Chapter Text
Rachel had warned him it would sting; when he'd asked how much, she'd pinched him, hard, and said it was probably twice or three times as much as that. He'd retaliated by pinching her back, a lot less hard, and when she'd protested, he'd pinched her again, somewhere he knew she was ticklish.
Even though Rachel was almost always too serious and hated getting off track, they'd ended up tickling each other, until he'd mostly forgotten about the markings he'd seen on someone's arm through a cafe window. It wasn't until a lot later that he'd asked about it again.
The feel of a collar around his neck had been grating, and he'd said, tentatively, "Do you think there's another way you could mark me?"
A lot of times in those days, Rachel seemed uncomfortable with him — he was growing, and artificial lifeforms weren't supposed to grow, but also, he was branded behind his right ear with the laboratory he'd been grown in, an off the books factory that had been razed to the ground a couple of years before Rachel found him; he had a hibernation mode; he definitely wasn't human — and she'd been taken back when he asked her this, before her eyes flickered down to his collar and she seemed to make sense of it.
"What kind of marking are you thinking of?" she asked, siting down next to him. They rarely touched each other those days, but he still felt the urge to curl up next to her; experimentally, like testing the water of a lake, he reached out to touch her hand. She didn't move away.
"I don't know," he replied, "A tattoo or something? Do people like me normally just wear collars?"
"There aren't a lot of people like you," she said; it was something she'd told him a lot. Artificial humans were an unpopular idea. People didn't like thinking they could be grown in labs, that the things that made them special and more than animals were things that could be engineered. Rachel was in engineering at the time — she had a bad time with one of her classmates, but was otherwise a good student. Bam had seen her grades, and even the ones she wasn't satisfied with were good.
Well, actually, she hadn't been satisfied by any of her grades.
"Collars are the most common, though," she agreed, "So are signature tattoos, though. If you wanted to get one, we could. They have to be visible at all times though."
He thought about that.
"I couldn't get one here?" he asked, moving his hand away from Rachel's hand long enough to pat his right hip. He loved Rachel, but he didn't want her name, or her ownership of him, to be the first thing people saw when they looked at him, just like he was starting to realize he didn't want the collar to be the first thing they noticed.
Rachel looked skeptical, "No, Bam, it has to be visible to anyone who looks at you. All the time."
"I could wear low slung pants," he offered, though it was hardly his normal style, and after a moment he added, "I'm going to need more clothes soon anyway."
It was true. He was growing like a weed in those days — he was sure that soon he'd even be taller than Rachel — and eating them out of house and home. Rachel never said anything, but he'd seen her going over the accounts.
"People won't hire me if they see the collar first," he added, though he wasn't sure they'd hire him with the tattoo either. Not just because it wouldn't look professional — no matter where he put it, it would seem jarring and out of place, though he supposed if it were somewhere other than his hip he'd look more professional because he'd be able to wear more professional clothes.
"Bam, you don't need to get a job, it's fine," Rachel said; he wondered if it was because she was protecting him or because she felt people judging her whenever they were out together, but she said things like that a lot, even though it wasn't fine.
They were both silent for a while, and then Rachel brought up something else; the conversation moved to other things, and Bam let it because he didn't want to be a bother; didn't want to give Rachel more of a reason to leave.
But two weeks later, she took him into a tattoo parlor; she filled out documents, and discussed ideas with the man behind the counter, but when she got a chance, she asked Bam, quietly, so no one would think to interrupt, "What sort of design would you like?"
He didn't need to think about it; at the time, anything Rachel liked, he liked too. Even now, he wants to be the things she likes, so that she'll like him, but back then it was simple and innocent, "You like stars, right? Maybe something with stars?"
She'd told him it would hurt.
It didn't.
Mr. Khun doesn't know the whole story, and Bam doesn't want to tell it to him; sometimes it's easier if Mr. Khun hates Rachel. That way Bam doesn't have to, doesn't have to question why he doesn't, when she built up his humanity for so long only to sell him to the highest bidder, to a shady group that promised her access to the upper city. Sometimes he wonders if they delivered, but they never answer when he asks. Most of them won't talk to him.
He's on loan to Mr. Wangnan, who is a nice person, at least, and doesn't treat him like a machine, though Bam would almost prefer it if he did. He doesn't want to be human if it just means the other person is lying to themselves about it, if it means waking up in a strange place one day, having a strange person explaining a strange situation as though it were only logical.
"You were the only thing she had that was worth anything," Ms. Hwa Ryun had said, casual and cold. Matter of fact more than cruel, but he still hadn't wanted to hear it.
Nia had been the one to take Rachel's name out of the tattoo on his right hip; even though Nia did excellent work, careful and thorough, if Bam squinted he could still see the scars it had left behind, white and pale where it had once been black. Sometimes he thought if he turned off the lights and looked at himself in the mirror it would be glowing, obvious to anyone that no matter who tried to erase it, he still belonged to her, body, heart and soul.
He kind of wanted to, but he didn't know how to get the words out when they went against everything he'd ever wanted to believe in. What he wanted to believe was that they were friends; what he wanted to believe was that she thought he was human too.
But being owned was better than nothing, sometimes.