals. They shone like crystals. Pretty.

“Taekwoon are you listening?”

Taekwoon blinked and ran back the recording of what Hakyeon had last said. He hadn’t been listening, not really, but his memory bank ran a constant recording of the sounds around him. It was incredibly useful in situations like these, since Hakyeon hated being ignored.

“Of course I was,” Taekwoon spoke as he listened to Hakyeon’s previous words. “Tell me what exactly you were doing when you first felt it. Maybe it’s circumstantial.”

“The first time was two Fridays ago. It was 4:45pm and I was reading The Great Gatsby,” He recounted. Hakyeon hummed, still looking down at his tablet.

“Maybe it’s the file you downloaded, do you still have it stored?”

Taekwoon blinked, “No I didn’t download it, I read your hardcopy.”

Hakyeon looked up slightly startled.

“You… you read my copy?”

“Yes.”

Taekwoon couldn’t read Hakyeon’s expression then. He’d never seen it before.

“What are you feeling?” Taekwoon asked, a slot ready to save the expression to his memory. Hakyeon blinked at him, expression turning to one the android did know.

“Oh shut up Taekwoon,” he barked, turning away to put his tablet down, “why does it matter? I’m hurt okay!”

That surprised Taekwoon. He knew hurt, but only physical, the teeth gritting and shouting kind. And why was beyond him.

“What has hurt you?”

Hakyeon scowled at him, “you know I don’t like you- no… anyone touching my books. I’ve told you that! I was already pissed off enough when you rearranged them Taekwoon, but now I find out you actually took one, and the most delicate one at that? How am I supposed to feel?”

Taekwoon didn’t know. How could he know? He knew nothing about emotions; he didn’t know how one was meant to feel in this situation. He didn’t even know humans could feel emotional pain until that day. Why was this his fault? How was he supposed to know?

“I don’t understand why you’re angry, I took care of the book, I didn’t damage it in any way. That’s more than I can say for you, Hakyeon.”

His hand shot out to hit Hakyeon’s hand away from his shoulder, where he had been trying to place it. His words slipped out of his mouth, all too fast, all too unexpected. His body had reacted automatically, unthinking. He could still hear the faint remnants of the slap. Where had his filter been, why hadn’t the words processed? Why the hell hadn’t his body seized up at the mere thought of hitting Hakyeon? His processor was only now picking up the action, alarms going off in all corners of his mind. 

“What the has gotten into you Taekwoon?” Hakyeon spoke, his expression serious, eyebrows knitted together. Taekwoon looked down, hiding his face. He shouldn’t have done that. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his hands grasped tightly together, “I should not have done that.” 

The knuckles were white. The alarms were still going, so noisy. He couldn’t think past the blasting of his mistake all through his mind. He tried to quiet them, but they wouldn’t stop, they wouldn’t go away. Error. The bright red word splashed across every alarm.

“Taekwoon tell me what’s going on,” Hakyeon demanded, “what is wrong with you?”

Taekwoon gasped, the alarms growing even louder, he could hardly hear. Why was it like this?

“Help me,” he whimpered, “they won’t stop.”

“What won’t stop? Taekwoon what the ?”

He vision was going, blurring. He couldn’t focus his lenses at all, the mechanism refusing to comply. It was so dark. He couldn’t hear, he couldn’t see. Why was this happening, it was a mistake. He didn’t mean to.

“Please, please, please,” he chanted, unsure if it was out loud. He couldn’t hear anymore. 

Error. Error. Error.

He couldn’t see Hakyeon anymore, couldn’t hear him, though he was sure he was talking, his back up hearing told him that. But he didn’t know what it was. 

The lights were dimming, fading to blackness, and his night vision wouldn’t kick in. 

Why wasn’t anything working?

And suddenly he was falling, hitting the bench hard, not a single nerve ready for the impact. It was painful, but not as painful as the screeching of the alarms ripping through his head. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear.

A notice popped up.

Shut down in, 5. 4. 3. 2…

“Taekwoon!”

1.

A/N: The next update might take a little while, sorryyyy.