Chapter Text
August 19, 2041- 9:09 p.m.
Gavin sat in the waiting room with everybody else. Said everyone had dwindled to himself, Connor, Markus, Hank, and North. Everyone else close to David was at their respective homes, waiting for news from there. Even Kara had asked to be kept in the loop, tears in her eyes as she had said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have accused him, I thought I was doing the right thing.”
Hank had assured her that none of this was her fault, but Gavin had abstained from saying anything. It would be so easy to blame this on her, but of course Hank was right, and Gavin hadn’t wanted to accidentally make an accusation of his own.
Besides, with that line of reasoning, one could blame Millie too, and Gavin wouldn’t have done that even if she wasn’t currently operating on David’s body. She’d offered to try to reboot David once she got out of the hospital, and they all agreed to wait for her. She was the best in her field after all, and as grim as it was, it wasn’t as if android bodies decomposed. Millie had been working on him for over twelve hours straight, now.
Connor sat on a couch next to Gavin’s chair, fiddling with a tiny fish sculpture. Tired of the silence, Gavin nodded at the trinket. “What’s that?” he asked in a quiet voice, mostly because he didn’t want to disturb the others, partly because his throat still wasn’t fully healed from the attack a few nights ago.
“Birthday pr-e-esent,” Connor answered, also quiet. “From David. Made it hims-e-e-elf. Hank made sure I got it.”
Gavin’s heart clenched and he regretted asking the question. Of course Mister Find-Me-A-Hobby had done arts and crafts for his big brother’s birthday. It was a good sculpture, though the paint job wasn’t perfect. The shape of some scales were a little wonky, and the eye sat a bit too low on the face, but didn’t that just make it all the more fucking special?
Silence resumed amongst the five of them, North and Markus talking through their communication chips and Hank sleeping but not yet snoring. Connor continued to stare at the little fish for a minute before saying, “He went d-e-e-eviant for you, you know. The others heard him yell your n-a-ame.”
Gavin shifted in his chair, feeling not for the first time that day that he needed several smokes and drinks. “We both would’ve died in that basement if it weren’t for him,” Gavin tried to reason, though he knew it probably wasn’t factual. None of the RK900s had actually made a move to hurt Connor.
Connor shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, then looked up to meet Gavin’s eyes, “but I’m not the one they took h-o-ostage.”
Gavin sighed and looked away, setting his jaw and blinking rapidly. He didn’t want to think about that idea, he couldn’t. If he let it stick that David had gone deviant for him, had shut himself down for him… Like Kara, it would be so easy to just blame himself.
A nearby analog clock ticked away the minutes until a new clacking accompanied it: Millicent hobbling on crutches towards them. Everyone’s heads snapped up and North, none too gently, patted Hank awake. Gavin felt the briefest moment of hope. Surely all that time Millie spent working had come out to some fruition? But she wasn’t making eye contact with any of them.
Still, all five of them stared at her with expectant eyes until she finally looked up, eyes bloodshot and lips pursed.
“I— I’m sorry,” she said.
Connor let out a moan that came from the back of his throat, the inner workings of his soul. He gripped the fish in one hand and buried his face into Markus’s chest. The deviant leader held and shushed him, though he was crying himself. Hank let out a whispered “Fuck” and rubbed a hand over his face. North pitched forward, elbows propped on her knees while she held her head, bouncing one heel up and down like a metronome on its fastest setting. Gavin only continued to stare at Millie, the suspense in his heart having dropped and turned to ice in his core. That was it, then. No hope left. David the deviant would never get to enjoy life, never experience the world as a free man, never get to just be someone.
Because he had wanted Gavin to live.
With everyone else in the beginning throes of their mourning, Gavin felt like he was the only one who could hear Millie continue in a shaky voice, “There were… a few times when I almost had it, but—” She cleared her throat, newfound tears making her trip over her vowels, mimicking Connor’s stutter. “—but even as a deviant, David’s still connected to the RK900 hive mind. Waking him up means waking them all up, and he won’t… let himself get rebooted.”
Another punch to the gut. So close yet so far to having David back, the stubborn, selfless bastard.
Still, Gavin felt a new spark of hope within him. Or perhaps he’d skipped a few steps in the grief process, straight to bargaining. “What if we just made the rest of them deviant?” he asked, then turned to Markus. “Do one of those mass wake up calls, like at Christmas?”
