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He is tired of Gavin. At first this was all fun and games, truly, there was something a little bit amusing at seeing Gavin try his hardest to pretend he didn’t like Connor. And at first, in the stages of Gavin learning to just like Connor as a friend, he could tease him about it. Gavin would do something nice for him (like pick his jacket off the floor when it slumped to the ground, falling from its place over the back of his chair, knocked loose when Connor left to go talk to someone else in the station) Connor could respond with an oh, how kind of you. And just calling Gavin kind would make him sputter and fumble his words and tell Connor to fuck off. It was fun to say oh, so you do consider me a friend? In the most innocent but not-so-innocent voice he could manage and see Gavin’s face twist and turn away to hide the blush that crept up on his cheeks.
There was a short time when Gavin disappeared after that. He was still at the station, but he refused to look or talk to Connor. A stretch of a few weeks that felt like forever, that had him racking his brain to figure out what he did wrong, what happened. There were no news articles detailing deaths of Gavin’s family members. There were no medical records that, with what little Connor was allowed to have, implied that there was anything serious going on.
It wasn’t until Tina yelled at Gavin, shoved him out of the break room and into Connor’s chest, that he realized what had happened.
Gavin’s blush and sheepish nature wasn’t that of a friend. His absence wasn’t because of something serious. It was just that Gavin had realized he liked Connor and he couldn’t be around him because of it, and it took Connor only a few minutes of seeing Gavin try to say he was sorry that he understood that. It isn’t terribly difficult to see through Gavin’s armor, despite what Gavin wishes or thinks, and get to the nitty-gritty of his feelings underneath. He’s easy to read. Which is just as frustrating as not being able to read him at all.
The way Gavin purposefully doesn’t touch him, the way he slides away from Connor’s grasp, the way he avoids Connor’s skin where he used to casually touch his arm when he laughed, or bump his shoulder against Connor when they walked past each other (no longer the cruel shove that once happened in the Eden Club, but a playful touch that was more reminiscent of the fake arguments that were spouted between Gavin and Tina about ridiculous things, like whether or not hot dogs could be classified as sandwiches). Gavin treats him like he’s infectious. His words are chosen a thousand times more carefully. And when he’s mean, it isn’t the stumbling trying-to-be-mean like before, but sometimes the words do hurt, and Gavin apologizes immediately. It only happens a few times before Gavin says a sorry that truly conveys what an apology should mean: it won’t happen again.
And then he was gone from Connor’s life once more, refusing to talk, refusing to look, refusing to acknowledge that Connor was there. Whenever he needed something from Connor for a case, there was instead a very formal email that Connor had watched him spend an hour typing out. Not even a handwritten note. Not even a watchful gaze to see if Connor would receive it. Gavin doesn’t ask Tina for help anymore—Connor knows she would refuse. She doesn’t want to play his little games, she wants him to grow up. And Chris doesn’t have time to worry about what Gavin does and doesn’t want—he’s too busy trying to find a new job somewhere else that won’t ever land him on his knees in the middle of a street facing death from a group of vengeful androids. He has a baby at home, and even if he didn’t, could he ever forget that moment, even if Markus had saved him?
Gavin has no one on his team and this, least of all Connor, who just wants to talk to him again. He wants to be able to tell him he likes him, too, but he knows those words will fall on deaf ears. He has tried his hardest to get Hank to believe that everything will be okay, to pick himself up again, and it’s gone nowhere if it weren’t for Connor forcing him into a car every day for AA meetings and every week for therapy. He can see traces of that type of depression in Gavin sometimes. The kind that leaves him frowning and frustrated, staring at a computer screen, pretending he’s doing something when he’s just willing himself to do something. He heard it in his voice when he said it won’t happen again, serious but shaking. Each word trembling like he was terrified that it would.
But Connor is tired of this. It’s not fun anymore. There are no stuttering words, there’s no blushing, there’s no accidental touches. There is just a lonely sad boy sitting at his desk.
And Gavin, too.
Connor brings up a hand, knocking softly against the wood of the door. He waits for it to open, the bag in his hand hanging by two fingertips, the plastic threatening to rip and scatter the contents against the floor before someone will let him in. But the door does open, and Tina smiles softly, ushering him inside quietly. Her text had said it was an emergency, and he was halfway here before she quickly rescinded the emergency part and said oh, can you stop and get some things? And it became very clear what the emergency was.
“I have to go to work,” she says, stepping past him, swapping their places. Her in the hallway, Connor on the other side of the door. “You have the day off, right?”
“Right. Tina—”
“There’s soup in the fridge. Force him to eat it, okay? And crackers in the cupboard, in case he complains about that. And I will kill you if you give into his coffee demands. Water only.”
