Chapter Text
John parked the car in front of the precinct, following the same routine they did every day: Dorian went to charge at Rudy’s, he went home or to get some noodles. However, Dorian sat in the passenger seat, looking like a stubborn child, without even unbuckling his seat belt.
“No. I’m not doing this again.”
John sighed heavily, turning to face his partner.
“Come on, Dorian. Would you rather hang out with Rudy or charge with the MXes?”
“I’d rather charge at your house.” Dorian responded bluntly, and John swore he saw a slight pout forming on his face. “John, you have a portable charge pod there, remember? That one time Rudy went on vacation-“
“Yeah, yeah. I remember.”
John couldn’t believe he was actually considering letting Dorian come home with him. What would Maldonado think? She had only let Dorian stay with Rudy because Rudy’s lab was on the premises. John’s house was across town.
But on the other hand…as much as he enjoyed torturing his partner with Rudy’s well-meaning but overbearing personality, he did feel kind of bad…
“Okay, let’s go,” John sighed. “But I’m not clearing out my trophy room.”
Dorian grinned, his face lighting up for some reason.
“Fair enough.”
----
“Didn’t think you’d be so predictable, Detective Kennex!”
Rudy hurried towards John, slamming his hands down on John’s desk, and leaning over nearly right into the detective’s face. John was startled, his morning coffee (at 165 degrees, thanks to Dorian) splashing over that day’s paperwork. He inhaled deeply, attempting some anger-management technique that didn’t seem to be working.
“What is it, Rudy?” he hissed from between clenched teeth.
Rudy only grinned wider, jovial almost to the point of triumph.
“Dorian told me he stayed at your house last night.”
John looked confused for a moment, until realization dawned. This seemed to only piss him off more.
“Don’t talk about it. Especially not here.” He motioned with his head, to where Maldonado, Stahl, and Paul were gathered around a table in the middle of the precinct.
“Why not? It’s normal for those with DRN partners to deve-“ John cut Rudy off, shoving his hand over the other man’s mouth.
“First of all, it wasn’t like that. Second, I haven’t told Maldonado yet, and if you keep announcing it to the entire precinct, she’s going to find out and I’m gonna be in hot water.”
Rudy began to try to say something, and John coldly dropped his hand.
“But if it wasn’t because of that, then why didn’t Dorian charge at my place?”
“O-oh, we had some...reports to finish.”
Chapter 2: Noodles and Nightmares
Notes:
Warning for possible 1x11 Disrupt spoilers!!
Chapter Text
“John, that’s the third time this week you’ve had noodles for dinner.”
“So?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of the food pyramid? You need a balanced diet to stay healthy.”
John shoved more of the offending food into his mouth and chewed exaggeratedly. Dorian kept a straight face, like he usually did when John acted like an eight year old.
“Sorry, when was the last time you ate an apple. DRN-0167?” John replied after he swallowed.
Dorian frowned, the lighthearted conversation quickly ceasing. He stood up, pushing his chair back under the kitchen table.
“I am going to charge now. Good night, John.”
----
Dorian leaned on the wall of the trophy-room-turned-charging-room, his low charge exacerbating his sudden morose mood. John calling him by his serial number bothered him immensely, and Dorian didn’t know why it did. After all…it was technically his name.
Staying with John had given him a sense of humanity, more so than the MXes (and compared to them, he was full-blown flesh and blood) and Rudy had. Scanning him while he “slept” made him feel like an object, like a lab rat. John didn’t do that, nor did he have the desire to.
Dorian was under the impression that John was beginning to see him as, well, almost human.
Moodily, he climbed into his charging unit. It would just have to wait until he had a full charge, until he had a more reasonable thought process.
---
Gunfire plagued Dorian’s mind as he was startled awake.
“Dorian, wake up,” John said, a hand on the android’s shoulder.
“G-good morning, John,” Dorian said, his lethargic tone only lingering in his voice for a moment.
“Man, what gives?”
“What do you mean?”
John looked deeply troubled, and it was only then that Dorian realized that it wasn’t actually morning. He quickly checked his internal clock, finding it to read 2:36 AM.
“Dorian, you were…yelling in your…sleep.”
Dorian’s systems began to work at maximum efficiency, running self-diagnostics.
“What was I yelling about?” he asked, as calmly as he could manage, trying not to convey the panic that stemmed from his fear of malfunction.
John was infuriatingly silent, shaking his head slightly.
“Come on, John.”
“Just go back to charging, Dorian, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
As John backed out of the room, Dorian let out a heavy sigh and flung himself back onto the charging pod. He felt like shouting profanity at John, the words he had picked up from his partner and stored in his vocabulary base under “colloquialisms”. He refrained from doing it, however, in favor of trying to figure out what was happening to him.
It certainly hadn’t been one of the memory flashes he had begun to have a few weeks ago. Those had been more vivid, had happened while he was off the charger, and hadn’t caused him to lose control of his vocal modules. He could barely remember the almost-dream that had just occurred.
