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“It’s been long enough!” Sixty insisted, staring down at Gavin while the man blinked weary eyes up at him from his slouched position on his couch. His left arm stuck out at an awkward angle, positioned gingerly now that he was safe at his own apartment. Connor and Nines flanked their brother, a wall of RK solidarity.
“Come on, man, you can’t let me get caught,” Gavin pleaded.
“Uh-uh, nope, no complaints. No arguing. We’ve been doing this for three weeks now; it’s not sustainable and we have a solution.”
“It’s been working, though!”
“Sixty’s right,” Connor added. “We’ve been happy to help you—”
“Speak for yourself,” Sixty cut in.
“—But we simply can’t follow you around everywhere forever. Nines has sourced the parts you need. We can install them in a single afternoon, and then you can get back to normal.”
“Officer Chen is beginning to suspect something is afoot,” Nines tried, hoping to play into Gavin’s paranoia.
“Tina thinks one of you is fucking me and is trying to figure out who,” Gavin said bluntly.
“I…how do you figure that!?” asked Connor, shifting awkwardly. “We’ve been by your side for three whole weeks and she’s never said anything.”
Gavin held up his phone with his good hand. “She keeps texting me with guesses,” he deadpanned.
“Oh,” was Connor’s only response.
“Aaaaanyway,” Sixty continued. “We’ve kept your secret cyborg nonsense to ourselves and masked your broken-ass signal output for three fucking weeks now. We work shifts, dimwit. Sooner or later we’re going to end up on different ones and nobody’s going to be around to run interference, and you’re gonna get your dumb ass exposed. And it’s going to be your fault, because you were too chickenshit to let us repair things.”
Gavin sighed, sheer exhaustion bleeding through the loud exhale. “You don’t get it. I’m not like you guys, I’m not…I’m human. You start taking bits of me apart and it’s gonna go over like a lead balloon. I can barely even cope with shooting up your blue shit into my arm because my head says glowy things going into veins is bad. I can’t just…like, pop myself into sleep mode while you break out the toolkit. That’s not how people work.”
“It is true that repairing a signal modulator would typically be done under forced stasis,” Nines acknowledged, “but we have few other options. Sixty may lack tact in his phrasing, but this truly isn’t something we can keep doing ad infinitum.”
“Just…just one more day, please?” Gavin all but begged. “I can’t do this tonight.”
“And if we resume this conversation tomorrow, can you honestly tell us you won’t ask for yet another day?”
Gavin’s eyes fell, unable to make that guarantee. He was up against a brick wall, and he knew it. The brothers knew it. There was no room to entertain the delusion that he could go around emitting off-key android signals and the brothers would be around to modulate them forever. He was one unavoidable separation away from his identity going up in smoke. Anderson and Fowler were already starting to look a little more closely. Cops sniffed around unexplained changes in behavior like hounds on a trail of blood.
And every android in the DPD would be chomping at the bit to bring down Gavin Reed, Resident Android Hater.
He still wasn’t sure how Connor found it in his heart—pump? Processor?—to forgive him for being an ass. The original RK800 was no stranger to rocky friendship starts, though, and Gavin had (awkwardly) tried to make amends after the whole revolution.
Most of his issues with androids weren’t really with them as individuals. Just… every time one of the department androids scanned their skinless palms at the door, he flinched, uncomfortably reminded that his hand could theoretically do the same thing. Every touch of robotic fingers to a computer, the evidence catalogue, a tablet—it all carried with it echoes of his brother’s gleeful eyes admiring his engineering work, bolted into Gavin’s shoulder without so much as a single check whether he wanted it.
The empty eyes of that Chloe of his, LED a placid blue as it reached out to hack into his brain without his permission, haunted Gavin’s every nightmare.
“Just…” Gavin tried. Paused. Tried again. “Is there a way to make it so I can’t see? I can’t fucking look at it.”
“I would be happy to interface and help you maintain your calm,” Nines offered.
“No!” Gavin yelped. “Not that. Anything but that!” Blue, empty eyes. A delicate feminine hand, reaching toward him while it shed its fake skin. Gavin shoving his way out the door of his brother’s lab, his own synthskin sliding over his wrong-wrong-wrong arm, covering up everything with a human veneer, a pathetic lie.
The RK collective tilted their heads like a litter of puppies observing a strange new thing, reevaluating. “I… don’t understand, though,” Connor ventured. “It’s the best way for us to keep you soothed while we execute the installation of the new modulator. You have all the necessary hardware. I promise none of us would touch anything you weren’t willing to share.”
“Don’t fucking…don’t talk about me having shit like hardware. Fuck.” Gavin grimaced. It was too much. Too inhuman. Too unbelievably fucked up.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” complained Sixty. “What else are we supposed to call it? ‘Gavin’s special robot bits?’ Your ‘alternate biology?’ You’ve been squirrelly this whole time about explaining how this even happened and we haven’t pried. I don’t really give a crap why a human has an android limb slapped onto him, anyway. But call a spade a fucking spade.”
“Sweet rA9, Sixty,” Connor groaned. “You’re going to break his brain on top of his signal modulator!”
Gavin had practically wilted into the couch at Sixty’s awkward euphemisms. “Kill me now,” he groaned, “it’ll solve your problems and mine.”