“I know how to take care of someone when they’re sick, Tina.”
“Okay,” she says, like she doesn’t believe him, like she wants to tack on but you’ve never taken care of Gavin . “Good luck.”
She leaves him like that, holding the door to Gavin’s apartment open, staring out at the space where she just was confused and bewildered. How easily he got roped into this—he thought he was just providing supplies. Tissues and medicine and cough drops. Now it’s just him. Nurse Connor, back again. He sighs, closing the door, setting the bag down on the counter, retrieving the tissues, tucking them under his arm as he makes his way to the bedroom.
Gavin’s place is a mess. There’s stuff everywhere. Laundry from one end of the place to the next. Dishes piled up in the sink like they haven’t been done in a week. There’s a remote on the coffee table that’s missing it’s back and has two batteries rolled halfway across the table away from it, stopped only by a thick stack of magazines that cover topics he wouldn’t except from Gavin, except the three issues of Game Informer on the bottom.
He pushes open the bedroom door, finding Gavin sprawled out across his bed, the light from the window streaming in bright and vicious, filling up the space so brightly that the overhead light doesn’t do a thing at all, so Connor flips it off.
“Gavin?” he says quietly, not knowing whether or not he’s awake. He takes a step forward, avoiding the basket of laundry that has tipped over. “Hello?”
“I’m going to kill her.”
He smiles softly, “Me, too.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me,” Gavin says, rolling over. His eyes are tired, his nose is red, his lips are chapped, his skin pale. He looks like hell. “She just doesn’t trust me alone when I’m sick.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Something about being hospitalized for dehydration three years ago. Why are you here?”
“Tina tricked me.”
“She’s like that. Fucking little fox. I’m going to stop talking to her.”
“I don’t know if that’ll do anything,” Connor says, handing him the box of tissues. “Your place is a disaster.”
“Thank you,” Gavin says, sarcasm coating his words. “I tried very hard.”
Connor takes another step forward, sitting down on the bed beside him while Gavin tears the tissues open, “Chris has the day off, too, you know.”
“Chris has a baby.”
“So she didn’t pick me for any other reason than that I’m available?”
“I assume so,” Gavin looks up to him. “Why? You think there’s some other reason? It’s not like we’re friends.”
“No. Not anymore,” he reaches a hand out, one finger tracing a line against Gavin’s free hand. “Why aren’t we, Gavin?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I know that. Just like you don’t need anyone to take care of you, it’s not really about what you want or need, is it? What about what I want? Or what I need?”
“You need to take care of me?”
“No.”
“You want to take care of me?”
In some ways.
Connor smiles softly, shaking his head, “I want you to be my friend again. I miss you. Who am I going to complain to Hank about when I get home from work? Fowler? Those two are best friends now that Hank doesn’t work there anymore. It’d be like talking behind his back.”
“You want me in your life so you can complain about me?”
Connor sighs, “Why are you being so stupid? I want you in my life, Gavin. That’s all.”
“Well I am. We’re coworkers. That’s in your life.”
“I hate you,” Connor whispers quietly, and he must say it with less humor than he means, because Gavin’s face falls and he looks away to the sheets, his hands and eyes focused on the ugly detailing of the vines on the box. “Gavin—”
“I’m really tired,” he says quietly. “It’s better to sleep this off. Can you just… go?”
“I promised Tina I would stay,” Connor replies, which isn’t necessarily true. Not explicitly. But it felt a little bit like it was implied, or that it was at least a deal that he was pushed into unwillingly. He might as well uphold his side of it.
“Then stay. Just get out of my room.”
He nods, but he doesn’t move. Not at first. Instead he reaches out, touches Gavin’s face, tips his chin up, but Gavin pulls away fast, looking off to the side.
“I didn’t mean it, Gavin. I don’t hate you.”
“Fantastic for you. Get out.”
Connor stands, moving to the windows to close the blinds. They don’t block out all of the light, but they do a decent job at it. Gavin must’ve bought the curtains and blinds specifically to blackout as much light as possible, because by the time the curtains are drawn over them, it’s hard to find his way back out of the room again. He pauses by the doorway, wondering if he repeated himself if Gavin would believe him this time.
I don’t hate you.
I won’t say it again. It won’t happen again.
He thinks Gavin will probably be angry with him if he cleans the apartment, but he does anyway. Taking baskets of laundry down to the machines on the first floor, scrubbing as many of the dishes clean as he can manage, tossing out expired foods, dusting the surfaces of the shelves. He doesn’t do it because he wants to be nice to Gavin. He does it because he remembers when Hank was too depressed to take care of his place, that it was helpful, just a little bit, to have things in order. And if it does make Gavin pissed off, part of him doesn’t care.
