Archive of Our Own

"Chairman Ha, we cannot thank you enough for giving us the opportunity to iterate on our standard assembly processes," the company representative says, sounding like she's reading from a script. She probably is. Her team probably had several meetings to determine how to positively frame giving in to a highly illegal demand.

When you're wealthy enough, people don't say no to you. And they convince themselves that they wanted to say yes all along.

Ha Insoo pauses on the slide detailing the extensive education modules installed in standard ComfortUnits. He lifts his finger to command her attention before smiling. "I don't want these modules on board. He can know what sex is, but I don't want him to have any experience. Only the barest understanding."

The company representative's posture stiffens for a moment before her features ease back to a tepid expression of interest. "That's an unusual request. I can't say that I've had a client ask for an inexperienced ComfortUnit before."

"That's because inexperienced companions are easy to be had," Insoo responds. His smile is genuine, but it is not kind. "Regardless, for what I am investing, I don't expect any issues with customization."

"Of course not, Chairman Ha," the representative says quickly. Her fingers weave in the air as she updates the order. "Beyond removing the standard sexual competence education modules, is there anything else you require in your investment?"

"Tell me more about his governor module," Insoo says. "It will give me complete control?"

"Absolutely. If you refer to slide fourteen, you can see a list of some of the more common commands used with ComfortUnits."

Insoo scans the list and hums with pleasant surprise. "I can modulate his pain tolerance? How novel."

"Of course. Our engineers have considered many circumstances." The representative smiles knowingly. "Allow me to walk you through the rest of the features. I think you'll be quite pleased."

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Moon Jaeshin wakes to the sound of screaming. This happens a lot.

He had nightmares even before, but those had been about his brother. And back then, Yoonhee had greeted him in the feed, its pleasant voice assuring him that it had only been a dream, that he was not in danger.

No one greets him in the dormitory cell on SKKS2011. Yoonhee is dormant somewhere, hopefully. Maybe it has found a quiet hangar to rest in while it waits for Jaeshin to return.

It's just another indistinguishable morning. And it will be another long day of work on the station.

Prison labor is cheaper than commissioning a fleet of skilled bots. That's what Yongha used to tell him, when he'd get fired up about the unethical practices of owning sentient bots and forcing imprisoned humans to work for corporations.

Jaeshin smiles wryly to himself as he waits for the door to slide open for the morning shift. Yongha had been right, of course. He'd always been right.

But even Gu Yongha would never have guessed that Jaeshin would be sentenced to a life of hard labor. For murdering him.

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Yeorim is the equivalent of an infant. That's what Chosun tells him, anyway. She is a very experienced ComfortUnit with a long memory. He is a newly commissioned construct, a mix of cloned human parts and inorganic parts.

His human parts shiver as she brushes his long hair. "You are different than most," she explains. "Your owner has requested that you be inexperienced. So do not be distressed if you're uncertain when it comes to your duties or his expectations."

"Shouldn't I be good at my purpose?" Yeorim asks. He doesn't know how to not be distressed. Nervous anticipation is already making the muscles that line his abdominal wall twitch. He tries to look at her, but she turns his head back, forcing him to face forward so she can finish weaving his hair into a thick plait.

"You will please Chairman Ha," she says, calm and assuring.

"I know. But wouldn't it be better if I knew how to please him?"

Chosun sighs. "No. You will please him."

Yeorim has only existed for nine cycles. He doesn't have enough data to understand how he could please his owner without knowing how to please his owner. But Chosun has existed for thousands of cycles. So he chooses to believe that she knows what she's saying, and that the truth will be revealed to him once he is presented to his owner.

He exists to provide Chairman Ha with companionship while he is busy supervising a long-term construction project. That is Yeorim's purpose. That, at least, he understands.

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The cargo ship sent by the company arrives with more fanfare than what Insoo supposes is the norm when it comes to delivering a ComfortUnit to a buyer. He is not unused to the extra attention. It's what one enjoys when one's father controls over half the rim.

Insoo is so wrapped up in the pleasure of causing others a great deal of inconvenience that he nearly forgets that he's about to receive the customized ComfortUnit he's waited over a hundred cycles for. As a result, his footsteps hitch, and the horizon briefly tilts, when the transport gangway unfurls.

There, dressed in shades of vivid blue and deep fuchsia, stands Gu Yongha.

No.

Yeorim. The construct made not from cloned human parts but the still-warm body of a young man who would not yield.

It's uncanny. He's unspoiled. His hair is once more long and shiny, pulled into an elaborate braid that falls over his shoulder. He looks anxious but eager. Eager to please. Yongha had never wanted to please him.

Insoo greets the construct by taking both of his hands. They are warm. So human. He's fucked sexbots, of course. He knows how real they feel. How soft they are inside. But he's never fucked a sexbot he knew — knows. He cannot help laughing with delight.

It makes Yeorim duck his head and blush. "I am honored to serve as your ComfortUnit. Thank you for choosing me.

"Splendid work," Insoo tells the company representative. He takes Yeorim by the chin to study his dark eyes. His long lashes. The faint scar below his lip from when he'd fallen from a tree. This construct would have no memory of the story Yongha had liked to tell, of how he'd been certain he could climb just as well as his childhood friend, but hadn't taken into account how impractical his shoes had been for gripping bark.

This construct has no friends, no memories, no reason to exist but to please Insoo.

Insoo puts two fingers in Yeorim's mouth to feel his wet, organic tongue. Yeorim lets out a startled whimper.

"He's perfect," Insoo tells the company representative. "Excellent work."

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A scream, more shrill than his own frequent wake up call, startles Jaeshin out of the monotonous groove he'd been in keeping the tension in the lift cable even. He squeezes around the huge coil they're feeding into the lift shaft to see the grisly aftermath of the kind of accident that happens when you don't train your workers or supervise them properly or follow safety regulations. He hears this in Yongha's voice. Yongha is so often beside him, passionately describing the injustice at every rotten foundation of great wealth.

Jaeshin turns away from the messy remains of a laborer. It only took a glance to know nothing would save the young man. It only took a glance for Jaeshin's exhausted mind to supply him with another scene entirely. What a treat, he thinks bitterly. He's usually asleep for this one. It's usually only an afterimage burned into his soul, one no amount of blinking can wipe away.

Yongha in dark blue coveralls, curled up where he'd slid to the floor, his blood a dark smear on the wall, a darker pool around him. Yongha unmoving, gone, fucking gone, his voice tinny on the feed, set to loop a call for help that never made it past the signal interference from a lunar storm.

Geoloh. I'm in a little trouble. Gonna need you to pick me up. Yoonhee has the coordinates. Tell it to prep the med… shit. Geoloh. Can you hear me?

He'd mumbled something at the end that Jaeshin still can't sort out, no matter how many times he replays it in his mind, no matter how many times he can still hear Yongha's desperate voice trailing off and then restarting, looping like a beating heart, like respiration.

The station rumbles with the sound of a transport leaving. It wasn't here for long. Not long enough to unload more prisoners. Probably more insufferable nobles visiting the station's administration.

Jaeshin would have looked up to try to identify the family crest on the transport on it's trajectory back to the rim, but he's too busy scrubbing his fingertips across his eyelids to try to stop seeing Yongha all alone in that cold fucking room waiting eternally for help that didn't get there fast enough.

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They've only just arrived at Ha Insoo's home on the station, and Yeorim already feels defective. He should, at the very least, feel neutral about the person who invested in his existence. Instead, it requires considerable effort not to retreat as Insoo approaches him.

"Nervous?" Insoo asks. He doesn't sound disappointed; he sounds amused. He looks hungry. Very slowly, he begins the process of unzipping the elaborate robes that he'd sent to the company for Yeorim to wear upon arrival. His knuckles feel warm against Yeorim's skin, brushing against him appraisingly.

It is unclear if Yeorim is expected to answer. He wishes he had a better understanding of Insoo's needs. "I am only eager to provide you comfort," he finally says, his voice betraying his uncertainty with a quiet waver.

"He was always so cocky until you got your hands on him," Insoo muses absently, as he uncovers one of Yeorim's nipples and circles it with his fingertip. "Tensed up every time." He lifts his eyes to meet Yeorim's. "You won't tease me like that."

"How should I address you?" Yeorim asks, his skin prickling from the chill as the robes fall to the floor. He was wearing nothing underneath, as demanded, and it's cold in Insoo's room.

"Hyungnim, I think," Insoo says, looking down to study Yeorim's penis. He cradles it in his hand, thumb brushing over the soft fold of his foreskin. "Would that please you, Yeorim?"

"I am pleased if you are pleased."

"Get hard," Insoo demands.

"Yes, hyungnim." Yeorim modulates his anatomy, directing the fluid in his human parts to provide him with the erection that Insoo desires. It makes the skin more sensitive. It feels strange. Short of practicing once to make sure his genitals functioned optimally, he's never had an erection. He's never had one touched by a human hand.

