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Gavin was cold inside. Less often, he was also cold outside , but the physical shivers were usually kept out by a drape of wrinkled leather that wrapped the small, exposed parts of his skin that the long sleeve shirt underneath couldn’t quite cover.
Come winter, he tucked his feelings into soft sweaters and hid them away in the furthest corners of himself, lest the icy air frost over any remaining warmth that still persisted. The heat, that familiar house fire, lost its gentle embers with each passing year. A feeling would fade, unreachable - sadness was the first to go, then hunger. Gavin could feel them, subcutaneous, when they slipped away. It was like a hole from a lost tooth, a memory you couldn’t quite recall, a lover who broke free.
He didn’t miss them, not at first. It had been a slow process, so dull and drowsy that by the time he noticed, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He didn’t need them where he was going, Gavin told himself. Because he was filling the gap with work, and he didn’t need to be human to point a gun or give orders or yell. The yelling was easiest. Anger was always reachable, it seemed, but even that had started to become tinged with frost.
He didn’t do anything. He was young, he told himself. He had time. So he went to bars, and that felt nice. He felt a part of something, and the amber bottles seemed to contain a temporary bonfire that set his mind alight, every emotion readily available at his fingertips. He was in the driver’s seat again, and that felt nice. The nights were the best during football season, though Gavin had never really bothered to learn the rules of the sport. The air sparked with intoxicated excitement, and there was a special magic in the booths and barstools that allowed Gavin to be both iridescent and invisible at once. It was special, and he learned that he could train himself to ignore the dull (so dull) pang that pinged like fingertips on sheepskin every time he saw Anderson arrive to work one, two, three hours late. That, too, faded.
Gavin hated androids, and he liked it. He had already lost most of his emotional complexity by the first time he saw the clouded gaze of one peering at him through a pane of glass, but the sight of its placating smile made something inside him burn - something that had been on the brink of dissolving completely. He was addicted to the spark; it was more accessible than the alcohol and didn’t smell as bad. At times, he allowed himself to act on the new emotions, but he mostly found himself moving before he had given his body permission. That was okay, Gavin figured. That meant he was getting better.
Connor unlocked something. Connor was like million-dollar heroin in a pristine syringe. Connor was like Colombian coffee on warm August mornings. Connor was like remembering everything you needed for your road trip and not having to turn around to grab your toothbrush. The sight of its serene expression felt like a gunshot to the right temple. It was more addictive than any drug that had only fleetingly encouraged any sensation at all. Gavin loved how its smell (the barest hint of Gain-brand detergent) could set him off and make him feel like he could count stars if he put in the effort. He wanted to put in the effort, and that was new and good.
He delighted in any reaction he could pull from its stony stature - it was so hard, but it was always, always worth the satisfaction that came from knowing that he had fucked up so bad that Connor’s lip curled slightly in distaste, or its hand magnetized slightly towards its chest, affronted. He burned with it, it made him warm.
But the reactions became more frequent. It was all too easy to prod out a furrowed brow or sharp tongue. Gavin hardly had to try anymore; he hated it. There was no satisfaction in its frustration anymore; that could be partly due to the fact that it didn’t feel much like frustration at all. Now, Gavin observed coolly, the response felt more akin to pain. He hated it. He was cold again.
He wanted to redouble his efforts - maybe if he pressed it harder, pulled his gun one more time, maybe if he actually pulled the fucking trigger , he would see the same small sneer come from its mouth, the same annoyance just barely lighting up its eyes. He snapped that day, in the evidence locker. He craved the attention like nothing else, and he had been cold, so cold , for too long. He sought out the heat like a mad dog. And as he laid on the icy, stone floor, feeling his bruised body soak up its frigidness, freezing everything inside again, he accepted that he was broken.
But it had stood over him, thoroughly rustled, and there was something its eyes that Gavin had missed. The gaze that pierced right through him, without fail. Every time, every finger in its chest, every bump to its shoulder, every glance back after walking away to catch a sweet glimpse of his reaction, every accidental meeting-of-eyes that took place in the space between their desks, every flip of his coin, every tapping of his toes, everything that made him tick and everything that he could see when he stood around him - the small shifts, the tilt of a smile, the droop of the eyelids - he realized he could read him like a book. He was naked and vulnerable in the endless depth of empathy in that gaze. Someone that knew how it felt to feel nothing at all. Who had not lost it all, but had rather started at zero. Someone like Gavin.
And he looked down at him in the evidence locker and clicked his tongue and ghosted his smooth fingers over the top of Gavin’s head, and he burst into tears soundlessly at the slight affection. It was this he had sought for after all, he noted. And Connor had looked shocked for several seconds before taming his expression to a controlled smile and returning to his task. Gavin didn’t move; he sat and cried and felt warm.
Connor was football nights at Jimmy’s Bar. Connor was late afternoon at the station. Connor was fire and the sun and a subcutaneous heating system made to simulate human warmth. Connor was waking up to feel something. Connor was casual touches and small kisses pressed to his hair periodically that Gavin couldn’t even pretend to hate. Connor was sadness coming back last, as if his lost emotions were just socks and shoes to be put back on in reverse order. Connor was the new and the old.
He liked it, and things were better.