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3:17 AM
He steps into the house, weary and tired and barely keeping his eyes open, but he doesn’t want to shut them. If he closes them, he will be reminded of blood and the smell of metal and the sound of a trigger firing. A few more hours of being awake, and he can be too tired to dream. A stolen hour or two of a nap squeezed in the middle of the day. He just has to stay awake.
“Gavin?”
He blinks into the dark of the room, reaches blindly for the switch before illuminating the black of the kitchen. He flinches away from it like the light has turned to fire, like it’s burning him just by being on.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” he asks, watching Connor step forward into the hallway. Almost like a child, peering around the corner of their parent’s bedroom, I had a nightmare, can I sleep in here?
“I don’t sleep unless you are,” Connor replies, reaching towards him, taking the keys from Gavin’s fingers as if they’re a dangerous weapon. “There isn’t a reason to.”
“Yeah?” he says, listening to the small noise of metal against porcelain as the keys clatter into the dish on the counter. “You’re asleep all the time when I get back from work.”
“Once a month isn’t necessarily all the time. It just happens. Occasionally. When I get bored. Or very comfortable.”
He lets Connor remove his coat for him, slow deliberate movements. Sometimes, Gavin wonders how much of his thoughts play across his face. How easy it is for Connor to pick up on the tiny movements he tries his hardest to hide, especially from him. He doesn’t want Connor to know about his tortured soul. He doesn’t want Connor to know how upset he is on nights like these.
But the tenderness in his touch when his fingers take the coat away, when they hang it up, when they rest easily against his cheek. Even the gentleness of Connor’s lips against his, the quiet way he moves, the slow slide of his fingers as they thread into his own—
Connor must know.
And he’s an android—
So he has to. There is so little Gavin can hide from him. So little that he could keep secret. Connor doesn’t ask about his past—and he’s thankful for that, he doesn’t want to talk about it—but sometimes he wonders if it’s because Connor already knows.
Would that be better? Worse? Should he feel like his privacy has been violated or does it make it easier, so he doesn’t have to cut himself open and let his past drip into Connor’s hands?
It is black and ugly and mutated.
He doesn’t want Connor to hold it.
“Come to bed,” Connor whispers, pulling him back towards the bedroom. “Let’s get some rest.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Don’t lie to me, Gavin,” he says, squeezing his fingers just a little tighter.
Not a child any more. A mother. Go to bed, little boy. I won’t tell you again.
He can’t help but smile. Because it’s Connor? Because his own metaphors are making himself laugh? Because he can imagine Connor being the perfect father, the perfect husband?
He doesn’t know. He’s tired. Things are blurry. They are slipping into each other, falling apart, morphing into new things. Gavin doesn’t know what they start out as. He doesn’t know what they are becoming. He doesn’t know what they are.
Things are blurry.
Like he’s taken his glasses off, misplaced them, doesn’t have the effort to find them again and has resigned himself to the fogginess of life.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll try.”
3:25 AM
He knows Gavin. He knows him well. Better than most of the people in his life—besides, perhaps, Hank. He knows the exhaustion of Gavin’s face like it belongs there. It doesn’t. He tries his best to brush it away, to turn it into something else. He wants to wrap Gavin up in sweet dreams and love and it’s difficult because he can’t take away the reality of Gavin’s life.
Connor has told him to quit working at the DPD a hundred times. He simply hasn’t because no one else will hire him—or, Gavin’s too scared to find that out to be the truth. One or the other.
On a night like this, even if he forces Gavin to lay in bed, to close his eyes for a few hours and not sleep at all, at least he will have some form of rest. Something that will allow him to relax, even if he will be lost into the thoughts of his life.
He leans against the edge of the bedroom door, listening to the soft sound of running water as Gavin brushes his teeth, as Connor brushes his hand through the dark black of the cat’s fur in his arms. Little baby Mocha. He feels the brush of the other one against his legs, feels guilty for giving only one of them attention.
“Connor?”
He turns, shifting Mocha in his arm so that he can lean forward and press a quick kiss against Gavin’s cheek.
“Ready?”