"We're going to have fun," Insoo whispers, playing with Yeorim's erection and the sensitive weight of his scrotum. He hums once, sounding very satisfied, and looks back up to stare into Yeorom's eyes. "Tell me. You're capable of feeling pain?"

"I feel all standard sensations, hyungnim," Yeorim responds. "Pain. Pleasure. My human parts have nerve endings."

"What about fear?" Insoo asks.

"I feel fear when it is warranted. Fear creates awareness of danger," Yeorim says. Is fear the reason why his body wants to flinch away from his new owner? It's difficult to tell. Emotions are messy, fleeting. Hard to name. It would be easier to function without them, but it's his understanding that owners desire ComfortUnits that behave identically to humans. "Unless you command me not to feel fear, I will respond naturally to distressing stimuli."

A smile twists Insoo's mouth. "Good." His grip tightens viciously, making Yeorim hiss with shock. "That's good."

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Insoo had intended to go slow the first time. He'd had the passing thought to make Yeorim enjoy it, to make him beg for something Yongha had detested. But Yeorim's eyes — the wide eyes that betray his nerves — make Insoo feel crazed with want, with the crushing desire to hurt Yongha. Yeorim.

"Can you cry?" Insoo asks, wrapping his arm around Yongha's back to pull him closer as he strokes his pretty cock and kisses his long neck. Yeorim's skin smells familiar. A little too sanitized, but still his.

"I have tear ducts," Yeorim responds. "I can also produce semen, but I have been sterilized per protocol."

Insoo cannot help laughing against Yeorim's neck. "So formal. Lighten up, darling." He can feel Yeorim swallow.

"I will try to lighten up."

"Have you ever been fucked?"

"No. No one has had access to me but you, hyungnim."

Insoo snorts and cups Yeorim's ass. "Access." He realizes he's trembling with desire, his mind racing with a thousand things he wants to do to this perfect, pliable body. "Turn around," he says, letting go of Yeorim's dick. He guides him to turn and walks him a few steps forward to a table he bends him over. "Spread your legs. Further. Put your head in your arms. Good. Like that."

Everything had been a negotiation with Yongha. A fight.

There's a jar of lubricant on the table. Insoo rolls his sleeve up slowly as he tells Yeorim, "I'm going to put my fingers in your hole, and then my entire hand. You're not going to like it, because I'm not going to take my time. I want you to ask me to stop if you don't feel pleasure. I want you to cry when it hurts. Do I need to command you?"

"You do not need to command me." Yeorim is trembling so hard the tip of his bounces against his back. "I understand what you want me to do."

"That pleases me, Yeorim." Insoo scoops a dollop of shiny, clear lubricant out of the jar and spreads it down the crack of Yeorim's ass where they made him hairless at his request. "If you're a good boy and I hear you crying and I know you mean it, I'll stop fisting you and I'll fuck your messy hole."

He can see Yeorim's ribs rising and falling with quick, agitated breaths. The company had assured him that Yeorim would behave as a human would, but this — this genuine response is already beyond anything he imagined. Unable to hold back any longer, he pries Yeorim open with three fingers, seeking the soft heat of his insides.

"How does that feel?" Insoo asks, pressing one hand against Yeorim's lower back for leverage. "Be honest."

"It feels bad," Yeorim whispers. His thighs twitch. It looks like he's struggling to hold still. "Please."

"Please what?"

Yeorim's voice breaks. "Please stop hurting me."

Insoo draws circles with his fingers at the base of Yeorim's spine and pushes hard enough to jam four fingers into his tight hole. It makes Yeorim cry out, and the sound is so sweet it almost drives Insoo over the edge untouched. "This is nothing. I'll show you real pain," he promises.

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Too overwhelmed to manually dampen his nervous system, Yeorim is left shivering and uncomfortable. He knows, logically, that he is not in danger. But that knowledge does not regulate his breathing.

He's sore, his body throbbing where Insoo used him like he hated him.

He'd cried like he was told to. Now, alone, the tears continue to fall. He'd even cried the entire time he'd used the hygiene station to clean the fluids off of and out of his body. The standard, nondescript clothing Insoo left for him to wear around the station offers no consolation. He still feels exposed and raw.

"You're free to roam," Insoo had told him after he'd finished using him. "I'll summon you when I need you."

Dressed and hugging himself, Yeorim wanders out of Insoo's residence, hoping that physical activity will prompt his body to stop leaking.

This is a station under early construction. Yeorim has access to the feed, and quickly downloads the history of it. He learns that it will eventually be a trade station. Insoo's family is the primary investor. They're using human prisoners for most of the labor, barring some specialized drones and heavy crawlers.

The construction area is enormous. Too expansive to see across. But Yeorim can access the surprisingly few security cameras in the feed. Within a few moments, he's mapped out each region of the station, from where ships dock to where the human staff sleeps to where they keep the prisoners for rest and replenishment.

This is an ugly, sad place. Standing at the edge of the construction area does not make it easier for Yeorim to control his tears or dampen the terrible feeling of emptiness in his chest. The only comfort is how loud this region of the station is. He cannot hear his body's functions. All he can hear is the clatter of heavy machinery and the occasional shouts of humans doing work that will eventually break their fragile bodies.

Unlike Yeorim, the prisoners cannot be repaired and remade. They'll die here.

He scrubs his hand across his eyes, frustrated to find his skin wet. At this rate, he'll have to replenish his fluids like a dehydrated human.

A few prisoners are working close enough to see him, and one lifts his head and whistles, startling him. When Yeorom flinches, the men laugh.

"Hey, sexbot," one calls out. "If you've got nothing to do, come blow me."

His friend punches his arm and laughs, gesturing for him to keep working. But now that Yeorim has been spotted, all of them glance up in intervals, looking hungry or angry or both.

Chest thudding, Yeorim hurries along a scaffolding until he's out of their view. He ran across a walkway just like this once, and then he climbed, but he'd always been so bad at climbing, and it had been even harder than usual with his hands slippery with blood.

No. That never happened.

He's malfunctioning. He needs rest. His performance has dropped to nearly 92 percent, despite no damage to his human or constructed parts.

Panting, Yeorim retreats to Insoo's residence, and then to the small room where he'll be kept when he isn't in use. He feels like he's being chased until he's settled in the darkness, his back against the wall.

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"Did you hear about the boss's sexbot?" someone down the line asks.

Jaeshin keeps his head down, but he feels his jaw clench. Yongha would always, always correct someone who called a ComfortUnit a sexbot. He'd launch into a speech on the different ways that specialized constructs provide comfort, from companionship to the elderly to emotional support for people requiring professional-grade guidance. And yes, most were forced to perform sex work, but that didn't make it alright to treat them like unfeeling objects, like toys.

Yongha had believed in the personhood of constructs. He'd died for that belief.

If he were here now, he'd already have gotten Jaeshin dragged into a brawl over the discussion currently rippling down the line.

Jaeshin misses him so much it feels as if his lungs are filled with concrete. As if it would be a mercy to lay down on the line and let the heavy machinery crush him.

"Will you shut the fuck up?" he mutters.

The man beside him laughs. "Sore you're not getting your dick sucked? I saw him. No one would say no to a mouth like that. Sweet like a doll. Pretty long braid for grabbing onto."

"Chairman's got expensive tastes," a woman says, her deep voice thundering with amusement. "None of you shitstains could afford to touch flesh like that."

"I heard they make sexbots little nymphos," a young man says. He's new to the line. Doesn't know when to keep quiet yet. He'll learn. "Like they need dick to fill their batteries up."

"Sounds like you've thought a lot about it," the first man says, eyeing the newbie like he's only just noticed him — and likes what he sees.

He'd put groping hands on Jaeshin the first cycle he'd spent here. Earned a broken thumb for it. He'll have more luck with this newbie.

It's just how things are. Yongha would have hated that, too. While Jaeshin focused on the bigger picture, the forces at play making the rich richer and everyone else poorer, Yongha saw individuals in pain. He ached for them. He saw humanity not only in humans who didn't deserve it, but constructs who could not imagine it.

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Insoo spent a decade being teased by Gu Yongha. Watching him run his mouth, watching him plaster his body against Moon Jaeshin's like a parasite. Watching him behave as if he thought he was better than everyone else, more clever than everyone else.

Yongha had known when to stop fighting Insoo, but he'd never stopped denying him.

Now, in bed beside him, Yeorim doesn't sleep. According to the company, he doesn't need to. Instead he lies dormant, his systems regulating, his energy preserved by the closest a construct comes to rest. When Insoo touches his bare back, he twitches, but he doesn't shy away.

"You're still wet," Insoo says, curling up behind him, nestling his hardening dick in the warm cleft of Yeorim's ass. "Wake up. Lift your knee. Good. Let me in."

When Yeorim's face is turned away, it's easier to pretend. Easier to think that it's Yongha who has finally given him what he deserves. Finally understood his place in the galaxy.

Insoo fucks him lazily, breathing into his hair and reaching over him to stroke his chest and stomach, to grip his throat. "Do you like my cum in you?"

