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Gavin kicks one of his slippers a short way across the carpet. Asshole and Punk go in for the kill immediately; scrambling and curling around the shoe with their entire bodies until they’re just gnawing, angry blobs of fur. Delilah blinks down at the scene from above the couch, uncaring; her tail swatting rhythmically against Gavin's shoulder.
Asshole pulls away first, victorious, the slipper snagged proudly between her teeth.
“Spoon, hey, nice shoes man!” the kid greets Detective Spooner on screen.
The android doesn’t seem to notice when Punk pounces up to sulk on his lap. His eyes are fixed on the movie, and they have been since it started.
He’s smiling slightly.
“I can see why you of all people would enjoy this, Detective.”
Gavin side-eyes him from the opposite end of the couch. It could be a compliment, could be an insult. Could be neither, who the fuck knows. The android’s tone never gives much away. It should irritate the hell out of him. Did, once upon a time. But Gavin’s gotten good at detecting the little nuances in that voice.
“So, what exactly do you do around here?” Detective Spooner asks.
Dr Calvin pauses for a moment. “I make the robots seem more human.”
It’s the small things; changes in tone here and there that expose his emotions long enough for Gavin to pick apart whatever he can.
The droid’s teasing him. Or at least, Gavin thinks he is.
He rolls with the instinct. If he overthinks it, he’ll bust a couple hundred brain cells. “Oh yeah? How’d you figure that, Toaster?”
“That, Detective,” Dr Lanning says to Spooner, “is the right question.”
Ninehundred– Nines, Gavin’s brain corrects, stern and abrupt, and without any kind of warning.
‘Nines is… fine. I’ll keep it, I think’. The android had said it with all the vulnerability that a self-confessed cold-blooded killing machine shouldn’t have, and now Gavin’s been thinking Nines whenever he glances at him. A nickname, not a number anymore.
“My name is Sonny,” the robot insists.
Detective Spooner is unconvinced. “So, we’re naming you now?”
Nines cocks his head, regarding the TV like he’s trying to see through it. Pick it apart, dissect it. His LED’s yellow, but not with confusion. He’s thinking. Gavin knows him well enough by now to discern that the little yellow light circles differently when he’s thinking.
“The protagonist is a Detective, like yourself,” the android continues, and yeah, no shit, Gavin could’ve worked that much out for himself. “He appears obstinate at first, unmovable in his views; determined to despise Sonny despite being faced with ongoing evidence of his ability to feel emotions as deeply as any human does.”
Gavin has to smirk at that, a corner of his mouth curving up around his beer bottle as he takes a sip. “Smartass. Any asshole could’ve drawn that comparison. Though if you’re sayin’ I’m like Will Smith then I ain’t gonna argue,” he adds, and it makes Nines’ eyebrow arch in that way it does whenever he’s tempted to refute. “Anyway, it’s you that should be enjoin’ it, not me. I’ve seen this shit a million times.”
“I did not say I wasn’t enjoying it, Detective.”
Punk’s curled into a puffy ball on Nines’ legs; purring under the android's fingers, kneading her claws into one of his thighs. Nines doesn’t appear bothered. He’s clearly got a soft spot for the little shit, if the idle way he’s scratching behind her ear is anything to go by.
“I am merely trying to perceive the movie as you might,” Nines confesses. “To see its appeal from your… unique point of view. It is difficult to adopt your frame of mind a lot of the time.”
Gavin knows there’s an insult coming; he can see it a mile off, he knows that shitty tone.
“Such an irritable and… petulant disposition as yours has proven to be challenging. On a number of levels.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Gavin nods along, and narrowly resists the childish impulse to grab one of the cushions behind him and thwack it across the space between them. “'Cause you’re so easy to get along with, right? A walk in the fuckin’ park.”
“Oh, excuse me,” Detective Spooner says, “I’m allergic to bullshit.”
Nines is smiling again. It’s that awkward little smile, too; a twitchy curl at the corner of his mouth. It’s fucking weird. Gavin’s stomach feels weird.
“However, like Detective Spooner,” the android says eventually, head inclining slightly toward the TV and the flurry of glowing red robots climbing the buildings, “you are also not without your merits.
“You are the dumbest smart person I have ever met!” Detective Spooner shouts at Dr. Calvin.
“It’s my winning personality, isn’t it.”
“Oh, no, not at all. I meant that you are a good detective. Your personality can be overlooked.”
Gavin snorts, and the sound scares Delilah out of her perch beside him. She hisses at Gavin from the carpet, but curls around his ankles a few seconds later. Fucking cats, man. Bipolar.
Not unlike someone else he knows. The change from the break room at the DPD to the here and now – from a red LED and crumpling a police badge in one hand like a piece of fucking paper to this; sitting straight as an ironing board on Gavin’s couch, expression all serene, intrigued as he takes in the flash of images on screen – the change is disturbing, to say the fucking least.
