Work Text:
Here is how Gavin Reed thought he was born:
In a hospital with a brother. Elijah. Elijah. Seven minutes before him and then Gavin was born, too. They existed side by side for nine months and will continue to do so until at some point they will eventually have to break apart and live their own lives.
But he had a brother. A twin. He wasn’t alone. He was never alone.
(Except he was.)
Here is how Gavin Reed was born:
He is born at nearly three in the morning. He screams and he cries and so does his mother. She wants to keep him. She desperately wants to keep him, but she can’t. Not enough money and not enough time and certainly not in the proper mindset to care for a baby. Too young and too foolish.
She gifts him her grandfather’s name, a kiss on his forehead, and she sends him away in the arms of his father because the more time she spends with him the more this will hurt.
She knows as the years pass she won’t go a day without thinking about him, but she hopes someday she will be able to go a day without crying.
January 6th
2004
He is too young to know what a sister is.
But he has one now.
Cute and small and just as fragile as he was.
(As he is.)
July 17th
2006
The people sing happy birthday and he isn’t quite old enough yet to be told the secret that this brother of his beside him is not his twin. For now, he’s allowed to think it is. He has to. The family needs to save face. What would the world think if they knew the truth?
What would Gavin think?
December 21st
2012
He lays in his bed and stares at the ceiling and repeats two prayers over and over again in his head.
Please, let the world not end today. He is only ten and there is still so much to do and so much to see and so much hope that could be had. Everything could be better. Everything could change, Please, let the world not end today.
Please, let the world end today. He is only ten and there is so much he has seen and so much pain and so little hope had. Everything is going to get worse. Nothing is going to change. Please, let the world end today.
October 7th
2014
His mother doesn’t wake him for school. He sleeps and he sleeps until suddenly he bolts awake at ten in the morning and his heart pounds in fear because he’s missing school and his father is going to be pissed.
He races to get ready, pulls on his shoes so fast that he stumbles down the hall and his mother finds him laying there face down on the carpet crying because almost certainly his father has already been made aware his least favorite son (his least favorite child) is skipping class.
“It’s alright,” his mother says, shushing him and trying to brush the tears away. “It’s alright, Gavin. Everything is going to be alright.”
He doesn’t believe her. Nothing is ever going to be alright.
She tells him a secret:
Today is his birthday. She made him a chocolate cake. She got him a little present—a baseball glove. Bright and shiny and new. Not the one that Elijah passed down to him.
She makes him a promise:
Don’t tell anyone. Not a single soul. It is a secret shared between just the two of them.
It takes him a few weeks to understand why.
His mother is his mother—but she is not his mother. Not the one that carried him and not the one that birthed him but the one that fed him and clothed him and sang lullabies to him and tucked him in at night and—
Where is his other mother?
Why did she not want him?
February 14th
2017
He comes home from school crying because a classmate punched him in the face.
Boys are not supposed to give valentines to other boys.
Doesn’t he know that?
He does.
Which is why he doesn’t tell his father the truth. Which is why he and his mother come up with a reason together that would explain why Gavin got punched in the face and why they shouldn’t try to do anything in response to it so his father can never learn the truth.
Not yet.
Not when the reason would result in another hit.
July 17th
2018
His brother is a genius.
Gavin continues going to their shitty public schools and Elijah is gone, off creating extreme breakthroughs in the world.
He is not jealous of Elijah’s intelligence.
He is only jealous that he got away.
But someone needs to stay and protect their mother, their sister.
He calls Elijah on his birthday anyways, wishes him luck, tells him he loves him, pretends that he isn’t as angry as he is.
October 31st
2019
He loves Halloween. It’s the only time he can be free. It might be a Thursday, but he still stays out late with his friends, with his boyfriend. He kisses him in the darkness while other people scream at the horror movie and he feels the slightest bit grateful that he can have this night, amongst all the other bad ones.
January 6th
2020
His father is screaming and yelling at his sister and it’s her birthday and she doesn’t deserve it to be ruined like his own was. Gavin steps in between, pushes his father back. His sister will not earn any physical scars. She will not bruise. She will stay unharmed.
He has had time to learn how to put the pieces back together. He has had time to bandage the wounds and cover the scars. But her? She can still be fragile and unbroken. It needs to be kept that way.
And It is so easy to redirect his father’s anger sometimes.
A push—not even one that is rough or angry—just a simple push.
And his face is slammed through the glass of the curio cabinet in retaliation.
He falls to the floor in a blur of blood and he can’t think because he’s never seen so much red everywhere.
