Chapter Text
Nine noticed Gavin beginning to stir in the predawn light. Relief coursed through him as he saw Gavin’s eyes open, and he kept watch as the human slowly blinked his way back into full consciousness.
“Gavin...”
“Nine…the fuck...?” Gavin squinted at the light as he attempted to sit up, but quickly collapsed back onto the bed with a groan as pain shot through his body.
“Try to not move too much, you’re in the hospital,” Nine said, placing a hand on his partner’s shoulder to prevent him from accidentally tearing his stitches.
Gavin closed his eyes a moment as if to recollect what had happened to put him in the hospital in the first place, before snapping them back open. “Oh shit, are you okay Nine?” he asked in alarm.
The question seemed extremely illogical to Nine when he was not the one laying in a hospital bed, yet all he could feel was a fond exasperation for the man’s priorities. “I’m fine, Gavin. You, however, are recovering from a pulmonary laceration, hemothorax, and severe blood loss after being impaled.”
Gavin grimaced as he looked down to see his bandaged torso. “I think it’s coming back to me now...definitely remembering the getting-impaled part.” The grimace gave way to an irreverent grin as he met Nine’s eyes and huffed out a small laugh. “You should see the other guy, though,” he joked.
Nine looked between Gavin’s face and the faint spot of red on his chest where some of the blood from the healing wound lightly seeped into the clean white of the bandage. Still overwhelmed by the realization that Gavin cared about him as much as he cared about Gavin, he couldn’t stop himself from blurting out a question.
“Why did you save me like that?”
Gavin stared at him as if he’d grown a second head. “Why did I...for fuck’s sake Nine, they were called the Thirium Pump Impalers! I didn’t need a supercomputer in my brain to figure out what they were gonna do to you.”
Nine busied himself with the thin blanket on the bed, not meeting Gavin’s eyes. “Gavin, you nearly died.”
“What was it you said that one time when we started working together? ‘I chose the course of action that gave you the highest probability of survival.’” He playfully mimed Nine’s methodical manner of speech with air quotes.
Nine could not dispute that logic given the fact that he did survive, but still felt his LED churn between yellow and red as he recalled Gavin’s medical chart. “The blade missed your heart by six centimeters. Had you or the android moved slightly differently, we wouldn’t be speaking here. I would have had to watch you die in that warehouse inste--”
“What’s going on with your hand?”
Nine’s new fingers were fading in and out of white where they gripped the corner of the bed’s blanket in distress. “It’s nothing; I recently installed replacement fingers, they just require a reboot sequence to sync to my system.”
“Did you hurt your hand back at the warehouse?”
“No, I...” Nine said hesitantly. “I broke them so I wouldn’t have to return to the precinct...so I could stay here with you.”
“Never thought you’d be such a drama queen,” Gavin laughed as much as his injury would allow.
“I admit it may have been excessive...but I couldn’t leave without seeing your recovery for myself. There was so much blood, and you became unresponsive at the scene, the doctors had to repair your lung damage, then after surgery they had to sedate y--”
Gavin stopped the barrage of thoughts by lightly placing his fingertips on Nine’s wild LED. “This is really bothering you.”
Nine closed his eyes to savor the sensation of the warm, callused hand on his face and slowly, hesitantly brought his own hand up to meet Gavin’s. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since you’ve been in here.”
“Oh yeah?” Gavin left his hand where it was, making no effort to move away. “What about?”
“I didn’t understand at first, why you would let yourself be hurt to protect me, why I couldn’t preconstruct the way you acted, and the outcome of those actions. The possibility of you dying...no longer existing...it bothers me.”
Even now his pump gave a little uncertain shudder at what might have been, what he might have lost. Gavin stayed quiet, moving his hand from the LED to settle on Nine’s cheek; his thumb brushed an absent pattern onto artificial skin, and he waited for Nine to continue.
“I’ve been analyzing all our time together and I think,” Nine let out an unnecessary breath. “I care about you. More than I ever thought would be possible given my base programming.” Nine averted his eyes and lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “And the only conclusion I could reach about your unpredictable actions that makes sense is that you care about me, too.”
They both stayed quiet for a time, the meaning of those words settling around them. Gavin’s hand slid down to Nine’s jawline and tilted his face up with a hint of pressure. “Nine, look at me. I don’t regret it, I’d do it again. And you know what? Yeah I do. I do fucking care about you.“
Nine’s simulated breath caught in his throat as he met Gavin’s eyes. “You do...?”
“Maybe a little too much,” Gavin grinned in return. “Besides, someone has to protect your dumb metal ass.” He poked him mockingly over the thirium pump, brow furrowing when his fingers ran over a spot where the texture was rougher than its surroundings. He pulled down the clasps holding Nine’s shirt closed, exposing the area where the blade had cut into him. The artificial skin was lighter there, skin pigments failing to entirely cover the scar now marring the underlying white chassis. “Looks like I couldn’t keep you from getting a little scratched up though. Shouldn’t you get this fixed?”
Nine placed his hand over Gavin’s, pressing it further onto the scar, the proof of an unspoken devotion. He wanted him to feel the wildly beating thirium pump beneath it, saying more than he had words for in an infinite language database.
“I think I want to keep this.”
Gavin’s eyes slowly widened as the full weight and promise of this dawned on him. His expression softened as he glanced at the bandages over his own wound. “Guess we’ll match, then,” Gavin murmured.
At that, though he had no protocol for it, Nine found himself drifting in towards Gavin and slowly, hesitantly pressed a kiss into his lips. Through them he felt Gavin’s heart rate, his blood oxygen saturation, his body temperature...proof that he was alive, and here with him.
“I guess we will,” Nine whispered as he brushed a smile against Gavin’s lips.
Nine hadn’t predicted this outcome at all, but he could not find it in himself to be troubled by that as Gavin began to deepen the kiss.