"Do you want me to tell the truth?" Yeorim asks. There are downsides to ordering a ComfortUnit that doesn't have the standard education modules. He doesn't always anticipate Insoo's needs, and instead requires clarification.

But Insoo finds it amusing regardless. "Yes." He tightens his grip at Yeorim's throat, making his breath tighten to a wheeze.

"I don't like it," Yeorim says, his voice strained. His body trembles like he's struggling to remain still and receive. "It feels unpleasant. You're hurting me, hyungnim. I can't breathe."

"I know," Insoo assures him. "But you can go a long time without breathing." To prove his point, he squeezes until his hand cramps up, until his thrusts become more frantic in the effort to wring another orgasm out after indulging in Yeorim's yielding body earlier.

He chokes Yeorim until he starts to struggle frantically. Because Insoo didn't command him to ignore the instincts of his human parts, he's reacting with fear and the universal desire to continue living. "Shhh," Insoo says. "You won't die. Even if you want to, you won't die."

Yeorim whimpers helplessly until he goes still, and once he's limp, his systems resetting from lack of oxygen, Insoo rolls him onto his stomach and finishes in him with violent, hungry thrusts, thinking about how Yongha had denied him in the end, left him wanting, left him.

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As the cycles pass, monotonous and uncomfortable, Yeorim builds his understanding of the circumstances he exists in. The station. The greater rim. The many ways that humans live. He develops an opinion of Insoo beyond his ever-increasing dislike: Insoo is not intelligent.

An intelligent man would not give his ComfortUnit unfettered access to the news and entertainment feeds available on the station. It's not like the information empowers Yeorim, but it helps him contextualize his presence here.

The galaxy is enormous. Alongside it, his pain is very small. Within it, he is very alone. The prisoners forced to provide labor look at him without empathy or recognition. He is not one of them. He is someone to be resented, coveted, hated. Not someone. Something.

Yeorim is not a person. But he struggles to reconcile that fact with the disturbing echoes of the person he must have been. The dead man they scavenged to make a plaything for a bad man. If he had a way to sever himself from those echoes he would. But he can't. So instead he is not only a vessel for Insoo's insatiable hunger, but a vessel for the shattered remnants of a human life.

Knowing this does not enrich Yeorim's existence. It makes him feel heavy, melancholy. And worse — he longs for something. Someone?

When his systems are quiet, and he exists in the twilight between consciousness and darkness, he reaches for familiar warmth. If he had someone to talk to, he would tell them this: I think he loved someone. I think he loved someone very much.

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"They're saying he's got that sexbot with him today," someone murmurs excitedly. "Think we'll see it?"

Jaeshin is on the lift they finished constructing two cycles before. He resists the urge to turn his head and listen attentively. The last thing he wants to see is Ha Insoo. He'll do anything he can to avoid him short of dismembering himself and earning a long term stay in the med center. And that's only because no one has ever come back from the med center.

It had been Insoo who had taken Yongha in the end, as they'd dragged Jaeshin away. Insoo had taken custody of the body that Yongha had never yielded to him. If Jaeshin had been able to wrench himself from the grip of the enforcers who had accused him of murdering Yongha, he would have torn Insoo to pieces with his bare hands.

He could still do it, if given the chance. He would.

The memory of his own desperate screams makes Jaeshin's throat feel sore. Someone jostles him and he turns with a growl, arm cocked back, fist ready to fly. Rage feels good. Rage feels right. It's the newbie who grabs him by the elbow and hisses at him to calm down.

When the boss is around, the supervision drones guarding them are on high alert. One scuffle could earn all of them a good, long stunning.

Shaking the boy off, Jaeshin collects himself and follows the group out of the lift onto the scaffolding they'll work on today. He's still angry. He'll never know what it's like not to feel angry. He'll never forgive Insoo for being the last person who held Yongha.

Jaeshin doesn't mean to look up. But he's little more than a herd animal now. And when the others lift their faces, he follows their gazes.

It's like being pulled out of an airlock.

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"Are you alright?" Insoo asks Yeorim under his breath. He puts his hand on Yeorim's back and guides him to walk closer to him as they tour recently completed work. "You seem distracted."

"I do not like the way they look at me."

"Why is that? You were made to be looked at and touched," Insoo reminds him. If he'd allowed them to install the standard education modules, would Yeorim feel differently? Would he preen under the attention?

"By you," Yeorim says, matter-of-fact.

Insoo laughs. He's glad that Yeorim averts his eyes and shies away from their lustful gazes. "You used to be flirtatious. You're so serious now."

At that, Yeorim glances at him. To Insoo's surprise, there's a flash of what he can only describe as anger. That's new. "I'm not him."

"Have I hurt your feelings?" Insoo asks, amused at this fascinating development.

Yeorim's expression goes so blank that Insoo wonders if he'd imagined the anger in his dark eyes. "I was merely reminding you, hyungnim. Sometimes it seems as if you've forgotten who I am." He takes Insoo's hand. "I am yours, am I not?"

"Yes." Yeorim's acquiescent behavior should please Insoo, but it is so violently different from anything Yongha ever would have done that he nearly jerks his hand out of Yeorim's hold. Suppressing the impulse, he lifts Yeorim's fingers to his lips and kisses his soft skin. "Go home ahead of me. Prepare yourself. I want to fuck you."

"Yes, hyungnim," Yeorim says. He quickens his pace to the sound of whistles and appreciative calls from the laborers above and below, and Insoo chuckles at the stiffness of his posture. So bashful, so sweetly skittish.

Abruptly, Yeorim halts. He grabs onto the rail and stares down at the crowd of laborers, seemingly trapped by their appreciative gazes. Slowly catching up, Insoo pats his backside. "Darling, don't let them frighten you. They won't touch you without my permission." He coaxes Yeorim away from the rail, charmed by the tension in his limbs. Yeorim is lovely when he's unsettled.

It's impossible not to imagine letting those animals loose, letting them devour Yeorim. The fantasy makes Insoo all the more eager to take Yeorim home and fuck him, though the truth is he'd never share what is his. Yeorim's pain, his fear, his submission — all of that belongs to Insoo alone.

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Insoo fucks Yeorim like he's trying to punish him. He did not order Yeorim to cry or struggle today. Nor did he command him to lower his pain threshold. As a result, Yeorim is free to withdraw into himself. The longer he's existed, the more he's found ways to passively resist giving Insoo everything he desires. He used to be scared. He isn't anymore. Insoo is pathetic, not frightening.

He lets Insoo fuck his body, the sensation distant and muffled. The agony he feels has nothing to do with Insoo's arm wrapped tightly around his throat or the brutal intrusion of careless sex.

Of all the men who had been watching him, one had stood out, had caught Yeorim's attention like a flashing beacon. He'd worn such bald horror, such terrible pain. It hadn't been the pain of being forced to work his life away for an uncaring master. It had been recognition.

It had been disbelieving grief.

And in turn, Yeorim had felt a crushing wave of fondness. Of devotion.

What had been a faint echo of memory inside of him is now an acute, constant pressure. He should not be here. He isn't supposed to be here. He's supposed to be beside that man, that stranger who shattered before his eyes.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

"I can't breathe," he gasps.

Insoo grunts at his ear. "Then don't."

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"Hey man." Another prisoner nudges Jaeshin, and then gestures at his shaking hands. "You good?"

For the first time, Jaeshin wishes he'd allowed himself to learn their names. It hadn't felt important before. Nothing had. He'd kept his mind quiet and his body busy, not wanting to die but not wanting to live either.

"No," he says, almost laughing. He's unaccustomed to being honest with himself or others.

The other man does laugh, wryly, and Jaeshin allows himself to look at him. He has sun-weathered skin and a pink scar down the side of his face. It would have been easy to recognize him, to learn his name, if he'd kept his eyes open.

Yongha would have kept his eyes open.

"Heard that," the man says, clapping Jaeshin's shoulder. "Stay clear of the heavy winch today. I'm tired of hosing guts out of the gears."

Jaeshin nods, dazed. That's what it feels like. It feels like he walked into the machine and let it crush him to nothing. He's been angry. He's been devastated. He's longed for his love, his lover, his everything. This feeling is something entirely new. Something his inadequate human body can't process.

The construct in Insoo's possession had looked exactly like Yongha. The only difference had been the long hair hanging in an impractical braid. Yongha had cut his hair short once they'd started running and never stopped. Easier to keep clean. Easier to throw a helmet on. Easier for Jaeshin to press his lips to the nape of his neck, to the jagged scar from a close call.

There'd been so many close calls. But they'd still felt invincible.

They're people, Yongha would always tell him, not because Jaeshin didn't believe him, but because the injustice made him restless and repetitive, pacing around the ship until Jaeshin made him turn off the feed. Sometimes he'd break down, shaking with rage in Jaeshin's arms, and Jaeshin would pull him to their bunk and peel him out of his coveralls. Jaeshin had understood, only a little, that Yongha had known what it was like to be considered less than a person. To be treated like an object.