Millicent shook her head. “There was never any hope for the other models. They were created corrupted when Victor Andronikov started the reboot sequence, and waking David up in January was the last straw. This—” She flexed her fingers on her crutches. “—Autokiller thing was as close to deviancy as they were ever going to get.”
“Then we’ll destroy them!” Gavin persisted, leaning forward in his seat, lifting his hands to accentuate his point.
“Gavin—” Markus started.
“No, they were murderous psychopaths, they shouldn’t get David too!” Gavin snapped. He turned back to Millie. “Would that work?”
Millicent shook her head again, this time with a bit of frustration mixed in with the sadness. “Hardware is never the same as software, Gav. The cloud of that hive mind will exist in the ether forever; even if you melted down every last one of the other RK900 units, that would still be true. David knows that, and he’ll never wake up because of it.”
She sighed, clacking over to the other couch and sitting beside North, propping her crutches against the armrest. She leaned back and looked at the ceiling, blowing a small stream of air through her lips before saying while blinking back tears, “I am the best fucking doctor at this hospital. That isn’t bragging; I worked damn hard to earn that title. But the hive mind can’t be destroyed, and the tech work needed to disconnect David from it is…” She raised her head to face them all, “beyond me.”
North took Millie’s hand, rubbing a thumb against it. “You did your best,” she said.
Millicent grunted but squeezed back. She sighed once more, looking at Connor and asking, “Did you want to take a look before—?”
“Wait,” Gavin said. The command was out of his mouth before he knew he was saying it. Five pairs of eyes looked at him.
“What, Gavin?” Millicent asked. Not angry, just tired. North glared at him and everyone else gave gazes that silently begged him to stop.
He could if he wanted to. Just say, “Never mind, I’m sorry,” and be done with it. But memories of David learning to be human, coming to enjoy the activities Gavin introduced him to, supporting each other both in and out of work pushed Gavin to keep going, even though he wasn’t too big a fan of the suggestion himself.
He looked to the ground, fists clenched, and said, “Say-say I’ve got a guy, right? A technician, a surgeon— like you, Millie. He knows his shit and he’s fucking good at what he does. If I called him and got him to come,” He looked up at Millicent, “would you let him in to take a look?”
Millicent gave him a half-lidded stare. “You ‘have a guy’ that ‘knows his shit,’ huh?”
Gavin swallowed but didn’t look away. God, his throat hurt. “Yeah,” he croaked.
She gave a final sigh and adjusted her new, blue-framed glasses. Gavin thought they suited her. “Well, it’s not like I had any plans. Is it OK with you, Connor?”
Connor stood from the couch, wiping saline tears from his face. “Do what you w-a-a-ant,” he said, “but I’m not sticking around just to be let d-o-o-own all over again.”
With that, he stalked off, LED blaring red. Markus stood to follow him. “I’d better— Goodnight, everyone,” he said, and was gone too.
Hank slowly rose from his seat. “He’s going to need all the friends he can get. You coming, North?”
“I’ll stay,” she said, leaning back in her seat. “I wanna meet this ‘guy’ who’s supposedly so much better than Millie.”
Gavin mumbled, “That’s not what I—”
Hank nodded, then turned to Gavin. “Let me know what happens either way.”
Gavin nodded back. “I will,” he promised.
Hank bid them good night, and was out the hospital doors. Millicent looked at Gavin pointedly. “Well?”
“What?”
“Go call your guy!” North yelled, shooing him away.
Gavin stood, raising his hands. “Right, right, I’m going,” he said, walking down the hallway. He came to stand next to a pair of vending machines. Their glow accompanied his phone’s as he pulled it out and scrolled through his contacts with a shaky hand.
He found his guy, but his thumb hovered over the “call” button. “Fuck,” he hissed, rolling his eyes as he realized the call actually scared him. It wasn’t like the last time they really spoke was on good terms.
But for all the years of turmoil behind the contact name, Gavin found that losing David scared him more.
So he took a deep breath, hit the little green button, and called the man he hadn’t spoken with in 15 years.
August 19, 2041- 9:59 p.m.
Millicent waited, patiently but alone, on the couch. Gavin had snuck off to the bathroom and North had said she needed to get something. The Doctor had only hummed in response; she was tired. 12 hours of fruitless work and one hour of waiting for some mysterious technician to show up would do that.