And his mother is sitting in front of him, whispering and crying and just saying over and over and over again:
“Everything is going to be alright.”
March 13th
2022
He fails out of college.
His father gives him a lecture and a few new bruises.
He joins the DPD because he has no other choice.
May 9th
2024
He is paired with Tina on a few cases.
She is the first one to make him laugh in a long, long time.
July 17th
2027
He stops calling his brother. He stops telling him happy birthday. He stops talking to him completely.
His brother is a Kamski now. He has separated their ties entirely by taking his mother’s maiden name.
And all Gavin wants to do is change his own.
He doesn’t like being a Reed.
January 6th
2031
He meets with his sister on her birthdays. It’s the only time she comes back from Italy or France long enough to see him for a day. Neither of them tell their father, and he doesn’t seem to notice Gavin’s disappearance from the station on these days anyways.
She confides that she has always thought of changing her name to Kamski, too, but now it’s ruined. Kamski doesn’t belong to their mother anymore. It belongs to Elijah. He has stolen it and made it his own legacy.
Gavin thinks in a few years she will do it anyways. Feed a little bit off of his fame. He doesn’t blame her.
He would too if Kamski didn’t mean androids and androids didn’t mean my brother left his family behind and didn’t care that they were getting yelled at and hit as long as he made some money.
June 2nd
2034
His father dies and he feels only the smallest sliver of guilt for laughing.
July 1st
2034
His mother is free and happy and Gavin has never seen her smile so much in her life.
November 6th
2038
He doesn’t like him. It. It is an android. It is just a machine.
When he sees him—IT—all he can think of is how it felt to watch Elijah leave their house and head off to college. He can feel himself get angrier and angrier the longer he’s in the room with hi—IT.
IT.
It’s just a fucking machine. It’s just a robot. It’s an it. That’s all it is. That’s all it will ever be.
He wishes he knew why this one specific stupid fucking machine is making him think about his past so much.
November 11th
2038
He holds a bag of ice against his head and watches the situation unfold on the screen. It had beat him in the fight—left him laying on that stupid Archive Room floor and now it’s flooding the street with an army of androids behind it.
Alive, they chant.
Alive, they have plastered on their holographic screens.
Alive, they demand.
Alive.
January 6th
2039
His sister announces she’s moving back to Detroit between bites of her pasta.
He smiles, for the first time this year.
February 27th
2039
Him and Tina argue about Connor more often than not. Behind close doors where no one can see or hear them.
Connor might be their subject, but it is always in reality Gavin.
How terrible of a person he is. How he can’t say sorry. How he doesn’t try hard enough or care about anyone but himself. How he holds grudges but never wants them held against him.
He’s a hypocrite and a terrible person.
Tina never says it, but he always hears it when they finally walk away with a slam of doors punctuating the end of their fights.
You’re just like your father.
April 26th
2039
“Detective Reed?”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright—”
“It’s not. I tried to kill you.”
“Okay.”
A whisper. A nod.
Gavin apologizes three more times before he’s certain Connor believes him.
He doesn’t need Connor to accept the apology, he just needs to make sure Connor believes it to be the truth.
October 11th
2039
“It was your birthday a few days ago.”
Gavin breathes in a sigh.
“Yes. It was.”
“You weren’t here.”
“No,” he says, with a shake of his head. “I wasn’t. You’re an observant fucker, anyone ever tell you that?”
It earns a very weak, but what Gavin thinks is real, smile from Connor.
“Happy belated birthday, Detective Reed.”
He turns, watches Connor walk away.
“Hey,” he says suddenly, making Connor come to a stop. “Thanks.”
“Of course.”
February 23rd
2040
He runs into his one and only boyfriend he had in high school. He pretends to laugh at his jokes, that everything is alright, that everything has been forgotten. But Gavin can see the triumph in his eyes. He has no ring on his finger, but his ex does.
How lucky to be loved.
They part their ways, and Gavin feels guilty for hoping that whoever has married that man finds out what a cheating bastard he is, how little he cared when Gavin showed him his wounds and his family’s history of violence.
He doesn’t deserve to be loved.
July 4th
2040
Tina drags him out to watch the fireworks, but he can’t keep his eyes off of Connor, looking for every minute detail that might lend proof to his being alive.
Connor smiles and laughs and looks up in amusement. Sumo and Hank are with him, thrilled with this tiny display of lights and noise. They look like a family.
And Gavin realizes when Connor pauses and looks over to him, when his smile falls just slightly and lifts back up again with a wave of his hand, that he is not an it at all.