But everything about Nines has always been in the extremes. Extremely annoying. Extremely by-the-book. Extremely capable. Extremely terrifying. Extremely funny. Extremely weird.
Extremely fucking weird.
Gavin realises the thought’s making him smile.
Nines hasn’t seen, thank fuck, enraptured by the movie as he is. Gavin takes another swig of his beer to get the fuck rid of his own dumb expression, and he glares down when Delilah tries to rat him out with a loud, self-satisfied mrrrowww.
“My logic is undeniable,” V.I.K.I cautions, before Detective Spooner shuts down her program once and for all.
“So,” Gavin pipes up once the credits start scrolling, because he feels like he has to say something now that there’s no more Will Smith and gunfire to fill the silence. “What’d you think? Unrealistic? Over-the-top? C’mon, lay it on me,” Gavin dares, shrugging back into the cushions. “I know you’re a critic, I’m fuckin’ ready for it. What you got?”
The android ducks his head. Gavin would say the gesture’s fond – shy, even – if it wasn’t Nines he was talking about. “Actually, I found it enlightening. And you were correct in my being able to relate. There are several comparisons I can draw from it and my own circumstances. I believe that there is…” His posture falters as he comes to lean his elbows on his knees, eyebrows drawn together. Gavin’s not blind to how human he suddenly looks, even with his LED in plain view. “There is much to consider, following our conversation this evening.”
Gavin feels something in his chest twinge. The reality of having to re-evaluate the whole reason for your existence in a single evening’s kind of been screwing with his own head, if he's honest. He can’t imagine what it must be doing to Nines’.
“Yeah, well, don’t short-circuit or anything,” Gavin says, craning forward to place his empty bottle on the coffee table and scoop Asshole away from completely destroying his slipper. “Maybe just… take it a step at a time. Like, I dunno.” He lets his eyes skirt over Nines for a second, considering. He gestures at him vaguely, cat in arm. “Get a new wardrobe or somethin’. Focus on one thing, then move the fuck onto something else, and so on. Go at it day by day.”
Nines hesitates, scrutinising him for a few, contemplative moments. And then he nods, just once and slowly. “Once again, that is… astute advice, Detective. Perhaps investing in small changes over a period of time is the wisest course of action.”
“Shit, did you just–” The only thing keeping Gavin from incredulously throwing his hands up into the air is the irritated cat bristling between them. “Did you just agree with me? Am I– no, seriously, am I hearin’ this right? Are you actually taking my advice? Is the fuckin’ world ending?”
Gavin’s other bitch cat sticks his foot with a claw anyway, but Nines is chuckling and that takes total precedence. Yeah, Jesus Christ, the world must be ending. Gavin just made the Ice Queen laugh a second time in only one night.
“Another adaptation to working with you, perhaps,” Nines admonishes, and it's wry and teasing, and Gavin wants to scoff but it comes out more like a feeble huff of breath because he can suddenly imagine spending a hell of a lot more evenings like this, and the realisation makes the room feel short of fucking air for a few seconds. “I’ve decided that acting on your advice may also be a wise course of action. In limited amounts, of course.”
“Right, right. Limited amounts.” Gavin shoots him the finger over Asshole’s head. “God forbid you listen to my good sense all the fuckin’ time.”
“A part of deviancy I am thankful for,” Nines retorts. “Being able to freely ignore you in any given situation, should I choose to do so.”
“All right, shut the fuck up. I ain’t that bad.” Gavin shakes his head, and he’s about to get up for another beer, and maybe grasp for an excuse to cue up another movie, but he freezes like a deer in the fucking headlights, half on and half off the couch, when he notices that Nines is still looking at him.
It’s not intense or anything, like it sometimes is, because the guy still doesn’t get how freaked out some people get with prolonged eye-contact.
It’s just… different. Nines hasn’t looked at him like that before. It’s kind of how Chen started looking at him, after she admitted that Gavin wasn’t as big of an asshole as he made himself out to be.
“No,” Nines says quietly. Almost to himself, as he finally drops his gaze. “You’re not that bad, Detective.”
Turns out, in the end, Gavin doesn’t have to grasp for any excuses. He suggests Ghost in the Shell – the anime, because fuck the live-action version – and Nines seems to make his own decision to stay; so he can ‘continue broadening his cinematic education’, blah, blah, blah, whatever poncey fucking language he used to describe whatever the fuck they’re doing.
So Nines stays put on the couch, with Gavin’s derp of a cat sleeping on his knees with her tongue poking out. And once the movie’s all set up and Gavin returns to the couch, if he sits closer to the android than before, then. Well. That’s Gavin’s own fucking decision, too, isn’t it?
“I have a face and a voice to distinguish myself from others,” Major says on screen. “But my thoughts and memories are unique to me. And I carry a sense of my own destiny.”