mechanical | xiuchen

seventeen.

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)

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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 thing that bugged him was that he was a mechanic, someone who needed to be neat and particular about things.

So why, why the hell could he 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 laundry 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 replied, and was that sarcasm Jongdae was hearing? It sounded purposeful. "Remember that bear?"

Jongdae quickly realized 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 ass 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 dick.

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