Gavin nods and Connor sets Mocha down on the edge of the bed, watches as she turns around in a circle, letting out a barely audible meow. Likely not even heard by Gavin. He moves the pillows, climbs in under the blanket, lets Gavin curl against his chest. Connor pulls the comforter around them tight, shutting away the chill in the air of the apartment that Gavin prefers so he can have an excuse for them to be closer together.
(He doesn’t know that he doesn’t need an excuse. That Connor will be at his side ready to hold him at all times of the day without the apartment being freezing, without him having tears in his eyes or something weighing his shoulders down.)
“Good night,” Connor whispers against the top of his head, reaches over to turn off the light.
He feels the soft press of cat paws against his legs, the weigh of the blanket shifting as the two cats settle their way around their limbs. Mocha, still just a baby, still just a little kitten, pressed in the space between their bodies like a bridge. Latte, big and fluffy and annoyed at her bed being taken over by Connor, pacing around by their feet. Two circles, a heavy plop down across Connor’s ankle.
“Good night,” Gavin replies, looking up just enough to press a kiss against his throat. The smell of mint is heavy in the air, one of the few accompanying things to their nightly routine.
It used to be the smell of cigarettes. Too strong and sticking too much to Gavin’s apartment, his clothes, his skin to be muffled by it. He much prefers this. Toothpaste and mouthwash. Clean and sickly fragrances in a much preferable way.
Connor feels the soft movement of Gavin’s lips against his skin. Words, lost in a voice that can’t speak them. He repeats them quietly to himself, mouthing them to the night. The need to say them. The need to hold them back, like there should be a perfect moment for this.
There doesn’t have to be. It’s silly to think that there should or can be. He doesn’t say them out loud, because Gavin hasn’t said them out loud. It’s a two-way street but they’re driving the same direction, never saying them because the other hasn’t said them yet.
Connor is just lucky. He knows Gavin has held the words for months, has meant them. But a fear creeps into his stomach every time he goes to voice them—
What if Gavin suddenly changes his mind? What if he realizes he can’t return them? Then what will Connor do?
5:11 AM
Gavin doesn’t have nightmares.
Or, he sort of does. Barely. They creep up into his head and wake him, but it is with unsettling things. It is not waking up with a scream or hands trembling with the feeling of blood on his arms or a knife in his stomach (or even a knife in his hand).
It is just things that wake him with the presence of how real they are, or how real they could be. They torment him with their likelihood.
Tina finding a new best friend. Getting fired from work. His apartment burning down.
Or, even, other things. Like his cats going missing. On those nights, he wakes, scrambling from his bed, looking for them, checking they are alive. Not drowned in the pool he once went to as a teen. Not wandering the streets of Florida when he went on vacation as a child.
Or worse.
Like Connor with someone else. Like Connor giving him disgusted looks. Like Connor telling him how much he hates Gavin, speaking everything that Gavin has told himself in the last thirty something years of his life. He doesn’t tell Connor about these ones, because he cannot be assured that Connor doesn’t feel them.
(He must, to some degree, he must, because they’re true, aren’t they? So how could Connor not know what type of person is lying in bed with him at night? Even if he excuses it, even if he accepts it, even if he helps nudge them away, they still exist now. They still existed at some point.)
He wakes with his eyes blinking back at the darkness of the room, the remnants of a dream stuck in his head.
Fading, fading, fading—
Not gone.
Still there.
Lingering.
“You’re awake.”
Barely.
Barely awake, like he barely has nightmares.
“I need coffee,” he says immediately, pulling away from Connor’s arms, retreating out of the bed. He trips over the tangled mess of the blankets, feels Connor tugging him back towards the bed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just need coffee.”
“Gavin—”
He pauses, half sitting on the bed, half getting up. Connor is draping his arms around his neck, holding him in place. His eyes close.
Don’t cry.
Their movements have made the cats scatter. Getting up and rushing out of the room, annoyed at the sudden action, annoyed at the slight raise in Gavin’s voice. He feels his skin crawl at his own actions.
Did he yell? He thought—
He thought he had said it calmly. Half tired, half bored. Not angry. But he had. He must’ve. It slips past him, it always slips past him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and he feels Connor tighten his arms around him. “I didn’t mean to yell.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“No, Gavin, you didn’t.”
But he’s so convinced now. He can feel how his throat aches. He had screamed it. He had yelled. He had. He had.