Her grief was suspended, caught between her failure and this friend of Gavin’s potential success (though she sincerely doubted the possibility), and it made her feel hollow. There’d been plenty of anger before, at the hive mind, at the Autokillers, at herself, even a little at David, but now it had at least temporarily fizzled out. All she could do now was wait while her leg and several ribs ached and think about who she’d be responsible for telling the news.
So wrapped up in her thoughts, Millicent didn’t even notice North come back. “Here,” North said, tapping her on the shoulder and holding something out.
Millie blinked. “Huh?” she said, then noticed the honeybun in North’s hand, likely from the vending machine. “Oh. I’m not hungry.” She took the snack and opened the plastic wrapping, taking a rather large bite.
North gave a single chuckle. “Right,” she said, moving to sit back down next to Millicent.
The Doctor chewed, swallowed, felt a new sadness accompany her body’s realization of its hunger. Tears streamed down her face. “Thank you,” she whimpered, hating herself all over again. North put an arm around her shoulders, shushing her. Millicent leaned into the embrace, cried, and munched on her honeybun.
“I’m… sorry to interrupt,” came a new, male voice from behind them, “but are one of you ladies Doctor Millicent Sturgeon?”
Millie sniffled and hiccuped, quickly setting her snack down and gathering up her crutches. “Yes that’s me,” she said, trying to compose herself as she stood and turned. “You must be—”
Millicent couldn’t help but gawk at the man in the doorway, who was accompanied by a well-dressed ST200.
“I’m sorry,” said Elijah fucking Kamski, a charming smile on his face, “I was told I’d be expected.”
Millicent continued to gawk, looking to North to make sure they were both seeing the same person (she had a similar expression of shock), then stuttered, “W-well, yes, but—”
But I was expecting some run-of-the-mill tech surgeon, not the fucking creator of androids! she thought.
She would’ve babbled for who knew how long, but Gavin interrupted her from the other end of the room. “Hey, Eli,” he said.
Millicent looked over at Gavin. His face was tense, eyes never leaving Kamski, and he kept loose fists at his sides. Millie shared another disbelieving look with North. Eli?
“Gavin!” Kamski said, smile widening. The ST200 gave a small but full grin of her own. “How long’s it been?”
“Long,” Gavin said simply, folding his arms and shifting on his feet, finally breaking eye contact to stare at the ground.
Kamski moved forward, towards Millicent. “I’d say I hope my brother has said all good things about me, but I assume he’d told you exactly nothing?”
Somehow, Millicent’s eyes widened further. “Br-brother?” she stammered. This was all getting to be too much, she was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that Elijah Kamski was here at all. Gavin bit his lip, finding a spot on the wall incredibly interesting in order to avoid North’s continuous gaze.
“As I suspected. That’s hardly the point, though.” He leaned in towards her. “I hear you have an android that needs my assistance?”
Millicent swallowed, trying to grab onto professionalism as if she were drowning and it was a life preserver. “Y-yes,” she said, reaching up to adjust her glasses and almost dropping one of her crutches. “RK900 ‘David,’ he’s Gavin’s—y-your brother’s—partner. He’s—”
“Partner, hm?” Kamski said, smirking and raising an eyebrow at Gavin. “Well, who would’ve thought?”
“At the police station, asshole!” Gavin yelled.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Kamski said, then turned back to Millicent. “You need him disconnected from his hive mind program?”
“I-I tried everything I could, but… maybe you can find something I didn’t.”
A “guy” who “knew his shit,” she thought. Way to skimp on the details, Gav. She could yell at him for not telling her he knew Elijah Kamski, let alone was apparently related to him, later (and maybe fangirl a bit). Right now they had a friend to save.
Millicent cleared her throat and said, “I’ll show you to where he is.”
Kamski nodded. “Excellent. Lead the way, Doctor Sturgeon.”
She couldn’t help but feel a little flutter at the title.
August 19, 2041- 10:07 p.m.
Millie left Gavin, Elijah, and Chloe in the operating room, muttering something that sounded like, “Needa ‘nother hunbun.” Gavin dismissed the comment, trying to shake off how awestruck his friend had been at the sight of his brother. Bastard was acting like it was no big deal, either. Just another day at the famous folks fair.
As much as he despised seeing the effect Elijah had on people, it was nothing compared to being in the operating room. (He’d tried to remain in the waiting room, but Chloe had stared at him and gestured for him to follow. Picturing a thousand other ST200s behind her eyes, Gavin begrudgingly went along.)