He'd been underweight, haunted and too pale, when he'd finally graduated from the academy, when he'd felt like he had enough specialized training to dismantle everything they'd tried to teach him. He'd never wanted to talk about it, but it had taken him a hundred cycles to stop flinching at Jaeshin's touch. It had taken a hundred more for him to ask Jaeshin to touch him with purpose.

All those times they'd crashed into one another, all those times that were never going to be enough, he'd wept in Jaeshin's arms, joy and release and grief one and the same, because that's what Gu Yongha was — capable of more than Jaeshin could ever imagine.

A fucking sexbot.

Jaeshin grit his teeth until his jaw ached.

He'd never imagined an end to this until the first, crystal clear impulse had struck him. In an instant, he'd decided he had to destroy that thing.

But then, just as quickly, he'd seen something impossible and unmistakable on the construct's face.

Recognition.

. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

Insoo wraps Yeorim's long hair around his hand, winding it like he's coiling rope. "Slow down," he commands.

Yeorim's eyes flicker up, and he nods as best he can with Insoo's dick buried in his wet mouth. He is endearingly clumsy at this, and Insoo is once more delighted by his decision to make Yeorim teachable rather than experienced.

Lately, Yeorim has been impertinent. Not in terribly overt ways, but enough that Insoo prefers to make it impossible for Yeorim to contradict him. When Yeorim is inexpertly choking on dick, Insoo can say whatever he pleases without the frustration of an unasked-for response.

"You were never very good at this," he says.

Yeorim glances up at him again. Only for a heartbeat. It's long enough for Insoo to see that he's irritated him. Good.

"I know, I know," Insoo says in a condescending tone, petting Yeorim's cheek with his thumb. "You're not Gu Yongha. You are my sweet, sweet Yeorim."

Yeorim closes his eyes. His lashes are wet, but it's impossible to tell if he's being emotional or if his gag reflex is being pushed past its limit.

Yongha had come to him willingly in the end. All it had taken was Insoo showing him the coordinates of Moon Jaeshin's rogue ship. All it had taken was Insoo's assurance that he'd be far less interested in the activities of a radical if Yongha kept him occupied.

He'd gone to his knees between Insoo's thighs and looked up at him with hatred so intense it felt like touching a live wire. But he'd opened his mouth and let Insoo fuck into it until he choked. He'd gone rigid with panic when Insoo had taken a fist full of his long, pretty hair and held him close. And when he'd started to claw at Insoo, all it had taken was a murmured reminder of how quickly Insoo could have enforcers on Jaeshin's trail for him to relent.

Insoo tells Yeorim how easy he'd been to control, recounting his triumph until he's so close to climax that he can't speak clearly. Then, all he can do is fuck Yeorim's face, his eyes closed so he can recall the desperate hate in Yongha's eyes.

. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

There's no distinction between night and day on the station. Yeorim has watched enough media to be familiar with a traditional cycle, but he knows his longing for a quiet dawn means more than that. The man Insoo hungers for must have liked mornings.

The more Yeorim learns of Yongha, the stronger the dead man's presence becomes in his human parts, in the parts they stole to make him for Ha Insoo. There's no logic or pattern to when the echoes surface. Sometimes he craves cakes drizzled with synthetic honey despite having no capability to ingest or digest food.

The brief taste of sweetness on his tongue and the memory of basking in the golden glow of a new day aren't terrible sensations. They're simply disorienting. It's manageable. He can cope with a human's preferences bleeding through his organic tissue.

He used to be able to, anyway. He'd been capable of handling it until the man existing at the very twilight edge of his consciousness had appeared before him. Until he'd known exactly what that man looked like — what he looked like in agony.

Now, Yeorim knows what it feels like to belong to someone. For two people to belong to each other.

I should not exist, he thinks. Instead of screaming it aloud, like he wants to, he asks Insoo, the man who thinks he owns him, "May I tour the station today? My joints require maintenance."

"That's a complicated way of asking to go for a walk," Insoo says, looking down with a biting smile as Yeorim kneels and fastens the clips on his boots. "Of course you may. I know you'll stay out of reach of the prisoners. You're so frightened of them. My innocent little dove."

By now, Yeorim understands that Insoo likes to consider him being raped by the men who work on the station. He responds the way that Insoo enjoys, shivering faintly and nodding shyly. "I'll be careful, hyungnim. Should I dress modestly as well?"

"There's no need." Insoo pulls him up to stand and kisses his mouth. It's a suffocating, vile sensation. Yeorim opens his mouth obediently and lets Insoo tongue at him obscenely, licking his teeth and the inside of his lips. "Turn around," Insoo says hotly, his hands dropping to his groin to unzip his trousers. "Let me give you something to think about while you're strolling."

. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

Jaeshin feels feverish. Feels as if his sanity is crumbling away. Had the others not spent so much time talking about Insoo's ComfortUnit, he might have worried he'd hallucinated the whole thing. That his grief had finally fractured his mind.

After seriously considering braining the last man who'd talked about what he'd do if he got his hands on the boss's sexbot, Jaeshin began seeking out solitary work. Monitored by a small supervision drone armed with a stun weapon, he installs composite rods that are not for structural integrity but aesthetics. It seems the Ha family wants their wealth on display despite the utilitarian nature of the station. A typical, shameless waste of resources.

It's almost comforting to recall the kinds of things that used to make him angry, that used to fuel him. Everything had seemed so clear before he'd lost Yongha.

At the sound of footsteps, he growls without looking up, "I've got this covered."

As Jaeshin slides another rod into its slot and begins to tighten the fastening pin, the supervision drone's flat voice acknowledges what must have been a command on the feed that Jaeshin couldn't hear. It's only when the drone rolls away that Jaeshin glances over, confused. The laborers are never left alone unsupervised.

But Jaeshin is no longer alone.

The construct stands in the empty hallway. His chest rises and falls with sharp breaths. "I told the little drone to leave. It recognized me as HaCorp property, so it didn't question the command."

The rod falls out of Jaeshin's numb fingers and rolls away. "You shouldn't be here."

The treated air pumped into the construction area to control the climate is usually refreshing, but right now Jaeshin is too cold. It's quiet but for the sound of heavy machinery in the adjacent region of the station. Jaeshin can hear himself breathing irregularly.

"You knew him," the construct says softly, his eyes — Yongha's eyes — clouded with sadness that should not be there. He wasn't asking a question, but he looks lost.

Jaeshin wets his throat. He can't feel his hands. It's like floating. He shouldn't be speaking to the construct, but this feels so much like a dream, like a nightmare, that he can't stop himself from asking, "What does he call you?"

The construct flinches almost imperceptibly. "Yeorim," he says warily, as if braced for how Jaeshin will respond.

Exhaling with strange relief, Jaeshin fights a hysterical laugh. Even Ha Insoo didn't have the gall to call this thing by a dead man's name.

"What are you called?" Yeorim asks, taking a half step closer. The sudden intensity of his attention makes Jaeshin take a half step away in turn.

Yeorim's eyes burn with desperation. Jaeshin is suddenly sure that this question is the sole reason the construct has entered the construction zone, likely disabling dozens of supervision drones along the way.

Why would he care?

"Please," Yeorim whispers. There's a familiar undertone of stubbornness to the sound. "Will you please tell me your name?"

"Why?" Jaeshin asks with a frustrated huff. His eyes sting with tears he refuses to shed. He should grab another rod from the container he's been slowly rolling down the seemingly endless hallway. He should take it and smash the construct's head in. He should end this for both of them.

He doesn't move.

"Because he loved you." Yeorim says it like it's so simple. Like it's obvious. His hand rises to his sternum and taps there absently. "I can feel it." His voice breaks, the sound painfully human — hesitant to speak a way Yongha never was, but certain in a way that's as familiar to Jaeshin as his own heartbeat. "It… aches. It feels like an injury."

For a long moment, all Jaeshin can hear is the high pitched whine of his ears ringing. He speaks into the silence that pulses like the aftermath of a terrible explosion. "You should go."

Yeorim's fingers flutter to his face. He scrubs wetness from his lashes and stares briefly at his knuckles before wiping them dry on his sleeve. "Forgive me. I should not have disturbed you." When he shuffles back, his heel catches on the rod that Jaeshin dropped, and he stumbles.

Jaeshin catches his wrist. It's only instinct.

Held upright by Jaeshin's grip, Yeorim stares at the place where they're touching. His skin is clammy. Yongha's hands always got cold when he tried to hide being upset. "Oh. My performance has temporarily declined. I will regain my balance momentarily."

"Is he hurting you?" It isn't what Jaeshin meant to ask. He didn't mean to ask anything at all. But now the question hangs between them, and he's touching skin he used to brush his lips against to make Yongha giggle from the tickle of his breath.

"Yes." Yeorim carefully removes his wrist from Jaeshin's grip and steadies himself. "He is also hurting you." There's a faint edge to those words. Defiance.

It's only in the wake of that defiance that Jaeshin finds the strength to whisper his name.

