mimosa 67 (1/2)
title: mimosa 67
pairing: mark/jackson, jb/jr
rating: nc-17
summary: when mark invented jackson, he never meant to fall in love with him. (android!au)
warning: mentions of character death
notes: for 22_taken :)
(When Jinyoung rings the doorbell of the address he had been told to report to, he waits a few minutes before the door is cracked open and a harassed-looking man in a white lab coat and disheveled hair peers out.
"Hi... uh, I'm here for the interview?" Jinyoung says hesitantly, and the man's eyes clear with comprehension. He opens the door a bit wider and gestures for Jinyoung to come in.
Jinyoung closes the door gingerly behind him as he steps in, scanning his surroundings. The office is spacious but gives the impression of being cramped because of the various odds and ends strewn over every surface. He can't see a single inch of floor beneath the layer of assorted loose-leaf documents, folders, scientific apparatus and trash of all kinds. The air is stagnant with a distinct stale, musty odor.
The man has the decency to look embarrassed, furtively kicking away random pieces of litter with his feet and hastily sweeping a landslide of scientific journals off the couch to clear a seat for Jinyoung. Jinyoung perches uncomfortably on the edge of the couch and declines the man's offer of a drink politely.
The man settles down on the loveseat opposite him, eyes serious and businesslike as he holds out a hand. "I'm Mark's associate, Im Jaebum. I'll be conducting the interview today."
Jinyoung grips his hand firmly. "Nice to meet you, Mr Im. My name is Park Jinyoung."
Jaebum takes the proferred resume from Jinyoung's hands and flips through it briskly. His brows crease with concentration as he peruses Jinyoung's portfolio, eyes widening slightly as if vaguely impressed as he closes it, looking up to study Jinyoung more closely.
"You majored in mechanical engineering?"
"Graduated with honours, sir," Jinyoung replies politely.
Jaebum nods with approval. "Your qualifications and expertise seem to be in order. But I have a question. What do you know about Mark Tuan?"
"Everything there is to know, sir," Jinyoung replies immediately, but admits after a moment's hesitation, "That is, very little." He tells Jaebum about how robotics has been his passion since young, and how he avidly respected Mark as one of the foremost researchers in the field. He knew Steel VS Skin, the graduation thesis the reclusive, enigmatic inventor had written about android construction by heart, but he had not heard any news about him ever since he had fallen off the radar of the scientific world a few years ago.
Jaebum nods, eyes impenetrable. "Have you heard of Mark's partner, Jackson Wang? He's involved with a lot of the research process too, so you'll have to work closely with him."
Jinyoung frowns. "I wasn't aware that Mr Tuan had... a partner. No offense, but I always thought he didn't work well with other people."
"Jackson's not a person."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You heard right," Jaebum says, the corners of his mouth twisting down in a wry smile. "He's an android. A robot, if you will. Part-machine, part-human, and Mark's greatest invention."
Jinyoung's jaw drops. "So all these years..." he breathes, "Mr Tuan had been working on a new project that no one knew about?"
Jaebum laughs mirthlessly. "That's one way to put it." He leans forward, eyes intent. "Mr Park, you're not going to believe a single word of what I'm about to tell you." Jinyoung leans closer too, holding his breath, and Jaebum starts, "Listen very carefully...")
"Welcome back, baobei," Mark whispers as No. 67's dusky eyelashes flutter open to reveal chocolate irises flecked with hazel, the dark pupils in those almond-shaped eyes so unsettlingly lifelike that Mark stumbles back with a choked gasp.
The man bends his joints stiffly into a sitting position, stretching his newly-formed arms with a familiar catlike agility that makes Mark's breath catch in his throat.
"Mark?" he says disorientedly, blinking groggily as those devastating orbs focus on Mark, registering recognition. It's the sound of his name in Jackson's unmistakable voice that breaks Mark completely.
"J-jackson," Mark stutters a sob. He hasn't tasted the word on his tongue for so many years, it slides down his throat like forbidden fruit. "Jackson," he repeats, voice a little steadier but still cracking at the end, and suddenly he's crying "JacksonJacksonJackson" like a broken tape recorder and his fingers are curling in the fabric of Jackson's shirt, his tears dampening Jackson's shoulder.
Jackson looks startled but his arms reflexively rise up around Mark's shoulderblades. "Hey, what's wrong?" he whispers soothingly in Mark's ear. "Shhh. Don't cry."
Mark wrenches out of Jackson's arms, making him look even more confused. "D-do you recognize me?" he demands, hiccupping and looking increasingly hysterical.
Jackson looks bewildered but nods. "What happened?" he asks softly. "I remember that we were driving home when there was a bright light and a crash..." He winces in pain, rubbing his forehead. "I can't remember anything after that. Was there an accident?"
Mark quickly grabs his hand, stroking his fingers tenderly through Jackson's hair. "Yes, baby. Don't try to remember. It's alright now. You're alright."
He takes Jackson into his arms, feeling the younger's body relax against his chest. So it had worked. Mark had transferred all his memories over to Jackson's synthetic brain, so all Jackson knew of the incident was where Mark's recollections ended. It was a stroke of luck that he had harvested the memories before he regained the blocked part of the accident, Mark thinks and shudders. He has to live with the images of Jackson dying every day, again and again in his dreams. The last thing he wants is for Jackson to be tormented by them too.
Suddenly, Jackson's arms lock around him like bars of iron, his worried gaze sweeping over Mark's body. "Hyung, are you okay? Did you get hurt? I'm so sorry --" Jackson's opalescent eyes glimmer with tears that spill over, warm and wet on Mark's skin as he smothers Mark in a hug so tight that he can't breathe.
Mark's heart contracts like there's a vice clamped over it, his mind still spinning dizzyingly from Jackson, suddenly alive and talking and moving in his living room. His head swims and his stomach lurches, but he swallows down the giddy spell and strokes Jackson's back until his blubbering calms down into soft breathless sobs.
Mark caresses Jackson's tearstained face lovingly, hesitantly leaning forward to lick Jackson's tears clean with his tongue. Jackson closes his eyes and melts into his touch. Jackson's tears taste salty and warm, exactly the way they had tasted when he was human.
"Don't worry, I'm fine," Mark croaks, feeling Jackson trembling against him. "I got out unscathed because you... you protected me."
("I met Mark and Jackson in university," Jaebum begins. "We were all majoring in Physics, and minoring in Electrical Engineering. Even back then, they were already the most popular guys in school, the smartest and most good-looking, but they only had eyes for each other. They were inseparable, the campus' golden couple."
He describes how Jackson and Mark were like at nineteen and twenty, young and carefree and toppling into love with each other. "They graduated at the top of the class. They had it all planned out -- once they got their degrees, they'd start building the android that they'd been designing since they were young. It would be revolutionary, introducing the world to a brand new age of technology. Mark was one of the best scientific minds in the country and Jackson was a brilliant mathematician and long-running champion of international Olympiads. Both of them were among the most highly ranking members of MENSA for their age. Together, they were invincible, unstoppable."
"But then tragedy struck.")
Mark knows that he can't hide the truth from Jackson for much longer, knows this from the way he catches Jackson studying his hands when he thinks Mark isn't looking, heartbreakingly puzzled like he hasn't seen them before; from the way Jackson inhabits his own body with an unease that has never plagued him. Jackson looks so lost and uncomprehending that Mark almost breaks and confesses the truth, but he can't even start to imagine the look of horror on Jackson's face when Mark tells him that he's not human.
Mark struggles with the words, rehearsing them in his head again and again, but simply can't find a way to explain their senseless predicament logically. Finally, though, Jackson is the one who shatters the silence.
"Hyung..." he says. "What did you do to me?"
Mark gulps and attempts to play dumb, blinking innocently. "What do you mean?"
"Come off it," Jackson says irritably, but his smile is sorrowful. "This..." he touches his face. "This..." he pinches his arm. "... isn't real. This is," he raps the side of his head, "but the rest feel different."
"Mark," Jackson says gently, eyes glistening with unshed tears. "It's okay. Just tell me what happened. I can handle it."
Turns out, that was a lie. Mark had overestimated Jackson's emotional capacity, forgotten that he was overwrought and fragile from just waking up days ago. All his newly-constructed nerve endings were thrumming like a power plant and it had taken just a few careless words from Mark to send his system into overdrive.
Mark catches Jackson as his eyes roll up in his head and he slumps against Mark's frame, still warm. To an ignorant bystander, it would look like he had just passed out from exhaustion, but Mark knows better.
When Mark opens him up, he finds a vein in his heart shot and burnt out, like a fuse in a short circuit. He repairs it carefully, biting his tongue until he tastes the metallic tint of blood. Jackson's body is lifeless in his arms, reminding Mark of what he had managed to forget for the past few days -- that this is not the real Jackson, but No. 67. An imitation that will always pale hopelessly in comparison to the original, no matter how authentic he seems.
Reset, reboot. Mark presses the buttons that he has pressed sixty-six times before, about to toss the useless body with all the others in the storeroom when something stops him. There is an indefinable quality about No. 67 that is different from the others, something that tugs at Mark's heart, something undeniably human. Maybe it's the few days they've been through together, those fleeting windows of transient happiness. If Jaebum knew about this, he would say that Mark had become hopelessly sentimental since the accident, and maybe it's true. But Mark can't bring himself to throw a body that had held even the slightest glimmer of Jackson in it away, at least not until he confirms that it is completely, irredeemably mechanical.
He takes a deep breath and knuckles down. Compared to starting all over with a new body, trying to revive this ruined one will take twice the effort and time. He will have to take on the backbreaking and daunting task of taking Jackson apart completely, and putting him back together again. But Mark feels the faintest tendril of hope, winding its way around his heart, as his fingers find the familiar buttons at the base of Jackson's spine and he feels the machine stirring to life beneath him.
("Mark lost his senses when he woke up from the coma and found out that Jackson was dead. He was inconsolable and unstable, and had to be sedated heavily. People always throw the metaphor insanely in love around, but Mark was literally the embodiment of it. It was painful to watch. When he seemed to calm down a few weeks later and they took him off the morphine, he attempted suicide. He was a wreck. He just kept repeating that life was worthless without Jackson. For awhile there it was touch-and-go. We thought we'd lost him too."
Jaebum stops talking and rummages in a pile of clothes for a box of tissues, offering it to Jinyoung with a sympathetic, uncomfortable smile, and Jinyoung realizes that his eyes are leaking unconsciously like a faulty faucet. He takes one gratefully and sniffles as he dabs at his face in embarrassment, gesturing for Jaebum to go on.
"By some kind of miracle, he survived," Jaebum says, crossing himself and muttering a silent prayer of thanks. The relief on his face is still apparent, as is his obvious affection for Mark. "He stopped crying all day, started eating. He was pale as a ghost and had lost all this weight, I thought he'd snap like a twig in a gust of wind. At least he started living again, started working. But he was never the same again. He sat there with me and answered when I asked questions but his eyes were dead and soulless. It was like when Jackson had gone, he had taken a piece of Mark with him."