It certainly wasn’t anything standard compared to a human operating room. Plugs and computers replaced medicine cabinets and tools, the biggest monitor of which had a fucking rolling chair in front of it. There were tools stocked up on a counter and accompanying shelves, some of which resembled the kind Gavin was used to seeing, but most of which he couldn’t begin to fathom the use of. David himself was laying stock-still on a metal table, dressed in a hospital gown that exposed his chest. Gavin might’ve been able to convince himself David was just in rest mode were it not for the gray LED at his temple. The sight of him brought a pain in Gavin’s chest and bile to his throat. He swallowed and looked away.
“Chloe, start up the system, would you?” Elijah asked, nodding to the computers.
“Of course, Elijah,” she said, walking over and pressing several buttons to bring each monitor to life.
Gavin scoffed. “You always talk to him that way?” he asked her.
Chloe blinked and looked at him. “Elijah and I keep up a professional relationship.”
“‘Professional relationship,’” Gavin repeated, then leaned in to his brother, who was gathering up several wires and electrodes. “Is she a deviant?” he whispered.
“Chloe’s ‘hive mind’ makes what humans consider normal social interaction moot. She’s usually speaking with the other models she’s connected to,” Elijah said, sticking an electrode on either of David’s temples. This, of course, wasn’t really an answer, but Gavin let it go.
Elijah paused in his work, looking up at Gavin with one eyebrow raised. “Are you just going to make quips at me and my assistant the whole time, or do you plan on having an actual discussion like adults?”
Gavin gave a harsh sigh. He wanted terribly to tell his half-brother to fuck off, he’d quip at whoever he damn well wanted to, but he was afraid of stepping over the line and driving him away. With him would go David’s last chance. Instead, he crossed his arms and said, “I called you for David. You want to talk, fine, we can talk. Just help him.
"Please," he added.
Elijah raised his eyebrows in a quick up and down motion, humming in consideration as he went back to sticking electrodes on David’s body. “You finally tolerate my presence after fourteen years because of one android? He must—”
“Fifteen,” Gavin interrupted, continuing as Elijah once again cocked an eyebrow at him, “I’ve got a cat that acts as a little anniversary calendar. He turned fifteen just a couple weeks ago, so.” He sniffed, swiping a thumb across his nose scar.
“I see,” Elijah said. “Well, that only drives my point further. If you’ve broken fifteen years of silence just for him, he must be pretty special to you.”
Gavin allowed himself to fully look down at David’s body. He pictured the blue eyes behind those closed lids, the smile that had become more and more genuine and frequent over the months. He let a sigh out his nose. “He saved my life,” he said, then raised the back of his pointer, middle, and ring finger to Elijah. “Three times.”
“Did he? I’ll have to thank him,” Elijah said, finishing up his prep work and moving to the computers David was now hooked up to. Chloe pulled out the rolling chair for him.
“So you think you can do it? Fix him?” Gavin asked, unwelcome tendrils of hope once again creeping up his heart.
Elijah pulled out a pair of glasses from his pocket and slipped them on, looking up at the various masses of code before him. “Oh goodness, this is… interesting.”
Gavin’s heart sank.
Elijah squinted at the screens. “It looks like Doctor Sturgeon left up some of her work. You weren’t kidding when you said she was brilliant; this is most impressive.”
Gavin tilted his head, now confused. “Does that mean you…?”
“It means I never back down from a challenge,” Elijah said, cracking his knuckles and beginning to type. “Intelligence can get you far, but secrets will get you farther, little brother.”
“Oh Jesus, don’t get on that ‘little brother’ crap, I’m only three months younger than you!”
Elijah turned to smirk at him. “That still makes me the big sibling, Gav.”
Gavin rolled his eyes, trying to focus on a spot on the ceiling. With Eli in the room, though, distractions were never easy.
“Last I checked, you had a personal grudge against all androids,” Elijah said as he continued to type. “What did David here do to change that?”
Gavin sighed, leaning back against the counter. “Nothing. I got over that stupid bias back at Christmas when Victor Andronikov tried to overthrow deviancy. Dunno if you left your private bubble to hear about that?”
“I do follow the news, Gavin.”
Up came the urge again to knock his brother off his high horse. “He kidnapped me and kept me in his basement for three days.”
