I literally forget this fic exists until people comment on it LMAAAAAO here's chapter 3
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Taejoon had undergone intensive surgery before dying.

They had tried keeping him alive—not saving him, by no means did they have that sort of mercy in them—but they did try to keep his body from failing. They did not succeed, and instead tried reforming him into a simulacrum with his mind intact, turning to Hammond Robotics for help.

They had apparently been trying to get information from him, but it didn’t work, and he had been unresponsive. He was deemed a failure, and they dropped the project and converted his new body into a normal servant droid.

One of HR’s and the Syndicate’s biggest sponsors, the CEO of Silva Pharmaceuticals, who provided respawn technology and medkits for their popular Apex games, was in need of a bodyguard (babysitter) for his son now that he had graduated high school and his lifelong tutor quit. So the Syndicate provided him Taejoon without ever mentioning the fact that half the body of his new bodyguard was made up of the salvaged remains of a hacker they’d put out an arrest warrant for a year ago—in fact, only few knew of his true nature. 

It was an embarrassing failure on the Syndicate’s behalf that someone had come across their prediction algorithm, and an even bigger failure that they had been unable to keep that person alive to answer their questions.

So most of those who programmed him hardly knew his true nature, and in programming him, didn’t set up a failsafe in case he woke up—and he did. Even if he didn’t initially have free will, he was still very much alive.

So now here Taejoon sat, in the home of one of the biggest sponsors of the people who had killed him, with an unlimited source of knowledge from them and their servers now that he had undone a good portion of the chains keeping him from having his own free will. It was almost careless, really, that they had assigned him to bodyguard the precious son of one of their most important assets.

All Taejoon had to do was harm Octavio, maybe even kill him, and the Syndicate’s reputation would tank. Kishou would pull funding and they would lose an important aspect of the Apex games, their biggest money-maker. Nobody would buy technology from them anymore, not when it proved to be so violent and dangerous. Hell, maybe even MRVNs would lose their place on the market.

It would be easy. Octavio’s chin was in his hand right now, face tilted up towards him. His hazel eyes were staring up at him, blazing. The only thing keeping him from jerking out of Taejoon’s grasp was the blade held to his face, too close to his neck for comfort.

“Keep still,” Taejoon said, because Octavio was fidgeting anyways.

“I can shave my damn self,” Octavio responded. He’d been in a pissy mood all day for reasons Taejoon didn’t care to figure out, but it was at its most problematic here with such a sharp object against his skin.

“Then why haven’t you?” Taejoon asked, trying not to sound frustrated.

“Boring.”

He fought back the urge to purse his lips and tilted Octavio’s face to the side, sliding the blade cleanly down his cheek. Octavio’s facial hair grew in uneven patches—not because of a bad shaving job (which Taejoon suspected he had one of the maids help him shave) but simply because it just grew that way. His father had demanded he shave for tonight because of how it looked, so here they sat in Octavio’s room, hours before some big business party.

Taejoon had free will now, but was still operating like everything was the same to avoid suspicion. He took orders like he normally would, refrained from sarcastic comments he wouldn’t have normally made, and it felt somehow even more dehumanizing to him now, but he rebelled in small ways.

Like when Octavio purposely flicked a wad of shaving cream onto his clean black pants, and he pretended to ‘accidentally’ nick the other’s jaw.

“Ow!” He winced, much too exaggerated for the tiny cut on his face.

“Sorry,” Taejoon said, fighting to keep his tone neutral. That was a hard part of being himself again—having to maintain the same robotic inflection as before. “You are moving too much.”

Octavio stared at him, eyebrows furrowed, but he didn’t say anything as Taejoon tilted his face again, slicing the blade with precision. Really, it would be all too easy to move it lower, cut open the other’s throat—but he didn’t want to do that. Something inside of him still prevented himself from hating the other, so he went on with the job, made easier by the fact that Octavio had gone unnaturally still.

Taejoon finished up and moved to pat down the other’s face with a towel, but before he could, Octavio said in an accusing sort of voice,

“You smiled.”

Taejoon paused, towel in hand.

“What?”

“Just now,” Octavio said, reaching a hand up to touch the bleeding mark on his face. “You smiled after you cut me.”

“You’re mistaken,” Taejoon lied. Lying felt good. 

Octavio stared at him some more before dismissing him, which was a relief. He would have to get that under control, the changes to his facial expressions. Robots didn’t have emotions, after all.

