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It began with a confession to Rudy, while Dorian was laid out on the slab, wires everywhere and iridescent purple fluid oozing from his bullet-ridden frame. One eye was all pupil while the other was partially shattered, the cheekbone beneath shot completely off, and he looked... well, dead. John knew he wasn't, because they'd exchanged snark-filled jabs not five minutes earlier (“I guess this is goodbye. I'll be trading your junk ass in for one of the new female model MXs” - “I can't blame you, since that's the only way you'd get a girl to stay with you longer than a week - assuming you don't push her out of your car”), right before Rudy had to take him offline, but it was still unsettling.
Close calls were an everyday occurrence, but this one had left Dorian in the worst shape John had seen in over a year of working together, and it scared him. In a macabre coincidence, Dorian’s right leg was mostly gone from the knee down. He’d joked afterward that now they matched, and maybe John could let him try out his leg - then immediately looked remorseful when John barely forced a smile in reply.
Still, they were both alive, if not entirely well, and now that the adrenaline was gone John felt shaky and drained. His leg hurt like a bitch and the prosthetic was beeping its low-charge warning at him incessantly. He knew it would be hours, maybe even days before Rudy got Dorian fixed up, but his hand was clenched over Dorian's cold, unresponsive one, and he couldn't make himself let go just yet.
“I am so goddamn lucky Dorian is a cop instead of an astronaut, or my ass would have been grass ten times over by now.” The words came out in a gruff, near-mumble, and John barely realized he had spoken aloud before Rudy was answering.
“Well, ah, of course he wouldn't actually have been an astronaut; he would have been stripped down for parts, primarily the trimidium circuits...” The scientist trailed off, clearly focused on his work rather than John. “But it's nicer to let him believe he would have just been doing space station maintenance, yeah? Like- like one of Asimov's robots. Wouldn't want him dwelling overmuch on the... precariousness of his existence. Really, he's just as fortunate your return necessitated his reactivation. So I guess you're even.” Rudy punctuated this by sticking his whole gloved hand into Dorian's chest to work something loose with a sickening pop.
John frowned and looked away; he didn't like thinking about the precariousness of Dorian's existence, either. He'd already lost one partner, lost way too damn much. He couldn't lose Dorian. On the heels of that revelation, he was struck with the morbid thought of some other decommissioned DRN being recycled to provide the parts Rudy needed for repairs. The idea made his stomach turn; he could only imagine how Dorian would feel about that.
If it did happen, would he or Dorian be able to tell? Would he be different? Were DRN parts marked in some way, that he could run a diagnostic and discover oh this was my friend's eye, and now it's mine (if Dorian even had memories of other DRNs)? Or were there just surplus DRN parts boxed up in a warehouse somewhere? Well, that was a nicer thought.
“Yeah, right... I'll just... leave you to it then. I need a drink.” The last comment was muttered under his breath as he headed out of the lab. Life had been so much simpler when he thought of androids as machines instead of people. Maybe if he drank enough, the alcohol would kill the nagging conscience he'd developed.
*********
It was late by the time John got home. He had to go back to the station and suffer through an out-briefing with Sandra over the fiasco (“Come on, Captain, it was just one little building, and we got the guy, that’s what counts, right?”). His leg had just enough charge to beep sadly at him as he forced it to get him around the kitchen, to heat up some leftovers and reach his alcohol. He paid zero attention to the crap on his vidscreen as he ate, the events of the day playing too insistently in his head. Mainly the part where Dorian got shot up.
As it turned out, drinking alone just made him more melancholy, so John stowed the bourbon and crutched off to bed. He briefly considered a shower before discarding the idea as requiring too much energy. Curling under his sheets, he willed his racing brain to just give into sleep, but the alcohol added a gnawing loneliness that bolstered his insomnia. He stared into the dark, thinking about Pelham (and so, unavoidably, Anna), and Dorian, and all the androids with Dorian's face that had been shut down and recycled like so much scrap metal.
Dorian, eyes bright and laughing, arm around his shoulder - wearing that cheeky half-grin as he teases him, and John can feel an answering smile on his own face. This is how it should be.The moment seems suspended, captured like a photograph, and John is content to stay this way.
Then Dorian's face freezes in shock, and he chokes on his words, sputtering blood instead.
Blood.
Why is there blood?