Just like in the dream. Just like how he reduced Connor to tears in the dream by screaming about—
What?
He doesn’t remember. He just remembers screaming. He just remembers Connor crying.
He feels Connor press a kiss against his shoulder, against the back of his neck.
“You didn’t. I promise.”
No.
Of course not.
He wouldn’t.
5:53 AM
He leaves Gavin in the bed, forces him to rest his eyes for a little while longer. Mostly, he just knows Gavin wants to be alone. Connor is reluctant to leave him that way—to his own devices—but he feels like he doesn’t have a choice sometimes.
And he knows if he was in the same position he’d likely want a few minutes by himself, too. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But leaving Gavin alone—vulnerable—on the edge.
It feels wrong.
He paces around the apartment, turning the cats around every time he sees them leave the bedroom, nudging them back. Don’t let him be truly alone, he wants to whisper to them, can’t because he doesn’t want Gavin to hear.
Eventually he gives up, makes a pot of coffee, brings Gavin it in his favorite mug. He wanders into the room, cats weaving their way through his legs on their journey back to the warmth of the living room. They are always together. One cannot be without the other. It’s a wonder how Latte managed without Mocha to follow her like a shadow before they adopted her.
“I brought you coffee,” he says, setting it down on the night stand. He knows Gavin is awake, his head turned towards the window to hide it but he cannot hide the way his chest rises and falls, the way his hands twitch against his stomach like they’re trying too hard to be still. “Can I—”
“Close the door?” Gavin asks, sitting up. He sheds his disguises easily once Connor makes his knowledge of their presence known.
Except for, maybe, the sadness in his eyes, the exhaustion in his face. He hasn’t spilled those secrets. Yet. Yet.
Connor nods, pushes the door closed behind him. He spots one of the cat’s shadows at the end of the hall, stretching out against the wooden floorboards, just before it closes the rest of the way.
“Gavin—”
“Come here?”
A question. Not a demand. He smiles, small, careful. It is the same as his movements towards the bed. Gavin pulls him down the rest of the way so Connor is in his lap. His hand comes up, brushing across Connor’s cheek. He doesn’t say anything when he leans forward and leaves a kiss at the corner of his mouth. He doesn’t need to.
“You should sleep,” Connor whispers, but Gavin’s hands are under his shirt, they are pressed against his skin, soft but needy.
“I don’t want to sleep.”
A lie. A half lie.
The truth.
No, he doesn’t want to sleep.
Yes, he is desperate for it, too.
Connor can see that. He’s seen it every day since he started spending most of his nights here, realizing how little Gavin actually sleeps.
“Connor?”
“Yeah?” he says, but it comes out as a tiny gasp.
He doesn’t finish his train of thought. It is lost somewhere when their shirts are pulled over their heads. It is lost with the warmth of the coffee, growing cold as they fall against the sheets. It is lost with the press of Gavin’s lips against Connor’s over and over and over again.
7:45 AM
“You’re making me breakfast?”
“Someone has to,” Connor says, cracking an egg against the pan. “You can’t live on just coffee. You need food.”
“Coffee has done me just fine for—”
“No,” he says, his voice firm but there’s a smile on his face. “You’re going to eat. You can’t keep complaining every time I cook. Stop acting like it’s such a surprise.”
“Okay.”
He steps over, tilts Connor’s chin so their lips can meet. Connor breaks it off, mumbling something about pans and food and fires.
He wants to tell him he loves him. He wants to say it out loud, not quiet and to himself. He wants Connor to know.
And there are too many perfect moments for it to slip out.
And somehow those are the most difficult times to say it. As if he cannot mean it because the timing is perfect for it. Like it doesn’t belong to him—it belongs to the moment, the atmosphere, the scene that is unfolding. Not to Gavin.
8:13 AM
It’s a quiet morning. It’s not unusual. They aren’t extremely talkative people until night time crawls its way through the windows. The darkness opens up their mouths, lets their secrets spill out. It always has. The first time they kissed was in the middle of the night. It belongs to them now. They belong to it.
But mornings?
Mornings are difficult.
Or maybe just different.