He waves back, against his better judgment.
October 7th
2040
“Happy birthday, Detective Reed.”
“Thanks, Connor.”
January 6th
2041
Their meetings are not exclusive to her birthday anymore, but they are the only ones they know for certain will happen. She might have moved back, but she still has a life and friends outside of Gavin’s existence.
She holds up a hand, shows him a ring. He didn’t even know she was dating someone.
“The wedding is in five months. Will you be there?”
“Of course.”
April 1st
2041
He’s drunk and stupid and rambling about how cute Connor is to Tina and just when he thinks it’s going to be something as light-hearted and funny as it is, he falls past the last barrier.
Connor is not just a cute guy he works with. He’s an android.
And his voice goes dead and flat as he starts to tell Tina all the things he refused to say to her for the last seventeen years.
No, androids are not the reason his father hit his mother. No, androids are not the reason Gavin broke his arm at least five times. No, androids are not the reason his sister fled to Europe to keep a safe distance from the abuse.
But Elijah still left them.
And it continued and it worsened when he was gone.
May 31st
2041
He invites Tina as his plus one.
She teases him the entire time about how much he would have preferred Connor at his side.
And he would have, because Connor wouldn’t have let him go three hours with frosting smeared on the side of his cheek because it was funny.
But they aren’t even friends.
July 18th
2041
He doesn’t remember anything from the night before, except going into the bar and putting his phone on silent and refusing to look at the numbers calling him. He doesn’t even know how Connor found him. He vaguely recalls Connor’s hands on his shoulder, on his waist, pushing off his jacket. He remembers being too drunk to think of anything else.
“Did we—”
“No,” Connor says. “No. We didn’t.”
Gavin nods, slowly. He has no reason to not believe Connor. He has no reason to think Connor would lie about this or that he would be the type of person to take advantage of someone as drunk as Gavin was.
“Why are you here still?”
“You asked me to stay.”
“And you did?”
Connor offers a small smile and a nod, “You were drunk, but I thought you meant it.”
“And we didn’t…”
“No,” he repeats. “We didn’t.”
A small question in Connor’s eyes as he turns, says his goodbyes. Would you have wanted to?
October 7th
2041
“Happy birthday.”
“Connor—”
“Yes?”
“You never get me a present,” Gavin says, laughing a little. “You say happy birthday but… there’s no gift.”
“I’m terrible with gifts. And I don’t know what you would want.”
No, of course he wouldn’t.
“You could ask.”
“Alright. What would you like for your birthday, Gavin?”
He had planned this out. It even went the way he wanted. For Connor to ask what he would want and he could reply with a boyfriend or a date or even just a kiss.
But now that he’s here his heart is beating a little too fast and he’s remembering all the terrible things he’s done and the way he’s acted and he has no courage to summon the words anymore.
“N-Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
December 31st
2041
“Detective Reed?”
He sighs and looks over to Connor. It’s barely noon. Most of the people in the station have left for lunch or to work on a case.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve decided that you annoy me.”
“Wow.”
“Annoy might be the wrong word. Frustrate might be more accurate.”
“Connor—”
“I won’t be here tonight, or at the party Tina is having for the New Years, so I thought I’d let you know.”
“That I frustrate you?”
A few years ago, he would have taken this information and thrown it back. Come up with the worst insult he can possibly imagine. Something that will hurt the other. Now, he can only smile at it.
Of all the things he’s been called, annoying and frustrating have never really bothered him.
Ugly, because of his scar? That one was always the worst.
“No. Well—yes, I suppose.”
“Connor…”
“You should ask why you frustrate me, Detective Reed.”
“Okay,” he says, and he can’t stop smiling because for some reason this is really amusing to him—Connor being blunt and honest like he always is but not quite being able to do it himself.
You could ask / you should ask. He’s playing a game. This is all just a game to make fun of Gavin for his birthday.
But he plays along anyways, “Why do I frustrate you?”
“You never admit what you want.”
No.
He doesn’t.
He isn’t allowed to want things.
“I hope you get a kiss at midnight,” Connor says, forcing a smile up onto his face. “It’s lucky, isn’t it? Human traditions are so strange.”
And then he disappears back to his desk, and the smile on Gavin’s face is gone.
January 1st
2042
“Did you get your kiss?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Gavin sighs and he feels like he is always sighing around Connor. Sometimes exasperated and sometimes quiet and sometimes in just utter disbelief and sometimes laced with a little bit of wistfulness.
“The person I wanted to kiss wasn’t there,” he settles on, because he’s tired and stayed up too late and can’t quite control his words right now. “So why bother?”