"Was he trying to... resurrect him?"
Jaebum chuckles bitterly. "It's so obvious to me now, but I hadn't the slightest clue then. He threw himself into his work like a man possessed and all we thought was that it was a good thing because at least it gave him a distraction. He swore that he would continue the work the two of them had started together, that he wouldn't rest until he had brought it to completion. They had already worked out all technicalities of the basic model so all he had to do was make some modifications, and it could be personalized to become anyone he wanted it to be. And if an android was to be designed as a clone of a living person, what better inventor to do it than that person's lover? It was the easiest thing Mark had ever done, because he knew Jackson like the back of his own hand. He knew every single mole on Jackson's body, every single pore and blemish, even better than he knew his own. It was, by all accounts and purposes, an impossible feat. But then again, he had always been impossibly talented."
"Still, he didn't get it right immediately. It took him time."
"Years," Jaebum says simply, the single word laden with meaning. "No one else could have done it. That was how much he loved him."
"I'm sorry," Jinyoung says tremulously, but Jaebum shakes his head reassuringly. "Don't be. It's all in the past.")
Lying in his hospital bed staring up at the cracks spiderwebbing over the off-white ceiling, Mark had felt the dim stirrings of memory. A year ago, on their sixth anniversary, Jackson had given him a large, gaudily-wrapped gift box with a wide ribbon around it. When Mark had opened it, he realized it was one of those Russian nesting doll boxes that opened up into smaller and smaller ones until finally, right in the heart of it, he found a simple, unlabeled memory card.
He turned it around in his fingers, unimpressed, but Jackson smiled knowingly. "Guess what's inside."
"Our sex tapes?" Mark joked, taking the bait, but Jackson batted his arm, miffed. "Be serious."
"Okay, okay," Mark raised his hands in surrender, laughing. "I give up."
Jackson looked smug. "I cracked the last code on the memory and brain waves transferring device last week. The first thing I did was to harvest the contents of my mind and copy them all in here." He patted the miniscule card proudly.
Mark blinked at him and deadpanned drily, "So... my anniversary gift is your brain matter. Romantic."
"Shut up," Jackson laughed. "If one day something happens to me, at least you'll be able to rebuild me," he jested, but Mark immediately clamped his hand over his mouth, panicked. "Don't say such inauspicious things!" he hissed, close to tears, and Jackson's eyes softened as he slowly kissed Mark's anxieties away.
The moment Mark recalled the incident, he bolted upright in the hospital bed, hope flooding into him like liquid strength. He ripped out the IV from his wrist and scrambled out of bed, nearly falling facefirst on the linoleum floor as his weak knees buckled beneath him.
He had barely walked a few steps when Jaebum approached on the corridor, foiling his escape plans. "Mark-yah?" he looked shocked at seeing Mark out of bed and standing upright. "What are you doing outside your room?"
"I'm going home," Mark mumbled, not stopping his agonized footsteps.
Jaebum caught him as his vision swam and his knees gave out again, carrying him effortlessly back into the room like he weighed nothing. When he woke up, it was dark and Jaebum was sitting cramped in the bedside chair, his head pillowed on his folded arms as he dozed on the edge of Mark's bed.
He snapped awake groggily when Mark started crying soundlessly. "What's wrong?" he whispered, hands reaching out worriedly to feel Mark's body. "Are you hurting somewhere?"
Mark was too tired to even gesture to his chest, just rasping, "I have to go home."
Jaebum looked confused but relieved as he said warily, "Of course you're going to go home, bro." He brushed a lock of Mark's hair out of his eyes. "When you get better, okay?"
"Now," Mark whined, sounding infantile, but Jaebum only smiled patiently and offered, "How about this... if you agree to eat something, I'll talk to your doctor tomorrow. Deal?"
Mark blinked through his tears. Jaebum was looking at him with a mischievous and hopeful gleam in his eyes, and Mark grimaced and nodded.
Within minutes, Jaebum had a tray of hot, aromatic food served in and was spooning bites into Mark's mouth.
Mark took Jackson's eyes from the prisms of sunlight lancing across solitaires, the creamy silk of his skin from white jade, his cheekbones from the steepest ski-slopes, his laugh from the tinkling of wind chimes, and the arc of his smile from the gradient Jackson had mapped a million times against his lips. He remembered with crystalline clarity every cadence and inflection of Jackson's deep, mellifluous voice, the piano of his breaths and the fortissimo of his breathless moans as he twisted beneath Mark. He remembered the dangerously slurring drawl of Jackson's accent, the way he rolled his tongue on the R when he said Mark's name and his sheer facility with languages. As for the remaining data needed to reassemble Jackson's system, it was all in the memory card Mark had raced home after he was discharged and found thankfully intact.
Because Mark knew Jackson so thoroughly they could complete each other's sentences, could predict with absolute accuracy how Jackson would react to every question, in every situation. He had the entire lexicon of Jackson's smiles at his fingertips, because the only thing Jackson loved as much as he loved Mark was smiling.
Mark took months to write the first rough draft of the program. He wasn't doing anything that many other inventors hadn't attempted before, wasn't exploring unchartered territory. But what made his program different, the magic ingredient, was how painstakingly intricate it was, boasting a complexity that had never been seen in robotics before. He had broken down the fourth wall, the thin, invisible line that distinguished androids from humans. And while his work was tedious and solitary, he never felt alone, because every day he could feel Jackson's spirit alongside him, silently helping and accompanying him.
Jackson made his presence known in ways more obnoxious and less romantic than spiritually too. He was there in the rapidly blossoming android that grew steadily more lifelike under Mark's careful hands with each passing day, in the way the half-formed but already surprisingly precocious mannequin would snap open its eyes suddenly when Mark's hands were elbow deep in its heart or some other less appropriate place, and say something in its robotic, still unedited voice that made Mark snort a startled laugh.
Jackson hadn't been lying when he said the memory card contained his essence. In the budding android, Mark could already see unmistakable echoes of Jackson's inexhaustible energy, irrepressible positivity, inimitable candor, brutal honesty, sparkling wit, and exhilarating spontaniety. It filled him with a warm glow that bubbled up uncontrollably and spread from his chest through his body, energizing him. Jackson had left so abruptly and without warning, the tiny and unremarkable memory card his only legacy. But from the wealth of information contained inside, Mark was confident of replicating him.
He shook his head in exasperation when he realized that the android had also inherited Jackson's crass and wacky sense of humour, and his quirky fashion sense. Jackson had a hang-up about his thighs and liked to wear baggy pants and hip-hop fashion. He had a vast collection of snapbacks and his entire wardrobe was Gothic black. Mark nearly choked on his water when he went to the kitchen for five minutes to get a drink and came back to see the previously nude android dressed in a black shirt of his and a snapback pulled jauntily over its head. Even in death, Jackson had to have the last laugh, didn't he? The muscles in Mark's face ached with unuse when he unwillingly smiled for the first time in he-couldn't-even-remember-how-long.
In this way, Mark had forged a tenuous and inexplicable relationship with every android he had built from the unpolished, amateur No. 1 to the final vastly-improved but still unsuccessful No. 66. It was the gravitational pull that Jackson had exerted on him from the very first day they met, manifesting itself every time Mark loaded the data from the memory card into the new android's empty brain. Every time he disposed of yet another failed attempt, it felt like watching Jackson die all over again. Mark wondered how many times he would have to send Jackson away, before his penance would be paid in full. He didn't know. The only thing he knew was that no matter how many times it took, he would willingly oblige.
("Not many people knew, but after the accident, Mark suffered from partial amnesia initially."
"He lost his memories?"
"He couldn't remember the cause and effect of the accident, only the events leading up to it. The doctor said it was normal that he had repressed some memories because of the trauma."
"Did he ever regain them?"
"... Yes."
"What's wrong? Were they unpleasant?"
"..."
"I mean... of course they were unpleasant. What am I saying? I'm sorry, that was insensitive."
"No, don't worry about it. It's just hard for me to remember. He was distraught. He kept saying that it was all his fault."
"Why?"
"Because Jackson had sacrificed his life to save him.")
This time, Mark has learnt from his mistakes. After he finishes reconstructing No. 67, instead of loading his own memories into the android's brain, Mark deliberately leaves it a clean slate. So this second version of No. 67 is a strange mix of adult and innocence, Jackson's brilliant mind and lightspeed reflexes tempered by the amnesiac quality the space where his memories should be gives him.
Even so, this Jackson is breathtakingly intelligent, even more so than the real one ever was Mark sometimes thinks. More intelligent than a non-human has any right to be. Jackson's intellect had always been one of his most attractive qualities to Mark. He liked when Jackson got all Maths geek on him, losing himself in the equations he'd pore over until the dead of the night with his eyes serious behind oversized spectacles, his knuckled hands dwarfing the pen he was holding.
No. 67 is vibrant and headstrong and wilful, spitting and clawing like a wildcat the first time he sees Jaebum until Mark lays a hand on his shoulder and wordlessly calms him.
"You've got him on a leash, haven't you?" Jaebum observes with amusement, sitting on the couch and accepting a drink after Mark has mollified Jackson and sent him to the bedroom and clumsily pasted a band-aid over the scratch on Jaebum's arm. "You always did."
Mark drops his gaze shyly, blushing. He can't help feeling a little smug over the difference in Jackson's reaction towards Jaebum and him when they had first met. Although Jackson hadn't remembered Mark, he seemed to somehow recognize him. If Mark was being romantic, he'd say that maybe it was deja vu, memories from a past lifetime. But the scientist in him took over and he figured out logically that it must've been some retained recollection in his mind because Jackson had known him a decade longer than Jaebum.
Jackson has grown into his own body now, lounging comfortably around the house with that sleek pantherlike grace and smiling that wicked smile that makes Mark's heart skip a traitorous beat as he teases Mark mercilessly. But he hadn't always been this cocky. Mark fondly remembers the first few days after Jackson had woken up, when he had followed Mark around with plaintive puppybrown eyes, trailing at his heels like a fledgling. It was only after Jackson had gone that Mark realized that he had always been his shadow. And wasn't a shadow what made someone truly human? Could one live on without it, without feeling like a ghost?
Mark finds himself lost in the curve of Jackson's unspoiled smile, reveling in the way every emotion he feels flickers across his face instantly, transparent as water. Jackson is touchingly artless, not having mastered the art of disguising his emotions and hiding his reactions. Mark enjoys this new, uncomplicated relationship, the lack of subterfuge that had clouded almost all their interactions nearing the end, but his heart clenches to think of the cost at which it had come.