Connor likes them. He likes watching the sun rise—especially in the fall when he can stand outside with Gavin on his way to work, letting the wind pick up, blow steadily pass them. The movement of leaves across pavement, the calm in the air. He likes the way Gavin looks when he wears that one specific jacket in the fall almost as much as he likes the way Gavin looks when he wears t-shirts that are a size too big or too small in the summer.
Winter mornings are different. There is a dissimilar quiet. Not quite the same as fall—vastly different to summer—more like spring. A hope in the glitter of the snow, in the leftover angels and men created by children where they can. It makes him happy. Eventually the snow will melt, but the laughs will carry on.
But Gavin—
He doesn’t know if Gavin likes mornings, he isn’t sure if Gavin hates mornings. To him, they seem to simply exist. A part of the day that brings the fact he has to go to work or the rare day off. It just is. They just are. Gavin seems to have an opinion on everything but the sun rising.
The silence of the apartment is filled with running water, the sound of dishes hitting the edge of the sink. The clatter of it is comforting to Connor. He likes to watch the dirt and food vanish off the surface of the plates and cups. He likes to watch it swirl around the drain when he’s done. A cleansing he can do. A little piece of control over the mess of the world.
It’s never enough. It’s like Gavin trying to quit smoking. He didn’t stop immediately. He went on and off with it. Down to one a day. One every other day. One a week. One a month. None.
“Evil,” Gavin whispers from the other side of the counter.
Connor’s eyes flicker up from the sink to him, holding his thumb to his lips, a drop of blood smeared across the skin. Mocha is on the table beside him, head tilted, paw held out with claws ready to attack again.
He watches as Gavin smiles, leans away from the cat, and he smiles, too.
“I deserved it, little girl,” he says, likely doesn’t expect that Connor is eavesdropping on this seemingly private conversation with Gavin and a cat. “But I’ll raise your rent if you do it again.”
10:23 AM
He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but it is devastatingly comfortable on this couch with Connor. The television plays in the background, something old, something about the criminal justice system. Gavin has made little ways past Connor’s thoughts to simply let a television show be a television show. If it was accurate, think of how much easier it would be for the people committing crimes to get away with it, yeah?
Not like he cares. It’s sometimes painfully amusing to see Connor get annoyed about how inaccurate it is.
He sprawls out across the couch, lets his legs drape over Connor’s lap, uses the arm rest as a pillow. Connor’s hand is resting on his leg, the other propping his head up. Mocha is curled up on his chest, a concentrated warmth right over his heart. His eyes move from the television every now and then to Latte in the window, looking down at the snowy streets. He can hear the quiet chatter of children over the sound of the television. Little kids not being sent to school, spending their time running through the snow that caused their day off.
And then, suddenly, somewhere, his eyes close.
11:11 AM
11:11
Make a wish.
He wishes for Gavin to sleep for a few hours with a nice dream. Something good. Something to reflect how peaceful his face looks right now. He wants him to stay like that for a few hours longer. Happy.
Or, maybe not happy.
Content.
Maybe it’s too much to wish for.
He wishes anyways because he deserves to be able to wish big and hard and loud and he deserves for them to be granted, doesn’t he? How many 11:11 and birthday and shooting star wishes has he missed?
Logically, he knows they mean nothing. Everyone knows that, don’t they? Still, humans put faith in them. They put faith in wishes and fortune cookies and horoscopes. As illogical as it is, he allows himself to, as well.
He has to.
2:17 PM
Gavin wakes somewhere between the beginning of two in the afternoon and another dimension. It takes him a second to remember where he is, how he fell asleep here. Connor is still on the couch, Gavin’s legs are still across his lap, that hand is still on his leg (up closer now, towards his thigh). The cat is gone, though. In the window, swatting at the snow that drifts down on the other side.
“You awake?”
Barely.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You can go back to sleep.”
Doubtful.
It’s not that a nightmare woke him up this time—
It’s just that his brain has not grown accustomed to sleeping for longer than a few hours at a time. It’s used to short naps, bursts of sleeping deeply and then being wide awake for far longer than he should.
“No,” he says quietly, moving to sit up. He finds himself closer to Connor than he thought, which isn’t a bad thing—just not something he was expecting. It makes him lose his train of thought, being so close to those eyes, being so capable of moving a fraction of an inch forward—
He knows Connor likes kissing, but God, doesn’t he ever get annoyed with how much Gavin wants to do it? Does he ever feel like they spend too much time this close together and not enough time apart?