His gaze lands on the gaping wound in his partner's abdomen, and when he looks back up, Pelham is staring at him with confused, glassy eyes. He manages to speak, but the words are not what he’s expecting.
“John, your leg...”
His leg is gone, just a bloody stump, and there's so much pain. He crawls, every movement agony, but he has to get away. Pelham/Dorian? is laying beside him, bleeding out onto the pavement. A hand lands on his arm, and he looks over. Pelham/Dorian's? eyes are black, all pupil, but he's speaking again. The words sound like they’re coming from far away, in strange voices.
“You can have mine. I won't be needing it anymore.”
Noise. An explosion. No, a siren.
John's alarm pulled him from the nightmare. His shirt was soaked with clammy sweat and it took him a few minutes to realize he'd fallen asleep. The images of the dream began to recede, leaving him only with the overwhelming need to make sure Dorian was all right.
He sat in the shower and told himself that Rudy would call when Dorian was ready to be picked up.
Hooking on his leg, he told himself that if he went over there now, he would just be met with blank black eyes (if Rudy had even replaced the broken one already) and internal robotics strewn about.
As he got in the car, coffee in hand, he told himself that his partner would be fine and he just had to wait.
*********
One of Rudy's eyes was magnified comically by his headpiece when he glanced up at John stomping down the stairs. “Oh, good morning, John. I'm afraid I have quite a bit more left to do before Dorian is ready to go.” It looked like he was currently reconstructing the bot's face.
John stopped beside the table and stared at his prone partner, resisting the urge for some kind of physical contact. “Yeah I, uh... I was hoping I could talk to him- just for a few minutes. About a case.”
“I'm sorry, but several parts needed replacing and they've not arrived yet. He can't function without them. If you need it right away, though, I could plug him into my interface and pull the files up for you?”
John grimaced, remembering Dorian's reaction the last time Rudy had gone sifting through his head while he was unconscious. “No, it can wait. Never mind.” It had just been an excuse, anyway. “Can you give me a time frame of when I should come back?” John tried for nonchalance, but sounded worried to his own ears. Luckily, Rudy was less perceptive when it came to people than tech.
“Mmmmm, well, I should be all finished by tomorrow morning? But I told you I'd call.”
“Right. It's just...” John scrambled for another excuse, anything to make what he was about to say sound less ridiculous than it was, but nothing came to him. He blew out a breath and decided to just be as confident about it as possible. “I want to be here to wake him back up, okay?”
Rudy looked up in surprise, stammering, “O-of course, though I'll still have a couple of tests to run after?”
“Fine, not like I can get anything done without him anyway. Whatever you need to do. See you tomorrow.”
*********
The rest of the day was unproductive. John flipped listlessly through his open case files, turning over old information again and again. He gave Valerie a half-hearted smile when she asked about Dorian, assuring her he was fine and would be back tomorrow. When lunch rolled around he got a fresh cup of coffee from the breakroom, a donut from the machine, and indulged his inner masochist by reading a few articles from the DRN decommissioning period. It was as grim as could be expected, and further darkened his already morose state of mind.
“Missing your boyfriend, Kennex?” Richard. Of course.
John couldn’t even muster a proper rejoinder. He shot the other detective a glare and growled, “Step off, shortstacks. Some people got work to do.”
Richard just let out a huff and rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Kennex, that all you got?” but he went on his way, the tall shadow of his MX behind him.
By the time his shift was over, John’s stomach was complaining loudly about the lack of any real food, so he went out for noodles. Dorian’s absence was keenly apparent. No banter, no rock-solid presence beside him, just anxiety prickling at his neck because he had no one to watch his back. He knew he was being ridiculous. It was just one day - like one of his days off, when he also didn’t see Dorian.
But lately, he had been missing Dorian on his days off. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like if he'd said yes to Dorian moving in. Then he would realize what he was thinking about and try and forget he'd even entertained the idea.
God, this kind of dependency on a robot couldn't be healthy. He really needed to broaden his social circle or something, but his series of failures on the dating scene weren't exactly encouraging. He just hadn't connected with any of them. Which lead him to thinking about the time Dorian had asked if he really believed there was someone out there for everyone.
He still did - and remembering the sad but hopeful look on his partner's face when he'd said so...
Everything came back to Dorian. They'd been circling something for months now - or perhaps more accurately, Dorian had been herding him while John did his best to stay just out of range, by laughing off the flirting, and ignoring (not missing) the more subtle things. But now that John was being all reflective and shit, he was having a hard time maintaining his usual stance of it's all joking, nothing to see here, just partners.
