Chapter Text
The day seems as any other, Gavin Reed walks into the DPD, back from his wonderful lunch break at a cafe across the road with his best friend, Tina Chen. A case file tucked under his arm as he maneuvers through desks and other mingling officers to get to his desk, but stops in his tracks halfway through, glaring at a stark white android jacket. For the moment he decided to completely ignore the android, but knowing his damn luck, this might be the partner that Fowler has been preaching about for weeks. He wouldn’t put it past his boss to hire him a plastic partner, fucking Fowler.
One look from the android and Gavin decided to abandon his initial plan of ignoring the bot. "Hey, whatcha looking at plastic?"
You could almost hear crickets with the damn silence that follows, the Android’s pale blue eyes settles on him, making Reed feel like he’s being analyzed cell by cell with how he’s being ogled.
"What?"
The android didn’t so much as blink, the fucking freak. He simply remains still, like a statue, blocking other officers’ paths.
Gavin’s just about to give the android a piece of his mind, when the captain’s office door burst open and a voice hollers, "Reed, my office, right now!"
Reed curses under his breath, trying to think of everything wrong he did in the past week. Fuck, he hopes this isn’t about the asshole he decked yesterday. Fowler’ll have him by the balls for that one.
All his racing thoughts came to a halt as soon as he sets a foot into the glass office. The imposing android that has been parked by his desk, keeping surveillance all morning like a fucking terminator or some shit, is standing to one side. It’s unnerving how similar he is to Connor, but if he’s an RK900 that means he’s some kind of an upgraded version, right?
"Sit down, Reed. And not a fucking word, let me talk first, then you can bitch all you want."
Gavin shuts his mouth that was partly open a moment before, ready to start arguing.
"This is RK900- Nines, he’ll be your partner. You know I’ve been looking for a partner for you for months, and to say it was hard is an understatement." Fowler moves around the desk, to lean against it once he is in front of Reed. "No one really wants to work with you, Reed, your reputation proceeds you."
Gavin purses his lips, he averts his Captain’s sharp gaze.
"So you will behave yourself, and be cooperative. I don’t want to hear one complain about you fighting with your new partner." Fowler then turns to face Nines, "Be a good influence on him."
The android simply nods, didn’t utter a word. Gavin would find it weird if he cared, and if he wasn’t too busy fuming at this stupid arrangement, but even he knows this will help his career in the long run so he holds his tongue. "Yes, sir."
Fowler seems pleased, giving a nod. "Good. Now you two can get the fuck out of my office and start working."
With a string of colorful swear words muttered under his breath, Gavin leaves the office, followed by his new shiny- possibly malfunctioned- android.
He didn’t need a partner but he doesn’t need more discipline papers in his file either so he has to suck it up. He plummets onto his chairs, wasting no time to get back to work. The android did the same, quietly, not as much as breathing a word since he arrived which has Gavin’s brain work strenuously to come up theories to why that is. He keeps giving the android a few glancing, of course that means nothing, it just picked at his curiosity, nothing more.
The next few days has been more of the the same, Gavin would clock in, work on cases, go out to a crime scene if needed, and the damn android was silent as a damn wall the whole time. Communicating through a small screen on his palm, and Gavin only grew more intrigued about the Android’s situation. Connor can talk, so why his successor can’t? It’s so fucking weird. Was the android incomplete? Is there a hitch with his vocal modulator?
Gavin got an idea, and set it in motion immediately. He looks at Nines, "Hey Disphit!"
Icy blue eyes looks right into his greenish gray ones, sending involuntary shivers down his spine. He signs, ‘You mute?’
ASL has proven yet again just how useful it is, he’s so glad he decided to brush up on his ASL back when he was just a beat cop and become as fluent as he is right now.
The RK tilts his head ever so slight like a confused cat, then he raised his hands and signs ‘Yes, voice broken’
Well now they’re getting somewhere.
Gavin hums, and tries something else. ‘You know ASL?’
Nines signs while his focus is zeroed onto Gavin’s face. ‘Yes. I speak more than 100 languages."
"Fucking show off" Gavin snarls, but the anger has ebbed away the moment he tries to sign to the nonverbal android. "Now that I know your voice piece thingy is broken and shit, we can start, you know, doing some real detective work"
The android rolls his eyes, in a clear declaration of how he feels about the detective’s attitude, which is unimpressed.