Or, worse, does his mind wander? Has it gotten over the first part of experiencing kissing, of the feeling of it, of how it makes his insides twist and now it just drifts off, computing math problems or replaying more interesting things from his day?
“Are you alright?”
Every time Connor asks him that he gets one step closer to telling the truth.
He’s probably still a million steps away from actually doing it, but he can feel it tug him along the line. One drop taken from the pool. One sand through the hourglass. Little by little. He just doesn’t know the size of the source.
“Tired,” he says, and he can hear it in his voice. Saying the word carries with it all the exhaustion he feels. “Just tired.”
“You can go back to sleep,” Connor repeats.
“It’s my day off, I want to spend it with you. Awake.”
“You see me in your dreams, don’t you?”
That’s the problem.
“I want the real thing.”
And he doesn’t want to talk anymore.
So he leans that fraction of an inch forward. He lets Connor’s hand on his back support him as he moves to kiss him deeper. Gavin lets the sound of the television fade, lets the feeling of Connor envelope him like the first time they were together.
Connor breaks the kiss, mumbles something about lunch that Gavin doesn’t quite catch. He’s about to silence him when Connor is there first, losing whatever he was going to say as easily as Gavin does.
The second he feels Connor’s hand against his side—that’s when everything leaves his mind. All of the thoughts about how he can’t sleep, all the dreams that aren’t reality, all the times he has tricked himself into thinking he was being crueler than he intended (and all the times he was as cruel as he wanted to be).
I love you. I love you. I love you.
He wants to chant it against Connor’s lips. He wants to die saying it. He wants it to be the last words either of them say. He wishes it could convey everything that ever mattered or will matter between them.
It’s not that easy. Gavin knows that.
It’s why it dies on his tongue so quickly. It’s why he’s never said it. It matters so much to him, and it should but he can’t help but think about—
How little it might matter to an android.
How little it might matter to Connor.
A perfect moment always shattered by overthinking.
He pulls away, breathes in and out slowly. Connor moves, sliding an arm underneath his legs, lifting him up off the couch like he weighs nothing. He feels butterflies forming in his stomach, fluttering like they are millions. He is weightless in Connor’s arms. He is nothing. An android too strong for his own good.
“Connor, put me down.”
The smile that splits across Connor’s face is enough for him to smile, too. He can’t help it. Connor is infectious. His laugh makes Gavin want to laugh. His smile makes him want to smile. Everything about his existence makes Gavin want to do better, to be better.
He’s scared that’s the only reason he loves him.
That, or the guilt.
These thoughts, these feelings, these words—
I love you.
They always seem to belong to Gavin until he’s about to speak them out loud. They slip out of his grasp. They’re taken away. They’re overthought. He is always overthinking, but it never stops him from it.
If they were out in the open, would it be the same? If they were already said, in the heat of the moment, if Connor knew, if it didn’t matter—
Would they feel like his again?
4:51 PM
“Put this on,” Gavin says, but he doesn’t hand it to Connor, he’s pulling the beanie on over his head, tugging it down over his ears like a mother trying to protect their kid from getting a cold.
“You know I don’t need to—”
“But you look cuter in it than I do,” he says, and his eyes avert like he’s embarrassed he just said the word cute or something. “So, it doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
Gavin smiles and he looks more like he should. Awake. Like he’s here, in the moment. It’s not a rarity—it’s just difficult to remember how often or how well he can hide his own tiredness. But he’s slept a little bit today. Even on his own accord.
“Are we going or not?” he says, his hands moving from the hat to Connor’s coat, holding onto it like he’s going to push him out the door.
“Yes,” he says, reaching into his pockets, producing the orange gloves, holding them out to Gavin, watching has he slips them on. He likes the feeling of their skin touching, even if he cannot connect with Gavin, but he’s not going to let him wander outside when it’s barely three degrees outside without gloves. “Put your hood up. You’re going to get sick, you’ve got to stay warm.”
“Of course, of course,” he says, lifting the hood up over his face. It’s too big on him, flops down over his eyes. The ridiculousness of it makes Connor smile. “You gonna make me put a scarf on, too?”