And if there's anything unnatural about the rhythm of Jackson's movements; if he blinks a little less than normal; if the glint in his eyes looks a little too much like glass in a certain light; if sometimes his actions and responses are a little too predictable, it's much easier for Mark to close one eye and pretend not to notice. It doesn't bother him. Not in the least.
("When I saw the latest model of Jackson in Mark's house that afternoon, I knew that it would be the last," Jaebum says thoughtfully, sipping his coffee. His eyes are cloudy with distant memories like the swirls of milk Jinyoung stirs into his own cup. He had grown thirsty from the crying as he gradually settled down for the long haul, knowing that he wouldn't leave this grubby office today without hearing the tale to the end.
"Sugar?" Jaebum offers, and Jinyoung nods, pushing his cup over. Jaebum rips a packet of packaged sugar crystals open and tips them in. Jinyoung has noticed that he's more dexterous with his left hand, and guesses that he's probably left-handed.
Jinyoung cradles the cup in both hands as Jaebum continues, inhaling the wafting aroma of the steam and feeling the temperature of the hot coffee seep through the enamel mug into his palms.
"It was amazing. He could walk and talk and function like a real person. If I didn't know that he wasn't, I'd be completely hoodwinked. I mean, I worked with androids. I was no stranger to their technology. But I'd never seen anything so... lifelike. It was frightening, how real he was. I couldn't take my eyes off him.
But what was most amazing was that he wasn't just human, he was Jackson. Mark had captured all of Jackson's defining characteristics so perfectly, it was unimaginable. His snark, his temper, his expressions. God." Jaebum closes his eyes, reminiscing.
"He had done it. Mark had immortalized Jackson in this living, breathing android, and it was nothing short of a miracle. I was the only witness to this unbelievable sight. That android was a walking tribute to his love, to their love and it was heartbreaking.
We covered up the accident. It was a testament to how indistinguishable he was from a human that we managed to pull it off. It was like Jackson come back to life. No one suspected a thing, not even Jackson's own parents."
"That must've been a difficult secret to keep." Now, Jinyoung is the one looking at Jaebum with sympathy.
Jaebum inclines his head, concurring. "It was. Especially because sometimes it seemed I was the only one who knew he wasn't real.")
Now, when Mark wakes up from nightmares, he isn't alone anymore. Jackson is beside him in bed, his body taking up half the mattress, reassuringly broad and sturdy. He immediately awakens, warm and drowsy with sleep but worried and solicitous as he takes Mark into his arms with wordless soothing murmurs. His chest is firm as a barrel and his shoulders seem broad enough to singlehandedly carry the weight of Mark's world.
"That dream again?" Jackson says knowingly, and Mark nods.
It's always the same dream. Him and Jackson driving along a dark road too late at night, arguing. Mark had been sulking because of some reason he had already forgotten and was still hanging on to because he was too proud to admit he wasn't angry anymore. Jackson was distracted, imploring as he pleaded with Mark to forgive him.
A ear-splitting screech, tires squealing on gravel, a blinding light, a resounding, bone-shaking crash. Jackson's scream. Then, mercifully, oblivion.
When Mark swam back to consciousness, the sky was a blanket of stars above him and they were surrounded by wailing sirens and flashing neon crimson ambulance lights. The paramedics were trying to cut them out of the wreck.
"Help," he tried to say, but he gurgled and choked over a mass of liquid that tasted like rusty blood.
"I can't reach the breathing one. The other guy refuses to let go of him."
"Isn't he...?"
"Yeah. But he keeps holding on."
The breathing one... Mark took a shaky breath. It felt like inhaling knives, but he was undeniably able to breathe. That meant...
Mark struggled beneath Jackson's heavy weight, trying to look at his face. When he saw Jackson's ashen, bloodless features, his heart sank like a stone and his stomach lurched sickeningly. Jackson's eyes were open, but the light in them was extinguished, snuffed out like a flame. Mark twisted weakly to take in their position. When the realization blindsided him like a punch, it felt like a stake being driven through his heart.
Jackson had thrown his body in front of Mark to take the full impact of the crash. He had always serenaded Mark with Bruno Mars' Grenade, greasily swearing to Mark that he would take a bullet for him.
Mark hadn't believed him.
"Ge?" Mark is hauled back to the present by Jackson's sleepy, tentative voice, prickling on the edges of the stars outside the window. Jackson is bathed in luminescent silvery moonlight, his skin glowing luminously. He looks too much like a ghost for Mark's liking. His eyes darken and the rough pad of his thumb comes up to brush Mark's eyes, before Mark realizes that his cheeks are wet with drying tears. Jackson's arms come up protectively around his body and Mark realizes that he's shaking uncontrollably. He feels like he's falling apart at the seams and Jackson's able hands are the only things in the world holding the pieces of him together. "I'm sorry, Jacks," Mark blurts out, the incoherent apologies spilling from his lips unchecked. "I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry --"
Other times, Jackson is the one repeating apologies until they become a meaningless chant as he tries to subdue Mark, who is a thrashing and flailing hysterical mess in his arms. Jackson doesn't flinch even as Mark berates him viciously, hitting his chest with angry fists and trying to squirm out of his embrace.
Mark feels betrayed, lied to, abandoned. Jackson had always seemed so infallible, so strong, so larger than life. He had always boasted and bragged about how powerful he was, thoughtlessly promising Mark forever. And like a fool, Mark had believed him. But ultimately, Jackson had turned out to be only human.
He wants to lash out at Jackson for leading him on, for stealing his heart and then abdicating with it. He hadn't even given Mark time to prepare before he had deserted him heartlessly, like the cad everyone had always told Mark he was but he refused to listen. But who was Mark kidding? Even a lifetime wouldn't be sufficient to prepare himself for the agony of losing Jackson.
He wants to turn back time, go back to that car, that night. This time, he would be the one to protect Jackson. As he always should've been.
Jackson cages Mark in his gentle embrace and repeats the magic words again and again until Mark grows limp and boneless, slumping against him. Then he carefully and tenderly lays Mark's drained body back on the pillows, tucking him in. Jackson's eyes are moist and unbearably soft, filled with a bitter regret. His hands are uncharacteristically gentle, like Mark is made of brittle porcelain and Jackson is afraid to shatter him. He doesn't say anything, just presses a lingering kiss to Mark's forehead, his lips branding. "Sleep, my precious," he whispers, and Mark closes his tired eyes obediently.
("But as time went by, I realized that this Jackson wasn't just a doppelganger, the spitting image. He was better than Jackson."
"How do you mean?"
"It might not have been obvious to most people. Maybe they just assumed Jackson had turned over a new leaf, become a nice guy. But I'd known him for four years. He was one of my best friends. It was immediately apparent to me that Mark had made some... alterations to his personality."
"Alterations...?"
"It was like Jackson Wang, the new and improved version. The upgraded model. After his death, Mark had romanticized him, glossing over his flaws and placing him on a pedestal. I don't mean that the real Jackson was bad. But he was human, you know? He was just a normal guy.
I wasn't surprised, though. Because even when Jackson was alive, Mark had only been able to see the best within him.")
And sometimes, rarely but occasionally, Mark has the sweetest, loveliest dreams. When he awakes to the white clouds etched across the powder blue sky, Jackson is beside him too, stirring drowsily as he murmurs, "Good morning, babe."
With just a glance, a volume of conversation passes between them. "That dream again?" Jackson guesses, and Mark's answering smile is radiant.
It always goes like this: They were in their first year of university, and rooming together in the dorm. Mark was falling in love with his roommate and it was the biggest cliche in the book, except that it wasn't funny at all.
Because Jackson's lopsided smile gave him butterflies in his stomach and Jackson's stupid accent made his heart do flip-flops in his chest.
To put a stop to Jaebum and his roommate Youngjae's annoying habit of barging into their room at the most inconvenient times, Jackson devised a special kind of do-not-disturb sign. It would just make their dorm look suspiciously like a skeevy motel room if they were to hang the normal big-lettered kind on their doorknob, so Jackson bought a pair of plushies and hung them on a hook outside the door. They informed Jaebum and Youngjae that if the plushies were facing inward, that meant that they were not allowed to enter on any terms. If they were facing out, they could do as they liked.
Jackson asked Mark to pick one of them. He picked the smaller plushie. Jackson smiled in satisfaction like he had predicted Mark's choice and arranged them so that his tiger plushie was in front of Mark's.
"Why did you do that?" Mark asked later, puzzled, in the privacy of their room.
Jackson smirked, but his eyes were kind. "Because Jackson always takes care of Mark," he replied, smooth as butter.
"Ge?" Jackson says patiently, pulling him from his reverie, and Mark snaps back to reality. Jackson looks overwhelmed under the wattage of his beaming grin but Mark can't wipe it off his face. "Do you remember the time we..." Mark starts, not letting Jackson getting a word in edgewise.
Jackson is subdued and thoughtful, his eyes clouded and distant as he listens carefully to Mark's rambling. He must be lost in the same memories, Mark thinks. But then why does he look at Mark so longingly, as if Mark is someplace far away he cannot reach?
("It was only supposed to be temporary," Jaebum muses resignedly. "When I found out he was building the android, doing experiments, I was immediately strongly opposed to it and tried to convince him to stop. But he talked me into helping him.
He had the worst case of survivor's guilt. He kept saying, it should've been me. I couldn't watch my best friend suffering and not lift a finger. What kind of person would that make me?
I promised that I would keep it a secret for him, if he agreed to one condition: he would deactivate the android after a year.
I figured that was enough time for him to get over it, accept reality and move on with life. I thought that if 'Jackson' came back to life, it would help him. But it only seemed to encourage his grieving.
Somehow, he managed to find a way to elongate Jackson's life. His lifespan should've expired after a year, but I suspect Mark used some unorthodox means to prolong it. There was nothing he wouldn't try when it came to Jackson. He had no scruples, no ethics.
Theoretically, it was impossible. But Mark was constantly upgrading Jackson's capabilities, modifying and adapting and tinkering with his system. He improved Jackson infinitely, breathing life into his artificial body, giving him more and more humanity. If this case weren't so personal to me, as a scientist, I would've been utterly fascinated by Jackson's rapid evolution. I would've dreamt of case studying it. Because Jackson's existence defied all the laws of nature and science. It contradicted all preconceived notions and conventions of modern robotics technology. It was something that would break records, make history.
He knew they were subsisting on borrowed time, but he didn't care. It was like having a loved one hooked to a ventilator. You knew they were dead, but you couldn't bring yourself to pull the plug.")
Mark knows that they are subsisting on borrowed time, that sooner or later he will have to tell Jackson the truth about his identity. Jackson is growing smarter and smarter every day, his mind expanding with astonishing velocity. Soon, he will have questions that Mark cannot kiss away and thoughts that Mark cannot derail with a hand running down his thighs.
