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Just for one time, RK900 thinks, it’d be nice to meet somewhere where normal people met. But Gavin, strange human that he is, had insisted to not meet somewhere downtown or at home, but at one of the numerous bridges that span the Detroit River south of Belle Isle. Of course the android has already deduced that the human isn’t where he is supposed to be. He seldom is. The same restlessness that makes him a challenge to work with, and a bloodhound when it comes to solving cases, makes him jumpy when he is forced to keep still for too long. Two days off were something the human always complained about were not enough to quote “forget how much he fucking hated work” unquote, but he frequently forewent even his holidays and had to be forced to stay home when he was sick.
It isn’t dark yet, but somewhere in the general vicinity of it being murky enough to switch the streetlights on. RK has the actual time down to the millisecond, but nobody is there to bother to listen to him, so why should it matter, and Gavin isn’t around.
Going for a cigarette, he called it, but really it is more of a walk. Not that he’d ever admit to that.
RK pauses for a moment at the bank of the river to catalogue the native species of river grasses. Reeds, he recognizes with some amusement. Not abundant in this water because of the industrial waste still contaminating the river after countless attempts to clean up nature that had eventually been conveniently forgotten about in one or another economical crisis. They are resilient, after all.
The android looks up at the bridge, the stonework spanning the slate grey water like a smaller, shabbier version of the Golden Gate bridge, self-driving lorries rushing over it like shuttles over a loom. He can hear the noise too, registering the frequency as background noise ready to tune out, but keeps it there just in case.
He can spot Gavin from down here, even in the dim light of a sun ready to retire behind heavy clouds and the dust of a city clogged with pollution. He is standing nearer to the river’s banks than the middle, apparently not willing to walk that far over the bridge towards Windsor. The windchill will get him, even though it isn’t as cold as it should be.
It isn’t the first time he’s found Gavin in strange places. In a park at midnight, with a glimming cigarette burning out between his fingers. In a hole in the wall fast food joint they’d never been to before because it was in a completely different part of the city. Perched on the steps of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument where he certainly wasn’t supposed to be sitting. Of all the infractions an officer of the law could possibly be guilty of, RK couldn’t even tell him off for that one, as exhausted as the human had looked back then.
Now, from down where RK is standing, he looks relaxed. RK is still too far off to tell for certain, but he is good at recognizing patterns. He can tell, for example, that the human on the bridge is his human by the way he is slouched over the railing, arms propped up and seemingly holding the weight of his whole upper body, by the colour of his jacket that is softer than it has any right to be, as he knew from experience, and by the way the blurry face has tilted in his direction when he has come into view, and has not turned away again.
RK himself is easy to recognize after all.
It willtake him about three minutes to get up to where Gavin is, but as RK plots the route, something else seems to grab Gavin’s attention, because he is suddenly straightening up, his head turning and his whole body language becoming more alert. He stares down into the river.
Before RK can turn to see what is going on himself, Gavin was starts to move; fast, erratic. There’s urgency in Gavins movements, he catches his elbow in his jacket, turns once around himself as he desperately tries to get out of it.
RK can’t decipher what’s going on, but then Gavin gets the jacket off and puts a foot on the balustrade.
Oh.
RK can only watch in mute horror as Gavin climbs up, teethers for a moment on the windy railing, balancing against the harsh october wind before he lowers himself on the other side, looks down for just a moment and
jumps.
It takes nearly three seconds for the human to hit the water, but through the myriads of preconstructions and the rising feeling in RK’s chest that shouldn’t be there it feels like millennia pass as the android watches the human plummet.
The feeling, he surmises, is dread.
He’s never felt it before, but he knows it now.
It’s not a feeling he wants to experience.
At least there’s some coherence to Gavin’s movement, he must’ve jumped from heights into water before. He hits the water feet first, arms close to his chest to avoid injury, and in one strange, clear thought, RK thinks that it’s good he’s kept his shoes on, judging from his memory of the human’s quick strip-down.
There’s a splash, nearly inaudible, and RK lurches forward, running towards the water.
He should’ve moved before.
In fact, if he had left only minutes earlier, he could’ve prevented this.
He’s fast, but he’s not fast enough to move this kind of distance in this little time.
Now, instead of standing on the bridge with a hand on Gavin’s shoulder, he’s standing on the edge of the river, takes a step forward.
The water is cold, his sensors register, but it doesn’t bother him. RK moves forward still, but has to stop eventually.
His bones of titanium alloy and his body panels made from heavy carbon fiber make him too heavy to swim. What was meant to protect him might just prevent him from saving his partner. He steps forward, the water soaking into his shoes, his slacks. He can’t do anything now, just wildly preconstruct off anything the river yields. It’s not much.
He should dial for emergency services, he knows it.