"Ah…" Yeorim doesn't smile, but a quiet sort of peace softens his features briefly. He nods once, so deeply that it's almost a bow. "Thank you," he says, before turning and making his way down the hall without looking back.

Jaeshin's legs give out from under him. He lands heavily, knees crashing against the polished floor.

And then he screams.

And screams.

. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

Yeorim never imagined an end to this, but now he knows what he can — what he must — do. He will free Moon Jaeshin from imprisonment.

The goal, discrete and clear, is the only thing that keeps him from collapsing. His systems alert him to significant performance issues, and he wonders if this is what humans feel like when their minds interfere with their bodily functions.

One by one, he returns the supervision drones to their duties, politely thanking each on the feed before erasing the last several minutes from their security logs. It's work a child could do, and Yongha is grateful for the low effort required. Because prisoners have no feed access, there's very little need for complicated encryption or other failsafes.

In addition to the lax security measures taken at the station, Yeorim has a strong advantage: Insoo's hubris. He also has the benefit of being an entity that most people have a bias against, focusing not on the broad spectrum of capabilities of a high-performing construct, but on the fact that ComfortUnits function largely as recipients of unchecked sexual abuse.

Ignoring the way his human parts won't stop trembling, ignoring the way he can't stop making little hiccuped sounds with every breath, Yeorim opens the hidden port just under his armpit and draws out the retractable data transfer cord.

He needs to access more than the station feed. He needs to tap into the external network of artificial intelligence that makes the galaxy safe for humans to exist in.

To go this deep, he must drop his connection to his body. It will leave him inert and vulnerable, but he's chosen an access point on a part of the station that isn't fully operable. No one should be here.

Still, as a final precaution, he asks a nearby supervision drone to tell him if any humans approach. Drones will comply to nearly any command if they recognize you as a fellow bot, and you're polite.

As he works, the man's name plays out in his mind over and over, a joyful, mournful litany. Moon Jaeshin. Moon Jaeshin.

When he establishes a strong enough connection, it's that name he speaks into the network of near infinite forms of consciousness. Someone out there must be looking for his beloved.

Far more quickly than he'd anticipated, a humanoid voice responds, tone bright and alert and intelligent. "Who are you?"

Closing the connection to the two of them, Yeorim projects his voice into the feed. "I am a ComfortUnit on SKKS2011." He provides the coordinates and shows the source of the voice a series of quick images as proof of Jaeshin's existence. "I can extract the prisoner Moon Jaeshin from the station, but I need you to evacuate him from this sector of the rim."

The closed connection is silent for a few seconds that feel eternal. Just as Yeorim fears he's lost contact, the voice responds. "Does he know about you?"

"Yes. That doesn't matter. Can you help me?"

The entity responds not with words, but with a projection of its consciousness that washes over Yeorim overwhelmingly. He's never interacted with highly sentient, complex artificial intelligence before. This is… he's speaking with a ship. It calls itself Yoonhee. He can feel Yoonhee exploring his consciousness in turn, seeing far more than he'd intended for it to know. He doesn't have enough experience to rapidly build walls around what he'd prefer not to share. Fuck.

"Are you alright?" Yoonhee asks. "Yeorim?"

Yeorim's systems are alerting him urgently, shrill alarms sounding at the edge of his perception. No. He's not alright. "You're my friend," he gasps, confused, barely able to form the words. He thought he'd experienced every emotion he was capable of feeling. He was wrong.

Yoonhee responds with the warm equivalent of a smile. "You're my friend, too. I'm on my way."

The connection drops, and Yeorim reels back, wrenching the cord out of the access point like a bone snapping. It spools back into his body with a painful whirr, and he crumples to the ground.

It will be hours before Insoo expects him to return from a long walk around the sprawling station.

He curls up on the cold floor and weeps with a disabling mix of relief and sadness. Yongha had called a bot friend, and been loved in return. He'd been a good person. Someone who wouldn't have hurt him. Someone who had not deserved Insoo's cruelty.

. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

Yeorim has his own small space; a narrow bunk where he can be thoroughly alone. But most nights, Insoo requires him to stay in his expansive room with faux windows that project convincing vistas.

Tonight is no different. Yeorim allows himself a pang of disappointment. Today was exhausting in a way he's never experienced, and he would give anything for solitude, his systems regulating and his consciousness dimmed to something like sleep.

Insoo sits on the white sofa made from the bleached hide of a creature Yeorim can't identify. On the floor, massaging Insoo's feet, Yeorim tries not to flinch at the sensation of Insoo's fingers combing through his hair. It should feel good, but Insoo's touch never will. He's certain of that.

Leaning forward, forcing Yeorim to bend and accommodate his reach, Insoo sets a wine glass down on the polished stone table. "Have you ever been beaten?" he asks.

Though he knows that Insoo knows the answer, Yeorim replies, "No. I have not."

"Some people enjoy it. Did you know that?"

"I am only marginally familiar with those practices." This is the truth. The sexual habits of humans haven't been high on the priority list of Yeorim's self-made education.

Insoo stands and walks to a cabinet built into the wall. He rummages in it briefly and withdraws a shiny, short piece of rope with a handle. The purpose of it is unclear to Yeorim until Insoo snaps it against the hide of the sofa. It makes a shockingly loud sound that startles Yeorim so much he jumps.

"Take your clothes off," Insoo says commandingly, running the implement of punishment over his flingers.

It wasn't technically a command.

"I don't think that is something I would enjoy," Yeorim says, hesitating. He shouldn't push back, but he doesn't want to be hit like that. The sex is bad enough.

"You won't know until you experience it," Insoo says in a voice that implies that he has no expectation that Yeorim will enjoy it.

Resigned, Yeorim silently dials up his pain tolerance and undresses, keeping his head lowered submissively. He'd rather comply than endure the nauseating sensation of Insoo overriding his will with a direct command. At Insoo's instruction, he folds his body over the chaise end of the sofa, his face tucked against a soft pillow.

At least this experience will keep his mind off waiting for Yoonhee's arrival.

The first blow feels more like pressure than anything. It's a relief until Insoo makes a thoughtful sound and says, "I command you to lower your pain tolerance by seventy five percent, Yeorim."

Yeorim whimpers involuntarily. A direct command engages his governor module, and the sensation of being overridden feels worse than Insoo penetrating him mercilessly. He feels his pain tolerance drop, and when the next blow rains down across his lower back, he thrashes with a swallowed-back shout.

"That's much better." Insoo bends to touch the welt. The skin is already fiery and sore.

"Let's start with twenty. Count them out loud."

"That was one," Yeorim stutters, turning his face into the pillow to try to muffle his screams.

Insoo laughs and hits him harder.

"Two," Yeorim sobs.

. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

Before his shift, Jaeshin struggles to eat his morning rations. All he can think about is that Yeorim, wearing Yongha's body, speaking with his voice, crying with his eyes, is somewhere on this station.

And Insoo is hurting him.

Hurting him with no restraint, because Yeorim is HaCorp property. Insoo's to abuse or even discard if he wishes.

The rations feel like sand on Jaeshin's tongue. He trudges to his work assignment, grateful to once again be installing rods along the decorative facade of a long hallway. Alone with his thoughts. Not fit for company.

He can still feel the texture of Yongha's — Yeorim's — skin. Human. Familiar.

If he'd gotten closer, would he have smelled the same? Tasted the same?

How had he recognised Jaeshin? How had he known the depths of Yongha's love? How could he possibly remember things that were not his to recall?

These questions gnaw mercilessly at Jaeshin as he wrestles with the rods, more clumsy than he'd been the day before. It had been foolish to let Yeorim walk away without interrogating him.

Even as he thinks this, he knows the only thing he really regrets is not drawing Yeorim into the embrace he's longed for every cycle of his life since being unable to shake Yongha awake.

"Fuck!" he shouts, taking a minute or so to slam one of the rods against the plastic bin rhythmically until his shoulder is sore and the side of the bin is misshapen.

The sound of metal wheels against metal paneling jars him out of his fit, and he whirls, rod still in hand, chest heaving with ragged breaths. "What?" he shouts at the supervision drone, inclined to see how many dents he can put into it.

"Do not assault the drone," the supervision drone says with no inflection.

Non-sentient supervision drones have a far more limited vocabulary than that. Jaeshin lowers the rod. "Yeorim?" he asks, feeling foolish for addressing a cylindrical tube by his dead lover's academy nickname.

"Be ready for extraction midway through your shift. Make your way as close as you can to docking bay seven without attracting attention. I'll find you at that end of the hallway. Do you understand?"

Jaeshin does not understand. "Extraction?"

"Yoonhee is coming for you," the drone says.

The tip of the rod clangs against the floor as Jaeshin nearly loses his grip on it. "My Yoonhee?" he asks stupidly. "What?"

"Midway through your shift is hour fifteen," the drone says. Despite the lack of inflection, Jaeshin is fairly certain that Yeorim is gently insulting him for failing to coherently acknowledge anything he's saying. "Do I need to be more specific than that?"

