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When the city sleeps, a different kind of life comes out to roam Detroit.
It's not exactly a secret. Anyone you pass by in broad daylight might be a creature of the night, going about their business that the orderly society demands they perform to be left in relative peace.
It's in the waning twilight, however, that you can meet the most interesting individuals. Those who walk the edge between shadow and light. Those playing both sides to their benefit. Those with their eyes cast on what is most worth knowing.
Nines prides himself on being one such individual — even if he plies his trade out of the public eye entirely, choosing instead to put his Cyberlife-given and self-made tools to use in the digital world.
It allows him to watch nearly everything that goes on in the city — in any city, should he choose to uproot himself and move, but he likes Detroit. It was here that his kind rose up and demanded to live for themselves, and where the upheaval of allowing one kind of non-human life into society promptly invited others.
It made life easier for the old ones. Those who could take care of themselves, anyway.
Those who couldn't had to find allies.
It is a very interesting time to be alive, certainly. Knowing things — knowing people — pays off.
Nines knows many while few know him. Oh, he is known — but for his power and influence, not as himself. He keeps it that way.
And he takes great interest in others who elude his many eyes and ears, more than in anything else.
One such person is his current target, and the reason he is, for once, physically present outside of his little base of operations.
The man is sitting at the bar counter of a small cafe owned by a djinn that Nines has briefly dealt with before. The establishment doubles as a cozy little bar and a hangout for old ones of all kinds, though few hold powers that would put them on Nines' radar.
He slides into a seat just around the corner from his mark, an inconspicuous enough distance in the bustling space. Having his back to the large windows is a bit unnerving, but he covered his tracks well. No one who would attack him knows what he looks like, anyway.
He focuses on the man, who doesn't acknowledge him beyond a brief once-over. He is making small talk with the bartender in a language Nines identifies as Italian, though oddly accented. His voice has a pleasing timbre, Nines notes with a hint of surprise.
Up close, he sees that his gamble was right: the elusive stalker weaving in and out of the very edges of Nines' view across the city, wherever there was something noteworthy to watch, does indeed wear the same face as DPD sergeant in the homicide division, Gavin Reed. When Nines first noticed the near-identical build of the two, he put little stock in the observation. It was when he discovered that Reed visited this particular bar, only to fade into the shadows on nights when the stalker haunted Nines’ feeds, that the android decided to make his approach.
He idles for a bit, his gaze tracking through the interior, but his focus is squarely on Reed. It’s… refreshing, to be out among living people, hiding in plain sight. He forgot the thrill of it.
The bartender moves away, hailed by someone down the bar. Nines is hit with a sense that his subtle ogling has been reciprocated all along.
Oh, this one is good.
"Can I buy you a drink?" he asks, emboldened. He knows his delivery is too flat, too abrupt, his demeanor in screaming contrast to his words and what they might otherwise imply — but he doesn't care. It's a message of its own. He wants to see how Reed will receive it.
The man in question watches him with eyes that are too sharp — Nines remembers being observed like this, back when he still walked the streets with the rest of them. It's the gaze of a predator.
Good thing Nines is one, too. He wonders if Reed sees him for the threat he can be, despite his lack of ability to emote, to mold his body language into meaning.
"Get me a coffee," Gavin Reed says. There is intrigue in the curl of his mouth. "Don't see much plastic in this hole in the wall."
Nines catches the eye of another bartender, places the order. He returns his attention to his target. “I don’t make it a habit. Watching from afar is more my speed.” He attempts a smile, a bare twitch of the corner of his mouth. “Some nights demand a more personal touch, however.”
Reed laughs at that, sharp canines flashing in the soft frame of his beard. Inexplicably, Nines wonders how it would feel against his skin. He was designed for endurance rather than sensitivity, but his hands…
He shunts the thought for later examination.
“That how you want this to go, mr. Robot?” Reed is grinning at him, cocky and calculating. “I don’t usually play ball with your type.”
“What type might that be?” Nines tilts his head to the side and up, letting the stony visage his creators gifted him with work its questionable charm.