There’s a warning flashing in his internal HUD, it’s frequency becoming more violent by the second. But calling for help would be admitting defeat, so he staves it off, just for a second, then a second longer.
His human will surface again.
He will not accept his human dying on his watch.
Even if he cannot prevent it.
Then, there’s another splashing noise, further down the river. RK’s head jerks around, and he catches a glimpse of dark hair plastered to a pale face.
Gavin, he thinks with such relief his LED actually stutters back from red into a solid yellow. He’s not safe yet, there’s whorls and rips in the deceptively calm waters, but he’s up on the surface and … and he’s swimming away from RK, the fucker.
He wants to scream after his stupid, stupid human, but Gavin is looking around and not paying attention to RK at all, and he’s searching for something clearly.
RK’s eyes scan the water surface, but there’s nothing even his advanced ocular magnifying apertures can pick up on. Gavin comes to the same conclusion and dives again.
Now RK can at least do what he was made to do and compute Gavin’s trajectory. There’s charts of the currents and he can calculate the flow rate, so he immediately finds Gavin when he surfaces again.
This time, he doesn’t seem to pay attention to where he is and drifts off a few meters downstream, concentrating on something that he’s clutching close. RK cannot make out what it is, but it must be the thing that made Gavin jump. So it has to be important.
His preconstruction software lists several possibilities, but without visual input, they’re too variable.
Gavin, finally, looks up and around wildly.
He’s looking for a way out, and his eyes almost immediately find RK, tracking his position from where he had been standing when Gavin jumped.
He grins - actually grins, the lunatic, and starts to swim over slowly. His movements are hindered by whatever he’s carrying, and RK distinctly remembers that he kept his shoes on, likely to soften the impact somewhat.
By his calculations, the human has to use a significant amount of strength to even keep afloat, and RK so wishes he could help him.
After what seems like hours, when it has just been some minutes, Gavin gains ground under his feet, and slowly wades to shore.
By now, his earlier moment of bravado has vanished and he looks absolutely miserable. Shivering from the cold, spitting out dirty water.
“Remind me to never complain about the tap water again. This is vile.” He made a grimace, trying to get the taste out of his mouth somehow. RK didn’t even need to get his hands on the water to know how polluted it was, there were myriads of studies about the subject, and he had no intention to get any firsthand experience on the matter.
What he did want was to grab the human by his wet collar and shake him until common sense returned to his apparently damaged brain, but the glance down reveals what Gavin is clutching close to his chest.
It’s a bundle of wet, presumably light grey fur.
It hisses at RK.
“That’s a cat.” RK says, very intelligently. It is.
“Yes I’ve noticed.” Gavin replies in the same dry tone. He’s taking another step forward, trying to shake the river mud from his feet, but RK doesn’t move out of the way. There’s something that makes it impossible to step away from his partner now, and he’s not going to investigate what it is. He doesn’t know if the answer to that riddle would be one he wants to know.
“You’ve risked your life for a cat.”
“It wasn’t going to make it.” Gavin grouses, his expression one of defiance. He knows it was immensely stupid, and could have easily cost him his life.
RK cannot begin to preconstruct what his life would be without the human. Mostly because Gavin has always defied expectations in a way no other human ever has, and is therefore a complete variable. Unpredictable. Yet completely different from RK that he cannot help but feel drawn to the man.
“That was reckless, never do that again.”
“I won't make promises I can't keep.” Gavin grins, shivering in the evening air, but completely ignoring his own state as he checks on the cat.
It hisses at him and swipes a claw in the general direction of his closest body part. Gavin winces as the sharp claws rake over his arm, but only shifts his hold to hold the cat tighter.
RK carefully reaches out and gingerly runs his fingers through the fur at the cat's scruff.
“She has no owner.”
“What, you can tell that by petting it for a second?” Gavin looks more amused than convinced, but RK raises his hand, lets his nanite skin retract just enough so Gavin can see flickers of the white under his already pale skin.
“There's no chip.”
“You can do that?” RK doesn't know if he should be amused by Gavins disbelief, or insulted.
“I am…”
“Apparently equipped with every fucking piece of technology under the sun, so you keep reminding me. Wouldn’t even be surprised if you can explode my microwave from all the way out here.” He’s clearly amused by the exchange. Even if he keeps up a serious facade, Gavin has his tells. There's the slightest quirk at the corner of his mouth, and an even slighter tilt of the head. It's a combination of microexpressions he has catalogued often, and lately moreso.
“And you know she’s a she because…”
RK only raised an eyebrow. Gavin didn't even need to say whatever completely wrong technical term he was thinking of.
“Alright so what now?” Gavin asked as if be hadn’t been the one to jump off the bridge in the first place. RK had no real predesigned sequences for a situation like this. He was never meant to be helpful in the first place, so improvisation it was.
“You can let the cat go or bring it to a shelter, that’s up to you. You should, however, get dry or you’ll risk an infection.”
