Chapter Text
It has become some sort of a norm to find newly made coffee on his desk whenever he arrives to work. Gavin sits down with an appreciative nod toward his android partner, he wasn’t going to thank him verbally however, the gesture is appreciated nonetheless. Although the tall android is treating him differently, and he isn’t sure why, it could be because Gavin almost died in a fire, and it certainly wasn’t because the RK900 said he looked attractive.
Every now and then Gavin will take a glance at his partner, like that would give him the clear answer to his question, but it didn’t.
‘Do you need anything detective?’ The android signs in inquiry, clearly catching him peeking repeatedly.
"Uh, no" Gavin says rather than signs, he sometimes speaks and signs simultaneously, but when he’s trying- emphasis on the words trying- to type a report he simply uses words instead of hand gestures. "Just finishing up this stupid report that’s been taking me hours to finish."
Nines hums, he usually allows Gavin to bitch about what is bothering him in the moment, which in this exact moment is apparently the report they should have submitted this morning.
Gavin subconsciously attempts to rub his healing nose. Yeah it’s a nasty injury, not his first but he can only hope it would be his last, cause this shit hurt like a bitch. It’s only been a week so he needs around two more for it to heal completely. It’s a bit blue and purple at the moment, but with painkillers he’s feeling somewhat better.
By lunch time they received a case or two but one of them is more urgent than the other, so the latter is the one they focused on. It was a typical homicide case, a women in her early 60s was murdered, and that’s pretty much all they have thus far, so they head down to the crime scene.
Gavin huffs at how fucking cold it is, he’ll gladly blame the weather for being too much rather than actually pick a suitable outfit for the weather no matter how much his android nagged about the topic. It started getting colder and colder since last week, and as much as he loves winter, he isn’t particularly a fan of freezing his ass off every time they had to step outside.
There isn’t anything special about this apartment, it was nice and spacious, sure, but it didn’t scream wealth or anything that indicates that this old lady had anything of value to be stolen, yet the crime scenes begs to differ. Seems as if someone was rummaging through the place, leaving the apartment in a chaotic mess, and the owner dead in the center of the living room.
"Shit" Gavin breaths, no matter how many homicides he gets assigned to, it’s never easy to see a dead person, they might be ever so slightly desensitized to it, but it sometimes makes him feel sick nonetheless. "So, what’s do you think happened?" He knows that androids, or rather the RK line can reconstruct crime scenes to find out what exactly happened. While Nines does that, he does his own scooping of the scene.
Something in the apartment stands out to him like a sore thumb. There was a litter box in the hall, and a cat bed in the living room, tucked to a corner. He turns to Nines. "Did the report mention a cat?"
The android shrugs, brows knitted. ‘No, not aware it did.’ He sighs elegantly.
"Right, of course not. Estimated death time?" Gavin nods toward the body laying in the middle of the room, it clearly started to smell, so it couldn’t be a day.
‘Me think 6-10 days’ Nines informs him via hand movements.
Gavin hums, very much intrigued.
Nines tilts his head in amusement as his human kneels, and peeks under and behind every piece of furniture in the living room, then moves to the bedroom and comes back out after a minute carrying a Himalayan cat.
"Mrs. Jordan was smart to give her an automatic feeder, else this little girl would have starved" The closer Gavin gets to the android the more the cat tries to his in the crack of his arm.
The adorably stoic android frowns slightly. ‘Cat scared.’
"Don’t think so, probably just shy or maybe an introvert. If she was scared she would have tried to get out of my arms, even claw at me, but she didn’t." Gavin says with a fondness and calmness that’s rare, and the android wants more of it.
The cat however, is doing her best to make a fool out of Gavin by hissing at the android when he decides to step closer, but did no attempt at escaping the human’s arms.
‘You sure?’
"Yeah I’m fucking sure, dipshit. It’s just a scared little kitten, whose owner was murdered a few days ago." Without another word the detective looks around for a carrier and finds it in the victim’s closet. He gently places the cat inside, and then leaves the the building, and comes back a few minutes without the carrier.
Nines’ LED circles yellow.
"I left her in the car with the window rolled down a bit" Gavin elaborates even though he knows he doesn’t have to.
‘Your jacket where?’
Gavin peeks down at his long sleeved olive green turtleneck. "Keeping the cat warm. Anyway, you should focus more on solving the case, I’m probably taking her to a shelter later or maybe look for a home for her." He really wish he can take her himself but he has a territorial orange Maine Coon at home.
The android tilts his head, looks like he’ll sign something, then seemingly changes his mind and returns to further examine the body.
The detective shrugs, and does his own thing too. He concluded after a while that whoever murdered the old lady did it out of hatred, Mrs. Jordan was about to have dinner when she was attacked, the door has clear signs of a break in, but they will have to go over the evidence again to confirm his theory, and he’d rather do that at his desk as he’s getting a rather nasty headache.
"Hey tincan, if you’re done, we can get a move on." He calls as he heads to the door to wait in the car.
About five minutes later the passenger door opens and closes as the mute android slides in.
‘You do what with cat?’
He’s still thinking about it. "Shit, I don’t know Nines. I can’t take her home, so probably gonna take her to a vet or shelter or maybe ask around if anyone would take her."
The LED circles red twice, then keeps pulsing at yellow for a long while, and finally settles on blue.
‘I take her’ Nines sighs confidently, as if the big doofus even knows how to look after another living being. Then again, he kind of nannies Gavin, so would that even count?
"You? Do you even know how to look after a cat?" It’s not that Gavin wants to be mean, but he doesn’t want something to happen to the cat and for his poor android to be heartbroken over it.