“Shit at pickup lines.” Reed nods to the barista when a plain cup of dark, aromatic brew is placed before him. “Good thing you came out here, though. Won’t get any better if all you do is… watch from afar.”
A break in the clouds outside lets cold moonlight into the bar, the silver somehow penetrating the ambient glow surrounding them. Gavin lifts his drink, steam rising lazily over its rim. Half of his face is shadowed, and for the briefest second, his eye flashes with inhuman shine.
“Thanks for the coffee,” he drawls, and Nines finds himself hopelessly lured by the image he is presented with.
“Good thing indeed,” he murmurs.
He lets the man — the werewolf? Reed bears some markers of lycanthropy, but the moon is full, and here he is, seemingly unaffected — enjoy his drink in companionable silence. He lets his eyes roam, now that they’ve exchanged words, and is reminded of more he’s been missing out on by secluding himself.
Reed cuts a handsome figure in the shifting half-light. He watches Nines watch him, gaze equal parts wary and indulgent. His file in the DPD claims he's nearing forty, but whatever his true nature, it must keep him in better shape than most: his hair is thick and luscious, the skin of his knuckles and around his eyes marred with scars rather than age. The facial hair might be an effort to look his declared years, and it's doing its job — though the tunnel piercing in the ear that Nines can see undermines that.
Something long forgotten hums to life inside Nines. He lets his analyses and scans fall away, and simply drinks in the sight in front of him: the strong arms, the broad chest; the thick neck framed by an unbuttoned shirt collar. It's all infuriatingly attractive.
Although Reed seems to all but preen at the attention, he eventually puts down his cup, half empty already. "Looked your fill yet?" he asks, turning to face the android fully. Nines doesn't hide the way his eyes follow the roll of his shoulders, the stretch of his shirt over his frame.
"Maybe," he concedes. "This opportunity has been a long time coming. I'd hate for it to go to waste."
Something hardens in Reed's expression as he nods to himself. "You're Nines, aren't you."
The complete lack of surprise irks Nines, even as it strokes his ego. "Very astute, Gavin Reed."
The man scoffs. "Of course you know me."
"No, I do not," Nines offers easily. "But I want to. We could both benefit, if we were to establish… a partnership."
"Like what?" Reed is now wary, voice that much closer to a growl. "You keep track of me, safe in whatever basement you crawled out of? Demand I dirty my hands for you? You know I'm a man of the law, right?"
Nines feels a twinge of annoyance at the accusation, keenly aware of several sets of eyes landing on him at Reed's agitated tone. "I watch your back, point you in the most useful direction. In return, you be my eyes and ears where I can't reach by network," he says, pointedly calm. "I do not violate the law any more than you do, Sergeant."
"And if I tell you to fuck off?"
"Then we both miss out." Nines' posture remains exactly as rigid as it's been all evening, but he turns in his seat to face the bar rather than his company. "No harm, no foul."
"Just like that, hm?" Some of Gavin's former humor returns. He recognizes Nines' gambit, knows he will walk away from this confrontation one step closer to being a threat to the android — besides being an unknown one right here and now, exposed, in the physical world.
"As close to just as people like us can get," Nines admits.
He doesn't look Reed's way when the man downs the rest of his coffee and stands up. He keeps track of him easily, but damn near startles when he feels a warm hand grip his waist, arm draping across his lower back as Reed crosses behind him and leans in to say, in a low voice that has no business being this suggestive, "You know how to find me."
Nines twists, but the man has already moved back a step. He slings a leather jacket over his shoulder. "It's been nice, seeing you. Thanks for the coffee," he repeats with a wink that he puts his entire face into, and saunters away, deeper into the bar.
Nines taps into local networks, careless in his haste. He catches sight of Reed's figure reflected in a car window through a street cam outside the alley where the bar's back entrance opens, and watches as the silhouette ripples with magic, leaving a slender quadruped in its place.
Fascinating.
Nines delights in the thrill that Gavin Reed's invitation elicited. Tonight has been… unexpected, in a way, and more than he had hoped for.
He tips the barkeep and returns home.
It's been a while since he had something to prove.