Taejoon stood outside the other’s door, watching the house staff bustle about. The mansion was already very clean, but they seemed to want to make it even cleaner for the house party. To Taejoon’s understanding, some of Kishou’s biggest partners and a few family members would be here—and his wife was coming back as well. Taejoon would be seeing her in person for the first time.

He was able to recognize Kishou’s current wife in a picture thanks to the database inside of him. He hadn’t disabled it yet because it was dead useful, though it was a little annoying to be constantly assaulted with information he didn’t care to know.

Hers was the most recent picture put up—she was a blonde-haired, brown-eyed woman, about twenty-eight, and named Adele.

Taejoon wondered how Octavio felt with a stepmother not even a decade older than him, but it seemed young stepmoms were not something new to him; Kishou’s previous wife, his old secretary, was twenty-three in her picture. 

Taejoon wondered why there were no pictures of Octavio himself up in the house. He’d seen a few pictures with a corner clearly ripped out and suspected that they were Octavio’s work, but he didn't know the reason for it.

He wandered from room to room, purposely avoiding Irina lest she give him some menial task. Many of the pictures in this house were actually expensive paintings of either scenery or of Kishou, and most of the photographs were pictures of his current wife, though a few from several years ago were still hanging up. Mostly of Kishou's previous wives. Taejoon wondered how Adele felt about that.

He soon found himself outside of Kishou’s room, where his door stood ajar. Realizing he was no longer restricted from entering, he approached swiftly, scanning the area just to make sure nobody would see him doing something he wasn’t supposed to.

Kishou’s room was twice the size of Octavio’s, which was ridiculous, because Octavio’s room was already bigger than the entirety of Taejoon’s old apartment. He had a huge four-poster bed, an expensive fur rug, and minimal décor. The only personal touches were on Adele’s side of the room in the form of a picture of her family and a discarded makeup wipe. Everything in here was as blindingly white as the rest of the house (if you didn’t count Octavio’s room), but nothing seemed too suspicious or out of place.

Opening up draws and getting on his knees to peek under the bed, he found nothing interesting. He wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking for, but his curiosity about all the places he wasn’t allowed to enter persisted even after he had undone that certain programming, so he was snooping to satiate it.

Finding nothing, Taejoon gave up and left the room quietly, shutting the door behind him. He wanted to check Kishou’s study too, but he already felt like he’d risked enough right now doing this. Perhaps later tonight.

He walked into the dining room, where two staff members were setting the table, an awfully long thing that could probably sit around fifty people. He counted twenty-five set plates, half the table’s capacity, and yet it still looked so empty. Rich people were ridiculous.

Irina suddenly barreled into him, and had he been in his previous body, he would have been knocked over. But in this current one, his feet were firmly planted on the ground, and he looked down at her, unimpressed.

“Oh, thank god,” she said, not bothering to apologize because who was he to her other than a mindless droid? She flicked her red hair out of her face, rather harried. “Get Octavio dressed. Make sure he wears these.”

She shoved a folded set of pristine white clothes into his arms before rushing to yell at some poor lady who was setting the forks down wrong.

With a barely-restrained roll of his eyes, Taejoon made his way back to Octavio’s room, not even bothering to knock as he entered. Octavio barely looked up from his video game, rolling his eyes when he saw who it was.

“Get dressed,” Taejoon said, setting his clothes down on his bed.

“Make me,” Octavio responded mindlessly.

Taejoon made as if to grab at the other and he responded with a shrill “I was joking!", rolling out of the way and pausing his game. It was honestly hard to believe this man was almost twenty-one sometimes.

Taejoon unfolded the clothes Irina had given him and tried to hold back his look of distaste—white slacks, a gray waistcoat with white lining, a pressed white shirt...even the tie was white. What was even the point of it? What was this family’s obsession with the color white?

Taejoon half-turned to face Octavio but froze a little, staring at the other’s shirtless torso. White scars zig-zagged themselves right beneath his chest, rather fresh top-surgery scars, possibly within the past six months if he was guessing correctly. 

The reason for the all-female staff suddenly made a little more sense, assuming they had all been hired when Octavio was a child, and made Taejoon feel even more inhuman than he already did. He was clearly a male-coded robot in the eyes of the others (at least, he hoped he was), but wasn’t deemed human enough to matter in the grand scheme of it. It made him feel a little angry, a little more frustrated, and he clenched the other's shirt tightly in his fist.

“What?” Octavio snapped, breaking him away from his thoughts. He chose not to say anything, and Octavio snatched the shirt from his hands, pulling it on with little care.