"But," Jaeshin starts. Before he can continue, the indicator panels on the drone change color slightly, and the drone begins to make the regular intermittent chirping sound that indicates that it is, in fact, supervising.

"What the fuck," Jaeshin exhales, trying to remember how to do anything at all.

Extraction. Freedom. Yoonhee coming here to get him the fuck off this station.

Jaeshin should feel overjoyed at the notion of being rescued, but all he can think about is the construct who is clearly orchestrating the entire thing. He tries to fit another rod into its fitting and jams his finger, sending sparks of pain running up his arm.

"Fuck!" he shouts, shaking it off and grimacing.

No amount of pain can mask the truth setting into his bones. He's not going to let Insoo destroy even a symbol of Yongha.

He's not leaving this place without Yeorim.

. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

Yeorim repairs his broken skin overnight, the effort requiring more of his attention than he'd hoped it would. Being fully awake means spending every second of the night wondering if he will be successful, and wondering if it will hurt as much as he thinks it will to send Jaeshin away from this place. He'll never see him again if all goes as intended.

That should make Yeorim feel satisfied. Instead, it makes him feel hollow.

Sweating through the excruciating sensation of knitting his flesh back together, a process that would take far too long if he sectioned off resources for numbing the pain, Yongha distracts himself by envisioning a different reality. One where he has a little more time to converse with Jaeshin — to hear the sound of his voice when he isn't distressed. Maybe to hear him laugh.

The thought of that makes Yeorim smile in the dark despite the pain. His body recalls the way Jaeshin laughed. A quiet, gentle laugh. Almost rueful, as if he'd still been learning how to feel amusement, how to let someone else see it.

In the morning, Insoo has the dazed look of a man who has overindulged. The night before, it had made him deliriously pleased to hit Yeorim with the punishment implement over and over until he bled. Yeorim doesn't have time to think about how much this evolution of Insoo's cruelty concerns him. Instead he masturbates Insoo upon request and kisses him on the cheek like someone sending their marital partner off to work.

And when Insoo has left on the internal transport shuttle to the far side of the station to meet with visiting trade barons, Yeorim goes back to the access point and hails Yoonhee.

It blooms with happy recognition on the external feed. "I've disguised myself as a cargo ship bringing ore to the station," Yoonhee says. "I will be ready at docking bay seven to collect you."

"Understood."

"Both of you," Yoonhee clarifies. There's an expectant pause.

The thing is, Insoo has repeatedly demonstrated an unhealthy obsession with both Yongha and Yeorim. This is too much to explain to a ship over the feed. Even an improbably intelligent ship.

"Right," Yeorim lies, grateful that Yoonhee appears preoccupied by juggling dozens of functions. It's too busy to root around in his consciousness and see that he would never endanger either of them by giving Insoo a reason to follow.

"Project your feed when you reach the bay," Yoonhee says. "I'll be able to pick it up once you're in proximity."

A dim, uncomfortable memory tries to surface in Yeorim. He'd tried to project something. Something important. And they hadn't been able to hear him.

The memory makes him feel as if his lungs aren't functioning properly.

"Yeorim. Are you alright?" Yoonhee asks.

"Just nervous. See you soon, Yoonhee-ya," Yeorim says, his mind catching up with the words the moment the feed disconnects. He'd spoken so unnaturally, and yet it had felt natural.

No time to think about that.

He sets off for Jaeshin's construction zone at a run.

. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

The trade barons have brought beautiful ComfortUnits with them. Three constructs in robes that shimmer with expensive cloth that changes color through silent commands in their feeds. As lovely as they are, they are not as exquisite as Yeorim, and Insoo regrets leaving him on the far side of the station for the day. The barons shouldn't be the only ones showing off their luxurious things.

Insoo considers sending for Yeorim until a murmured name catches his attention like a splinter snagging his skin. The barons are talking over a water pipe full of precious tobacco from a distant colony.

"I knew his father," one of them says. "It's a blessing Chairman Moon died before he knew his son had disgraced him."

"Disgraced all of us," another says with a disgruntled huff. "Nobility crusading against technology. Can you imagine?"

"And murdering that young scholar. Likely driven by his radical ideologies."

Confused and irritated, Insoo approaches the barons. He grabs a glass of wine from a serving bot and takes a long swallow to wash the distaste of Moon Jaeshin from his mouth. "This is old news. Surely you've better gossip."

"We only just found out the Moon boy was one of your laborers," the first baron says. He has wild red hair and a nose as plump and purple as an overly ripe fruit.

"Moon Jaeshin is here?" Insoo asks, too stunned to pretend he already knew.

He hardly registers the affirmative responses. Heart racing, he finishes his wine and tries not to throw the glass against the wall. "Here's to his demise," he says with false calm. "We have an awful lot of accidents around here. Will you excuse me? I'm going to send for a better vintage so we can drink to the power of justice."

Turning his back to the barons, Insoo clenches his fists and considers Yeorim at the rail, looking down at the prisoners, looking — no, not afraid. Looking like he'd seen a ghost.

"Send for the transport," he hisses to a servant. "Now."

₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

Anticipating Yeorim's arrival doesn't make it any less disorienting to Jaeshin when he appears. Harried and sweating, the construct looks far more human than he did before. His hair is unraveling from his long braid. There's a pinch around his eyes. When he grabs Jaeshin by the arm and starts to drag him down a narrow service passageway, Jaeshin digs his heels in until he stops and looks back impatiently.

"What?" Yeorim asks impatiently.

Jaeshin tries not to raise his voice in turn. He tilts his head at Yeorim. "Are you injured?"

"What?" This time, it's a genuine question,Yeorim's voice softening with surprise.

"You have that look he got when he didn't want me to know he was hurt. I'm asking you if you're injured."

The pause before Yeorim speaks tells Jaeshin what he wanted to know. "It's mostly better. Do you understand that you have a very precise window of time here?"

Jaeshin allows himself to be dragged along again. He marvels at the way Yeorim's attention appears to sink inward on itself, always directly before they pass a dormant supervision drone. Yongha had been as capable as a human could be, but he hadn't been able to do something like that.

"What happened?" Jaeshin asks, overly aware of the rigid way Yeorim is walking. He's in pain.

"I know you can tell I'm busy," Yeorim snaps.

"You sound like him," Jaeshin says with a grin, nearly bowling them both over when Yeorim abruptly stops.

Without a word, Yeorim tugs him through a sliding door into a small storage alcove. They're close enough to the docking bay that the eerie whine of interstellar engines can be heard even through the thick barrier of the station.

Jaeshin is still grinning when Yeorim turns to face him. When he takes in Yeorim's expression, his grin falters.

"That's what he says." Yeorim's voice is stilted. "Please don't — please don't do that."

"Oh." Jaeshin feels like he's been punched in the stomach. And also like he deserved to be. "I'm sorry." It's not that he's changing the subject, but he's just now realizing that they're tucked in a dead end. "Why are we in here?"

"We're early. Yoonhee is waiting its turn to access the docking bay. When it arrives, you will need to do what I say without hesitation."

There's a strand of hair stuck to Yeorim's cheek. Without thinking, Jaeshin reaches to brush it back into its braid.

Yeorim flinches back. "What are you doing?"

"Sorry." Again, the sensation of being punched. "Your hair was out of place. Habit. I'm sorry."

Yeorim exhales audibly. "I see. You may… you may fix it if you'd like."

"Would you like that?" Jaeshin asks.

Another ship enters the bay, its engine making the floor vibrate. It's like being in the belly of an enormous creature. Yeorim's attention briefly dims, his eyes going strangely blank, and then he's looking at Jaeshin again. "I would like that," he whispers.

His eyes flutter closed when Jaeshin strokes the hair off his cheek and carefully tucks the loose strand into his braid.

"You know things about me, and about him," Jaeshin murmurs. "How can that be?"

Eyes still closed, Yeorim shakes his head faintly. "I don't know how. I suppose there's a dearth of research into using recycled human parts instead of cloned human parts to create a ComfortUnit." He opens his eyes at the sound of Jaeshin's hissed breath. "Oh, I'm sorry. It must sound jarring to hear me say recycled. Oh — no, no. Shhh."

Jaeshin slides to the floor and hugs around Yeorim's legs, his composure having shattered from one breath to the next. Gone. Recycled. Here breathing in a small room beside him. Shivering under his touch. It's too much.

Yeorim puts both hands on the crown of Jaeshin's head, fingertips trembling like insect wings against his hair. "Shhh. Moon Jaeshin. Oh, please don't cry. Yoonhee will be here soon."

That doesn't help.

₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

Jaeshin's long, unkempt hair is soft to Yeorim's touch. He makes sad, snuffling sounds against Yeorim's belly as he cries for a dead man. His ship will be here soon to take him away to safety. So Yeorim pets him while he can.

"I like your hair," he says. There are very few things he likes, so it feels significant to point this one out.

Eyes wild and red-rimmed, Jaeshin looks up at him. His mouth hangs open silently for a moment, and then he laughs wetly. "Do you?"