He shook his head, berating himself. He needed to wake the fuck up. Was he seriously contemplating this? What the hell was wrong with him? Dorian was an android, and City property to boot. Their partnership was tenuous enough already, with the ever-present possibility of Dorian being deactivated again. And maybe this reconsideration of Dorian's intentions was stupid anyway – the innuendo and flirting were just part of his sense of humor; the little touches, looks, and words just platonic affection.
Which was fine. John liked what they had just... fine. Everything was fine and it was perfectly normal to be concerned about and miss your partner when you spent so much time together. It was normal to look forward to going to work every day if it meant you'd be helping people – even if you couldn't stand the thought of doing it with anyone else.
John finished his noodles and headed home, fighting the desire to drink himself into a stupor. He didn't need a repeat of the previous night. Instead, he put his leg on the charger and alternated between upper body and core exercises until his muscles were burning pleasantly. He'd worked up a sweat but wasn't that tired, so he put his leg back on and got on the treadmill, letting his mind turn off as he focused on his breathing and the rhythm of his feet.
He was approaching five miles when the chronic ache in his stump became a cramp and he slapped the treadmill off with a curse. He fell to the side, biting back a sob as he massaged the jumping muscles. It had been too long since he pushed himself that hard in one stretch, apparently. He lay gasping on the floor awhile before he could motivate himself to get up and put his prosthetic back on the charger.
The heat of the shower felt amazing. John sat in the spray, zoning out for a good ten minutes, until he realized he was falling asleep and should probably at least soap up. His arms protested even the minor movements required to wash his hair and scrub himself down, and he had to lean on the wall, leg shaking, to towel off. When he finally collapsed exhausted into his pillows his aching body felt far away, and his last thought was gratitude for the enveloping softness.
Blue eyes sparkle with challenge, a smirk on those full lips, and John is determined to prove he doesn't need to run the O-Course – by running the O-Course.
“I have modified my power output to match the average readings from a human male police officer in the 35-42 age bracket. Is that fair?”
“Don't need a damn handicap to keep up with a rustbucket like you. Let's do this.”
“Whatever you say, John.” John maybe feels like punching that smirk right off Dorian's unfairly perfect face, but also doesn't feel like breaking his hand. “Clock starting in 3...2...1... Go!”
John takes off in a sprint to get the lead on Dorian. It may have been awhile, but he's run this dozens of times. He could do it in his sleep. The first climbing wall is cake with his new leg – he vaults over it, then clambers up the concrete pipe bridge, looking forward slightly rather than down at his feet, to keep his momentum up. He clears the ditch leap, then has to slow down to sidle along the curb and into the zig-zag run.
“Not bad so far, for an old man.”
He can hear Dorian's footfalls right behind him and turns on the Cheetah, running up the steep slope and jumping off without slowing. The impact jars his leg and sends pain shooting all the way to his back. He bites off a curse. No way is he going to let Dorian see him stumble, but he makes sure to be more careful with his landing after scaling the next high wall.
A series of hurdles and his breaths are coming harder. He vaults another low wall and takes a second to evaluate the fast-moving punching bag pendulums. There is a hologram to make it look like a three-lane road, with the punching bags visible as cars driving by at different speeds and in different directions. While he's stopped, Dorian glides through them like water. He follows, resisting the urge to shout something about how it must be nice to have a computer in your head to calculate that shit instantly. He doesn't get hit by the pendulums, but neither does he do it with Dorian's grace.
Only a few obstacles left. He takes the stairs three at a time to catch up, thankful for the slight advantage of longer legs.
“Fancy meeting you here.” He shoulder-checks Dorian into the half-wall simulating the stair well and gains the lead again. Up the rest of the stairs, dodge through the protruding pipes, and down again. His lungs are burning and his leg aches, but the last two obstacles are easy – wall dodge and the crowd-sim pendulums.
He's through the walls and starting through the crowd, dodging buskers and people with strollers and others in business suits, when he hears one of the hologram people shout
“Hey!” and a he can't avoid the guy suddenly pushed into him from the side– by Dorian. John's indignant yell of protest is cut off when Dorian shoves another person at him, this time straight-on, and he's already off-balance –
The bottom of the bag hits his solar plexus on the up-swing and John goes down hard, gasping like a fish out of water. Dorian is immediately leaning over him, hands on his shoulders, blue circuits lighting up as he scans for injuries.