Gavin shrugged, uncharacteristically unbothered by his state for someone who complained about the slightest drizzle of rain.
“I could keep her.”
“Your lease does not allow for any pets, detective.”
At that, Gavin grins, leans into RK’s space slightly. “Yeah but if you don’t tell my landlord, and I don’t tell my landlord…” The implication of breaking his rent contract so easily throws RK into the smallest blip of yellow, but he catches himself immediately. He shouldn’t even consider helping Gavin in anything that is not as lawful as it can be but he cannot help but-
“Oh shit, fuck!”
There’s a grey streak shooting down the bank and disappearing into some underbrush, and Gavin is holding his face, clearly in pain. Nines takes his hands gently and pulls them away to assess the damage. There’s four parallel stripes of red down the side of his jaw, bleeding slighty.
“I swear I just shifted my hold on the little devil.” He mutters, eyes screwed shut. Likely to avoid RK being able to see the involuntary spring of tears in his eyes, the android deduces. A very human reaction.
“The lacerations are not deep and will heal within a matter of days.”
“I don’t care about the scratches, where did the cat go? We need to catch it.”
“I do not believe we will be able to find it now. My preconstrucion software was not written to calculate a cat’s erratic behaviour.”
“Oh fuck off, you can just say you don’t know, you know?”
Gavin is sitting down on the cold concrete, looking defeated, and still wet to the bone.
RK crouches down next to him, careful not to make contact with the damp ground, and holds out a handkerchief for Gavin to take.
Gavin stares at the square of fabric for a good while.
“Seriously?” He then asks, in a voice so utterly defeated that RK has to re-check if this action might be taken as offensive or otherwise uncalled for.
“You… you just carry that around? Did some asshat program you with 19th century dude behaviour? You can’t even… you don’t need... “ Gavin’s outburst tempers down with each word he says, and RK patiently holds out the fabric.
Gavin takes it.
“A kleenex would’ve been okay too, you know?” He finally mumbles against the stark white fabric pressed to his cheek.
“Do I look like I carry those with me?” RK asks.
“Nah, not really. What’s it for if you don’t get the sniffles?”
“Apparently for detectives who should go and get a rabies shot.”
“Oh, really. You sure it’s not to catch those android tears once I kick your ass?”
“Why don’t you figure it out?” RK asks, but there’s no heat behind his words. This is not an invitation to a fight, it’s just… something else. A provocation that he wants to go nowhere.
Gavin looks at him for a long moment before the tension goes out of his shoulders. RK catalogues sixteen different microexpressions that indicate his journey from actively alert, to giving into the new situation, to settling for letting the cat go. Still, RK knows the human is going to be coming here for the next few days, looking for the stray.
With a shrug, Gavin half turns, and starts walking.
“Guess I shouldn’t have expected too much. Nothing… hm.” He stops, thinks, then walks on. “That’s cats for you. Some of them just don’t appreciate the help. Or like their freedom.” He already sounds less sad about the whole thing.
In a way, RK supposes, they’re not that different, Gavin and the cat.
“You’re not likely to take any help offered either.” He tells him.
“Yeah but I’m... “ Gavin stops again, catching up to the implication. “Oh fuck you, I’m not a stray cat. I have a house.” He shoves RK, but the android, ever stalwart, already braced for the impact. He’s much too heavy for Gavin to move easily anyway.
“You have an apartment that barely qualifies as habitable. It’s not even a half-step up from being homeless.” RK shoots back.
“Fuck you.” Gavin says again, but this time it’s softer. Almost tame. But that might be the cold, since Gavin is also walking against the wind, his arms wrapped around his torso in a way that wants to be unconcerned, but RK has the technology to know he’s losing body temperature. It’s not quite hypothermia, but it’s getting there, and the weather isn’t exactly helping.
They’ve reached the bridge by now, and there’s some narrow maintenance steps leading up to the tarmac. RK puts his hand to Gavin’s shoulder, keeps him from climbing the steps.
“We will be faster if we continue down the bank. I’ll get your jacket.” It’s not something RK ever would have imagined himself doing, fetching things for the human, but he will excuse it this instance. This is his human after all, and he feels like he should at least make the effort to try and keep him healthy. Or as healthy as Gavin will ever allow himself to be.
The jacket is still where Gavin has stripped it off, discarded on the sidewalk. Cars are streaking past like it’s a piece of garbage abandoned on the side of the road, but RK carefully picks it up and folds it over his arm. This is Gavin’s jacket. Not just a piece of exchangeable garment, even he has figured that out by now. Gavin wears it most days, and when he isn’t he’s unconsciously fidgeting, because something is missing but he doesn’t know what. It’s soft from wear, the brown leather smelling like tobacco and pine needles for some reason. The scent tree in Gavin’s truck proves to be the most likely match.