So when Jackson asks beseechingly, earnestly, "Mark, who am I? What am I? Why don't I remember anything?" looking anguished, Mark answers him honestly and forthrightly. He gently takes Jackson's clammy hand and leads him to the locked storeroom, revealing the lifeless forms of his predecessors sprawled over each other in the dark. Jackson gulps and tears his eyes away, and Mark can feel his heart pounding through his fingertips.
He climbs onto a stool and opens the cupboard, taking out the photo frame containing the picture they had taken together in Taiwan, the summer after graduation, right after Jackson had proposed to him. Jackson's arms instinctively reach out to encircle his knees, pulling Mark's thighs onto his shoulder and protectively lifting him down. He sets Mark gently on the couch and kneels down before him, taking the frame from his hands.
The look on Jackson's face when he sees the photograph cuts Mark to the quick.
"It's me," he whispers, running his thumb over the miniscule thumbnail of his face. "But I've never been there before."
Jackson looks bereft, numb with panic, adrift in a sea of bewilderment. He looks like he's slipping away, and Mark panics too, grabbing Jackson's chin desperately and wrenching it up, forcing him to look at Mark. Jackson is taken by surprise, bracing his hands on the couch on either side of Mark to catch his balance.
Mark cradles Jackson's face with his hands, gazes deeply into his eyes. "Jia-er," he says gravely, unconsciously slipping into Chinese. "There's only one thing you need to know. Whatever you are, whoever you are -- whether you're man or woman, human or non-human, I will always, always love you. Even if I was the land and you were the sky and we could never, ever meet; even if I was the moon and you were the sun and we could never see each other, I'd still be in love with you."
Jackson looks dumbstruck by his speech, and Mark blushes hotly at his cheesy words.
But then a drop of liquid falls on his hand, and Mark looks up in surprise to see two lone tears streaking down Jackson's face.
He covers Mark's hand with his own, intertwining their fingers, and gently places it back in his lap. "Thank you," he simply says, quieter than a whisper, and gets to his feet, padding silently to his room and closing the door.
Mark lets out the breath he had been holding, feeling his shoulders sag with relief. It feels like a heavy weight has been lifted off him, but he feels an uneasy clutch in the pit of his stomach as he places the photo frame back on the coffee table, where it had originally been.
Jackson is back to his normal, boisterous self the next day, seeming to accept Mark's revelation with unsettling calm and stoicness. He is bright and cheerful, whistling as he prepares breakfast and Mark doesn't dare to broach the subject with him.
("Why didn't you advise him?" Jinyoung interrupts. "That he was living in denial, dwelling in the past."
Jaebum chuckles drily. "Do you think I didn't? I tried, more times than I could count, until I lost my voice. It was no use. He was smitten, infatuated. Jackson had him wrapped around his little finger. Even in college, they were the same. Mark was the only one who could tame Jackson, and Jackson worshipped the ground Mark walked on."
"And..." Jaebum's eyes soften, curiously dreamy as the faintest tinge of pink dusts over his cheekbones. "He was smiling again. God, I hadn't seen his smile in years. It was worth everything."
Jinyoung clears his throat awkwardly. Jaebum snaps out of his reverie and coughs nervously. "Have you met him before?"
Jinyoung shakes his head. "I've seen pictures."
Jaebum laughs. "Pictures don't do justice."
Jinyoung chews his lip thoughtfully. "Is his smile that gorgeous?"
Jaebum smiles warmly, and the last word catches in Jinyoung's throat, tripping back to the tip of his tongue.
"It's breathtaking."
"He's grown so intelligent, Jaebum-ah," Mark had said, a glitter in his eyes Jaebum had never seen before. "I can't leave him now. He needs me."
"Mark-yah, it's not too late to stop. You've made a very big discovery, a very important invention. If you showed this to the world, if you sold it... you could become a very rich and famous man. You wouldn't have to worry about money for the rest of your life. You could have anyone you wanted --"
Mark cut in, eyes growing cold and hostile. "Jaebum," he said, voice reproachful. "I would trade all the money and fame in the world, just to see Jackson standing in front of me again, alive and healthy, for one second."
Mark's voice broke, and suddenly he was in Jaebum's arms, clutching at his shirt, his fingers curling tightly in the fabric.
"Jae," he pleaded desperately, "Promise me you won't tell anybody. They'll take him away from me."
"Mark --" Jaebum started helplessly.
"Please. I'll do anything you want."
"... Anything?"
"..."
"Then get on your knees and suck me off."
"..."
"Mark? Mark? I was joking! Christ, get up. I won't tell, okay? I won't breathe a word to a soul. No, stop it -- Oh, God."
Jaebum breaks off abruptly, breaking his gaze away from Jinyoung's and avoiding his eyes guiltily, like he's hiding something.
Eventually, he simply says, "I couldn't do it."
He raises his eyes to Jinyoung, and they contain a world of sadness.
"I couldn't make him watch Jackson die again.")
When Mark finds out a way to make Jackson able to function without charging, he exuberantly calls Jaebum to share the breakthrough. He had been working on this issue for almost a year, slowly but steadily minimizing Jackson's necessity for charging from every week, to every month, to every year.
Now, Jackson is officially bulletproof, able to survive like a normal human being without electronic power. Now, the only hint that Jackson is a machine is the single tiny button at the base of his spine, flesh-coloured and invisible to the untrained eye. Mark knows its exact location without even having to look, his fingers having mapped the route towards it a hundred, thousand times. But no one else does, and Mark dreams of a day when he will be able to do away with the button too.
Jaebum is a skeptical cynic. "He'll never be a hundred percent human, no matter what you do," he says moodily, and Mark counters testily, "What's your problem?"
"You know I'm right, Mark-yah," Jaebum says heavily, and something in Mark snaps.
He launches into an impassioned and righteous argument they have had variations of countless times. "He gets happy, sad, angry. He smiles, laughs and cries. For God's sake, Jaebum, he breathes. If that's not proof of being human, I don't know what is."
There is a loaded silence. Then Jaebum says conversationally, "Mark-yah, do you know those plants whose leaves fold up when you touch them?"
"... Mimosas? Yeah..."
"Would you say they have feelings too?"
Mark nearly drops the phone, his hands are shaking so badly. "Did you just compare Jackson to a plant?" he finally says.
Jaebum takes a reluctant breath, then delivers his final blow. "At least plants are alive."
"Fuck you." Mark slams the phone down, trembling. He should never have called Jaebum, knowing what a wet blanket he was.
Jackson walks into the room, his forehead creasing in concern as he takes in Mark's paper white face. "Hyung, are you okay?" he crosses the room in two strides, eyes raking down Mark's body.
Mark wishes Jaebum could see Jackson now, the countless emotions flashing across his eyes -- worry, anxiety, care. Love. Jaebum would eat his words if he could see what a depth of feeling Jackson had in his warm heart.
"I'm fine, baby," Mark murmurs reassuringly, kissing his knuckles. "Let's go have lunch."
Mark watches Jackson sitting across the kitchen table, spooning rice into his mouth apathetically. Jackson had quickly acquired a taste for human food, but he had never quite displayed the hunger. Nevertheless, Mark thinks, didn't the proverb go, If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and walks like a duck, who's to say it isn't a duck?
(Jaebum tells Jinyoung about the rare occasion when he walked into Mark's apartment and didn't immediately see Jackson, bouncing off the walls and making a ruckus.
"Where's Jackson?" he had asked Mark, who smiled innocuously.
"He's at the supermarket," he said, and Jaebum's heart sank.
Taking a deep breath, he decided that it was now or never to say the words he had been holding back. He didn't know when the next time he could catch Mark alone would be.
"Mark-yah..." he started gently, chest aching at Mark's guileless eyes. "Don't you think it's time to move on?"
"Move on?" Mark repeated, blinking at him blankly.
Jaebum sighed. "Jackson's dead. But we're alive."
"Jackson isn't dead," Mark retorted, a sharp edge to his voice. "He's at the supermarket."
"I meant... the old Jackson," Jaebum quickly amended appeasingly. Pain flashed across Mark's eyes at his words, but he continued pretending.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Jaebum's heart was breaking, but he said calmly, "I understand how you feel."
"You don't understand anything," Mark snapped, voice harsh as a whip.
Jaebum couldn't help flinching, hurt, but he tried not to lose his temper. "I was his friend too," he said defensively.
"Is that all you were?" Mark shot back bitterly, and Jaebum was taken aback.
"What do you mean?"
"God dammit, Jaebum," Mark muttered, voice low. "I have to know. That night at the party I didn't attend, when Jackson got drunk and crashed at your room... did you fuck him?"
"No!" Jaebum vehemently denied, and Mark's face paled with relief, his jaw unclenching.
"I wanted to." Although he knew it would hurt Mark, the guilty confession spilled from Jaebum's selfish lips in a rush. "We were both drunk and horny, but he said no. He said he couldn't do that to you."
Mark's face twisted with pain and surprise. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and groaned softly. "It bothered me for so long but I didn't dare to ask. He'd never let me live it down."
Jaebum stared at him. "I didn't know you cared so much..."
Mark breathed a laugh. "I know, I'm pathetic. What does it matter now, anyway? If he were still here, I wouldn't give a shit if he slept in your room every night. I wouldn't argue with him over stupid shit like that. If he just came back... God, I'd forgive him anything."
Jaebum was shocked to see tears spilling from between Mark's fingers, his shoulders heaving soundlessly. He had no idea that Mark's grief was still so raw, after all these years.
"Mark..." he started helplessly, voice thick, but Mark recoiled from his tentative touch as though stung and dashed a defiant arm roughly over his red eyes.
"You should go," he said, avoiding Jaebum's eyes. "Jackson will be back soon."
"You know he's not real, right?" Jaebum couldn't help blurting out callously, his own nerves frayed to breaking point. "Mark-yah, you're in love with a machine."
Mark spun around, looking like he had been slapped. Then his eyes narrowed dangerously. "Don't ever call him that again," he warned, the manic glint in his eyes chilling. "I love him.")
"They say you're just a glorified computer, an android," Mark whispers to Jackson as they snuggle on the couch watching TV, biting off the term scornfully as if it's a dirty word. "But don't worry, my Jackson. I won't let them treat you like an object."
Jackson doesn't say anything, just presses the hard length of his body against Mark's to show him that he is very much human, with human desires and urges and feelings. His hands span Mark's back, warm through his threadbare shirt as he holds Mark the way he needs. Mark wants to savour the breathtaking simplicity of afternoons like these, languid and unremarkable but exactly the kind of memories Mark had regretted not making more of after Jackson had gone.
Jackson strokes Mark's hair gently, whispering unintelligible words in Cantonese into Mark's ear that Mark doesn't understand. All he knows is that they are sweet, soft and adoring.
"I love you too," Mark whispers back in broken Cantonese, and Jackson breaks into a boyish, bashful grin.
