Work Text:
Gavin's drink gets spiked.
Part of him is flattered. Another part of him is somewhere in the vicinity of ironic gratitude that he knows the first symptoms well enough to act on them.
Mostly, he's terrified. He has minutes before he'll comply with every demand made of him, and in his paranoia, he can almost feel the drug course through him with every beat of his heart, drowning out the bass in his ears. His mind races through his options. His phone almost slips out of his palm. He can't go puke in the restrooms, or he'll be cornered. He needs to get out, and he needs support. But he didn't tell anyone about his sad, desperate bar crawl, and Tina is on a date...
His finger lands on the number of his stick-up-the-ass robot partner. That'll do.
They don't have that kind of relationship, but Gavin thinks — hopes — that he can trust the robot to keep him safe even off duty. (And, if he's otherwise occupied with whatever passes for social life for someone like RK900, Gavin gives little enough of a shit to intrude on it.)
"Detective Reed," comes the frosty greeting.
"Hey, uh. I need help, Nines."
"And you are asking me?"
Gavin snorts. "Yeah. Listen, I got something slipped in my drink. I'm not gonna be thinking for myself for much longer. Talk me through going home, or someone else will."
There is the briefest pause, and Gavin almost thinks he'll be left to his own devices, but—
"Accessing your location now." Nines' voice does not change in pitch or tone, but the words come a little faster than usual. "An autocab will be with you in about three and a half minutes. Leave the club and turn left. Keep walking. Do not hang up."
"Okay, google," Gavin snickers and elbows his way towards the exit. "Are you doing that Big Brother thing and watching me?"
"I am."
Gavin blanks for a second.
"You are being followed. Keep moving."
"Yeah," Gavin breathes, feeling the cold grip of fear in his gut at the same time as the sickening fog of the drug blurs the edges of his vision. "Nines, talk to me."
"I am rerouting a closer cab. Stay in sight of the entrance when you make it to the street. The car should be pulling up— dodge left!"
Gavin ducks, nearly falling to his knees, and someone stumbles forward where he was a second before.
"Eyes on the door. Do not stop."
"Yes," Gavin mumbles. His legs feel wooden, but the exit is getting closer, so muscle memory must be carrying him still. Nines' voice drones in his ear, words bleeding together and pulling Gavin ahead.
There's an autocab idling by the curb. Its doors open when Gavin comes close. He stumbles inside.
He thinks he hears praise from the speakers of his phone before it slips from his fingers. He grunts in protest, but his hand doesn't cooperate well enough to bring it back to his ear.
"Take deep breaths," Nines' voice rings suddenly all around him. Gavin yelps, then obeys.
The lights and colors outside the car blur into a dizzying kaleidoscope, snatching bits and pieces of Gavin's consciousness with them.
Dimly, he thinks he's glad he's getting ever closer to that voice that wraps around him like something physical and comforting.
He snaps awake feeling both drunk and hungover. Everything is bright and hard around him.
He is not in his bedroom.
He sits up in spite of the nausea, panic overwhelming discomfort for a moment. Was he with someone? He's on the floor — barren, clean — and scrambles back against an equally barren wall, one hand fumbling between his legs. He’s dressed, and feels normal enough, aching back and sickness aside...
Something stiff and white, smelling like faux leather that's never been worn, slides off his shoulder, and he gapes at the glowing blue triangle and ANDROID printed in silver on black for a moment.
"Settle down," comes a command in a familiar tone. Gavin’s eyes snap up.
The only thing breaking the monotony of the small white room is RK900, standing at ease in a corner opposite Gavin and looking down at him with an expression that is somewhere to the left of his usual resting bitch face.
"What the fuck," Gavin groans, voice rasping and not his own.
Nines hesitates, then opens a door to his side and disappears for a moment. He emerges with a cup of water before Gavin can begin to rein in his racing thoughts. "Here," he says, extending the cup awkwardly from five feet away, "drink this."
Gavin's head is pounding, his guts are staging a revolt, and every muscle in his body is sore. "C'mere with that, dipshit," he groans when his heart slows down and he can find his voice again. "My legs aren't working. What the fuck happened?" He squints at the robot. "Did we fuck? Tell me before I'm awake enough to be horrified by the idea."
"We— did not," Nines says. Was that a stutter? Gavin can't muster enough brainpower to analyze that when the water finally makes it within his reach and he downs it carefully, wary of his unsettled stomach. "You called me when you realized you had been drugged."
"Shit, that happened," Gavin mutters. "So what am I doing in this— storage unit?"
"You lost consciousness in the taxi. I elected to have it bring you to my residence, so that I could ensure your safety until morning."
"You live like this?!"