He eventually had to manually override his processing systems in order to charge optimally.
Chapter 3: The Second Incident
Summary:
John reacts to everything so far.
Notes:
I haven't updated this in a while (the only reason I'm doing it now is because I'm sick and have time on my hands) and I'm getting a bit concerned about continuity/plot issues, so please tell me if something seems wrong in context...
This whole chapter is relatively fluffy and actually longer than the others, but not much happens. Also there are very very unsubtle hints at Jorian from John's POV.
Chapter Text
John still hadn’t told Maldonado that Dorian wasn’t returning to Rudy’s lab to charge every night.
The question kept nagging at him: would she be okay with it? As much as he hated to admit it, he had grown fond of their daily routine, and didn’t mind it nearly as much as he let on sometimes. Frankly, John was surprised the razor-sharp captain hadn’t found out yet. He would have expected the MXes to have informed her of the missing DRN unit by now.
Rudy was the only concern in their situation. The “finishing reports” excuse was thin, and both of them knew it. Rudy had good intentions, but his tendency to blurt out things in tense situations made John nervous. John didn’t even want to think about the consequences if he alerted Maldonado. The technician would probably give her the impression that he and Dorian were….well…
It wasn’t like people hadn’t perceived them as a couple before. Many civilians didn’t remember the DRNs particularly well, and didn’t realize Dorian wasn’t human. There wasn’t a taboo on homosexuality like there had been when John was a teenager, so they would, at most, get some knowing looks or harmless comments about their aesthetic together. John could calmly deny their allegations, mention that his robot partner was not his boyfriend, and move on with whatever case they were working on.
But Dorian always stayed silent on that matter. He’d grin, or smirk really, at John whenever it happened. Sometimes, it even seemed like he was encouraging the false insights…
John was doing a rather awkward mental exploration of that one night when he heard a loud noise from Dorian’s new bedroom. He instinctively jumped out of bed, hurriedly hopping over to his leg (crutches weren’t worth the effort most of the time) and putting it on. He ignored the loud, insistent beeping, saying it wasn’t fully charged, and rushed down the hallway. Dorian was standing up on the charger, looking fearful just as John entered the room.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Dorian panted in response, detached. “Go back to sleep, John.”
“Dorian…” John trailed off. He had no idea what he was trying to say.
In the end, he decided not to bother going back to bed. Dorian had followed him out of the former trophy room, insistent on doing so despite the mere half charge he had gained.
“Dude, you’re going to end up having those mood swings again,” John informed him as they entered the living room.
“I’ll just get a charge booster from Rudy,” Dorian replied, stubbornly. “It’ll tide me over until shift’s over.”
“Fine.”
John stalked into the kitchen in search of coffee, wincing as the lights turned on. His cabinets were pretty much empty, the coffee grounds shoved in the back of one. He knew his habits when it came to food weren’t particularly healthy, but he couldn’t bring himself to care that much. Once the coffee was in the machine, John walked back to the living room. The machine took what seemed like a thousand years to warm up and actually make the damn drink.
Dorian was sitting on his couch, arm slung over the side. He turned to look at John and leaned into the back of the couch. The position, and the exhaustion on his face, made him look like the farthest thing from robotic. John sat down next to him, silent, but couldn’t resist unfolding a blanket and wrapping it around Dorian’s shoulders. It was a relic, a housewarming present from his mother, and somehow it didn’t look so out of place on Dorian. The action was meant to be half-joking, the other part calming and apologetic, but the android looked genuinely appreciative.
“Why don’t we watch some TV?” John said, breaking the uncomfortable, yet somehow not that awkward, silence.
“Sure,” Dorian said.
John dug around for a few minutes looking for the remote, finding it buried between the sofa cushions. As he fished it out, his hand brushed Dorian’s thigh, and he cringed.
It being nearly four in the morning, there was hardly anything on. They ended up watching some 40-year-old space movie with too many lighting issues and lots of dramatic music. Dorian was endlessly amused by one of the actors, who he claimed looked exactly like John. The other detective didn’t see the resemblance.
John woke up two hours later, leaning on Dorian with the blanket draped across him. His coffee was sitting on the table next to the couch, presumably cold. He hurriedly sat up, and Dorian regarded him calmly.
“I told you that you should go back to bed.”
Rorie+Still (Guest) on Chapter 2 Sun 23 Feb 2014 05:28AM UTC
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gunpowderandlove on Chapter 2 Sun 02 Mar 2014 05:41AM UTC
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orphan_account on Chapter 2 Sun 02 Mar 2014 12:14PM UTC
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Rorie+Still (Guest) on Chapter 3 Tue 22 Sep 2015 05:37AM UTC
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Brenda (Guest) on Chapter 3 Wed 28 Oct 2015 07:59PM UTC
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