“I'm sooo sorry, man, are you okay?”
John glares up at him until he gets his breath back and spits out, “You fucking dirty cheater. I was winning.”
Relief softens the android's face before it's replaced by a smirk, “Dirty, huh? Well, I have been dreaming about getting you on your back, John. I saw the opportunity and took it.”
John feels his face heat as he takes in their positions. He shoves at the android's arms and mutters, “Get off, you damn pervy bot.”
Dorian's smirk turns into an all-out leer. “Get off? That an order? Or maybe you want me to get you off.”
John freezes. What did he just say? Dorian never said that. Dorian laughed and let John push him off, then helped him up and promised not to play dirty any more – “Unless you ask,” smirking, of course.
Dorian shifts to straddle John's waist. The pendulums, the course has disappeared. They are in John's bed and he's breathing fast and suddenly very hard. Dorian's fingers dig into his shirt and he leans down, pressing his groin against John's, bringing their faces close, until he can almost feel his partner's lips brushing his when he says “All you have to do is ask.”
“I don't... what are you-” John's stutters are cut off by a groan when Dorian rolls his hips and grinds his ass down against John's clothed erection. It feels amazing and perfect, but it's wrong because this didn't happen it wouldn't happen and
The alarm blared him back to consciousness. John blinked groggily and discovered his hand was wrapped around his dick. He groaned, stroking a few times until his brain caught up. How the hell was he going to face Dorian after jerking off to a fantasy of him? The dream was bad enough, but not under his control. If he kept going, he'd feel like a creeper, and no orgasm was worth the awkwardness he'd feel around his partner.
His erection persisted through this mental shaming, and a little voice in his head whispered Dorian wouldn't want you to be backed up. He forced himself to think of naked MXs, and when that wasn't enough, resorted to a cold shower.
*********
John was wound up with anxiety by the time Rudy called, halfway through the morning. He closed out of his work station and practically ran out of the precinct, heart ratcheting in his chest. He was eager to get his partner back, so they could get to work and he could throw himself into the next case. Then everything would be back to normal. For Dorian, pretty much no time had gone by anyway; there was no reason for anything to be different.
Rudy was occupied with something on his multiple screens when John arrived, so he ended up staring at Dorian, who looked almost the same as the first time John had woken him up, DRN onesie and all. The deja-vu was very strong, except this time around he felt his face heating as he appraised Dorian’s body on display beneath the form-fitting suit. He almost jumped guiltily when Rudy brandished the metal wand at him. “You were going to do the honors?”
He took it wordlessly, mouth gone dry, and moved the wand to the side of Dorian’s neck.
Dorian’s eyes came into focus and he sat upright with the oddly robotic motion echoed from the first time. Then there was that smile, as he turned to face John, and John felt like his stomach had just gone down an elevator without him.
“So, how long was I out?” His expression was so warm. John was not prepared for this. Going back to normalcy was going to be harder than expected.
He cleared his throat, “Uh, less than two days. Probably felt like blinking to you, huh?”
“Somewhat. Thanks for waking me up, man. What happened to your new MX, though?”
“Oh, right, my new MX. Well, she’s actually waiting in the car, I just came down to wring your brain about something from our last case, and then we’re headed out. I guess you’re going to the space station tomorrow, so yeah, send me a postcard. I always wanted to see Venus up close.” The banter eased something in John’s chest and he fought to keep a straight face.
Then Rudy interjected, “Ah, sorry, but I do still have those tests to run?”
John had forgotten he was there, “Right. Are there… clothes? For him, somewhere? I can go get those while you’re doing that.” Dorian shot him a look he wasn’t sure how to interpret, so he just shrugged.
Rudy gestured to the far corner of the lab as he tapped at his screen, “He has some spares over by his charging station. I’m afraid the ones he came in with had to be thrown away, they were completely ruined.”
As John walked over to what was apparently Dorian’s corner, he couldn’t help thinking that meant Rudy had seen his partner naked. Had undressed him, while he was unconscious. And as much as he liked Rudy, John was now fighting the urge to throttle him.