"This apartment meets all my needs—"
"Fuck, okay. So it didn't cross your mind that if you're gonna harbor a filthy, drunk human, they might — how do I put this — require human amenities?" Gavin's voice wavers in pitch, mocking.
Nines remains silent. Gavin drains the rest of his water.
"It really didn't," he concludes.
"I was... concerned that you would not wake up if I simply let the taxi drive you home," the android states. "Bringing you here until you could be trusted to take care of yourself was the better option."
Gavin wants to give him more shit for it, but his gaze falls to the jacket pooled in his lap, and to his own, folded neatly to serve as an impromptu pillow.
The fight leaves him.
His hand squeezes his belt one last time, just to chase off the last of the fear coursing through his veins.
"So you put me in the recovery position on your goddamn floor and watched me for — what time is it, anyway?" He scrambles for his phone, but his jacket pockets only hold his keys and wallet.
"Five hours, eighteen minutes," Nines says. "It is 5:47AM, Sunday, April—“
"Okay, I don't need the details. I’m going home. A man needs an actual bed to recover from bullshit like that."
Gavin ignores Nines' brows pinching minutely and makes himself get up and leave. He stumbles out of the little apartment and down to the street, glad to find a cab by the curb. He's too sick to worry about his robot partner putting him up while he was passed out after the shittiest night off he's had in years — all he wants is to purge, shower, feed his cats, and collapse into bed with curtains drawn against the morning sun.
He manages all of that — and then his doorbell rings right before he can pull the covers up and pass the fuck out.
"No," he mumbles into his pillow. "Fuck off."
As if to spite him for that attitude, the goddamn ringer goes off again.
And doesn't stop.
And still doesn't stop.
"Cock-sucker!" Gavin bellows and gets up.
The buzzer falls silent when he enters the hallway. Good. Maybe the soggy piece of shit outside does have a shred of self-preservation.
Gavin all but tears the door from its hinges to open it and directs the full force of his glare at the intruder.
"You left your phone behind," RK900 offers in the smallest voice Gavin's ever heard out of any android — and he's seen plenty being intimidated by the very murder machine before him.
"Jesus Christ," he mutters. "Who the fuck taught you manners?"
"Connor, for the most part," the bot replies, almost smugly. "...I would ask you the same question, but you have no manners to ask about."
Gavin blinks at him dumbly.
"I'm never drinking again. Call an ambulance, I'm hallucinating that you're sassing me."
The corner of Nines' mouth twitches and a faint crackle emits from his throat. "Based on your personality, an insult seemed the quickest way to defuse the situation," he offers, deadpan as ever. "Your phone, detective."
He lifts one hand, holding the device — and then the other, with a paper bag hanging from his long fingers. "I also brought you breakfast, to make up for my subpar lodgings. And because I doubted you'd be in any state to prepare a suitable meal—"
"I get it, asshole," Gavin says, stepping aside to let the bot in. "Idiot meatbag can't take care of himself, so you did your research, hm?"
"I did," Nines admits softly.
If Gavin weren't still sick and at least half pissed, he'd find it adorable. As he is, he realizes too late that he just invited RK home.
He forces half of a sandwich and most of a disgusting looking smoothie down, and miraculously, his stomach settles. He swallows the ibuprofen RK places before him with gratitude.
Mind and body placated, he finds it in himself to make an effort to be civil to his guest.
"I'm going to sleep all day," he mutters, fiddling with a napkin on his kitchen counter. "Don't feel like dying either, so you can go now, I guess. But, uh." He looks at the android, whose gaze barely left him since he opened the door. He should probably find it far more unsettling than he does, but it feels — okay. Nines is just like that. "Listen — I owe you one for last night, so. Thanks for looking out for me." He cracks a shitty grin. "Bad at it as you were."
Nines' mouth twitches. "Not at all, detective. You were in danger. I am glad you trusted me to help. I hope we both learned from it."
"Yeah, I'll watch my drinks," Gavin grumbles, half-hearted.
"I meant that you can rely on me," Nines says carefully. "We are partners, after all."
Several responses come and die on Gavin's lips.
"Alright," he concedes after a pause. "But I'm not letting you watch me sleep again. And — did you seriously hack the bar's cameras to keep tabs on me? Because that's illegal, or some shit. I hallucinated that. Drugs, you know. Plausible deniability. Don't do that again."
"Of course, detective," Nines agrees, and there's that quirk of a smile again. "I hope you rest well. I will see you at work tomorrow."
"Yeah, you know where the door is." Gavin bites down on a smile as he says it. "And learn some contractions."
"I'll think about it," Nines says.
The door clicks shut behind him.
Gavin wonders briefly if he'll think that this interaction was a fever dream when he wakes up.
Just before he drifts off, a small part of him decides that he hopes not.