“If you had one, yes.”
“Whatever,” he says, stepping past Connor, but he grasps his hand out as he goes, catching Connor’s fingers in his as he reaches for the door. “You’ll keep me warm, won’t you?”
“Yes,” he says, following him out the door, scanning the room for the cats to make sure they don’t try and sneak their way out into the hallway like last time. “I promise.”
5:20 PM
They stop by a store because Gavin is shivering and Connor wants him to be inside, even if only for a few minutes, but more so because he saw a scarf in the window. Striped soft shades of red and gold. It matches his gloves, almost. He buys it when Gavin isn’t looking, loops it around his neck when they step out of the shop, uses it to pull their lips together.
“Clever boy,” Gavin mumbles, wrapping the scarf around his neck, burying his face in the knit. Connor smiles as his face flushes, like it was their first kiss, like he wasn’t expecting it.
He reaches out between them, holds their hands together tight. He is desperate not to let Gavin go.
5:31 PM
Their feet crunch down snow on their way through the park. He can feel his cheeks going from cold to numb. He can feel the beginning of a sickness coming on, which he doesn’t care if it overtakes him. It gives him a (valid) reason to call in to work. It gives him a reason to keep Connor over at his place for a few days without making Hank mad.
Not that he cares if Hank gets mad. Hank has had little affect on their relationship.
He did get punched once, though, but it was something Gavin probably deserved. He remembers preparing himself for a bunch of snide comments like did I corrupt your precious boy? but he couldn’t manage to make them. Corrupting Connor is his worst fear.
Gavin pulls Connor to a stop at the thought of it, breaks their hands away from each other and holds his face in his hands for a long moment, searching his eyes. They are pieces of plastic. They are nothing more than the biocomponents created for him. There could be a thousand androids with the exact same shade of brown.
But they are more than that. They can be sad, they can be happy, they can be scared. Gavin has seen it. They are more than just mass produced. Maybe it has something to do with how realistic CyberLife wanted them to be—even the smallest of things can make a human realize how unsettling an android is. The pupils change, the iris reflects light. They act like real eyes, why wouldn’t they reflect emotion?
Because they weren’t designed to feel emotion at all.
But they do.
He’s confusing himself. He’s overthinking this.
“Gavin?”
A perfect moment.
A quiet I love you slipped between snowflakes and wind.
The sun setting behind them.
The scarf around his throat.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
“I love you.”
His heart stops.
“I—I—”
“Gavin, did you hear me?”
“Yes,” he says, his hands falling from Connor’s face.
He didn’t—
He hadn’t—
“You love me?” Gavin asks, smiling, unable to wipe it off his face, unable to take it away.
“I said I did.”
“You’re not lying?”
“No. I wouldn’t lie.”
“Fucking amazing,” he mutters, leaning upwards, his hands back on Connor’s face, pulling him down, kissing him hard. Connor is so cold. His lips are like ice cubes. Gavin was wrong about Connor keeping him warm. He seems to hold all the frigid air.
But still—
His body is flushed with heat like Connor’s fingertips are running across all the sensitive spaces on his skin but instead it’s just words.
Words that have made his heart beat faster, made the butterflies in his stomach light up again, made him unable to stop smiling.
They pull away. Gavin isn’t quite sure which one of them breaks the kiss, but one of them does and he whispers it back, says it five times before he can get it out with a level voice.
“I love you, too.”
And the words do, in fact, belong to him. Not the wind or the snow or the shadows.
They belong to them.
He should’ve said them sooner.
7:15 PM
He makes Gavin dinner, because he likes cooking and because if he left more than one meal a day in the hands of Gavin Reed he would either eat junk food or nothing at all. Mostly, though, it’s because he likes cooking. He likes the science of it. The chemistry of how things have to work but how there is a balance set upon the hands of humans, how varying people’s tastes are. It’s not a sudden knowledge of knowing what Gavin likes and what he doesn’t—but that’s part of the fun of it.
Gavin watches him cook, sitting on the counter or leaning against the fridge or trying to steal an ingredient he disapproves of from Connor’s hand with kisses pressed to his neck and jaw that easily distract him.