He rubs his neck, stuck in a fucking dilemma.
‘Yes, you teach me!’ The ever cocky asshole. Honestly who made an android that can be described as cute, sassy and intimating all at the same fucking time? Seriously who? Gavin needs to know who he can fucking sue.
"Yeah cause I work as a veterinarian as a side fucking job?" Gavin retorts, and although he is known for his hotheadedness, his words carry no heat. "Besides couldn’t you just Google the information?"
Nines with all the patience of the world, glares at him. ‘You know cats. You teach me how to care for it.’
The detective makes an effort of sighing loudly, with the feign of how inconvenient this whole ordeal is, when in reality he genuinely looks forward to it, to witness how his partner would handle owning a pet, and how he’ll be teaching him how to do that. Not to mention the fact that they’d have to spend more time together.
They spend the following days getting the cat some essential, like a collar, food and water bowls, a bed, toys, a comb, etc. Gavin was invited to Nines’ a couple of days later, he helps Nines with cat-proofing his apartment, as well as showing him where most of the cat stuff should go. He also made suggestions, such as an automatic feeder, and a water fountain.
That evening Nines orders Gavin takeout, and offers to watch a movie, and of course most of the time they are distracted by the cat- which Nines has yet to name- and distracted by each other’s company.
The advanced android remembers the day that his partner almost was swallowed by flames in that basement. It keeps him up at night sometimes.
"Hey" He hears the words spoken softly. "You’re not blue screening, are you, tincan?"
‘Of course not’ RK900 signs swiftly, frowning slightly at the implication.
"Of course not" Gavin parrots, shrugging, deciding not to press the android, even though the urge is strong to ask why did Nines seemed so troubled for a moment there.
"Anyways, as I was saying, Marshmallow is a good name?" And he continues before the android has a chance to disregard his suggestion. "Just think about it, it’s a fun name."
The dork stares him in the eye as he finger spells, ‘Dipshit’
Gavin huffs, trying and failing to stifle a laugh. "Yeah fuck you too, it’s a great name!"
‘You going where?’ Nines inquires, with a tilt of his head as soon as Gavin gets up and begins to collect his stuff.
"Home. In case your internal clock or whatever is that working, it’s 11pm and we have work tomorrow"
‘Of course, good night, Gavin’ He signs ‘G’ for Gavin.
Gavin stares dumbfound for a moment, just a moment. It is far from the first time Nines has called him by his first name, but it still knocks out the air out of his chest every time.
"Yeah." Gavin decides to sign, he usually does from time to time, but mostly he does it when he wants Nines to focus on him, part of it is selfish, he knows. ‘Goodnight, 9s’ He then pets ‘marshmallow’ before leaving.
They are called to a crime scene, and this itself isn’t unusual, what is unusual is the fact that the building is on fucking fire.
"Holy shit!" Gavin curses just as he approaches the building. The rapid and angry flames has most of his focus, else he would notice Nines’ LED having a little rave of mostly red.
Years in training and in this career tells him to move, and see if anything can be salvaged, but the second he moves forward, a strong grip holds him back.
"The fuck?" He makes the mistake of turning around, and he was greeted with an extremely stoic face, so stoic and frozen that it looks like a face of a mannequin rather than his android partner. "Shit, the fuck is wrong with you, dipshit!"
No response whatsoever. So he tries again.
"Hey tincan, let go!" Still nothing. He lets a string of colorful curses roll out of his mouth, before attempting to sign with one hand, it was clumsy, and inconvenient as fuck, but than god it works. Pale gray eyes moves from the radiance of the fire, that’s currently being distinguished.
Gavin’s concern grows when the android does not respond, the only thing was moving is his LED, otherwise the RK is completely paralyzed.
He does the best thing his to snap his left hand in front of Nines’ face, since his right arm is still in the strong clasp, he’s desperately trying to get his attention, this isn’t fucking normal and he doesn’t want to admit it but he’s worried as fuck about his partner.
Whatever trance took over his partner seems to disappear, making Gavin sigh in relief.
"Nines?" A tentative question, while his eyes search for an another answer to this bizarre behavior.
He misses the warmth of hand that was wrapped around his hand, but he’s more focus on Nines. "What was that?"
The android blinks unnecessarily then shakes his head dismissing his unusual manners a moment ago.
When the android refuses to answer, Gavin jumps into a rant in ASL, cause clearly that’s the only way his terminator would talk when he isn’t exactly mentally there.
‘That was fucking what? You okay? What happened?’
No reply, but the LED glows a mixture of red and yellow, so at least that’s something. It wasn’t just a solid red as it was a moment ago, so Gavin takes it as a good sign.
‘9s! What happened?’ Gavin signs again, this time slowly and calmly. He tries to catch the Android’s gorgeous icy blue eyes.
It takes five moments of complete silence- excluding the chaos that was happening in the background, firetruck and cop cars surrounded the place, doing their best to put out the fire, and they were successful.
‘I panicked.’
‘It’s okay. We’re homicide detectives not firefighters’ The human detective never really had to calm down his android cause usually it’s the other way around, except that one time at the hospital.
‘What then?’
‘Memories’ It takes him an embarrassingly long moment to realize what the mute android was referring to. Oh holy shit, how could he have been so stupid? Of course Nines’ still traumatize from the whole almost burnt to a crisp in the basement ordeal.
Oh shit.
"Alright then. Uh, you know what? I think they got this one, we have other cases to focus on."
‘But’
"No excuses, or we can just come back here later" He’ll deal with Fowler if he decides to give them a hard time about this, although something tells him he won’t.