He was distracted by seeing Dorian’s space up-close for the first time. He had an old leather loveseat next to the charger, a small bookshelf/nightstand with some kind of colorfully spikey succulent on it, and a wall locker. John recognized some of the books as gifts he’d given to Dorian when he found out his partner enjoyed reading, despite having access to every library in his head.
He opened the locker and was greeted by several photographs stuck to the inside of the door. One was an aerial shot of the city at night, lit up brilliantly. Another was a gray tabby kitten that automatically made John roll his eyes. There was a rocky shoreline with the sun setting, two silhouettes leaning into each other.
His eyes widened in surprise at the next one - himself, smiling at the little boy from the sexbot case, Victor. And two more candid shots of him, one with Valerie, the other with Sandra. At one time he might have used the inappropriateness of hanging pictures of your co-workers in your locker as fodder for teasing Dorian, but that was before he had a wet dream about his partner. Now they just made him wonder…
But he was invading Dorian’s privacy enough. He turned to the clothes, surprised to find a set of civvies hanging up alongside the DRN uniforms. A light blue, button-down shirt (that no doubt matched his eyes), and a pair of khaki slacks. John found himself imagining Dorian wearing them before he clamped down on that train of thought. He grabbed a set of uniform pants and jacket off a hanger, one of the neatly folded shirts out of the drawers, and a pair of boots from the floor of the locker. Then he shut it with his hip and made his way back over to the diagnostics table.
“Almost done now, John. Everything looks good. As you no doubt expected, ahah, of course my workmanship is always top-notch…” Rudy rambled as he finished whatever he was doing. Dorian gave him a pained look and John stifled a chuckle.
“I’m sure it is, Rudy.” He set the clothes in a pile on a mostly clear workbench and leaned against it, pulling out his cell-o to have something to do. “So Dorian, we may have a new lead on the Argent Manufacturing case. But it was an anonymous tip, and you know how those are.”
“Hmm, I just listened to it. The person sounds scared, could be genuine. Definitely worth checking out, with as little else we have.”
“I thought so too.” They rehashed the case until Rudy made a triumphant noise and declared that Dorian had a clean bill of health. He hopped off the table and moved towards his clothes, simply pulling them on over the bodysuit. John was simultaneously disappointed and relieved to see him back in his regular gear.
On the way out to the car, Dorian said conversationally, “So you saw my pictures.”
John stopped in the empty atrium, taken aback. “Uh, yeah? They were...nice?” John cursed himself inwardly. “I mean, I guess you probably didn’t get the memo that keeping pictures of your coworkers in your locker might give someone the wrong idea.” What the hell was coming out of his mouth?
“It’s true I wasn’t expecting anyone to see them. I can take them down if it makes you uncomfortable.”
John forced a laugh, “Because you generally care so much about my comfort.”
Dorian wasn’t smiling though. “John, you know if I say or do something inappropriate and it makes you uncomfortable, you should tell me. The parameters for my interactions with you are fairly broad because you have positive responses most of the time, but I know I’m not perfect at interpreting them. And in this case, I knew it was probably wrong to have those pictures without your knowledge, but I justified it by reasoning that it was harmless and no one else would even know. But that doesn’t make it okay. Joking aside, I do care about-”
“I had a dream about you,” John blurted, unable to look at Dorian’s earnest face as he went on about ‘appropriateness’ any longer. “And I’ve been thinking about you- more than I should, as your partner. So if anyone needs to be checked on appropriateness, it’s me. But hey, now that’s out there, we can just get back to work and forget all about it. In fact, why don’t you just purge that from your memory, you can do that right?” Having thoroughly embarrassed himself, he started to walk away.
He was stopped by Dorian’s hand on his arm. “John, wait.”
John’s heart was pounding with anxiety, but he forced himself to turn and look at Dorian. He didn’t know what to make of the android’s expression, but at least he didn’t look angry. John bit his tongue and waited.
Dorian’s processing circuits lit blue for a moment before he took a slow step into John’s personal space. “Can I kiss you?”
John wondered if he was dreaming again. “What?”
“I said, can I kiss you? I put the security cameras on loop and I paused my network transmissions.” Dorian looked unsure but hopeful. John felt light-headed and maybe a bit crazed. This was crazy, right? The potential consequences hammered at the edge of his thoughts, and his anxiety was still running high. But he definitely wanted to kiss him. Screw it.
“Yeah.”
Dorian’s smile was blinding. But John would give his sight willingly, if he could keep this.