He returns and hands the jacket to Gavin, who is leaning against the support arches of the bridge, shivering in the cold with his hands stuffed deep into his pockets.
He pulls it over his shoulders gratefully, but doesn’t offer a thanks. He never does. At least not verbally.
They walk in silence for a while, and Gavin actually stops shivering once there’s enough body heat trapped under the leather of his jacket. It’s not ideal, but it will do for now. At least, until they climb up the banks of the river and reach the storefronts.
There’s a coffee shop that’s still open, and RK can pinpoint the exact moment Gavin registers its existence by the way he perks up.
Coffee has proven time and again to be an incentive to get the detective to cooperate, or to put him into a better mood. Plus, it’s a hot drink. RK doesn’t know much about human health besides how to damage it, but he can also reverse-engineer some things.
“Stay here, I will be right back.” He instructs, and leaves Gavin standing outside with a pointed glance at his feet, where the concrete has taken on a darker shade from Gavin’s wet shoes. Gavins mood darkens again at being told to stay out, much as he reacts to any No that is thrown his way, but RK does not care. He’ll only be disgruntled for a few minutes, after all.
He returns with the largest takeaway cup of black coffee the shop had to offer, and Gavin only needs a second before he’s making grabby hands at it like it’s his sole reason to live. Colleagues have speculated it might be.
Gavin takes a sip and his face immediately crunches up into a grimace.
“This is black? Warn a guy, not everyone can take the full brunt of the colombian rainforest without further notice.”
This is another thing RK has noticed. Gavin will let everyone believe he likes his coffee, quote, black as his soul, but he actually only tolerates the taste for the results. He will absolutely down a full mug of black coffee to make a point, but if he has the choice, he’ll go for something to take the edge off. But there’s no milk in this coffee on purpose.
“Maybe next time you will not jump off of a bridge without further notice.” RK answers nonchalantly.
“Not like I fucking planned that. I saw the cat and I had to do something. It was drowning. Wonder how it got there in the first place...”
“You have put your own life over what could also have been very much not a cat, and jumped into a fast running river in the middle of the night. You could have easily lost your life, because I could not get to you!” RK stops himself from continuing and dials his volume parameters down again. He had not intended to get louder, but sometimes things just happened around the detective.
“Wait… you can’t swim?”
“No.”
“Seriously? After all this time of you telling me that you’re clearly superior to any human or machine, you can’t even swim?”
Nines stops at Gavin’s obvious glee. The human stops with him, so he takes the opportunity to slap the hot beverage out of his hands.
“Oy, what the fuck is wrong with you? I was drinking that! You just got me that!!”
Nines steps forward and grabs Gavin by the collar of his jacket, backs him up until he’s pressed into a rickety looking chain link fence. For once, he’s not concerned about any protruding wires that could possibly hurt Gavin, because clearly the humans own wellbeing is of no consequence to him.
“I had no possibility to get to you.”
“I had to do something.”
“For all you knew the cat could have already been dead. Or a toy, or anything else.”
“And I got it out alive, okay? I got out alive.”
“Maybe next time you will not.”
“There's not going to be a next time, I promise.”
“Empty promises do not inspire my confidence in you.” RK snaps back and starts walking away again. The conversation is already infuriating, but just as he expected, Gavin follows, jogging after him and adjusting the collar RK had pulled earlier.
“Listen, it’s my job to serve and protect, alright? I may be an ass but I still got like, a moral code. Plus I like cats better than humans anyway. Poor fucking thing was very likely not even at fault for ending up in the water.” Gavin explains. “Why the fuck can’t you swim?”
“I’m too heavy.”
“Oh you’re not that fat.”
They have reached the door that opens into the foyer of Gavin’s apartment complex, and RK wants nothing more than to leave him here, possibly to never return. Not to work, not to Detroit, just… there’s got to be a place where he can be at peace, because it’s clearly not here.
“My skeletal structure is made out of a durable titanium-alloy, my body does not have any deposits of fat tissue, and Thirium is three point one times as dense as blood. Do you require further explanation or should I sign you up for a physics class at the Wayne County Community College?”
“You’re serious.”
“Am I ever.”
“Calm down, I’m fine, alright?”
Gavin starts climbing the stairs, ignoring the elevator that is still broken. RK has already offered once to harass the company responsible for repairing the thing, but Gavin has declined his help, stating that he needs the workout. RK hasn’t offered again, and also did not ask about why Gavin also never takes any other elevator, no matter how many flights of stairs there are.
Gavin’s apartment is just as chaotic as the last time RK has seen it, only some things have been rearranged. The dishes in the sink, mercifully, seem to at least have been cleaned before being reused.
Gavin, standing in the living room and looking peculiarly lost for someone in his own space, is reaching up and scratching his fingers slightly over the scratches on his face, testing if they’re still stinging. By his wince, they are.