The clack clack clacking of Elijah’s typing paused. Both he and Chloe turned to look at him. “You’re not serious?” Elijah asked.
Gavin nodded, feeling odd at the look of genuine concern on his brother’s face. “Deadly. I watched a colleague—an android colleague—of mine get taken apart bit by bit. I kept hearing a little YK500 boy cry for his mothers. I saw androids rip themselves and each other apart in the street.”
He shrugged. “Kinda got hard to convince myself they weren’t people when they kept begging for their lives.”
“What happened to them?” Chloe asked, her LED spinning red. “Your colleague and the boy?”
“They’re both fine, now,” Gavin assured her. She nodded and her LED went back to spin blue. “Connor’s got a couple hardware malfunctions or something, but he’s fine. Can still get a job done faster and better than most of the human DPD combined.”
“Oh, Connor?” Elijah said, turning back to type at David’s code. “Give him and the Lieutenant my regards.”
Gavin didn’t want to know how his brother knew the pair, and promised himself never to give Elijah’s regards to anybody. He sniffed and continued, “Dave came along back in January, a few days after the Christmas thing got shut down. He wasn’t all there at first—you know, as a person—but he kept fighting his programming, and…”
Gavin sighed, staring down at the face that had held more life than some humans he knew, the face he loved. “I watched him turn into a man. So many people… I helped find him things to enjoy, little things in life and shit like that. We had fun together, and he—”
And he means so fucking much to me, Gavin thought. He’s not just strong and fast and efficient, he’s kind and he’s funny and he’s smart in ways a computer could never be. He cared about me and trusted me like no other person has before. I completely blew that trust, blew off the only other person besides Tina who ever showed me consistent compassion and he still fucking came to rescue me. He never wanted to hurt me, and look where it’s got him. I never deserved someone like David and I’d sell my soul a thousand times over to get that stupid LED spinning again.
But of course, Gavin wasn’t about to admit any of this to a brother he’d been estranged from for 15 years, the man who the last conversation he had with had resulted in one too many thrown punches and the scar on his nose. He rubbed at his eye, blaming it on a fallen eyelash. “And he means… a lot… to me,” Gavin finished, sighing again. “He doesn’t deserve to die this way.”
Chloe smiled at him, her lips curling in a way that Gavin knew wasn’t in her inherent programming.
Gavin glanced away from her. “So, uh, thanks for coming,” he muttered to his brother.
“Goodness, David must’ve been a good influence on you if you’ve managed to revive your manners,” Elijah joked. “I thought those died out when we were teenagers!”
“Haha, fuck you,” Gavin said. He was surprised to find himself smiling as he did so.
Elijah laughed along, though he cut himself short as several large messages popped up on the screens. “Oh my.”
That numbing coldness Gavin was growing used to feeling filled his chest again. “What are those?” he asked, standing up and uncrossing his arms.
“Good news, ideally,” Elijah said, setting his glasses down and pulling an extendable plug from the base of the largest computer, the one that stood at around 4x5 feet. “Chloe, monitor that, would you?”
“Of course, Elijah,” she said, taking over as Elijah extended the plug to David, starting to open a port on the android’s chest.
“And non-ideally?” Gavin pressed, coming to stand on the other side of the table.
Elijah looked Gavin dead in the eyes. “Then I did the best I could,” he said, and inserted the plug in the port.
There were a few painstaking moments of silence. Gavin kept looking David up and down, but nothing happened. Elijah must have seen his distress, because he raised a calming hand and said, “It might take a while.”
He leaned over David’s prone form. “David’s been stuck with this programming his entire existence and then some,” he reasoned. “Chloe’s monitoring the system to help make sure the separation takes, but it’s not so simple as a click of a—”
Chloe hit a button and David suddenly shot straight up, headbutting Elijah in the face. Both brothers reeled back at the movement.
“The code took!” Chloe announced, smile wide.
“Yis, we god dat, Chloe, tank you,” Elijah said, eyes shut as he gripped his presumably broken nose.
Gavin would have found the whole thing hilarious if he wasn’t staring open-mouthed at his partner. David stared down at himself, turning over his hands and looking confused. “What the…?" he said.
“Dave?” Gavin breathed, not yet trusting the sight he had been hoping for.