Gavin abandoned him. And maybe it was only for a few weeks the first time, and maybe it was only for a few months the second time, but he still left. He might’ve physically been there but was never there. And it’s a feeling that Connor doesn’t like to dwell on. Someone leaving him behind, someone refusing to talk to him. It hurts. It cuts deep. And he tells himself that maybe it would’ve been better if he had a reason or a proper explanation—something that cut the two of them off in a more proper way than an abrupt break—but he doesn’t know if that’s true. If Gavin had told him that he didn’t want to be friends anymore, it probably would’ve destroyed him still. He just probably would’ve been able to pick up the pieces a little bit better. He would’ve been able to understand faster. He would’ve been able to grow accustomed to the empty space in his life rather than trying to keep it open for someone who doesn’t ever plan on coming back.
And he wouldn’t have felt so stupid, asking Hank what he did wrong. He wouldn’t have felt so pathetic being upset at the loss when there was nothing that told him it was going to carry on for so long. He just needs reasons and explanations. He just needs something more solid than I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. And then nothing ever following it.
Connor knows he’s guilty of it, too, though. Maybe that’s the worst part. It’s hard for him to keep in contact with Markus and the others, and their busy schedules aren’t to blame for it. It’s just hard for him to find words. He doesn’t feel like he belongs with the deviants. He doesn’t fit into their world properly. They all know each other, they all get along, they all laugh and fight and have their own space. And he’s just Connor. Ex-deviant hunter. Hanging with the few humans that he was forced to be around when he was still a machine.
It’s difficult to feel worth anything when he feels so lonely and worthless most days.
Gavin wakes up a quarter to five and neither of them say anything while he shuffles his way to and from the bathroom, pausing at the end of the hallway and peering out with squinting eyes like the dim overhead lights are blinding him.
“Did you clean?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Sit down,” Connor says, avoiding the question. “You need to eat.”
“I just woke up.”
“So?”
“So… I just woke up.”
“Sit down,” Connor repeats. “You can’t take any medicine on an empty stomach. It’ll make you sick.”
“I’m already sick, Mom.”
Connor steps forward, resting his hands on Gavin’s shoulders, he leans forward, so close that he sees Gavin shift his head back a little bit, “You’re going to eat, Gavin. I have forced Hank to eat, and he’s a lot tougher than you, so don’t think you’re going to get away from this if you try.”
“Okay,” Gavin says quietly. “You’re really hot when you’re mad, you know that?”
“Is that why you try to piss me off so much?”
Gavin smiles, shoving him back, but his arms are weak, though they still get the point across, “Yeah. As if.”
“As if what?”
“As if I’d ever be with you.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Gavin asks, taking a seat at the table in front of the bowl placed there just before Gavin had left the bathroom. “You’re an android. I don’t like you like that. I’m pretty sure you don’t like me like that.”
“No?” Connor says, and he says it purposefully. One word, one question, carefully poised in a voice that sounds both skeptical and curious.
It does exactly what Connor wants it to do, making Gavin stop, making Gavin look up at him with a look that he thinks says something along the lines of are you saying it’s a possibility?
But he doesn’t say that out loud, and Connor can’t tell the redness in his cheeks is from the steam of the soup warming his sensitive skin up or if it’s a real blush, but it’s there, thrown across his face like he’s a teenage girl in a book meeting her love interest for the first time.
“Can I eat without an audience?” Gavin asks quietly.
“I suppose so,” Connor says, stepping away from the table.
Gavin sits on the couch, arms crossed, curled up underneath a blanket, watching Connor fold his clothes. He isn’t even paying attention to the show, which Connor suffered through thirty minutes of him deciding on, instead he’s telling Connor he’s folding it wrong, or that something is supposed to hang, or lurching forward and trying to take the briefs out of Connor’s hand like he’s never heard of someone wearing underwear before. Though, he’ll admit, the only reason he isn’t surprised that Gavin isn’t the kind to go commando is the fact that when he doesn’t wear a belt (and sometimes even when he does, and he wears it improperly) his jeans shift down far enough to show the band. Not that Connor was looking.
“I can fold my own laundry,” Gavin says.
“Right,” Connor replies, capturing the same tone as Tina earlier when she said Okay. “You’re like a child, you know.”
“What? Because I don’t keep my place spotless?”
“No,” he says with a smile, holding up a pair of socks with cartoon cat faces on them. “Because you’re an idiot.”
“You’re insulting my socks.”
“I’m not insulting your socks,” Connor says, folding them together, setting them aside. “I like your socks.”
“That’s the best pickup line I’ve ever heard. But you’re lying. You were insulting my socks. Do I need to wear boring black socks every day to be an adult, huh, Connor? Huh? You’ve got boring socks. You’re boring. You suck.”