RK closes his eyes briefly, he knows his LED is yellow with preconstructions, could have let out a defeated sigh. It’s in his repertoire, but he doesn’t want this many human tells. Instead, he grabs Gavin’s forearm and turns him around, studies the four parallel, razor thin wounds. They’re not deep at all, but the skin around them is raised in welts and reddened. RK shakes his head softly.
“These will need to be cleaned.” He announces, and for once Gavin doesn’t resist. Instead, he walks into the bathroom and strips his wet sweater and shirt off. RK can see him rummage around in the cupboard through the open door, and fidget with the bottle of peroxide.
Something about the human trying to balance the sterile pads and the glass bottle on the thin rim of his washbasin makes him approach, take the items from his hands.
“Sit.” RK orders, and Gavin does.
Defeated, and slumped in a way that should not be possible on the sloped edge of the bathtub, but he does, for once, not complain about being ordered around.
RK reaches out and prods his jaw until Gavin’s head is tilted up. The human squints into the light, and the whole procedure was entirely unnecessary since RK can see well even in low light conditions, but he enjoys the feeling of control over Gavin, as fleeting as it is.
He opens the bottle, soaks a sterile pad in the solution.
“Why did you jump?” He asks again.
“You were there, there was -”
RK presses the cotton against Gavin’s jaw with entirely too much force and earns a pained hiss for his troubles.
“I was not asking about the circumstances. Why do you constantly disregard your own safety?”
“I’m perfectly fine.” Gavin bites out in answer, but RK isn’t finished.
“Not even considering your habits of smoking and drinking too much, you frequently request the most dangerous cases and have the highest injury rate in the precinct, you constantly take sparring too far and you’re continuously bruised in one way or another. I do not understand you, Gavin.”
“Guess I was made to antagonize.”
“This is not antagonization, this is self destruction. You care neither for your health nor your life.”
“Well why should I?”
At that, RK pauses. There’s a million variables being pushed through his processors, and not a lot of them are coming back with positive outcomes.
“Hey, hey RK. RK Nine Hundred. Nines.” Gavin is standing, and when did he stand up? He’s in front of RK, a hand on his shoulder, looking concerned.
“You went red there for a solid while. You good?” RK blinks at him, processors trying to catch up to a motion he’s already processing, and it’s coming back with a rather weird double sensation registering in his motion sensors. It must look weird to the human.
“You… You’re…”
“Relax, I’m not like, suicidal. It’s just.” Gavin squints at him, obviously not comfortable with the turn their conversation has taken. “Okay, do you know how you’re always telling me to get behind you, because obviously you’d rather take the bullet with your unbreakable fucking Terminator made from adamantium body than have it hit squishy old me? It’s sort of similar, but like, I know I’m getting hurt, but if it helps other people, why should I care?”
“You’re not as much of an asshole as you lead people to believe.”
“Yeah well. Don’t go make a fuss about it. It’s a reputation I intend to uphold.”
“I still don’t want to one day show up to find you dead in a ditch. Or at least seriously incapacitated.”
“That’s sweet of you.” The sarcasm is dripping off of Gavin’s words, but even so they’re not his usual level of venomous.
“I am being serious Gavin. I… Do you know how hard it is to predict humans?”
The question comes from far out of the left field, and it throws Gavin in a loop.
“What does that have to do with anything?” He asks. RK slaps a bandaid on his wound, finally.
“Ow, fuck, what did I do now? You started this cryptic fucking bullshit.”
“It has taken me entirely too long to learn even your behavioral patterns, simple as they are. I will not go through that trouble again.”
“That’s what this is to you? Convenience? Well what a nice fucking person you are.” Gavin stands, then pushes past RK and out of the bathroom. His bedroom door slams shut, and RK doesn’t know what to do now. For the second time today, and for the second time ever, he is truly at a loss.
But his programs are already running a language pattern analysis without even asking him for permission to do so, and the results are clear. The human has called him a person, not a machine, so not all seems to be lost.
There's a crash, and a dull thud, and a curse. More shuffling from behind the closed bedroom door, and then Gavin emerges again, wearing sweats and a dark green plaid flannel shirt.
He stops in the doorway, considering RK, who is still rooted to the spot. He’s rubbing his upper arm, just below the shoulder, clearly having been hurt somewhere in the process of exchanging his wet jeans for something dry, but at least his anger has dissipated quickly.
“You misunderstand me.” RK says. Gavin looks at him. He’s tired, clearly, but his eyes are as scrutinizing as ever. Eyebrows furrowed, his nose scrunched up because he should be wearing glasses but isn’t. But he doesn’t immediately shoot RK down.
Instead he shrugs and heads for the kitchen, where he starts rummaging around. Kettle on, mug out, and he produces a jar full of that disgustingly sweet chocolate chai instant coffee that has none of the three ingredients promised in its name in it. RK has given up on getting him to at least drink coffee with traceable ingredients, if he is consuming caffeine at all.