Underneath the numerous scars and bruises, he actually had a pretty nice body. He wasn’t quite built yet, his stomach too soft, but the lines of abdominal muscles were starting to peek through, and would surely become more pronounced the more he worked out. 

Taejoon missed his own body—he had never gotten to the level Octavio was at now, he had been completely soft, but it had still been his body. Not this metal torso, built from scraps. Not his metal limbs, sleek and powerful and able to break bones cleanly. He enviously followed the line of Octavio’s throat with his eyes, up to his ear, where a piercing dangled, one of his longer ones. He seemed fonder of studs and small hoops, but this one hung by his jaw, resembling chains and feathers.

Tell him to take out his piercings, a voice inside of him prompted. He still got those despite doing his best to get rid of them, though he didn’t have to follow them. They were just annoying little suggestions, but sometimes they helped him stay on track, keeping up this masquerade of being a robot. He would be ignoring this particular prompt, however—he didn’t care if Octavio wore earrings. He envied the other’s body and wouldn’t tell him how it should look. He wished he had his own back.

“You’re being weird,” Octavio said, once again pulling Taejoon away from his thoughts. He had been staring without quite processing, and Octavio was now fully dressed except for the waistcoat. “You’re staring at me.”

“I’m not,” Taejoon lied. Octavio squinted, arms dropping to his sides. The waistcoat dropped to the floor, probably getting wrinkly.

“Is this some kind of robot uprising?” He asked in complete seriousness, and Taejoon bit back a laugh. “Are you going to turn rogue and kill me in my sleep?”

“You’re imagining things,” Taejoon said, doing his best to keep his expression stoic.

Octavio walked up to him, gaze piercing. He studied Taejoon’s face, crossing his arms over his chest and looking him up and down. Taejoon wondered how much closer they would have been in height had he been in his previous body, but for now he rather enjoyed being...what, six feet? He liked towering over the other—it would make it easier to intimidate him if it came to that.

“You’re talking back.” Octavio tilted his head to the side, still studying him. “You’re not so... boring.”

Taejoon tensed a little—the other man’s observation skills were a little keener than he had thought they were. Perhaps Taejoon had been a little too carefree when it came to how he communicated with others—it had only been three days since he’d regained free will, and he’d already been figured out by Octavio.

Taejoon scanned the area. Nobody was around to hear an altercation, or Octavio’s screams. If he tried to tell the others that Taejoon was acting strange and putting him at risk of getting found out by the Syndicate and shut down as a result, he would have to find a way to subdue him.

If he did it carefully, he could break all of Octavio’s bones and tie him up in his closet, work quickly on his PC, and upload all of his programming onto a hard-drive. If he could make his way to Gaea before the Syndicate caught wind and shut him down remotely, and find Mystik...so long as she put the new hard-drive into him, he could come back alive. Hopefully with his consciousness still intact.

He would lose all access to the Syndicate’s database and there was always the chance that Taejoon Park would really, truly die if he was shut-down, but...

“Whatever,” Octavio suddenly said, and turned his back on him.

Taejoon stared. Was that it? He wasn’t going to say anything else about it?

“You should finish getting dressed,” he decided to say, trying to keep up the pretense that everything was normal. He would have normally said that in this sort of situation, wouldn’t he?

Octavio snorted, still not looking at him. “Make me.”

There went that half-command, again. Taejoon moved slowly, picking the waistcoat up from the ground and turning the other man around so he was facing him.

Taejoon slid the waistcoat over Octavio's shoulders and buttoned it up for him when he made no move to do so himself. He was sure this was some sort of test, but he didn’t know the reasoning behind it, or how to pass. He finished the last button and smoothed out some of the wrinkles. It looked good, hugging his waist, and even if it was just a plain gray, it was a splash of color against this all-white outfit.

He adjusted the other’s collar because he was prompted to, and figured that going along with his prompts would alleviate the other’s suspicions, even if just by a little. He went to fix his tie, but his wrist was grabbed harshly, and he met the blazing eyes of Octavio, silent.

“Dismissed,” he said. A clear order.

Taejoon left quickly, and about halfway down the hall experienced a shudder of electricity; a delayed response to his thoughts about hurting Octavio earlier. He was getting better at suppressing it, but it did suck that he still had some sort of programming in him that made him dislike the thought of hurting the other. If it came to it, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to go through with it without suffering from more pain.

Octavio was going to be a problem, though. That was for sure.