David looked to him and blinked. “Gavin? You’re here?” He looked around the operating room. “Where are we? My memories are a little corrupted; I remember… a wall, but—”
Gavin stepped forward and pulled off the electrode hiding David’s LED. It spun a steady blue. The tiny ring was the last step to cement reality in Gavin’s mind, causing his heart to break with relief. “You fucker!” he shouted, not bothering to hide his tears this time as he wrapped his arms tight around David, burying his face in the crook of the android’s neck. “Don’t ever do that again, you understand?! Not ever!”
Gavin sobbed, joy and anger mixing inside to come out as a rather violent embrace, gripping David so hard he might’ve worried about hurting him had he a thought to spare on anything besides how David was alive.
He couldn’t see David’s expression, but eventually the android returned the hug in a much more gentle manner, rubbing at his back and carding through his hair.
“It’s OK, Gavin,” David whispered. “I’m OK.”
August 21, 2041- 7:16 p.m.
David was given a few days off to recoup with loved ones and make sure he wasn’t in danger of shutting down again. So far he was turning out to be just peachy, a whole new man ready to dive back into existence and experience the world as a fully-realized person.
North booked The Blue Ring to throw a “David’s Deviant/Not Dead!” party. Friends, family, and coworkers toasted David’s revival and newfound personhood as mellow party music filled the restaurant bar.
Gavin was currently standing outside the establishment, tucked into the nearby alley and smoking a cigarette. He was just as happy as everyone else to see David alive and well, but he’d suddenly felt out of place at the party, his partner getting swept away by everyone else and pleased well enough to talk to them. That was fine. It would be better if David got closer to other people anyway.
Gavin blew out a stream of smoke, juggling the idea of bailing and heading home to his cats, when a figure peered at him from around the corner.
“Don’t tell me you got bored?” David asked, smirking at him.
Despite what he’d just been thinking, Gavin couldn’t help but grin back. “Nah. Crowds just stress me out after a while when I’ve got nothing to do.”
David turned the corner fully, pressing one hand against the side of The Blue Ring. “Well, do you mind if I keep you company?”
How could I ever mind anything you do ever again? Gavin thought. He shrugged. “You know what you want now; do what you like.”
David slid over, leaning next to Gavin against the brick wall. Gavin had to admit, as much as he felt David had been a person before, there was a new spark in those cool blue eyes, a brighter understanding of the world around him.
“So,” Gavin said, tapping the end of his cigarette to discard the ashes, “how’s it feel? Deviancy?”
David took a deep breath in through his nose. Gavin watched his LED spin a brief yellow as he thought. “I got very close to it on my own, beforehand. I believe the other RK900s were the only thing holding me back. Everything seems clearer now, I feel like… myself.” He chuckled. “I suppose I still don’t know exactly what that means. I think that’s OK, though. Nobody’s ever really done growing.”
Gavin gave a sideways nod in consideration. “Fair enough.”
David turned his head to look at Gavin. “So,” he said, half smile on his face and one eyebrow raised, “Elijah Kamski, eh?”
“Ugh,” Gavin groaned, though the name didn’t sound quite so bitter to him anymore. “I’m not getting out of explaining myself this time, huh?”
David shrugged. “You’re not obligated to tell me anything, Gavin, but I’ll always be happy to listen.”
Gavin thought about taking the out, shying away from opening up like he always did, running from a past that held so few happy memories. But that was all so long ago, and he knew David wasn’t about to judge him.
He took a drag from his cigarette. “We’re half-brothers,” he explained. “Same father. Y’know, if the age difference didn’t make that obvious. Dear old Dad cheated on his pregnant wife with my mom, who eventually got knocked up herself. Again, obviously. Eli’s mother, real high-class lady, divorced Dad as soon as she found out. Got full custody besides one weekend a month and gave her son her maiden name.
“The folks didn’t exactly keep the situation a secret from us. We knew who each other were, and we were really close for a while, always sneaking out of our houses to hang out and talk about shit we didn’t understand. Ambitious couple of bastards we were, convincing ourselves and each other that we were going to change the world. One of us did, anyway.