Mark can't afford to lose him.
part 2
pairing: mark/jackson, jb/jr
rating: nc-17
summary: when mark invented jackson, he never meant to fall in love with him. (android!au)
warning: mentions of character death
notes: for 22_taken :)
(When Jinyoung rings the doorbell of the address he had been told to report to, he waits a few minutes before the door is cracked open and a harassed-looking man in a white lab coat and disheveled hair peers out.
"Hi... uh, I'm here for the interview?" Jinyoung says hesitantly, and the man's eyes clear with comprehension. He opens the door a bit wider and gestures for Jinyoung to come in.
Jinyoung closes the door gingerly behind him as he steps in, scanning his surroundings. The office is spacious but gives the impression of being cramped because of the various odds and ends strewn over every surface. He can't see a single inch of floor beneath the layer of assorted loose-leaf documents, folders, scientific apparatus and trash of all kinds. The air is stagnant with a distinct stale, musty odor.
The man has the decency to look embarrassed, furtively kicking away random pieces of litter with his feet and hastily sweeping a landslide of scientific journals off the couch to clear a seat for Jinyoung. Jinyoung perches uncomfortably on the edge of the couch and declines the man's offer of a drink politely.
The man settles down on the loveseat opposite him, eyes serious and businesslike as he holds out a hand. "I'm Mark's associate, Im Jaebum. I'll be conducting the interview today."
Jinyoung grips his hand firmly. "Nice to meet you, Mr Im. My name is Park Jinyoung."
Jaebum takes the proferred resume from Jinyoung's hands and flips through it briskly. His brows crease with concentration as he peruses Jinyoung's portfolio, eyes widening slightly as if vaguely impressed as he closes it, looking up to study Jinyoung more closely.
"You majored in mechanical engineering?"
"Graduated with honours, sir," Jinyoung replies politely.
Jaebum nods with approval. "Your qualifications and expertise seem to be in order. But I have a question. What do you know about Mark Tuan?"
"Everything there is to know, sir," Jinyoung replies immediately, but admits after a moment's hesitation, "That is, very little." He tells Jaebum about how robotics has been his passion since young, and how he avidly respected Mark as one of the foremost researchers in the field. He knew Steel VS Skin, the graduation thesis the reclusive, enigmatic inventor had written about android construction by heart, but he had not heard any news about him ever since he had fallen off the radar of the scientific world a few years ago.
Jaebum nods, eyes impenetrable. "Have you heard of Mark's partner, Jackson Wang? He's involved with a lot of the research process too, so you'll have to work closely with him."
Jinyoung frowns. "I wasn't aware that Mr Tuan had... a partner. No offense, but I always thought he didn't work well with other people."
"Jackson's not a person."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You heard right," Jaebum says, the corners of his mouth twisting down in a wry smile. "He's an android. A robot, if you will. Part-machine, part-human, and Mark's greatest invention."
Jinyoung's jaw drops. "So all these years..." he breathes, "Mr Tuan had been working on a new project that no one knew about?"
Jaebum laughs mirthlessly. "That's one way to put it." He leans forward, eyes intent. "Mr Park, you're not going to believe a single word of what I'm about to tell you." Jinyoung leans closer too, holding his breath, and Jaebum starts, "Listen very carefully...")
"Welcome back, baobei," Mark whispers as No. 67's dusky eyelashes flutter open to reveal chocolate irises flecked with hazel, the dark pupils in those almond-shaped eyes so unsettlingly lifelike that Mark stumbles back with a choked gasp.
The man bends his joints stiffly into a sitting position, stretching his newly-formed arms with a familiar catlike agility that makes Mark's breath catch in his throat.
"Mark?" he says disorientedly, blinking groggily as those devastating orbs focus on Mark, registering recognition. It's the sound of his name in Jackson's unmistakable voice that breaks Mark completely.
"J-jackson," Mark stutters a sob. He hasn't tasted the word on his tongue for so many years, it slides down his throat like forbidden fruit. "Jackson," he repeats, voice a little steadier but still cracking at the end, and suddenly he's crying "JacksonJacksonJackson" like a broken tape recorder and his fingers are curling in the fabric of Jackson's shirt, his tears dampening Jackson's shoulder.
Jackson looks startled but his arms reflexively rise up around Mark's shoulderblades. "Hey, what's wrong?" he whispers soothingly in Mark's ear. "Shhh. Don't cry."
Mark wrenches out of Jackson's arms, making him look even more confused. "D-do you recognize me?" he demands, hiccupping and looking increasingly hysterical.
Jackson looks bewildered but nods. "What happened?" he asks softly. "I remember that we were driving home when there was a bright light and a crash..." He winces in pain, rubbing his forehead. "I can't remember anything after that. Was there an accident?"
Mark quickly grabs his hand, stroking his fingers tenderly through Jackson's hair. "Yes, baby. Don't try to remember. It's alright now. You're alright."
He takes Jackson into his arms, feeling the younger's body relax against his chest. So it had worked. Mark had transferred all his memories over to Jackson's synthetic brain, so all Jackson knew of the incident was where Mark's recollections ended. It was a stroke of luck that he had harvested the memories before he regained the blocked part of the accident, Mark thinks and shudders. He has to live with the images of Jackson dying every day, again and again in his dreams. The last thing he wants is for Jackson to be tormented by them too.
Suddenly, Jackson's arms lock around him like bars of iron, his worried gaze sweeping over Mark's body. "Hyung, are you okay? Did you get hurt? I'm so sorry --" Jackson's opalescent eyes glimmer with tears that spill over, warm and wet on Mark's skin as he smothers Mark in a hug so tight that he can't breathe.
Mark's heart contracts like there's a vice clamped over it, his mind still spinning dizzyingly from Jackson, suddenly alive and talking and moving in his living room. His head swims and his stomach lurches, but he swallows down the giddy spell and strokes Jackson's back until his blubbering calms down into soft breathless sobs.
Mark caresses Jackson's tearstained face lovingly, hesitantly leaning forward to lick Jackson's tears clean with his tongue. Jackson closes his eyes and melts into his touch. Jackson's tears taste salty and warm, exactly the way they had tasted when he was human.
"Don't worry, I'm fine," Mark croaks, feeling Jackson trembling against him. "I got out unscathed because you... you protected me."
("I met Mark and Jackson in university," Jaebum begins. "We were all majoring in Physics, and minoring in Electrical Engineering. Even back then, they were already the most popular guys in school, the smartest and most good-looking, but they only had eyes for each other. They were inseparable, the campus' golden couple."
He describes how Jackson and Mark were like at nineteen and twenty, young and carefree and toppling into love with each other. "They graduated at the top of the class. They had it all planned out -- once they got their degrees, they'd start building the android that they'd been designing since they were young. It would be revolutionary, introducing the world to a brand new age of technology. Mark was one of the best scientific minds in the country and Jackson was a brilliant mathematician and long-running champion of international Olympiads. Both of them were among the most highly ranking members of MENSA for their age. Together, they were invincible, unstoppable."
"But then tragedy struck.")
Mark knows that he can't hide the truth from Jackson for much longer, knows this from the way he catches Jackson studying his hands when he thinks Mark isn't looking, heartbreakingly puzzled like he hasn't seen them before; from the way Jackson inhabits his own body with an unease that has never plagued him. Jackson looks so lost and uncomprehending that Mark almost breaks and confesses the truth, but he can't even start to imagine the look of horror on Jackson's face when Mark tells him that he's not human.
Mark struggles with the words, rehearsing them in his head again and again, but simply can't find a way to explain their senseless predicament logically. Finally, though, Jackson is the one who shatters the silence.
"Hyung..." he says. "What did you do to me?"
Mark gulps and attempts to play dumb, blinking innocently. "What do you mean?"
"Come off it," Jackson says irritably, but his smile is sorrowful. "This..." he touches his face. "This..." he pinches his arm. "... isn't real. This is," he raps the side of his head, "but the rest feel different."
"Mark," Jackson says gently, eyes glistening with unshed tears. "It's okay. Just tell me what happened. I can handle it."
Turns out, that was a lie. Mark had overestimated Jackson's emotional capacity, forgotten that he was overwrought and fragile from just waking up days ago. All his newly-constructed nerve endings were thrumming like a power plant and it had taken just a few careless words from Mark to send his system into overdrive.
Mark catches Jackson as his eyes roll up in his head and he slumps against Mark's frame, still warm. To an ignorant bystander, it would look like he had just passed out from exhaustion, but Mark knows better.
When Mark opens him up, he finds a vein in his heart shot and burnt out, like a fuse in a short circuit. He repairs it carefully, biting his tongue until he tastes the metallic tint of blood. Jackson's body is lifeless in his arms, reminding Mark of what he had managed to forget for the past few days -- that this is not the real Jackson, but No. 67. An imitation that will always pale hopelessly in comparison to the original, no matter how authentic he seems.
Reset, reboot. Mark presses the buttons that he has pressed sixty-six times before, about to toss the useless body with all the others in the storeroom when something stops him. There is an indefinable quality about No. 67 that is different from the others, something that tugs at Mark's heart, something undeniably human. Maybe it's the few days they've been through together, those fleeting windows of transient happiness. If Jaebum knew about this, he would say that Mark had become hopelessly sentimental since the accident, and maybe it's true. But Mark can't bring himself to throw a body that had held even the slightest glimmer of Jackson in it away, at least not until he confirms that it is completely, irredeemably mechanical.
He takes a deep breath and knuckles down. Compared to starting all over with a new body, trying to revive this ruined one will take twice the effort and time. He will have to take on the backbreaking and daunting task of taking Jackson apart completely, and putting him back together again. But Mark feels the faintest tendril of hope, winding its way around his heart, as his fingers find the familiar buttons at the base of Jackson's spine and he feels the machine stirring to life beneath him.
("Mark lost his senses when he woke up from the coma and found out that Jackson was dead. He was inconsolable and unstable, and had to be sedated heavily. People always throw the metaphor insanely in love around, but Mark was literally the embodiment of it. It was painful to watch. When he seemed to calm down a few weeks later and they took him off the morphine, he attempted suicide. He was a wreck. He just kept repeating that life was worthless without Jackson. For awhile there it was touch-and-go. We thought we'd lost him too."
Jaebum stops talking and rummages in a pile of clothes for a box of tissues, offering it to Jinyoung with a sympathetic, uncomfortable smile, and Jinyoung realizes that his eyes are leaking unconsciously like a faulty faucet. He takes one gratefully and sniffles as he dabs at his face in embarrassment, gesturing for Jaebum to go on.
"By some kind of miracle, he survived," Jaebum says, crossing himself and muttering a silent prayer of thanks. The relief on his face is still apparent, as is his obvious affection for Mark. "He stopped crying all day, started eating. He was pale as a ghost and had lost all this weight, I thought he'd snap like a twig in a gust of wind. At least he started living again, started working. But he was never the same again. He sat there with me and answered when I asked questions but his eyes were dead and soulless. It was like when Jackson had gone, he had taken a piece of Mark with him."