Gavin pays the android no mind and returns to what he was doing a moment before, but of course that didn’t fucking last, cause they are instantly summoned to a crime scene.
They get into Gavin’s car and drive there, and by there he means a really gigantic fancy ass house. He whistles in something between amusement and disgust. His partner continued walking toward the main door to the building, not minding that he’s leaving his human detective behind to ‘admire’ the luxurious house.
The door seems intact, no evidence of forced entry or attempt to. Gavin’s eyes scans the place, taking in as much as possible, but someone blocked his line of sight.
"Hello! Are you the detectives they said they’d send?" A blonde woman inquires, a little girl clinging to her leg, giving them cautious stares.
"Yeah, could you tell us what happened before we have a look at the crime scene?"
The tired woman nods, fingers fidgety toy with her pink dress. "Yes, of course." She takes a breath to help her steady herself. "It was around 10pm, my kids were in bed, and I was in my bathroom drying my hair and as I was finishing, and put my hairdryer on the counter, I heard a gunshot coming from somewhere downstairs. So I rushed there after calling 911." Mrs. Scott takes another shaky breath trying to her best ability to describe how she found their nanny android dead with a gunshot to her forehead. "It was horrible! The sound woke my kids up, and I- I didn’t want them to see, but I was in so much shock myself-" she starts sobbing, and the kid clinging to her tries to sooth her, while sobbing herself.
Gavin feels awkward, he’s bad at this part of the job, he isn’t good with soothing anyone, but he tries. "It’s alright, ma’am, we’ll catch whoever did this and put them behind bars." Then he excuse himself quietly to stalk toward where he assume the crime scene is, followed by his new partner.
"Alright, you do your android thing, and I’m gonna look around." Gavin walks around the dead body, eyes lingering on the bullet wound on the victim’s forehead. There doesn’t seem to be anything unusual about the entry wound. "Hey tin can, can your robo eyes see anything unusual?"
‘One moment, Detective’ The mute android signs, then kneels by the body, eyes scanning every bit he could. That’s curious.. there are no finger prints, however there is a digital print. It’ll disappear after few minutes, but what it essential means, that the perpetrator is in fact an android, and they initiated an interface by wrapping one hand around the victim’s body. His theory is that the perpetrator hacked the victim rendering her useless as she mostly luckily wasn’t able to move a synthetic muscle before inevitably shooting her at a close range.
The sound of a foot tapping impatiently caught his attention, looking up Nines’ met with two beautiful greenish gray eyes.
The detective looks around, and when he was certain no one was paying attention to them, he signs ‘Well? you find something?’
Nines stands to his full height, forcing the human to look up to maintain eye contact. ‘Digital finger print.’
‘What the fuck is that?’ Gavin spells it as w.t.f. staring at Nines, looking flabbergasted. He never heard of digital finger prints on bodies before.
The RK shakes his head, explaining it with sign language might proof to be difficult but he’ll give it a try anyway. ‘Digital finger print’, he elucidates, ‘like human finger print, but stays longer on skin.’ When the detective gives him a nod, indicating that the android can continue, which the android does. ‘Only android can see.’ Using his pinkie, Nines indicates where the prints are. ‘Android prints, android criminal’
Gavin hums thoughtfully, crouching by the android, like getting closer would help him see these invisible prints. "Okay then, if we got prints that means we pretty much got the killer, right?"
The android gives him a look that makes Reed feel utterly dumb. "What?" He couldn’t keep the accusation out of his voice.
‘Many androids, same print, same model’ Nines smiles unconsciously, all his assumptions of his partner are already being proven wrong, and it’s only been a day.
"Fuck, at least we have a model number then, that’s something." The detective won’t let simply things deter his determination, and that is something Nines can respect, even if the detective has such a foul mouth.
"You guys got an android record with all the model numbers and their serial number and shit like that in Jericho, right?" Gavin inquires, pulling out his pack of cigarettes.
Nines’ eyes found his so quickly, it almost made Gavin jump out of his skin, and that fucking murderous glare, makes him gulp. ‘Smoking bad’
"Yeah, no shit Sherlock.” Gavin turns his pack over, showing the side that’s covered with warnings of all the effects that smoking could cause. "I know what I’m putting into my body, smartass."