“Well,” Connor says, and he smiles at Gavin in a way that makes him want to cry because it reminds him of all things he wasn’t allowed to have. “He’s here now, isn’t it?”
“W-What?”
“The person you want to kiss. It’s me, isn’t it?”
He could argue. He could pretend. He could lie. He could shove Connor away and run as fast as he can out of the station but he doesn’t because of that smile on Connor’s face.
Soft and happy and gentle and warm and inviting and all the things he wasn’t allowed to have.
“Yeah,” he whispers instead. “You are.”
“So, kiss me. Better late than never, right?”
He hesitates and he sees the smile shift on Connor’s face. Frustrated. Because Gavin is frustrating. Because Gavin doesn’t take what he wants. Connor kisses him first, and he is grateful for it because he doesn’t have to be the one to close that gap and make an absolutely life-changing decision.
It takes him a second to kiss Connor back, because he is still so scared of this.
And it isn’t messy and rushed like the kisses in clubs or bars or with the men that don’t care about Gavin past a few hours one night.
He has to hold back tears and fight as hard as he can to keep them from spilling down his cheeks. This is what he wants. He is getting what he wants. A soft sweet kiss that lingers and doesn’t take or destroy.
Connor is the epitome of all things he isn’t allowed to have and yet here Connor is, kissing him, giving everything he’s ever wanted through just a simple action.
It’s too much weight to put on one kiss. Gavin should know better than to do this, but he can’t help it. Connor will likely never know what this means to him.
February 14th
2042
Connor wraps a scarf around his neck. Soft yarn against his skin, an infinite warmness held around him tight. He has never been the type to wear a scarf before, but it’s something Connor has gifted him and he thinks in the summer he will allow himself to die of heat before he takes it off.
“Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Gavin smiles and he laughs and then doesn’t even bother saying it back because he’s kissing Connor instead. He never thought he’d be the type to care about this holiday. He never thought he’d have this.
September 2nd
2042
“Do you have a birthday?”
He watches Connor consider this, a little bit of a nod before replaced by a shake of the head. “No. I prefer not to.”
December 26th
2042
The day after Christmas he wakes to the sound of Connor cleaning up the apartment. Wrapping paper carefully folded and placed in the recycle bin, the dishes sitting neatly on the drying rack, the laundry sitting by the door ready to be taken down to the machines below them in the building.
He says his good morning and leans against Connor’s body, his eyes still too tired to stay open. He leaves a kiss against his jaw and in return Connor leaves on against his nose. The scar isn’t as visible as it used to be. He wonders sometimes if Connor is healing it. Making it fade a little more every day.
“I love you,” he says, and it isn’t the first time he has thought it but it’s the first time he’s said it out loud.
“I know. I love you, too.”
And perhaps that is the thing that he loves the most about Connor.
Gavin might be stubborn and stupid and frustrating but Connor knows. It isn’t going to stop Gavin from saying it every day now, but Connor knows.
May 31st
2043
He wakes up to nightmares rarely, but it happens. Connor is always there to reassure him, to ground him in the moment, to leave a kiss against his shoulder and somehow that kiss always helps.
“Everything is going to be alright,” he whispers, brushing away the tears. “Everything is going to be okay.”
Gavin nods, and he tries to keep this on repeat in his head, he tries his best to make sure Connor’s words are real and true.
Everything is going to be alright.
Maybe not right now. Maybe not right this second.
But it will be.
Here is how Gavin Reed thought he was going to die:
Cancer or some other type of illness. Especially with the cigarettes he picked up when he was nineteen and trying to impress a guy in his class.
On a snowy evening with the roads too slippery and his dad too drunk to drive and the car getting out of control.
While chasing down a suspect and getting shot and falling and nobody caring enough to save him.
Here is how Gavin Reed actually died:
With his hand intertwined with Connor’s and racing across the street in the middle of a rainy day for cover under the eaves of another shop. He is laughing and smiling and looking up at Connor with his hair and his clothes soaked and he can’t believe that they didn’t get hit by that taxi honking at them.
Connor has helped kill all the parts about himself that he hates.
Even the last name Reed. Attributed to a piece of shit that died before he could ever even know about Gavin’s relationship with Connor.
He has rebuilt it to mean something else. The unification with Connor. The matching rings on their hands. The kids they might be able to adopt and raise with as much love and care that Gavin was never afforded.
The old Gavin Reed is dead. He is buried underneath therapy and happiness and hopes for the future.
Everything is going to be alright.