Chapter Text
Nines’ eyes moved around the precinct, tracing different movements, following familiar faces, but not lingering on anyone longer than necessary. Nothing out of ordinary.
It was 7:38 and the usual commotion caused by change of shifts has began.
Nines remained located at his desk, his eyes moving to the book in front of him. The busting and rustling around him has been intensifying with every minute and he was tempted to turn off his hearing device completely. Technically, he was still off duty. In the end, he decided against it, just in case of something worth listening would happened. Even thought, the probability of that totaled to merely 7%.
The thing was, Nines didn’t find people to be very interesting.
Even before his deviancy, they weren’t his concern. He was programmed to track deviants and his contact with humans was supposed to be limited to necessary minimum. So he spent first weeks of being a deviant on “finding himself”, as Connor had put it and it has been a real challenge. He was still going through the process of finding things that interest him. His predecessor went on a long speech about the importance of hobbies, finding ways to fulfill his needs and awaken his wants.
And of course, Nines had various wants and needs, and he was even able to develop some hobbies, but people just weren’t on his list of interest.
Most of them were simply too predictable for Nines to find them interesting. There were certain aspects and characteristic that he found entertaining in a person, but it was nothing that could make him want to look forward to the next meeting. He also wouldn’t say that he was deliberately avoiding any social situations. He wouldn’t walk away in the middle of the conversation, just because he found them boring, like Connor’s stories about curly fries. No, it was a specialty of one-week into deviancy Nines. The two - months into deviancy Nines knew that you should just nod and wait for the other person to walk away. Or looked busy enough for others to not approach you in the first place.
Reading the book, seemed to be the most successful solution.
The book was a light reading about the most gruesome war crimes, so it still enable Nines to remain attentive to activities around the precinct. After two months of working here, his predictions concerning different officers reached to 98% accuracy.
For example, Officer Chen would be ending her shift in 17 minutes. Taking into account that it was uneventful night and she still had a bounce in her step, she would be feeling good enough to prepare her breakfast at home. In that moment she must be scrolling through different recipes of the second most popular culinary website.
There was 14% probability, she would choose mini waffles with hazelnuts sprinkles, 27% for savory crepes and 59% it would be shakshuka.
In 2 minutes, she would be walking away from her desk and heading towards the break room with an armful of mugs and Officer Miller right behind her. He would already have his coat on and his gym bag would be tossed between his hands, precisely 13 times, as he would be waiting for Officer Chen to finish washing her mugs. On the more stressful day, Officer Miller would gather the mugs by himself and wash them for Officer Chen, but because today’s shift wasn’t compelling at all, Officer Chen would shoo him away.
He also knew that before 7:50, Connor and Lieutenant Anderson would be walking through the main entrance. Connor’s left mouth corner would go up after reaching their floor and before he would start indulging himself in small talk with the rest of the people around the precinct, he would scan the area. As there was only one person in the holding cell and no officer had been harmed during night shift, his scan would last 32 seconds and his smile wouldn’t withered.
It was still a 20 seconds longer than Nines needed to scan their floor.
He heard clucking of Officer Chen’s mugs and squeak of Officer Miller’s shoes, just as he predicted. Everything so predictable and consistent –
“Yo, tin can.”
Ah, and there he was. A little particle of chaos.
“Detective,” Nines answered and with one swift move closed the book in front of him. As he watched his partner coming from behind his back and heading towards his desk, hands tempering with a lid of his cup of coffee, Nines took a moment to analyze his words.
He was already familiar with a nickname “tin can”, usually accompanied with a sneer or bite, but everyday a malice behind the nickname was slowly shifting into something more… subtle.
However, yo.
“Yo” made him wonder. During his two months of working around the precinct, he never heard Reed welcoming him with “Yo”. It wasn’t something that he heard the detective saying at all, actually. He thought about adding the word to his own everyday’s vocabulary, but there was a doze of familiarity and nonchalant to the word and frankly, he wasn’t sure he would be able to pull it off.
“You are early,” Nines added, running a quick scan over his partner.