"Was he trying to... resurrect him?"
Jaebum chuckles bitterly. "It's so obvious to me now, but I hadn't the slightest clue then. He threw himself into his work like a man possessed and all we thought was that it was a good thing because at least it gave him a distraction. He swore that he would continue the work the two of them had started together, that he wouldn't rest until he had brought it to completion. They had already worked out all technicalities of the basic model so all he had to do was make some modifications, and it could be personalized to become anyone he wanted it to be. And if an android was to be designed as a clone of a living person, what better inventor to do it than that person's lover? It was the easiest thing Mark had ever done, because he knew Jackson like the back of his own hand. He knew every single mole on Jackson's body, every single pore and blemish, even better than he knew his own. It was, by all accounts and purposes, an impossible feat. But then again, he had always been impossibly talented."
"Still, he didn't get it right immediately. It took him time."
"Years," Jaebum says simply, the single word laden with meaning. "No one else could have done it. That was how much he loved him."
"I'm sorry," Jinyoung says tremulously, but Jaebum shakes his head reassuringly. "Don't be. It's all in the past.")
Lying in his hospital bed staring up at the cracks spiderwebbing over the off-white ceiling, Mark had felt the dim stirrings of memory. A year ago, on their sixth anniversary, Jackson had given him a large, gaudily-wrapped gift box with a wide ribbon around it. When Mark had opened it, he realized it was one of those Russian nesting doll boxes that opened up into smaller and smaller ones until finally, right in the heart of it, he found a simple, unlabeled memory card.
He turned it around in his fingers, unimpressed, but Jackson smiled knowingly. "Guess what's inside."
"Our sex tapes?" Mark joked, taking the bait, but Jackson batted his arm, miffed. "Be serious."
"Okay, okay," Mark raised his hands in surrender, laughing. "I give up."
Jackson looked smug. "I cracked the last code on the memory and brain waves transferring device last week. The first thing I did was to harvest the contents of my mind and copy them all in here." He patted the miniscule card proudly.
Mark blinked at him and deadpanned drily, "So... my anniversary gift is your brain matter. Romantic."
"Shut up," Jackson laughed. "If one day something happens to me, at least you'll be able to rebuild me," he jested, but Mark immediately clamped his hand over his mouth, panicked. "Don't say such inauspicious things!" he hissed, close to tears, and Jackson's eyes softened as he slowly kissed Mark's anxieties away.
The moment Mark recalled the incident, he bolted upright in the hospital bed, hope flooding into him like liquid strength. He ripped out the IV from his wrist and scrambled out of bed, nearly falling facefirst on the linoleum floor as his weak knees buckled beneath him.
He had barely walked a few steps when Jaebum approached on the corridor, foiling his escape plans. "Mark-yah?" he looked shocked at seeing Mark out of bed and standing upright. "What are you doing outside your room?"
"I'm going home," Mark mumbled, not stopping his agonized footsteps.
Jaebum caught him as his vision swam and his knees gave out again, carrying him effortlessly back into the room like he weighed nothing. When he woke up, it was dark and Jaebum was sitting cramped in the bedside chair, his head pillowed on his folded arms as he dozed on the edge of Mark's bed.
He snapped awake groggily when Mark started crying soundlessly. "What's wrong?" he whispered, hands reaching out worriedly to feel Mark's body. "Are you hurting somewhere?"
Mark was too tired to even gesture to his chest, just rasping, "I have to go home."
Jaebum looked confused but relieved as he said warily, "Of course you're going to go home, bro." He brushed a lock of Mark's hair out of his eyes. "When you get better, okay?"
"Now," Mark whined, sounding infantile, but Jaebum only smiled patiently and offered, "How about this... if you agree to eat something, I'll talk to your doctor tomorrow. Deal?"
Mark blinked through his tears. Jaebum was looking at him with a mischievous and hopeful gleam in his eyes, and Mark grimaced and nodded.
Within minutes, Jaebum had a tray of hot, aromatic food served in and was spooning bites into Mark's mouth.
Mark took Jackson's eyes from the prisms of sunlight lancing across solitaires, the creamy silk of his skin from white jade, his cheekbones from the steepest ski-slopes, his laugh from the tinkling of wind chimes, and the arc of his smile from the gradient Jackson had mapped a million times against his lips. He remembered with crystalline clarity every cadence and inflection of Jackson's deep, mellifluous voice, the piano of his breaths and the fortissimo of his breathless moans as he twisted beneath Mark. He remembered the dangerously slurring drawl of Jackson's accent, the way he rolled his tongue on the R when he said Mark's name and his sheer facility with languages. As for the remaining data needed to reassemble Jackson's system, it was all in the memory card Mark had raced home after he was discharged and found thankfully intact.
Because Mark knew Jackson so thoroughly they could complete each other's sentences, could predict with absolute accuracy how Jackson would react to every question, in every situation. He had the entire lexicon of Jackson's smiles at his fingertips, because the only thing Jackson loved as much as he loved Mark was smiling.
Mark took months to write the first rough draft of the program. He wasn't doing anything that many other inventors hadn't attempted before, wasn't exploring unchartered territory. But what made his program different, the magic ingredient, was how painstakingly intricate it was, boasting a complexity that had never been seen in robotics before. He had broken down the fourth wall, the thin, invisible line that distinguished androids from humans. And while his work was tedious and solitary, he never felt alone, because every day he could feel Jackson's spirit alongside him, silently helping and accompanying him.
Jackson made his presence known in ways more obnoxious and less romantic than spiritually too. He was there in the rapidly blossoming android that grew steadily more lifelike under Mark's careful hands with each passing day, in the way the half-formed but already surprisingly precocious mannequin would snap open its eyes suddenly when Mark's hands were elbow deep in its heart or some other less appropriate place, and say something in its robotic, still unedited voice that made Mark snort a startled laugh.
Jackson hadn't been lying when he said the memory card contained his essence. In the budding android, Mark could already see unmistakable echoes of Jackson's inexhaustible energy, irrepressible positivity, inimitable candor, brutal honesty, sparkling wit, and exhilarating spontaniety. It filled him with a warm glow that bubbled up uncontrollably and spread from his chest through his body, energizing him. Jackson had left so abruptly and without warning, the tiny and unremarkable memory card his only legacy. But from the wealth of information contained inside, Mark was confident of replicating him.
He shook his head in exasperation when he realized that the android had also inherited Jackson's crass and wacky sense of humour, and his quirky fashion sense. Jackson had a hang-up about his thighs and liked to wear baggy pants and hip-hop fashion. He had a vast collection of snapbacks and his entire wardrobe was Gothic black. Mark nearly choked on his water when he went to the kitchen for five minutes to get a drink and came back to see the previously nude android dressed in a black shirt of his and a snapback pulled jauntily over its head. Even in death, Jackson had to have the last laugh, didn't he? The muscles in Mark's face ached with unuse when he unwillingly smiled for the first time in he-couldn't-even-remember-how-long.
In this way, Mark had forged a tenuous and inexplicable relationship with every android he had built from the unpolished, amateur No. 1 to the final vastly-improved but still unsuccessful No. 66. It was the gravitational pull that Jackson had exerted on him from the very first day they met, manifesting itself every time Mark loaded the data from the memory card into the new android's empty brain. Every time he disposed of yet another failed attempt, it felt like watching Jackson die all over again. Mark wondered how many times he would have to send Jackson away, before his penance would be paid in full. He didn't know. The only thing he knew was that no matter how many times it took, he would willingly oblige.
("Not many people knew, but after the accident, Mark suffered from partial amnesia initially."
"He lost his memories?"
"He couldn't remember the cause and effect of the accident, only the events leading up to it. The doctor said it was normal that he had repressed some memories because of the trauma."
"Did he ever regain them?"
"... Yes."
"What's wrong? Were they unpleasant?"
"..."
"I mean... of course they were unpleasant. What am I saying? I'm sorry, that was insensitive."
"No, don't worry about it. It's just hard for me to remember. He was distraught. He kept saying that it was all his fault."
"Why?"
"Because Jackson had sacrificed his life to save him.")
This time, Mark has learnt from his mistakes. After he finishes reconstructing No. 67, instead of loading his own memories into the android's brain, Mark deliberately leaves it a clean slate. So this second version of No. 67 is a strange mix of adult and innocence, Jackson's brilliant mind and lightspeed reflexes tempered by the amnesiac quality the space where his memories should be gives him.
Even so, this Jackson is breathtakingly intelligent, even more so than the real one ever was Mark sometimes thinks. More intelligent than a non-human has any right to be. Jackson's intellect had always been one of his most attractive qualities to Mark. He liked when Jackson got all Maths geek on him, losing himself in the equations he'd pore over until the dead of the night with his eyes serious behind oversized spectacles, his knuckled hands dwarfing the pen he was holding.
No. 67 is vibrant and headstrong and wilful, spitting and clawing like a wildcat the first time he sees Jaebum until Mark lays a hand on his shoulder and wordlessly calms him.
"You've got him on a leash, haven't you?" Jaebum observes with amusement, sitting on the couch and accepting a drink after Mark has mollified Jackson and sent him to the bedroom and clumsily pasted a band-aid over the scratch on Jaebum's arm. "You always did."
Mark drops his gaze shyly, blushing. He can't help feeling a little smug over the difference in Jackson's reaction towards Jaebum and him when they had first met. Although Jackson hadn't remembered Mark, he seemed to somehow recognize him. If Mark was being romantic, he'd say that maybe it was deja vu, memories from a past lifetime. But the scientist in him took over and he figured out logically that it must've been some retained recollection in his mind because Jackson had known him a decade longer than Jaebum.
Jackson has grown into his own body now, lounging comfortably around the house with that sleek pantherlike grace and smiling that wicked smile that makes Mark's heart skip a traitorous beat as he teases Mark mercilessly. But he hadn't always been this cocky. Mark fondly remembers the first few days after Jackson had woken up, when he had followed Mark around with plaintive puppybrown eyes, trailing at his heels like a fledgling. It was only after Jackson had gone that Mark realized that he had always been his shadow. And wasn't a shadow what made someone truly human? Could one live on without it, without feeling like a ghost?
Mark finds himself lost in the curve of Jackson's unspoiled smile, reveling in the way every emotion he feels flickers across his face instantly, transparent as water. Jackson is touchingly artless, not having mastered the art of disguising his emotions and hiding his reactions. Mark enjoys this new, uncomplicated relationship, the lack of subterfuge that had clouded almost all their interactions nearing the end, but his heart clenches to think of the cost at which it had come.