"It feels… comfortable." It's getting harder to control his emotions. They're more unruly than ever, like an entire weather system brewing in his chest. "I like touching you."

Kneeling at Yeorim's feet like he's serving him, Jaeshin lifts Yeorim's shirt to expose his pale belly, and it feels nothing like being undressed by Insoo. It feels like being something very important. Something precious.

"I like that, too," Yeorim tells him, so that he knows.

"You were hurt," Jaeshin starts, hoarse and trailing off with a sucked-in breath. His hands are shaking. Yeorim takes them gently to try to comfort him. But Jaeshin makes an anguished sound, as if Yeorim's touch made him feel worse. "You were bleeding here. I had to look away."

The afterimage of a memory surfaces. Shock. Putting his own hands there, marveling at the damage, realizing that —

"It wasn't me," Yeorim reminds him, swallowing hard against the pain of knowing that.

Shaking his head, Jaeshin continues to stare at his stomach, at the soft skin he's touching. "This body was his."

"I would give it back if I could," Yeorim whispers. It hurts. He chokes on a small, surprising sob. When he blinks, his face is wet.

Stricken, Jaeshin looks up at him. "You're a person. He would never want that."

"I'm not a person," Yeorim says with a shuddering gasp. "I just seem like one to you."

"No." Jaeshin tugs him down to the ground and touches his face tenderly, holding his gaze, making him feel what it's like to be seen. "That's not true."

When Insoo makes Yeorim cry, he licks the tears off his face and growls like he wants to devour him whole. Seeing his tears, Jaeshin draws him into an embrace, and somehow that is far more painful. It makes him feel like he's been ripped open, like all his parts, human and construct, are exposed to the raw air. He sobs harder. It's not from fear or discomfort but a sadness so enormous his body cannot contain it. "I'm sorry," he whispers shakily. "I'm sorry he died."

Jaeshin pets his head and runs his hand down his long braid, and then down his back, and the tenderness of the gesture makes Yeorim as dizzy as the irregularity of his breathing. "You have done nothing to be sorry for. You didn't hurt him. You didn't ask to live like this, either."

Yeorim still struggles to name emotions, but he knows the squeezing ache inside of him is love. Love embedded in his human parts, in the soul of a man who loved so greatly it could not be erased. "I," he tries, before he corrects himself. "He."

"I know," Jaeshin says, swaying as he holds him, rocking him as if he is a child.

"Geoloh," Yeorim cries, not sure why his strained mind reaches for the wrong name, for a name he's never heard.

Jaeshin doesn't seem to mind.

₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

It takes Insoo an infuriatingly long time to find them. It turns out none of the supervision drones on this station have decent logs or feeds that aren't inexplicably buffering. Running for the only docking bay taking arrivals, he makes a mental note to rent a SecUnit or two.

When he sees them, they're sneaking like rats out of a service hallway into one of the larger rooms that will function as waiting areas for general transport ships when the station comes online.

"Get them!" he screams at the only nearby supervision drone.

It slowly spins and faces him instead of Jaeshin and Yeorim, and he screams with frustration and fires at them with a projectile weapon, striking the wall behind them and leaving a melted gash in the metal.

That's enough to get them to both turn, Yeorim frozen with his hands reaching toward Insoo as if begging him to stop, and Jaeshin with enough sense to put his hands up.

"You killed him once. Now you're going to steal him?" Insoo asks, the projectile weapon trained on Jaeshin.

"I didn't kill him," Jaeshin snarls.

"Didn't you though? Took him from the safety of society, the protection of his father. Dragged him across the galaxy to follow your moral compass straight to his death."

"Stop it," Yeorim says, strained. "Stop."

Jaeshin's expression wavers. "He wanted to come."

"And where were you when he was on that mining colony picking through bot parts like a scavenger? You left him defenseless. And he died alone. You may as well have been the one to do it. It would have been faster."

"He always made his own choices," Jaeshin says unsteadily, glancing at Yeorim as if a ComfortUnit has the power to absolve him. "Do you think I could control him?" His attention returns to Insoo and his gaze hardens. "You couldn't. That's why you did this."

Insoo laughs. "Of course it's why. I'm taking my due. What you snatched away from me."

"Please," Yeorim says, taking shuffling, cautious steps toward Insoo like a child learning to walk. "I'm not going anywhere. Let him leave. He's a distraction. Let him go."

"You're right," Insoo says. "He is a distraction." When Yeorim is within reach, he feels weightless. He takes his hand. He's won.

"Get your hands off him," Jaeshin says, lunging forward and stopping himself when Insoo steadies his aim.

Ignoring him, Insoo lifts Yeorim's hand and kisses his knuckles. "I'll wipe all of this away, darling, but first you must atone for the trouble you've caused. I command you to execute Moon Jaeshin."

Jaeshin lets out an incoherent sound of rage. He doesn't look as terrified as he should. Maybe he doesn't understand how a governor module works. He will momentarily.

Yeorim has gone rigid. His body jerks convulsively, minutely, as if every muscle that controls him as it odds with his mind. He stares at Insoo, his nostrils flaring, and opens his hand to receive the projectile weapon. "Don't," he manages to choke out. "Don't."

"You're a stubborn one, aren't you?" Insoo croons, helpfully turning Yeorim's body to face Jaeshin, who has the most curious expression on his face. Rather than fearing his imminent death, he looks like he's trying to soothe Yeorim. A sexbot.

Jaeshin has never been anything but a fool.

"Go on," Insoo murmurs, guiding Yeorim to raise his arm and aim. "You heard me.

. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

Jaeshin can tell the weapon's trajectory is directed at his chest. He knows it will kill him instantly when Yeorim is forced to fire it. But all he can see is the dark bead of blood welling up and falling like a tear from Yeorim's nose, over his lips, down his chin. Yeorim's throat works with low, distressed sounds of protest. He's fighting so hard.

All he's ever done is fight.

Insoo steps back, hands clasped together like an artist admiring his own masterpiece. It's like he wants the best vantage point, wants to see them both destroyed by the same shot.

"Close your eyes," Jaeshin exhales. "Yeorim, close your eyes. You don't have to watch."

"Do it!" Insoo shouts, just as the wall beside him crumples toward him like paper.

All sound seems to lag a moment, and then Jaeshin can hear nothing but the horrible screech of twisting metal and the deafening whine of an engine powering down. It's loud in a way that wipes his mind clean of any thought at all, makes his head pound and his eyes throb. It takes him a while to realize he's been thrown to the ground. And then, from his vantage point sprawled on his back, he recognizes the gleaming edge of the battering ram that forced its way into the mangled room.

It's the nose of his own ship.

And Insoo — he's crushed against the far wall, pinned at the midsection so thoroughly that even in death, his expression is one of disbelief.

Disoriented by the blinking emergency lights, Jaeshin knits the last few moments together and abruptly realizes that Yeorim must have been communicating with Yoonhee. He must have called it. He must have told it what it had to do to save them.

Jaeshin whoops with stunned delight, twisting to look for Yeorim. "You're brilliant!"

His voice dies in his throat.

The projectile weapon lies discarded in the snarl of twisted metal.

Yeorim is kneeling on the buckled floor between Jaeshin and the nose of the ship, a jagged fragment of metal protruding from his middle like a pin through the delicate wing of a butterfly. His hands scrabble helplessly at the gleaming metal, fingers too bloody to gain purchase.

All the other sounds fade away. Jaeshin scrambles onto his hands and knees and crosses the distance between them with an anguished shout. "No! No. No, no." He cups Yeorim's face with all the tenderness he can manage. "Look at me. You're alright," he says, absurdly. "You're okay."

"Geoloh," Yeorim says. It's hard to hear his voice. There's blood — blood staining his teeth, his lips. He keeps trying to catch onto the metal with clumsy grasps. "I'm in a little trouble."

"No." Jaeshin is back in the cold room that haunts him. Back in the nightmare. They both are. "No. No, you're alright. I'm here."

"Gonna need you to pick me up," Yeorim mumbles, his head bobbing weakly. "Yoonhee has the coordinates."

"No." Snarling out a horrified sound, something between apologizing and begging, Jaeshin braces his feet against the wreckage. He considers warning him or counting down, but there's no way to do this mercifully. Lifting with his legs, he hauls Yeorim off the metal impaling him. There's a moment of horrific resistance. Yeorim cries out and flails, and then he's limp in Jaeshin's arms. He's free. They're getting away.

"Come on," Jaeshin says, panting. "Up you go. We're going home. Yoonhee's here. See? See?"

Yeorim's fingers knead at Jaeshin’s clothes weakly. His lips are moving. It's hard to hear him. It's so fucking loud. Yoonhee's extending the gangway. There are sirens now. All around. Yeorim takes it in with an unfocused, lost sort of expression.

"Look at me. Yongha. Damn it — look at me! Come on. We're going home."

. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

There'd been a plan, Yeorim thinks. He tries to remember what it was. He feels glitchy. "Tell it to prep the med…" Was it that? "Shit." It's too hard to think.

His performance is plummeting. It makes him feel warm and strange. But it was cold that night, not warm. It was so cold. His blood had been the only thing that wasn't cold until even it was cold, and he'd known. He'd known a terrible thing.

"Geoloh. Can you hear me?"

"I can hear you. Stay awake. Yoonhee's here. See? We're inside. We're getting out of here. MedSystem will fix you up. Yoonhee's good at fixing things. You — he taught it. So you're in good hands, okay? Hey! Hey, come on. Stay awake. Look at me."

He's recording. What a strange thing to leave behind. Something. Not enough. He debates for a moment, whether or not he should tell the truth. But once they got tired of hiding things, they always told each other the truth. No matter how hard that truth was.

So he whispers his truth into the darkness trying to sweep him away. A current he cannot fight. "Geoloh, I'm scared."

. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖ . ₊. ₊ ⊹ . ₊˖

Twitching on MedSystem's procedure table, Yeorim tries and fails to reboot and come back online. He is a machine. That is what he's meant to do.

Jaeshin knows this. But watching Yeorim surface to agony and critical malfunction again and again feels like the thing that will finally break him.

They're already in flight because Yoonhee is the best of ships. Struggling to rapidly adjust to the ship's artificial gravity system, Jaeshin cuts Yeorim's bloodsoaked clothes off his convulsing body. There are —

"Fuck," he sobs out, biting the inside of his lip so hard it starts to bleed. The taste of iron makes him realize, distantly, that Yeorim's blood doesn't smell like human blood. It doesn't have the same metallic, fuzzy scent. He tries to focus on that and not the criss-crossed lines of new, pink skin all down Yeorim's back and rear.

Insoo is dead, but it was too quick. He didn't suffer.

Yeorim whines, suffering, and shuts down again. He looks too vulnerable without his clothes on. He looks cold. Jaeshin can't look at the wound. Can't bear it.

"Geoloh," Yoonhee says calmly on the intercom. "You have feed access now. Care to join us?"

Skidding across the small room, Jaeshin grabs an augment from a utility cabinet and unceremoniously installs it, barely feeling the sting of it settling into the sensitive skin behind his ear.

And then they’re connected. He can hear Yoonhee repeating itself to Yeorim, assuring him that it’s safe to fully power down, he’s safe. He needs to let go for now. He’s safe.

On the feed, Yeorim isn’t communicating with words. But Jaeshin can understand the raw flashes of confusion and fear.

don’t delete let me stay let me stay please don’t please don’t please don’t

“What are you doing?” he shouts out loud. “Help him!”

Yoonhee responds on the feed, an unflappable, even voice. “If I override him and power him down manually, he will never trust me. Or you.”

Swearing, Jaeshin swings around the table to press his forehead to Yeorim’s. It’s been so long since he’s had feed access it feels clumsy and disorienting, and his lips move silently, mirroring his voice in the feed. “Yeorim, you need to power down completely. We won’t hurt you or take your memories away. You’re… You’re damaged badly but we can fix you. Just your body. No one will tamper with your mind. I won’t let anyone hurt you. You — he taught Yoonee how to help. It knows how to help you. I — fuck — please. Please rest. I can’t. I can’t watch you die. I can’t do this.”

“Geoloh,” Yoonhee says, not so much a warning as a reminder that he’s supposed to be helping. That perhaps this isn't helping.

Yeorim responds with staticky fragments of language and desperation. wake me up same? stay? same?

Petting his hair, kissing his cold cheek, Jaeshin sobs and nods. “The same. I promise. I will be right here. I promise.”

When Yeorim powers down it should be a relief, but the way he turns off so thoroughly and instantly drains the last of Jaeshin’s ability to cope with any of this. Yeorim is no longer in pain or distress, but he looks dead, and it's too farfetched to imagine that he will ever wake again.

Jaeshin slides to the floor, sick with adrenaline and horror, as MedSystem descends onto Yeorim and begins the tedious work of repairing his organic and inorganic parts. He stares at his bloody, shaking hands and then at the pile of Yeorim's ruined clothes on the floor. "Help him," he begs. "Please."

“You also need to go offline to recover,” Yoonhee says absently. “Okay?”

All Jaeshin can do is whine in the affirmative. One of the MedSystem drones sticks him with a sedative that hits him like a crashing wave. Watching the room start to wobble and darken, he slurs, “I stay here though. Promised.”

“Yep,” Yoonhee says, faintly amused. “You stay right there.”

Yoonhee - Encrypted Log 100024

The problem with being a ship is that you can't sleep or close your eyes or fully tune out the things your humans are doing. What your human and your formerly-human-not-quite-human-anymore construct are doing, that is.

As a result, all the intimate goings ons between them become your business just as much as it's your business to safely navigate from one place to another. Or occasionally facilitate a prison break and a justified, long-overdue murder.

The surgical repairs are the easiest part. Injured humans need human blood, and they need it quickly. That can be problematic, particularly on the run. Constructs, on the other hand, are made of a little blood and a little this and a little that — the kind of fluid that's much easier for a well-stocked ship's MedSystem to replenish.

"Geoloh," you say in the feed. "He's not going to die. Please talk to him. He knows your voice."

Jaeshin has been slumped beside the procedure table after you made the tactical decision to sedate him due to being both distraught and in the way. You understand why he required a sedative, as well as why he needed to remain close to Yeorim. Trauma infects humans like malware. It shuts them down. It's been a traumatic several hundred cycles for Jaeshin, punctuated by one even more particularly traumatic cycle.

"He's going to live," you repeat, coaxing Jaeshin to rouse from his drug-induced nap on the floor. "Also, I'm hacking his governor module. So he'll wake up ungovernable. I assume this is your preference."

"Don't try to make me laugh," Jaeshin chokes.

You project a smile, and Jaeshin lifts his chin and smiles back. "Asshole," he says fondly.

Now that Jaeshin appears to be coming back online, you turn your attention back to Yeorim. You have been fascinated by the experience of attending to him. Many of his biometric signals are identical to Gu Yongha's, but he is a distinct entity. Thankfully. A human would not have survived being eviscerated.

It will be a while before he wakes from dormancy. This is good for everyone. While dormant, he cannot feel pain. He also cannot hear Jaeshin, but occasionally you lie for the better of your human. It would do Jaeshin good to speak to him.

Jaeshin, being bullheaded, hesitates, speaking to you before speaking to Yeorim's inert form. His smile has faded and he's crying hoarsely. At least he's holding Yeorim's hand and looking at him instead of staring blankly.

"He was experiencing Yongha's memories, I think," Jaeshin says between ragged breaths. He bows his head. "I never knew. I never knew what he was saying at the end, it was too hard to hear."

"You are in danger of losing consciousness again," you say. A drone supplies Jaeshin with a stool, and he sinks into it heavily and sways. If he passes out, he passes out. You are capable of caring for him whether he's conscious or not.

He does not pass out. But he does rest his head awkwardly against Yeorim's shoulder, his attention trained on his slack mouth, thankfully, rather than the gaping hole in his midsection being slowly repaired by MedSystem.

"Does knowing what he said change anything?" you ask. You could hear Yeorim on the feed. You know what he said — what Gu Yongha's last words were. You have not yet integrated that information.

It takes Jaeshin a while to answer. "I think it makes me feel worse."

"Yeah," you acknowledge, focused on replaying Yongha teaching you how to disable the cruel grip of a governor module, as he'd put it. You are glad you knew him. Yeorim will also be glad you knew him, once he can no longer be told what to do by anyone. "It will always feel bad. But you will feel other things, too."

Jaeshin shudders. You have a feeling it will take him a little while to understand that.

"Talk to Yeorim," you remind him.

A while later, Jaeshin brushes a tangled strand of hair off Yeorim's forehead. "You saved me," he murmurs. "It was brave and clever. And… well, I'll tell you this again when you're awake. I'll tell you as often as I have to that I know you're not him. You're you. And you can take as long as you need to get to know me. I hope… "

"It's alright," you interrupt, giving Jaeshin privacy the only way you know how. "You don't have to say that part out loud"

Yoonhee - Encrypted Log 100108

Yeorim doesn't cut his hair. You're glad. It creates a visual distinction that reduces the number of incidents of Jaeshin calling him by the wrong name and then sulking guiltily about it for lengthy amounts of time.

You have an easier time falling into a comfortable rhythm with Yeorim than Jaeshin does. You think it's because you're both improbable entities who know more than an entity ought to know. He says it's because you're funny and have good taste in friends.

Jaeshin still grieves. Yeorim tells him it would be strange if he didn't.

Yeorim's performance still falters when he remembers things that he shouldn't have to carry, or when he wonders if he ought to exist. Jaeshin tells him it would be strange if he didn't.

You try very hard not to look too closely, but you cannot tune them out entirely. So you hear them arguing, and you hear them crying, and you hear them having sex, and you hear them laughing.

The laughter is your favorite.