It was the first time that Detective Reed came to work at 7:46. Just when Nines thought that finally he was able to narrow Gavin’s coming hours between 7:55 and 8:12, his partner decided to do something illogical like that.
For a moment Nines thought that maybe, Reed wasn’t able to sleep at night, which led to the early morning, but after a quick scan, it was obvious that detective had at least 6 hours of sleep and from the way his hair was curling at the nape he had time to take a shower AND stopped at the bakery for a breakfast.
Reed shot him a smirk over the brim of his coffee cup.
“Surprised?” Gavin asked, his eyes quickly moving to Nines’ temple.
Indeed, he was surprise. But part of him didn’t want to give Reed a satisfaction of reading him so well.
“Yes, I’m surprised you finally manage to come to work on time, Detective.”
It was 96% chance that Gavin would answer back, as Reed liked to have the last word, but again, he was surprised when other man just simple huffed and went back to sipping his coffee.
His lips twisted into a small smirk.
Interesting.
He heard the shuffling behind him and familiar sound of the elevator door opening.
“Good morning, Officer Chen. Officer Miller.”
7:49. As predicted.
“Oh, hi Connor! How’s your morning?”
10…
11…
“Very good. Thank you for asking, Officer Miller. How’s the night shift?”
He asked, but he’s already scanned the place.
“Boring, nothing happened. But check his out, I’m trying the new recipe for breakfast. I’ll be making shakshuka!”
“Oh, it looks delicious. Let me know, if it’s good, so I could – “
Making it for Lieutenant Anderson, for the next Meatless Monday.
“Oh, for sure!”
12…
13…
The last mug made its way into the cupboard and the rustle of the gym bag stopped. Connor was already moving to Officer Wilson, who was chatting with mildly interested Lieutenant Anderson by the elevator.
Nothing out of ordinary.
So unexciting.
“Shit!” Gavin scowled, his hands gripping at his shirt. “Tina! Toss me the paper towel!”
“Maybe “hi” or “hello, Tina, you look nice today” would be better way to greet a friend, asshole!”
“Hi, Tina, toss me the fucking towel!”
Nines moved his eyes toward his partner frowning at the small puddle of coffee on his desk, then switched to the break room entrance, where Officer Miller was still leaning on the doorframe. Officer Chen was making a big bowl of paper towels and Officer Miller let out a soft laugh, looking at his friend who aimed the ball at Reed’s head. Just when the paper ball flew through the precinct, the sport bag was tossed 14th and 15th time.
Nines could try to predict how the rest of the day would go with the 98% of accuracy, but he knew that as long as Gavin was involved, nothing was out of the table. It didn’t matter which outcome was logically the most plausible for Reed, because very rarely Nines was able to actually predict correctly. Quickly, he learnt that the most logical answer wasn’t always the one that Gavin chose. Other factors seemed to be more essential during making his decisions, but it also didn’t follow any specific rule.
As almost all the detective decisions were random. And Nines found that unpredictability challenging.
In most cases, it wasn’t hard to find patterns in human’s behavior as repetitiveness of actions and developing habits gave them the sense of familiarity. Also, he found it rather effortless to learn different things about them, because most people didn’t seem to need any push to talk about themselves and their interests.
“Fucking plastic lids, that shit is useless,” Nines picked up his partners’ mumbling as detective Reed viscously threw a bend piece of plastic and the soaked paper towels to the bins on his left.
Unfortunately, the only person that Nines actually wanted to learn about was the one that didn’t talk about themselves at all. His partner talked a lot, however he was rather skillfully hiding any personal information.
MISSION ADDED: GET TO KNOW DETECTIVE GAVIN REED
POTENTIAL OUTCOME: @#error@#$
“Maybe if you put the lid correctly, it wouldn’t spill, Detective.”
“Oh, fuck off, Nines. I know how to put a fucking lid on the cup!”
INFORMATION ADDED IN THE FOLDER GAVIN REED : MAY NOT KNOW HOW TO PUT A LID ON A COFFEE CUP.