The mute android lifts his hands to sign something, but the detective didn’t give him a chance to, he simply rolled his shoulders and makes for the exit, fully planning on smoking, calming his nerves. He’ll need it if they’ll be paying New Jericho a visit for the damn records. Sure androids have their freedom and all now, but he isn’t sure if he can trust completely them.
New Jericho owns Cyberlife’s buildings now, so that’s where they are at. Gavin looks up at the building, remembering a time long ago when he walked into this exact building with his brother when Cyberlife was still a small business.
With a cloud of warm breath emitted from his cold chapped lips, Gavin steps into the imposing building. "Alright, let’s get this shit over with." A snort escapes his lips at Nines’ signing of ‘Be nice’
Gavin flips him off.
An DX300 android greets them when they approached the front desk.
"Hello, how may I help you?"
A flash of their badge is all it took for Beth, the receptionist, to lead them to a conference room with two men standing at the far end by the glass windows. Gavin wasn’t a person who’s up to date with politics but he recognized Markus, the deviant leader and his right hand, Simon.
"Welcome detectives." Markus, greets, eyes momentarily pausing at the other RK in the room before his smile widens. "Ah, you must be Nines, heard a lot about you from Connor." Markus has met Nines once before, but the android probably don’t remember as he was still in the process of waking up.
Nines gives him a nod in a polite greeting, then taking a seat when the deviant leader asked them to sit down.
"We won’t take much of your time, we’re just here for the records and we’ll be on our way" The detective explains hastily, sitting to Nines’ left, away from the other two androids.
"It’s no trouble at all, Detective Reed. We have the records right here," He waves a tablet, then sets in before Nines. "We simply want more information regarding the latest android homicides."
Gavin shares a look with Nines, in a clear question- Can he do that? Ask for classified info?
Nines gave a simple nod.
"Alright." Gavin slides his own tablet toward robo Jesus. "Some things are still classified, but you can read the briefing."
After that they were on their way back to the station, to drop his partner and pick up whatever he left on his desk before heading back home. It was a long fucking day and he’s ready to just pass out on the couch after feeding his little gremlins.
The case keeps taunting them, more bodies show up, all androids, and all of them have those digital stupid finger prints. So clearly this is one Android’s doing, but that’s all they managed to gather for weeks.
Well that until they found a pattern that helped them guess who the next victim, but they were late..
That’s how Gavin found himself examining the body that was found in the basement by the Android’s lover. Said lover is currently outside, having his wounds treated on an ambulance while being questioned by his partner.
He takes note of the heavy smell of petrol clouding most of his senses, pulling the front of his shirt over his nose. He won’t let this deter him, he guesses that the perp was planning on disposing of all evidence, including the body in a fire, but wasn’t quick enough. Gavin circles the body, noticing a small red ‘x’ symbol on the neck. "What the fuck" he kneels go take a better look, too focused on this new revelation that he didn’t notice the figure that stood behind him. Gavin should’ve known better than to leave the door wide open, giving easy access to perp if they were dumb enough to come back.
Wood creaking behind him makes the detective turn around, just in time for a metal bat to make nasty contact with his face, knocking him out cold.
Gavin comes to with a nauseous feeling in his stomach, and a throbbing pain in his face, especially his goddamn nose. Feeling the nasty dried blood all over his lower face. It takes him an embarrassing long time to realize that the basement is on fire, and he can’t see shit, the place is filled with suffocating smoke. He coughs and hacks. Fuck. Between the pain and the headache he can’t scream for help, uncertain if anyone would even hear his wavering voice over all the flames and wood ceiling beginning to whine and crumble.
His vision swims, despite the stairs and door to the top floor is right there, he’s not sure he can make it. His options are diminishing.. not only is crawling on scorching wood uncomfortable, it’s leaving burns on his elbows and knees. Energy is scarce at the moment, and he’s pretty sure whoever that motherfucker with the bat was, gave Gavin a pretty nasty concussion.
After another coughing fit which feels like he’s trying to cough his goddamn lungs out, Reed thought of calling his partner. That would have been a great idea if he wasn’t seeing double of everything. He shakes his head, willing his vision to just fucking focus, but the more he shakes his head the more his head swims. You’d think that would stop him from trying anyway- nope. He’s glad his phone unlocks with Face ID, now to find the stupid phone app to call his partner, all while crawling slowly, very slowly toward the set of stairs.
"Fuck! Siri— shit Siri call plastic prick"
His phone came to life, a ‘no service’ flashed before him.