Tonight, though, he watches in silence with a small smile on his face. At some point, he steps away from the wall, pulls him close like he always does, but there isn’t that mischievous, trouble making look on his face. Instead it is just the smile he has worn since they started back from the park.
“Thank you,” he says quietly, pressing a quick kiss to Connor’s lips.
“For what?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?”
The hand around his waist tightens, Gavin leans in closer, the movement of his lips as he speaks parting Connor’s slightly, “Everything.”
9:41 PM
“Can you read to me?”
Connor looks up from the cat curled up in his lap. Latte is coming to like him, he thinks. It’s only taken a few months to get on her good side. He’s reluctant to leave her, destroy this fraction of a good relationship he’s created to go with Gavin. He might be undoing all the love she has started to feel for him.
But it’s Gavin. And he loves Gavin. And Gavin loves him.
And it’s been said out loud. It exists between them. It’s not hidden in their own heads anymore.
“Of course,” he says, scooping Latte up in his arms, pressing a soft kiss to the top of her head before resting her back down on the cushions. She looks up at him with a look he’s never been able to decipher.
She’s a cat. He can’t exactly adapt all human expressions to her.
Still, he feels like it’s a warning. Don’t hurt him. She’s Gavin’s Hank. She’s somehow just as terrifying as Hank must be to Gavin. She’s got claws. She doesn’t need to follow legal action. She can’t be arrested.
And Gavin might very well be on her side if anything did happen.
Connor reaches out tentatively, petting the top of her head.
“I love him,” he whispers, keeping his voice low so Gavin can’t hear him. “I promise I won’t hurt him.”
She lets out a little meow at him and he smiles.
“Connor?”
“I’m coming,” he says, moving from the cat to Gavin’s side, sliding an arm around his waist. He leaves a kiss against his temple as they exit the living room.
10:14 PM
He likes the sound of Connor’s voice. Or rather, he loves it. He could listen to Connor reading off his own RK800 manual or the terms and agreement of a website. It doesn’t matter what words they are. He makes them sound interesting. He makes them worth paying attention to.
And he likes watching his mouth move. The shifts and changes of it. So human-like, so very android-like. A unique splicing of the two. Connor-like.
Gavin reaches up, passes a finger across Connor’s lips. He’s getting tired. He’s going to fall asleep, he can feel it. He’s not going to fight it. His hand lays across his cheek, feeling the smoothness of his skin. A wonder how they could make a boy so beautiful.
Connor turns, presses his lips against Gavin’s palm.
“Another chapter?”
He closes his eyes, drops his hand back to his stomach where Mocha has curled up against him. He passes his fingers through her fur until his fingers grow too tired to carry on with the movement.
“Yeah.”
“Chapter Seventeen,” he says, his voice even, soft, perfect. “Multiple Personality Disorder.”
The bed is warm. Connor’s legs underneath his head don’t make an ideal pillow, but he doesn’t want to move. He’s comfortable. He’s happy. His boyfriend is beside him, his boyfriend reads to him when his eyes can’t understand the words anymore, his boyfriend loves him.
“The mind is like a circuit of Christmas tree lights. When the brain works well, all of the lights twinkle brightly, and it’s adaptable enough that, often, even if one bulb goes out, the rest will still shine on,” Connor reads. “But depending on where the damage is, sometimes that one blown bulb can make the whole strand go dark.”
Gavin drifts away, floating on the current of words, swimming in the sound of Connor’s voice, the words mixing from the book to a few hours ago.
I love you.
11:11 PM
Connor sets the book down, marks in his mind where he remembers Gavin falling asleep, where he will have to restart from tomorrow. He reaches down, brushes his fingers through his hair, traces the line of his jaw.
He glances to the clock.
11:11
Make a wish.
He wishes for more days like this. More mornings they can spend with soft kisses, more afternoons with just the two of them, more nights with Gavin asleep, the smallest of smiles on his lips.
“I love you,” he whispers, loud enough that it can be said, quiet enough that it won’t wake him.
He needs it to be the last thing he says before he falls asleep. He needs the last words on his tongue before he closes his eyes, before he settles against the wall, to be them.
Connor is unbelievably lucky to have Gavin. He wouldn’t trade him for the world.