RK stands by the table, and Gavin leans against the counter, chews on a cold pop-tart and looks at the android for a while.
“Don’t just stand there like a street light. You were saying something.”
“You are not usually offering people chances to explain themselves.”
“Yeah do you want it or not? Because I could fall into bed and pretend to be dead for the next five hours.”
That word gives RK the necessary cue to continue where he was cut off earlier.
“You are not a convenience. Not to me, not to anyone. I don’t think anyone has ever thought anything you have ever done convenient. You’re... “ He stops, because this is not the direction he wants to be going. “I will not learn anyone else’s habits and character because I don’t want to. What you are is a remarkable human being who will put himself into harm's way to save others, all while telling them to piss off.” RK’s voice did a weird distortion as the last two words to signify them as a quote. Gavin snorted in amusement, but motioned for RK to go on.
“I don’t know what I will do should you die. I truly don’t. I have… gotten attached to you.” It’s not as hard to admit as he had thought. This is Gavin, after all. He already knows more about RK than even his creators do.
“You’ve what now?”
Rk sighs, crosses his arms over his chest.
“Okay, let me get this straight, you, big bad machine that you are, are officially admitting to having a feeling?”
“I would categorize it as such, yes.
“Well. I’ll call the newspapers.”
“They will want a trustworthy source, and you’re not likely to qualify.
“Oh yeah? I’ll just send them a picture of your linux-face.”
“My what?”
Gavin snickers at RK’s gobsmacked expression.
“Your fucking… you know whenever I’m telling people your coding is secretly based on ubuntu? That face. Trust me, that’s another real emotion you're having and I call it true disgust. That can not be achieved by any programming. The sheer loathing is hilarious in itself.“
“You truly are a menace to society.”
“And you like me anyway.”
“Surprisingly, yes.”
That stops Gavin in his tracks. Even though he wasn’t exactly joking, the confession isn’t something he was expecting.
“Well. You shouldn’t. I’m nobody’s favourite person for a reason. I got it on paper somewhere that I’m a certified grade A asshole. Someone actually wrote that down.”
He gestures into the general direction of the living room, implicating that the piece of paper is actually out there. RK tilts his head, trying to get a reading on Gavin’s vitals. He cannot quite figure out if he’s speaking the truth, exaggerating a half-truth that’s neither here nor there, or if he’s just taking the piss. The latter seems to be his usual modus operandi, so it does not even show up on RK’s polygraph parameters unless it’s rather obvious.
Another mystery that makes this particular human so interesting.
“You’re my favourite person.”
“Oh shut up, you know like, four people.” There’s a redness creeping up Gavin’s collar, invades his face, and RK catalogues the visual with amusement.
“You do know there are more than four people working at the precinct, yes?”
“I… yeah I know.”
Uncharacteristic, that. Usually Gavin would’ve shot back some quip, some borderline aggressive remark to get back at whoever was talking to him.
Today, he just takes the comment, leans back against the countertop, stares at the faded arabesque print of the linoleum.
He seems more tired than usual with his shoulders slumped, and the deep shadows under his eyes, courtesy of the nearly burnt out single light bulb of the kitchen lamp that casts the room in a dim yellow light. It would be cozy, if this was any other person’s space.
“Gavin.”
The human looks up at RK calling him by name. It doesn’t happen often. He looks tired, more so than usual, and it worries RK. He wants to do something, anything, to make this man feel even marginally better, but that’s a line he doesn’t know he’s allowed to cross. But Gavin’s reaction to hearing his name from RK, that bright look in his eyes and that slightest trace of a smile cutting through his usual scowl, that has to be worth something.
“I may not be good at expressing feelings, but I do have them. I wasn’t asked if I wanted to feel anything at all, but I find that I don’t mind them that much. There’s always positives and negatives.” Rk starts to explain. They’re standing opposite of each other, trapped in the room by that warm cone of light that makes anything outside of it feel unimportant. Maybe it is.
“You make me… feel. A lot.”
Gavin looks at him for some time, obviously not sure how to react.
“Good feelings, or bad feelings?” He then asks. It’s a valid question.
“You make me want to stay with you. You make me want to stay not for a reason, but because you are there. Around you I feel like I wasn’t built to hurt people, and I -”
Gavin stops him by leaning forward and grabbing his wrist.
“Don’t say something you don’t mean, alright? I know you’re new to the whole emotions thing, but… don’t take me as the measure of things, alright?”
“Oh believe me, I wouldn’t. You’re the furthest from everything I’ve ever considered myself wanting.” He’s quicker than Gavin pulling away, and grips Gavin’s hand, tangles his fingers with the human’s. “And yet here we are.” It’s a gamble, after Gavin’s initial reaction to his unfinished confession.