“No!"
‘Unable to reach Plastic Prick at the moment, would you like me to call emergency service?’ Siri chimes in, Gavin is only able to hear bits and pieces of what she said, he’s going in and out of consciousness at this point. The place is scalding and he is unable to fucking breath anymore. He wants to hope, he really does, but if he’s unable to call his partner to come and save him, he’s bbq.
Nines sighs, the victim is utterly- well, to put it simply, insufferable. He’s barely gotten anything out of her, and of course he has made an attempt to calm her down, and that only made more tears fall.
As soon as he takes one step into the house, he immediately notice something awry. He scans the place, shocked to see the ample of heat signature that’s coming from the basement. His system informs him of what he’s dreading to read: fire.
Gavin’s in the basement!!!
Seeing as Nines cannot physically call for Gavin, he tries the best next thing, to call him.
Come on, Gavin, pick up! Please! He prays mentally as he dashes toward the basement, and the closer he got, the more he can sense the heat and see the pall of smoke tying to escape through the tightly closed basement door. The RK doesn’t think twice before kicking the door off it’s hinds. He wants to yell, call out for his partner to know that he’s at least alive, but he curses his damaged voice box to hell and back.
He moves his mouth, but no words come out, not even a puff of air. Fueled with fear and desperation, RK hacks into Gavin’s phone and use it to speak.
"GAVIN"
Nines uses his own voice (through the phone) to navigate through the smoke, as heat signature wouldn’t work with the amount of flames all over the place.
"Gavin, are you okay? Gavin? Can you hear me?"
"-VIN"
Going in and out of consciousness sucks. He can barely make out who is calling out for him. Is it him they’re calling, right? He can’t tell. Feeling disoriented whenever he is awake, and when he opens his eyes again, he sees an overly bright screen, and muffled voice talking and talking. He can barely comprehend it, but he feels the urgency behind it.
Then he sees it, a figure slowly closing in toward him, and a floating angry red light.. that’s all he makes out before his eyes close again.
The smell of cleaning detergent is so goddamn intense, and he has a good idea of where he is before he even opens his eyes. Opening them, however, took a while with how fluorescent the fucking lights are here.
"Fuck.." He winces as he attempts to pull himself up, only to feel light headed and immense pain coming from.. pretty much his whole damn body, he assumes.
Movement in his peripheral catches his attention, even with his sluggish brain at the moment. He turns slowly toward the figure standing to his left to find his panicked partner who was signing 10mph, which isn’t helping his headache.
"Fucking.. slow down.." Gavin whines, blinking rapidly at Nines whose LED was blaring red, bathing most of the room in a scarlet light, if he had to guess it’s sometime around evening.
‘My apologies’ The RK’s LED is now stuck on an endless loop of yellow red, yellow red.
Gavin scoffs, "’M fine." He stifles the moans of pain every time he tries to move, and his face feels hot and sore, "The fuck happened?"
‘Basement on fire’ The nonverbal android signs, staring unashamedly at his partner. ‘Perpetrator knocked you down. Android caught on way out.’ A moment of silence then passed before the android hands moved at light speed again.
‘I was worried, you didn’t answer when I called. The basement was ablaze, and I saw you laying down, face bloody, and.. and’ Motor whirls can be heard, or was it fans? If Gavin had to guess, Nines was cooling down his system to avoid overheating, which spoke volumes to how the android felt about his human partner. Nines cares, his brain helpfully supplies.
A hand slips into his own, Gavin’s attention moved to it for a second before looking up at the icy blues that ironically were looking at the far wall to the left, where the machines Gavin’s attached to are beeping along with his heart.
Gavin hacks then tries to clear his throat. "Fuck, is my nose broken?"
The android gives him a small apologetic smile. ‘Unfortunately, yes.’
"Fuck. Just when I thought I couldn’t get any less attractive."
‘You always attractive, Gavin.’
Gavin laughs hoarsely at that, pretending that his brain was too slow to comprehend that, which it was, he guess.
The hand gives his own a small reassuring squeeze, and Gavin relishes in it. Maybe, just maybe someone does care about him. That’s the last thought that comes to his mind before he’s pulled back under with the amount of painkillers he’s given, and the last thing he sees before his eyes flutters shut is a soft gorgeous smile, and glimmering icy blue eyes filled with so much warmth.