“Eli always loved building and programming shit; taking apart toys to figure out how they worked and seeing if he could put them back together the same way. Or better. Big ass nerd, but it was all pretty cool until he started working on the first real androids. He founded CyberLife and poured all his time into making the first ST200. He surrounded himself with his creations and left me behind, and I—”
Gavin bit his lip. “I… resented androids for a long time.” Wondered how hunks of metal and plastic could possibly replace a living, breathing, flesh and blood brother. “Eli got all big and famous and for a year or so, he didn’t make any effort to see me. I finally caught him in the street, surrounded by a bunch of big people in ties. I tried talking to him and he pretended not to know me. Things got heated and…” He gestured to his nose. “Well, suits can throw punches, too. Eli tried to call me a couple times after that, but I never picked up, and I never tried to get in contact with him myself. To me, he made his decision. So I made mine.”
David’s LED spun yellow, processing the story. “It couldn’t have been easy to make that phone call,” he said. “I’m glad you did.”
“Are you kidding?” Gavin said, cocking an eyebrow. “It couldn’t have been easy shutting yourself down. I guarantee calling my asshole brother was nothing compared to that dumbass stunt you pulled.”
He waved the subject away, the end of his cigarette making smokey zigzags in the air. “Enough about me, this is your party. What are you going to do now?”
David pulled a considerate frown, raising his eyebrows. “Frankly, I thought I’d ask you. I thought there were plenty of activities you still had left to show me?”
Gavin fidgeted, looking away. He didn’t want David’s loyalty to be his downfall again. “You don’t really need my help anymore, Dave. You’re all deviated and ready to take on the world yourself, aren’t you?”
David narrowed his eyes. “Are you kidding?”
Gavin glanced back up at him, away, and back again, not knowing what to say.
David shut his eyes as he sighed, then opened them as he turned to Gavin more fully. “Gavin, a wise yet terribly stupid man once told me, ‘Friendship isn’t a mission to accomplish.’ Yes, I’m deviant, but there’s so much of life I’m unfamiliar with. I’d like to experience it with you.” He inclined his head. “That is, if you’d like to.”
The resolve to put space between himself and David was gone in an instant. Once again, the look in those bright blue eyes made it so he couldn’t say no. “Yeah alright, Dave,” he said. “I’ll be here.”
David tilted his head. “Do you remember the first time we met?” he asked suddenly as Gavin took another drag of his cigarette.
Gavin narrowed his eyes. “What, when you were dead-set on killing Markus and I shot you in the shoulder?”
“You know perfectly well that wasn’t me,” David said, rolling his eyes. “Back in January, when Connor first woke me up, everything was so… strange. I was exactly halfway stuck between machine and deviant. I didn’t know what my purpose was, and I didn’t have the capacity to feel conflicted about that.
“The whole world was like that; there for the sake of being there without any real meaning behind it. Connor, North, Hank, everyone who was in that initial room all smiled and said ‘Welcome to the world,’ and I went along with it because with such a blank slate, I didn’t know what to make of anything.
“Then we went outside and there you were, just chatting with Blaire, Rose, and Dylan. I could tell there was a difference in your species, heat signature gave it away, but you were talking pleasantly and I thought: ‘There. That makes sense. That’s how things ought to be.’”
David took a step closer to Gavin, leaning over him, blue eyes staring deep into gray ones. “It was always you, Gavin. You were always the key to my deviancy.”
Gavin didn’t handle romanticism well. Not that he had a problem with people flirting with him, he just could never seem to find his tongue to flirt back. He shuffled, laughing nervously as he felt heat rise to his cheeks. “Gee, you sure know how to make a guy blush,” he said, voice higher than he would like it. He took a final drag from his cigarette.
David lifted up a hand, catching the cigarette between his middle and pointer finger before Gavin could do anything else with it. He pulled the butt away and lifted his other hand to cup Gavin’s face.
They both leaned in to press their lips together. The kiss was soft and sweet but passionate, and Gavin gripped the back of David’s jacket. He heard the android dispose of the cigarette and felt him press his now free hand into the small of his back.
Gavin exhaled when they finally parted, being sure to tilt his head down and to the side enough so he didn’t accidentally blow smoke into David’s face, though he didn’t break eye contact.
David gave a soft laugh. “You still need to teach me to dance, anyway,” he said, sliding the hand cupping Gavin’s face down to hold his hand.
Gavin chuckled. “Fine. But I never claimed to be good at it.”
“Then we’ll learn together,” David said, grinning. He pressed their foreheads together. “You’re stuck with me, Detective.”
Gavin smiled like a dope right back. “I can live with that.”
And the RK800 and red-haired WR400 who saw everything from the window? They could live with it, too.