Gavin looks down at their joined hands and there’s something around his lips that only RK could categorize as a smile because he can pick up on his microexpressions.
“You really have a way with words, don’t you?”
“If you do not interrupt me, at least.”
Gavin chuckles at that, gives RK’s hand a little squeeze. He’s losing his hesitance.
“But seriously. Don’t just… stick with me because you don’t have any comparison. I’m not what anyone needs, and you could honestly do better.”
“If you want me to leave, you just have to say it.” Gavin tenses at RK’s words, and the android knows it’s a gamble between Gavin’s insecurities and abandonment issues. But it’s the one thing he has to figure out. His heart rate has spiked too, hammering away at a pace that suggests he’s working something out in that brain of his.
“Nines…” He’s unsure how to speak, but RK gives him the time he needs.
“I’m not… I’m not going to kick you out, fuck. You’re the only one who has even tried to stick with me this long. I don’t think I could even make you leave.”
“If you told me to, I would go.”
“Well I’m not going to!” Gavin speaks up sharply. “I just don’t know what you see in me when everyone else has declared me an arrogant asshole within five minutes.”
“You are an ass. But you’re also straightforward. I do not have to work out the meaning behind your words, because you will tell me. In fact, I don’t think you could build a metaphor if your life depended on it.”
“Oh fuck you, I can too.” He starts forward, but RK maneuvers their still tangled hands in a way that pulls Gavin flush against him.
“You are at the same time very hard to predict. I could never perfectly compute what you will do, and that in itself is quite a feat. It’s why it scared me to lose you, earlier. I could have lost you, and I wouldn’t have seen it coming.” RK confesses.
Gavin, cheek pressed against RK’s chest, doesn’t answer, but his posture has gone from aggressively defensive to actually approaching peaceful. RK counts it as a point in his favour. He does allow himself to wrap an arm around Gavin, slip his hand between the layer of green flannel of Gavin’s shirt and his undershirt. It’s not quite full contact, but RK isn’t sure even now that the human would welcome anything more.
“I’ve… you’re not going to leave, right?” Gavins asks. RK squints down at him, even though he can only see the crown of Gavin’s head. He puts his other hand at the nape of Gavin’s neck, scratches idly through the short hair there.
“Since you are not telling me to leave, I’m staying.” RK says, and Gavin finally puts his own arms around the android, slumps against him with his full weight. There’s that emotional release.
“But don’t jump off any bridges again.”
“I will make no such promises.” Gavin mutters against RK’s shirt. He’s sounding tired, more so than earlier when he already looked like he hadn’t properly slept in days. “Would make me too predictable.” He grabs a handful of RK’s shirt and uses it to haul himself up, get face to face with the android. They’re only inches apart, and Gavin seems to realize this slowly. He doesn’t pull away though. Something is keeping him where he is, torn between wanting to stay, and unable to back away.
“Nines…” he says, unsure how to continue, but wanting to keep the android’s attention nonetheless. RK lets his hands trail idly, and Gavin melts into the motion. There’s something about him being very obviously touch starved coming into RK’s thoughts, and he wonders about the last time when Gavin actually had the luxury of human contact that was not a mandated sparring session, or had something to do with having a perp in a restraining position.
It makes him feel even more for Gavin.
And there’s that.
That emotion that has been gnawing at the back of his processors, the one unexplainable variable in a completely logically structured system. That ghost of a computing string that has haunted him for months now, possibly as long as he has known Gavin.
He doesn’t know what to call it, since there are no words for what a machine is feeling except those borrowed from humans.
But he thinks it might be love.
Or at least something that has all the marks of being very similar.
And he has thought about it. He always feared that his deviancy would bring unwanted feelings with it, feelings that seemed to enable people to lose control over what they were doing, encouraging them into odd, illogical behaviours.
This, however, seems to be the most logical thing he can think of. It’s a progression, a relationship they have both worked on, and if it culminates in… love, then so be it. He likes Gavin. More than he should. More than he ever thought he would ever like anyone. Gavin’s earlier escapades just hammered shut the last nail in RK’s metaphorical coffin. There is no life after Gavin. Or at least not one that RK deems one he wants to experience.
RK lets his touch fade from Gavin’s neck, uses his fingers instead to gently tilt his head up.
The look in Gavin’s eyes is more an answer than a question.
“You can still back out, you know?” Gavin murmurs, even as he leans closer into the touch. And that’s it. That last way out that Gavin provides, born out of his weird combination of self-depreciation and being an utter asshole, is what does it for RK.
He pulls Gavin in more than he leans forward and the human comes willingly, letting himself fall against RK in something that might be exhaustion, or might be trust. There’s no doubt in his eyes though, so RK bridges the last gap between them, and kisses Gavin.