This is what he misses. Laughing at Gavin being an idiot. Listening to him grasp onto words like they can mean something. This is the boy he misses.
And he knows Gavin likes him. It’s so easy to see it. It’s so easy for Connor to see that he likes him, too. It would be so easy for them to be together if Gavin wasn’t—
Well, Gavin.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Con?”
“Because you’re a jerk.”
“About the socks?”
“No, just in general.”
“Oh,” Gavin says quietly. “I know.”
“You know,” Connor says, tossing a half-folded shirt into the basket, pushing it away. “I do like you. And it hurt when you stopped talking to me. And I don’t know how to get you to be like this again. You were my friend, Gavin, and you just left me. You’re a jerk. And you leaving hurt worse than you saying anything cruel to me.”
“Connor—”
“You’re the worst,” he says quietly. “You make people like you and then you destroy it.”
“I’m trying,” Gavin says, sitting up, the blanket falling around his shoulders. “I am.”
“Did you ever plan on coming back to me then?”
“I didn’t think I had a you to come back to,” he replies. “I was mean to you. I might’ve—I don’t know. My father was mean to people. And I guess that’s a nice way of putting it. He betrayed everyone around him and sometimes I see him in me and it scares me. I’m trying to get rid of it but I slip up sometimes.”
“Go to therapy then.”
“I am,” Gavin says with a short laugh. “But you’re the one that said you hated me.”
“This morning. I said I hated you this morning .”
“Yeah, but you can’t say shit like that to me. Not the way you said it.”
“How did I say it?”
“Like you meant it,” Gavin says. “Like you’ve been waiting to say it.”
“I didn’t.”
“No?” he asks. “Then why do I see it every time you look at me at the DPD? Like you’re so pissed off at me?”
“Because I like you and you left.”
“Well. I fucked up. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. And this isn’t fair,” Gavin says, his voice shaking. “You doing this to me when I’m sick and high on cough meds and can’t think straight. You’re a jerk, too. Maybe not like me, but you’re still—so annoying. Why can’t you ever just say how you feel?”
“Fine,” Connor says, leaning over to him. Gavin shrinks back against the couch, but not away from Connor, just like he needs the support. He moves his face against Connor’s hand where it rests against his cheek, like he’s nuzzling into place. “I like you, Gavin. I like you a lot. Not as a friend. And I know you like me. And I really want to be with you. I want to help you. I know I can’t fix the problems, but I want to be there for you, and I want you to stop pushing me away and I really want to kiss you.”
“Well, you can’t,” Gavin says quietly. “Not that last part. You can’t kiss me.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sick,” he says quietly. “My nose is all stuffed. My lung capacity is shit. It would last like five seconds.”
“Okay,” Connor says with a laugh. “Is that the only reason?”
“Well, I mean, yeah,” Gavin replies. “Because you’re taking advantage of me right now.”
“Because of the cough meds?”
“Yeah,” he whispers. “And if you kiss me it should really be better than just… a one-second thing. You deserve more than a one-second kiss.”
“I thought it was five seconds?”
“Yeah, now that I’m thinking about it, you kind of take my breath away, so it’d be one.”
“Are you going to replace all of your bad insults with bad pick up lines now?” Connor asks.
“If that’s okay with you.”
Connor nods, smiling in a way that he is trying to keep held down, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“I’m sorry I left you. I didn’t think you liked me, but I shouldn’t have done it. And I shouldn’t have been mean to you. I am getting help, you know.”
“Okay.”
“So whenever I feel better, you can kiss me then. And we can… be together. I guess.”
“Okay.”
“Can you say something other than okay?”
Connor tilts his head, looking to the blanket, the way it’s drawn around Gavin’s shoulders where a moment ago it was wrapped up around him like a cloak, hiding his face, only his hands poking out, keeping it held up. “Can I kiss you? Not on the lips?”
“Yeah. I guess,” he pauses and smiles like an idiot. “I’d like that.”
Connor leans forward, pressing a soft kiss against Gavin’s forehead. His skin is cold, and Connor knows this sickness of his is going to last a few days, and it will be a painful few days, because he likes being this close to Gavin. It feels right in a way that something feels right after denying oneself of it for too long. But he can wait. It’ll be a horrible wait, but he can wait, because he knows the kiss will happen again. He knows he’ll get annoyed at Gavin again sometime, he knows they will probably yell at each other again, he knows he will see Gavin cocooned in this blanket of his again, and he knows they will probably even repeat the sock argument another time, playful or not.
He’s fine with that.
Because he can wait. He can wait for their first kiss, because he knows that there will be a thousand kisses that will follow it. It will happen again and again and again.