And if there's anything unnatural about the rhythm of Jackson's movements; if he blinks a little less than normal; if the glint in his eyes looks a little too much like glass in a certain light; if sometimes his actions and responses are a little too predictable, it's much easier for Mark to close one eye and pretend not to notice. It doesn't bother him. Not in the least.
("When I saw the latest model of Jackson in Mark's house that afternoon, I knew that it would be the last," Jaebum says thoughtfully, sipping his coffee. His eyes are cloudy with distant memories like the swirls of milk Jinyoung stirs into his own cup. He had grown thirsty from the crying as he gradually settled down for the long haul, knowing that he wouldn't leave this grubby office today without hearing the tale to the end.
"Sugar?" Jaebum offers, and Jinyoung nods, pushing his cup over. Jaebum rips a packet of packaged sugar crystals open and tips them in. Jinyoung has noticed that he's more dexterous with his left hand, and guesses that he's probably left-handed.
Jinyoung cradles the cup in both hands as Jaebum continues, inhaling the wafting aroma of the steam and feeling the temperature of the hot coffee seep through the enamel mug into his palms.
"It was amazing. He could walk and talk and function like a real person. If I didn't know that he wasn't, I'd be completely hoodwinked. I mean, I worked with androids. I was no stranger to their technology. But I'd never seen anything so... lifelike. It was frightening, how real he was. I couldn't take my eyes off him.
But what was most amazing was that he wasn't just human, he was Jackson. Mark had captured all of Jackson's defining characteristics so perfectly, it was unimaginable. His snark, his temper, his expressions. God." Jaebum closes his eyes, reminiscing.
"He had done it. Mark had immortalized Jackson in this living, breathing android, and it was nothing short of a miracle. I was the only witness to this unbelievable sight. That android was a walking tribute to his love, to their love and it was heartbreaking.
We covered up the accident. It was a testament to how indistinguishable he was from a human that we managed to pull it off. It was like Jackson come back to life. No one suspected a thing, not even Jackson's own parents."
"That must've been a difficult secret to keep." Now, Jinyoung is the one looking at Jaebum with sympathy.
Jaebum inclines his head, concurring. "It was. Especially because sometimes it seemed I was the only one who knew he wasn't real.")
Now, when Mark wakes up from nightmares, he isn't alone anymore. Jackson is beside him in bed, his body taking up half the mattress, reassuringly broad and sturdy. He immediately awakens, warm and drowsy with sleep but worried and solicitous as he takes Mark into his arms with wordless soothing murmurs. His chest is firm as a barrel and his shoulders seem broad enough to singlehandedly carry the weight of Mark's world.
"That dream again?" Jackson says knowingly, and Mark nods.
It's always the same dream. Him and Jackson driving along a dark road too late at night, arguing. Mark had been sulking because of some reason he had already forgotten and was still hanging on to because he was too proud to admit he wasn't angry anymore. Jackson was distracted, imploring as he pleaded with Mark to forgive him.
A ear-splitting screech, tires squealing on gravel, a blinding light, a resounding, bone-shaking crash. Jackson's scream. Then, mercifully, oblivion.
When Mark swam back to consciousness, the sky was a blanket of stars above him and they were surrounded by wailing sirens and flashing neon crimson ambulance lights. The paramedics were trying to cut them out of the wreck.
"Help," he tried to say, but he gurgled and choked over a mass of liquid that tasted like rusty blood.
"I can't reach the breathing one. The other guy refuses to let go of him."
"Isn't he...?"
"Yeah. But he keeps holding on."
The breathing one... Mark took a shaky breath. It felt like inhaling knives, but he was undeniably able to breathe. That meant...
Mark struggled beneath Jackson's heavy weight, trying to look at his face. When he saw Jackson's ashen, bloodless features, his heart sank like a stone and his stomach lurched sickeningly. Jackson's eyes were open, but the light in them was extinguished, snuffed out like a flame. Mark twisted weakly to take in their position. When the realization blindsided him like a punch, it felt like a stake being driven through his heart.
Jackson had thrown his body in front of Mark to take the full impact of the crash. He had always serenaded Mark with Bruno Mars' Grenade, greasily swearing to Mark that he would take a bullet for him.
Mark hadn't believed him.
"Ge?" Mark is hauled back to the present by Jackson's sleepy, tentative voice, prickling on the edges of the stars outside the window. Jackson is bathed in luminescent silvery moonlight, his skin glowing luminously. He looks too much like a ghost for Mark's liking. His eyes darken and the rough pad of his thumb comes up to brush Mark's eyes, before Mark realizes that his cheeks are wet with drying tears. Jackson's arms come up protectively around his body and Mark realizes that he's shaking uncontrollably. He feels like he's falling apart at the seams and Jackson's able hands are the only things in the world holding the pieces of him together. "I'm sorry, Jacks," Mark blurts out, the incoherent apologies spilling from his lips unchecked. "I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry --"
Other times, Jackson is the one repeating apologies until they become a meaningless chant as he tries to subdue Mark, who is a thrashing and flailing hysterical mess in his arms. Jackson doesn't flinch even as Mark berates him viciously, hitting his chest with angry fists and trying to squirm out of his embrace.
Mark feels betrayed, lied to, abandoned. Jackson had always seemed so infallible, so strong, so larger than life. He had always boasted and bragged about how powerful he was, thoughtlessly promising Mark forever. And like a fool, Mark had believed him. But ultimately, Jackson had turned out to be only human.
He wants to lash out at Jackson for leading him on, for stealing his heart and then abdicating with it. He hadn't even given Mark time to prepare before he had deserted him heartlessly, like the cad everyone had always told Mark he was but he refused to listen. But who was Mark kidding? Even a lifetime wouldn't be sufficient to prepare himself for the agony of losing Jackson.
He wants to turn back time, go back to that car, that night. This time, he would be the one to protect Jackson. As he always should've been.
Jackson cages Mark in his gentle embrace and repeats the magic words again and again until Mark grows limp and boneless, slumping against him. Then he carefully and tenderly lays Mark's drained body back on the pillows, tucking him in. Jackson's eyes are moist and unbearably soft, filled with a bitter regret. His hands are uncharacteristically gentle, like Mark is made of brittle porcelain and Jackson is afraid to shatter him. He doesn't say anything, just presses a lingering kiss to Mark's forehead, his lips branding. "Sleep, my precious," he whispers, and Mark closes his tired eyes obediently.
("But as time went by, I realized that this Jackson wasn't just a doppelganger, the spitting image. He was better than Jackson."
"How do you mean?"
"It might not have been obvious to most people. Maybe they just assumed Jackson had turned over a new leaf, become a nice guy. But I'd known him for four years. He was one of my best friends. It was immediately apparent to me that Mark had made some... alterations to his personality."
"Alterations...?"
"It was like Jackson Wang, the new and improved version. The upgraded model. After his death, Mark had romanticized him, glossing over his flaws and placing him on a pedestal. I don't mean that the real Jackson was bad. But he was human, you know? He was just a normal guy.
I wasn't surprised, though. Because even when Jackson was alive, Mark had only been able to see the best within him.")
And sometimes, rarely but occasionally, Mark has the sweetest, loveliest dreams. When he awakes to the white clouds etched across the powder blue sky, Jackson is beside him too, stirring drowsily as he murmurs, "Good morning, babe."
With just a glance, a volume of conversation passes between them. "That dream again?" Jackson guesses, and Mark's answering smile is radiant.
It always goes like this: They were in their first year of university, and rooming together in the dorm. Mark was falling in love with his roommate and it was the biggest cliche in the book, except that it wasn't funny at all.
Because Jackson's lopsided smile gave him butterflies in his stomach and Jackson's stupid accent made his heart do flip-flops in his chest.
To put a stop to Jaebum and his roommate Youngjae's annoying habit of barging into their room at the most inconvenient times, Jackson devised a special kind of do-not-disturb sign. It would just make their dorm look suspiciously like a skeevy motel room if they were to hang the normal big-lettered kind on their doorknob, so Jackson bought a pair of plushies and hung them on a hook outside the door. They informed Jaebum and Youngjae that if the plushies were facing inward, that meant that they were not allowed to enter on any terms. If they were facing out, they could do as they liked.
Jackson asked Mark to pick one of them. He picked the smaller plushie. Jackson smiled in satisfaction like he had predicted Mark's choice and arranged them so that his tiger plushie was in front of Mark's.
"Why did you do that?" Mark asked later, puzzled, in the privacy of their room.
Jackson smirked, but his eyes were kind. "Because Jackson always takes care of Mark," he replied, smooth as butter.
"Ge?" Jackson says patiently, pulling him from his reverie, and Mark snaps back to reality. Jackson looks overwhelmed under the wattage of his beaming grin but Mark can't wipe it off his face. "Do you remember the time we..." Mark starts, not letting Jackson getting a word in edgewise.
Jackson is subdued and thoughtful, his eyes clouded and distant as he listens carefully to Mark's rambling. He must be lost in the same memories, Mark thinks. But then why does he look at Mark so longingly, as if Mark is someplace far away he cannot reach?
("It was only supposed to be temporary," Jaebum muses resignedly. "When I found out he was building the android, doing experiments, I was immediately strongly opposed to it and tried to convince him to stop. But he talked me into helping him.
He had the worst case of survivor's guilt. He kept saying, it should've been me. I couldn't watch my best friend suffering and not lift a finger. What kind of person would that make me?
I promised that I would keep it a secret for him, if he agreed to one condition: he would deactivate the android after a year.
I figured that was enough time for him to get over it, accept reality and move on with life. I thought that if 'Jackson' came back to life, it would help him. But it only seemed to encourage his grieving.
Somehow, he managed to find a way to elongate Jackson's life. His lifespan should've expired after a year, but I suspect Mark used some unorthodox means to prolong it. There was nothing he wouldn't try when it came to Jackson. He had no scruples, no ethics.
Theoretically, it was impossible. But Mark was constantly upgrading Jackson's capabilities, modifying and adapting and tinkering with his system. He improved Jackson infinitely, breathing life into his artificial body, giving him more and more humanity. If this case weren't so personal to me, as a scientist, I would've been utterly fascinated by Jackson's rapid evolution. I would've dreamt of case studying it. Because Jackson's existence defied all the laws of nature and science. It contradicted all preconceived notions and conventions of modern robotics technology. It was something that would break records, make history.
He knew they were subsisting on borrowed time, but he didn't care. It was like having a loved one hooked to a ventilator. You knew they were dead, but you couldn't bring yourself to pull the plug.")
Mark knows that they are subsisting on borrowed time, that sooner or later he will have to tell Jackson the truth about his identity. Jackson is growing smarter and smarter every day, his mind expanding with astonishing velocity. Soon, he will have questions that Mark cannot kiss away and thoughts that Mark cannot derail with a hand running down his thighs.
