tell it to my heart & run

“Put down the ramen.” You demand.

“No.”

“I said put it down!” You persist, your tone rising.

“And I said no.”

Your frustration gets the better of you and you smack the table. “So help me God, I will tackle you to the ground and rip my ramen from your cold. Dead. Fingers!”

“You?” He laughs humorlessly. “Tackle me to the ground? Don’t make me laugh.”

You raise a finger to him. “Don’t tempt me, Jeonghan.”

“More like I’m calling your bluff.” He smirks. “You won’t do it.”

The tips of your ears start to get red as you stand and stare him down. “That’s it, you’ve messed with the wrong girl!”

Without hesitating, you practically leap across the table, knocking Jeonghan out of his chair and onto the ground. You’re sitting on top of his hips, your hands pressing his shoulders into the ground, and a triumphant smile on your lips.

“Told ya.” You taunt him, brushing your hair out of your face. “That’ll teach you to—what are you doing.”

His hands suddenly find themselves on your waist, and he’s got that devilish smile creasing his lips. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You—“ You start, huffing in anger. “You totally let me tackle you.”

“Mhmm.” He agrees, smirking up at you. “I’ve got you right where I want you.”

Before you can get a word out, Jeonghan’s flipped the tables and you find yourself on your back, his hands keeping your wrists secured to the floor.

“Jerk!” You spit at him as you force back laughter. “You couldn’t let me have this one? Just this one?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Not today.”

Pouting, you puff out your cheeks, resisting your roommates exuberant charms. “You’re so mean.”

“I think you’re just a sore loser.” He says, his voice hushed and mildly sexual. “There’s only one way you can beat me.”

“Oh?” You feign ignorance. “And how’s that?”

“Do I really have to spell it out for you?” He asks quietly, slowly getting closer, and closer, until—

With everything you have, you manage to roll over once more, putting yourself back on Jeonghan’s waist. You offer him a mischievous and knowing smirk, leaning in close to his ear and whispering seductively.

“Why’s that?” As you ask, your gaze is on the way that sunshine tries to reach into the room, on the flecks of dust that float through the air and the floorboard where light switches to shade. His feet come into your vision first. You look up to see him approaching.

“It could be today that the files come in at your office, right?”

The bed dips where he sits beside you. “You’re thinking about that already?” you ask, the rim of your cup just below your lips. Steam drifts up over your lips and brings the aroma to your nose faintly. It’s warmer than any touch of his. By no fault of his own, you add to the thought.

“It’s hard not to.” Hyojin watches you take a sip. You wonder - not for the first time - if he envies humans of the littler things. If he even has time to with his eyes set on the bigger problem. “You don’t know what’ll mean if we can get a hold of it.”

His words are a little too accurate, considering the role you’ve agreed to play in getting them to him. “Could you remind me again? How data from some station habitats is going to help with making things fair for androids down here?”

And he tells you that and more. The good reason he has to believe studies done there have indisputable proof of android sentience that organizations on Earth have been invested in keeping buried. The ways you’ll expose it together, and the world will change for the better.

In your time as a functionary, you’ve never once peeked into the files being transferred between the space stations and the office you worked in. It isn’t part of your job description. You’re just a step in the encryption process; a step intentionally left unautomated to keep the information out of nefarious, non-human hands. It had never occurred to you as an injustice until you met Hyojin.

You bend down to set your now empty mug on the floor. Once you’re upright again, your hands are occupied again quickly. This time with Hyojin’s hands clutching yours. “No one will ever be able to be grateful enough to you,” he professes. “I still can’t believe I found you.” He brings your hands towards his mouth and dots small kisses against your knuckles. His lips travel up, one just above your elbow and one at your shoulder before they finally meet with your own. You don’t need to see scientific evidence to know Hyojin truly has his own mind and heart.

Your back meets the mattress gently, and your arms wrap around his neck as they’ve done so many times before.

“I know he’s sweet with you. Makes it so easy for you to believe him. But you can’t.”

Hyojin walks you to work as he often does. Which is to say, he only ever takes you as far as two blocks away from your office. Once upon a time, you thought it was just the most convenient turning point for him to get to his own job. You know better now.

On most sidewalks, the two of you are afforded the same treatment as any other couple would be. No one really says a thing about it. It’s only in those parts of the city with scanners for bionics that Hyojin ever appears on edge. Otherwise he moves through the streets with a confidence that’s easily enviable.

A squeeze of your hand draws you out of your thoughts. Traffic serves as a good excuse for him to come to pause with you on a street corner.