Immediately, the last bit of tension goes out of Gavin, and RK has to practically hold him so he doesn’t completely melt, possibly down to the floor.
But his lips are surprisingly soft, shifting against RK’s after only the slightest hesitation, trying to figure out how to move with the android.
RK has his eyes closed and allows himself the luxury of simply feeling, as far as he can with all his programs running on high. But under all his analytics, there’s still Gavin, running hot like his anger, and so very alive in his arms. Maybe RK does tighten his arms around him a bit at the thought of Gavin-not-alive, but that's not what he wants to think about.
“You taste weird.” He mutters against RK’s lips once he comes up for air, but that doesn’t stop him for kissing RK again. It’s languid this time, less rushed and more like he’s taking his time memorizing the feeling.
“It’s the ethanol in my saliva. It acts as a disinfectant.” RK states.
Gavin blinks up at him, trying to decipher how the words fit together.
“Fuck do I need to go to the hospital now?” He asks, but immediately cracks up into a tired grin.
“You should, but not because of this.”
“If you’re trying to make me go because of my suicidal ideation, you’re too late, i worked that out years ago.” Gavin jokes, and only half means it.
“You should go because even I don’t know what exactly is in this river. It worries me to know you have most likely ingested some of it.”
“Well… you can kiss me about it some more. That’ll disinfect me.” Gavin quips back and steals another kiss, lets it deepen enough to get another taste of RK before he lets it fade, rests his head against RK’s shoulder with a soft laugh, then yawns against the fabric of the android’s jacket.
“You’re tired.”
“Am not.”
“Gavin, you jumped into a river and that you didn’t die with that undertow is either pure luck or took an incredible amount of strength out of you. On top of that you’ve been wet and out in the open for very long. You’re very obviously tired.”
“Am not.” Gavin repeats, more to rile RK up than to actually disagree, but he knows RK is right. Tomorrow is gonna be hell, but tonight is a strange twilight zone where things are not as they normally are.
RK moves forward, carefully but persistently maneuvers Gavin in the direction of his bedroom. Gavin lets him, testament to his trust in the android, and moves backwards with him, trusts him not to let him hit any door frames.
They reach the bed, RK’s night vision letting him see enough of his surroundings to not stumble over any of the laundry and knickknacks scattered across the floor, and he gets Gavin situated on the side of it.
“You know I…” Gavin starts, but then hesitates. Unusual, for him, this hesitance. RK stands before him, not entirely sure how to continue with the situation. He doesn’t know Gavin like this. Open, and letting himself actually be vulnerable for once in his life. It’s not bad, but it’s a side of Gavin RK has not learned how to handle yet. It’s easy, right now, but that doesn’t mean it will be. He leans down once more, checks Gavin’s tells, and kisses him again.
“You’re tired. Sleep.”
“Will you stay?” Gavin asks, the question slipping out like he’s been mulling it over anyway. His heartbeat is elevated, and despite the dark his pupils are wider than they should be. Something about the question is making him uncomfortable, despite his words being steady.
“If you want me to. But you will sleep.”
“That sounds like an order.”
“It’s a clarification. I know you link certain… connotations to shared use of a bed-”
“Jesus, NInes. Just say you’re not going to fuck me.” He sounds half relieved and half disappointed even after cutting into RK’s words, and the android takes it with amusement.
RK steps forward and presses Gavin down onto the mattress, leans over him as he does so. Immediately, Gavin’s heart rate spikes again, and hard. RK lets his hand rest on Gavin’s throat for a while, feels his pulse against the palm of his hand, feels a second spike as he leans down, presses his mouth against Gavin’s once more, but lets it evolve into something sweet and languid.
This is new, and they have time to explore whatever this is, between them. How far they are willing to take it, and when.
But that’s not going to be tonight, because tonight Gavin is exhausted, and RK has a lot of things to parse through and extrapolate.
Tonight, he thinks, he might enjoy just having his human beside him, so he slips out of his shoes and jacket, lets them fall to the floor carelessly, and lets himself sink onto the mattress next to Gavin.
Gavin exhales shakily, but turns to lie on his side and face RK. He probably can’t even see him properly in the dark, except for the few stark outlines RK’s LED can reach with it’s steady blue glow.
“So.” Gavin says, and lets the word rest between them for a while. “This is… this is not gonna stop being what it is tomorrow, just because it’s a new day?”
“Not unless you want it to.” RK says, giving Gavin an option he doesn’t even want him to consider. This is… good. He likes being this close to Gavin.
“I don’t.” Gavin says with conviction. Then he closes his eyes, exhales with some force, as if to manifest something in his own mind. “Not a word to anyone though. This stays between me and you.”
“Whatever you want.”
Gavin laughs at RK’s words. “Whatever I want, huh?” He asks, then moves closer, presses himself against RK until the android has an arm around him. “Right now I just want to sleep.”