So when Jackson asks beseechingly, earnestly, "Mark, who am I? What am I? Why don't I remember anything?" looking anguished, Mark answers him honestly and forthrightly. He gently takes Jackson's clammy hand and leads him to the locked storeroom, revealing the lifeless forms of his predecessors sprawled over each other in the dark. Jackson gulps and tears his eyes away, and Mark can feel his heart pounding through his fingertips.
He climbs onto a stool and opens the cupboard, taking out the photo frame containing the picture they had taken together in Taiwan, the summer after graduation, right after Jackson had proposed to him. Jackson's arms instinctively reach out to encircle his knees, pulling Mark's thighs onto his shoulder and protectively lifting him down. He sets Mark gently on the couch and kneels down before him, taking the frame from his hands.
The look on Jackson's face when he sees the photograph cuts Mark to the quick.
"It's me," he whispers, running his thumb over the miniscule thumbnail of his face. "But I've never been there before."
Jackson looks bereft, numb with panic, adrift in a sea of bewilderment. He looks like he's slipping away, and Mark panics too, grabbing Jackson's chin desperately and wrenching it up, forcing him to look at Mark. Jackson is taken by surprise, bracing his hands on the couch on either side of Mark to catch his balance.
Mark cradles Jackson's face with his hands, gazes deeply into his eyes. "Jia-er," he says gravely, unconsciously slipping into Chinese. "There's only one thing you need to know. Whatever you are, whoever you are -- whether you're man or woman, human or non-human, I will always, always love you. Even if I was the land and you were the sky and we could never, ever meet; even if I was the moon and you were the sun and we could never see each other, I'd still be in love with you."
Jackson looks dumbstruck by his speech, and Mark blushes hotly at his cheesy words.
But then a drop of liquid falls on his hand, and Mark looks up in surprise to see two lone tears streaking down Jackson's face.
He covers Mark's hand with his own, intertwining their fingers, and gently places it back in his lap. "Thank you," he simply says, quieter than a whisper, and gets to his feet, padding silently to his room and closing the door.
Mark lets out the breath he had been holding, feeling his shoulders sag with relief. It feels like a heavy weight has been lifted off him, but he feels an uneasy clutch in the pit of his stomach as he places the photo frame back on the coffee table, where it had originally been.
Jackson is back to his normal, boisterous self the next day, seeming to accept Mark's revelation with unsettling calm and stoicness. He is bright and cheerful, whistling as he prepares breakfast and Mark doesn't dare to broach the subject with him.
("Why didn't you advise him?" Jinyoung interrupts. "That he was living in denial, dwelling in the past."
Jaebum chuckles drily. "Do you think I didn't? I tried, more times than I could count, until I lost my voice. It was no use. He was smitten, infatuated. Jackson had him wrapped around his little finger. Even in college, they were the same. Mark was the only one who could tame Jackson, and Jackson worshipped the ground Mark walked on."
"And..." Jaebum's eyes soften, curiously dreamy as the faintest tinge of pink dusts over his cheekbones. "He was smiling again. God, I hadn't seen his smile in years. It was worth everything."
Jinyoung clears his throat awkwardly. Jaebum snaps out of his reverie and coughs nervously. "Have you met him before?"
Jinyoung shakes his head. "I've seen pictures."
Jaebum laughs. "Pictures don't do justice."
Jinyoung chews his lip thoughtfully. "Is his smile that gorgeous?"
Jaebum smiles warmly, and the last word catches in Jinyoung's throat, tripping back to the tip of his tongue.
"It's breathtaking."
"He's grown so intelligent, Jaebum-ah," Mark had said, a glitter in his eyes Jaebum had never seen before. "I can't leave him now. He needs me."
"Mark-yah, it's not too late to stop. You've made a very big discovery, a very important invention. If you showed this to the world, if you sold it... you could become a very rich and famous man. You wouldn't have to worry about money for the rest of your life. You could have anyone you wanted --"
Mark cut in, eyes growing cold and hostile. "Jaebum," he said, voice reproachful. "I would trade all the money and fame in the world, just to see Jackson standing in front of me again, alive and healthy, for one second."
Mark's voice broke, and suddenly he was in Jaebum's arms, clutching at his shirt, his fingers curling tightly in the fabric.
"Jae," he pleaded desperately, "Promise me you won't tell anybody. They'll take him away from me."
"Mark --" Jaebum started helplessly.
"Please. I'll do anything you want."
"... Anything?"
"..."
"Then get on your knees and suck me off."
"..."
"Mark? Mark? I was joking! Christ, get up. I won't tell, okay? I won't breathe a word to a soul. No, stop it -- Oh, God."
Jaebum breaks off abruptly, breaking his gaze away from Jinyoung's and avoiding his eyes guiltily, like he's hiding something.
Eventually, he simply says, "I couldn't do it."
He raises his eyes to Jinyoung, and they contain a world of sadness.
"I couldn't make him watch Jackson die again.")
When Mark finds out a way to make Jackson able to function without charging, he exuberantly calls Jaebum to share the breakthrough. He had been working on this issue for almost a year, slowly but steadily minimizing Jackson's necessity for charging from every week, to every month, to every year.
Now, Jackson is officially bulletproof, able to survive like a normal human being without electronic power. Now, the only hint that Jackson is a machine is the single tiny button at the base of his spine, flesh-coloured and invisible to the untrained eye. Mark knows its exact location without even having to look, his fingers having mapped the route towards it a hundred, thousand times. But no one else does, and Mark dreams of a day when he will be able to do away with the button too.
Jaebum is a skeptical cynic. "He'll never be a hundred percent human, no matter what you do," he says moodily, and Mark counters testily, "What's your problem?"
"You know I'm right, Mark-yah," Jaebum says heavily, and something in Mark snaps.
He launches into an impassioned and righteous argument they have had variations of countless times. "He gets happy, sad, angry. He smiles, laughs and cries. For God's sake, Jaebum, he breathes. If that's not proof of being human, I don't know what is."
There is a loaded silence. Then Jaebum says conversationally, "Mark-yah, do you know those plants whose leaves fold up when you touch them?"
"... Mimosas? Yeah..."
"Would you say they have feelings too?"
Mark nearly drops the phone, his hands are shaking so badly. "Did you just compare Jackson to a plant?" he finally says.
Jaebum takes a reluctant breath, then delivers his final blow. "At least plants are alive."
"Fuck you." Mark slams the phone down, trembling. He should never have called Jaebum, knowing what a wet blanket he was.
Jackson walks into the room, his forehead creasing in concern as he takes in Mark's paper white face. "Hyung, are you okay?" he crosses the room in two strides, eyes raking down Mark's body.
Mark wishes Jaebum could see Jackson now, the countless emotions flashing across his eyes -- worry, anxiety, care. Love. Jaebum would eat his words if he could see what a depth of feeling Jackson had in his warm heart.
"I'm fine, baby," Mark murmurs reassuringly, kissing his knuckles. "Let's go have lunch."
Mark watches Jackson sitting across the kitchen table, spooning rice into his mouth apathetically. Jackson had quickly acquired a taste for human food, but he had never quite displayed the hunger. Nevertheless, Mark thinks, didn't the proverb go, If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and walks like a duck, who's to say it isn't a duck?
(Jaebum tells Jinyoung about the rare occasion when he walked into Mark's apartment and didn't immediately see Jackson, bouncing off the walls and making a ruckus.
"Where's Jackson?" he had asked Mark, who smiled innocuously.
"He's at the supermarket," he said, and Jaebum's heart sank.
Taking a deep breath, he decided that it was now or never to say the words he had been holding back. He didn't know when the next time he could catch Mark alone would be.
"Mark-yah..." he started gently, chest aching at Mark's guileless eyes. "Don't you think it's time to move on?"
"Move on?" Mark repeated, blinking at him blankly.
Jaebum sighed. "Jackson's dead. But we're alive."
"Jackson isn't dead," Mark retorted, a sharp edge to his voice. "He's at the supermarket."
"I meant... the old Jackson," Jaebum quickly amended appeasingly. Pain flashed across Mark's eyes at his words, but he continued pretending.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Jaebum's heart was breaking, but he said calmly, "I understand how you feel."
"You don't understand anything," Mark snapped, voice harsh as a whip.
Jaebum couldn't help flinching, hurt, but he tried not to lose his temper. "I was his friend too," he said defensively.
"Is that all you were?" Mark shot back bitterly, and Jaebum was taken aback.
"What do you mean?"
"God dammit, Jaebum," Mark muttered, voice low. "I have to know. That night at the party I didn't attend, when Jackson got drunk and crashed at your room... did you fuck him?"
"No!" Jaebum vehemently denied, and Mark's face paled with relief, his jaw unclenching.
"I wanted to." Although he knew it would hurt Mark, the guilty confession spilled from Jaebum's selfish lips in a rush. "We were both drunk and horny, but he said no. He said he couldn't do that to you."
Mark's face twisted with pain and surprise. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and groaned softly. "It bothered me for so long but I didn't dare to ask. He'd never let me live it down."
Jaebum stared at him. "I didn't know you cared so much..."
Mark breathed a laugh. "I know, I'm pathetic. What does it matter now, anyway? If he were still here, I wouldn't give a shit if he slept in your room every night. I wouldn't argue with him over stupid shit like that. If he just came back... God, I'd forgive him anything."
Jaebum was shocked to see tears spilling from between Mark's fingers, his shoulders heaving soundlessly. He had no idea that Mark's grief was still so raw, after all these years.
"Mark..." he started helplessly, voice thick, but Mark recoiled from his tentative touch as though stung and dashed a defiant arm roughly over his red eyes.
"You should go," he said, avoiding Jaebum's eyes. "Jackson will be back soon."
"You know he's not real, right?" Jaebum couldn't help blurting out callously, his own nerves frayed to breaking point. "Mark-yah, you're in love with a machine."
Mark spun around, looking like he had been slapped. Then his eyes narrowed dangerously. "Don't ever call him that again," he warned, the manic glint in his eyes chilling. "I love him.")
"They say you're just a glorified computer, an android," Mark whispers to Jackson as they snuggle on the couch watching TV, biting off the term scornfully as if it's a dirty word. "But don't worry, my Jackson. I won't let them treat you like an object."
Jackson doesn't say anything, just presses the hard length of his body against Mark's to show him that he is very much human, with human desires and urges and feelings. His hands span Mark's back, warm through his threadbare shirt as he holds Mark the way he needs. Mark wants to savour the breathtaking simplicity of afternoons like these, languid and unremarkable but exactly the kind of memories Mark had regretted not making more of after Jackson had gone.
Jackson strokes Mark's hair gently, whispering unintelligible words in Cantonese into Mark's ear that Mark doesn't understand. All he knows is that they are sweet, soft and adoring.
"I love you too," Mark whispers back in broken Cantonese, and Jackson breaks into a boyish, bashful grin.
Mark can't afford to lose him.
part 2