“I just want to say - it’s okay if you can’t,” Hyojin says softly. The abstraction is intentional. Outside of the apartment, it’s impossible to know what’s safe to say.

“No, if it’s there, I will,” you promise. “I know how much it means.”

His grip tightens again. “Don’t do anything that’ll get yourself in trouble, though.” It’s difficult to believe he could prioritize you over his grander cause, but there his words are. “That’s the last thing I want.”

“I know. I’ll see you later.”

Hyojin smiles at you. His fingers hesitate to untangle with yours when the traffic pauses for crossing. As a substitute for a goodbye kiss, he simply reaches his other hand up to your face and brushes lightly over your jawline. For half an instant, you’re angled as if he really would kiss you on the street corner. You would let him, as indelicate as it would be in this city. But then his touch is gone, and he’s reminding you one more time to be safe before you hurry across the street.

“He makes it all sound so promising, but he isn’t telling you the truth. If you go through with it, you’ll be horrified with yourself. He isn’t looking for data to convince people of androids’ humanity. It doesn’t exist. It’s an excuse.”

You struggle against the hold of the stranger, half wondering if this would be the end. You’ll go missing, or be found in this alley in a few hours time. The accusations against Hyojin shouldn’t have surprised you - he’d told you from the start that he had to keep his presence in the city a secret. But still, you refuse to let it slide. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” you say with clenched teeth. “Our plan-”

Your words are cut short by an abrupt pull and a push. Your shoulders slam against the rough wall, an arm presses up against your throat. The stranger is in front of you now, pulling their hood down quickly before returning the hand to restraining you.

If not for all the pressure locking you into place, you would mistake it for being in front of a mirror. Shock puts a halt to your attempts to break out of the hold. “It’s his plan. Not ours,” the assailant with your face hisses. “Get that through your head now. We can’t let this be the reality where he actually gets his way.”

You come back to the apartment only slightly later than usual, your shoulders slightly sore but your throat feels fine. The lights in the small studio are off, and there’s a part of you that’s grateful to have gotten here before Hyojin. The other part of you is angry to even have that first thought.

The light buzzes on, flickering for a moment before turning steady. With a sigh, you sit down on the edge of the mattress and pull the small, square drive disc out of your pocket. It feels like you’ve just woken from a nightmare. Heart still racing despite being able to look around and say you’re fine.

You’re fine, you repeat to yourself. You ought to treat the whole ordeal as a bad dream. Odd and confusing but inconsequential. It isn’t so easily done when there’s proof it was real.

Real - but it makes no sense. There’s no other you. Not even an android modeled to your likeness. It’s impossible, but it happened. You sigh shakily and slip the disc back into its place.

Before you can try to clear your head, the lock of the door turns and Hyojin is coming in. He looks the same as when you left him. He smiles when he sees you, but it only lasts for a moment. “What’s wrong?” Hyojin is in front of you in an instant, his hands brushing over your arms and eyes looking you over closely. “What happened?”

You smile weakly, endeared by how easily he can read you and how concerned it makes him. You know Hyojin. If you lied and told him you couldn’t get the files, he would sweep you into his arms and tell you it was fine; that he was just glad you were safe. If you told him the truth - that someone had found out about the plan, and was trying to convince you it’s far more nefarious than you knew… Then he’d be hurt. He’d wonder if you’d really believe a stranger over him. If you really could be so easily convinced that androids weren’t trustworthy. That he wasn't.

“It was nothing,” you try to assuage him. “Just something weird on the way home.” His expression angles into confusion. There’s a flash of a dark misgiving; but then breaks his gaze from yours and looks to your hand as he cradles it.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

You shake your head and hum refusal. “It’s not important.”

“You’re sure?”

“There’s something more important.”

An optimistic curiosity lights up Hyojin’s face. You pull your hand away from his and reach into your pocket.

“Is that…?” Hyojin only starts to ask when his eyes catch the black plastic of the memory card. You nod, and he grins. When you hand him the drive, it feels like a bolt locking into place. There’s no changing your mind now.

“I love you,” Hyojin says as he pockets the card. An instant later, his hands are cupping your face as he leans in to reaffirm the statement with a kiss.

“He’ll keep hopping timelines until he can find a version of me that goes through with it. And not because he loves me- you - us. You understand, don’t you?” The strange reflection - this not-you - struggles for a moment before holding a disc out to you. “Give him this instead. You can put a stop to this for good.”

“I love you, too,” you tell him when his lips leave yours.