“I’m afraid we will have to decline,” Nines informed him solemnly. “But I do fear the best we can do for your prior request is place a blindfold over your eyes while we conduct repairs. It will still be somewhat uncomfortable, I would imagine.”
“That’s suspiciously kinky,” Gavin pointed out.
“Gavin. Listen to me. We cannot follow you around anymore. You’re going to have to pick something: get the repair, or get found out. Those are the only options.” Connor laid out the choice as bluntly as Sixty had. They were going in circles and Gavin was deflecting. No more.
“Fuck. Fuck.” Gavin hated this. Why the fuck did he ever think it was a good idea to get between Sixty and that fucking maniac in an ice rage? He hadn’t been thinking, was the answer. He had just reacted, knee-jerk, and flung himself between a fellow officer and a violent repeat offender. And sacrificed a secret he’d kept for a decade in the process.
“Fine. Fine. Just…fucking do it. Hurry up, before I change my mind,” he ground out.
The brothers wasted no time. Connor hurried to get his repair kit, Nines went to fetch the new part, and Sixty reached down to pat the detective’s mousey hair with a soft smile and a sweetly condescending, “good human.”
Gavin swatted the hand away with a miserable glare.
The three androids worked to swiftly clear a space in the apartment for the procedure, bringing him to the kitchen where he could lay the damaged limb out on the table. Already Gavin felt a strange mix of dread, fear, and a sensation like he wasn’t quite seated in his own body but drifting along behind it.
It was Nines who took his hand, the synthskin peeling back from the android’s shiny chrome chassis where they touched. Gavin shivered and had to look away as Nines initiated the connection, the prompt sending an intangible tingle through the back of his head. It was just a matter of not resisting that prompt, and Nines—or any android who tried this—would worm their way into his brain, his thoughts, his self in a way no human being was ever designed to experience. Suffice to say, Gavin had spent a long time practicing his resistance, and it took several minutes and deep breaths before he was able to relax enough to accept it.
Next came the sensation of his own skin rippling, Nines forcing the veneer of realism over his arm to retract, revealing it for what it truly was underneath. The limb bore no difference from any android’s, except for the grisly seams where it was connected to the remains of Gavin’s shoulder. A short array of lights lit up at his wrist, blue, blue, red indicating a severe malfunction to the unit. Nines sent a command for the paneling in the arm to open up, which they did with a quiet hiss, revealing an organized mess of wiring and mechanical parts. Gavin saw none of this, head still turned away, but he felt every second of the unnatural way his arm opened up, exposing warm metallic insides to the chill of the air in the room.
“I am going to deepen the interface now,” Nines announced while Connor laid the tools he’d need out on the table beside the part they would be repairing. Gavin responded only with a grunt of acknowledgment. Taking that as the best consent he was likely to get out of the man, Nines did as he’d said and strengthened the connection. He focused on transmitting thoughts of calm and peace to the human, and soon saw a measurable decrease in Gavin’s heart rate and a deepening in his breath that was encouraging.
It was a strange sensation from Gavin’s end, someone else’s emotions being imposed over top of his own. If he pushed back on it he could have resisted, but he forced himself not to panic and to accept the calming effect of the interface as Connor got to work. Sixty stood behind his twin, passing him the tools he needed as he called for them. The mechanics of the prosthetic were intricate, making the repair tricky, and long, tense minutes passed while Connor searched for the broken part among delicate wiring and biocomponents with pieces thinner than a human hair. When he found the right part he made a satisfied sound, seizing it between a long pair of tweezers and holding out his free hand for a screwdriver to move it out of place.
Gavin kept his face turned away and his eyes squeezed shut for good measure, limbs locked to keep himself from bolting, trying to ignore the fact that Connor was rooting around in his insides. It was a sick feeling, to have something inside you while you were awake, and each movement was accompanied by the sound of metal clinking against metal filling the quiet kitchen.
Clink, clink, clink
Gavin shivered. Then he shuddered. He took in a sharp, gasping breath, then another. The sounds, they were exactly the same, the same as every other time he’d been operated on, strapped down and experimented on while his brother watched on with cool, detached interest—
Connor stopped what he was doing immediately when Nines sent out an alert that Gavin’s mental state was flagging, quickly withdrawing his tools, but Gavin continued to spiral. The RK800s could do nothing but stand back anxiously while Nines desperately reached out through their connection in an effort to calm him.
It was no use. Gavin shrank back from his presence, his mind fearful and reacting more on instinct than logic. When Nines got close, he would lash out, and in those moments splinters of what Gavin was experiencing passed through their connection. It broke something inside Nines. He’d pieced together some time ago that Gavin had a past he kept hidden, but actually seeing that trauma as Gavin relived it was another thing entirely. Seeing the face of his creator in Gavin’s memories filled him with a misplaced sense of guilt, like he somehow should have been there to protect Gavin from the man even though he had yet to even be built at the time.
While he could do nothing to change the past, he could save Gavin from further torment now. The man was still seated, his body having shut down as he silently panicked, but he was visibly tense. His hand gripped Nines’ tightly enough that a human would be at risk of injury. The human was too far gone to listen to Nines’ attempt at talking him down, so Nines had to get creative. If he could find something shocking enough, maybe he could knock Gavin out of this panic.
Nines didn’t think much further beyond that, only wanting to help Gavin as quickly as possible. He simply passed the first option to pop into his head through the interface, realizing what he had done only after it was too late to stop the message from reaching Gavin. The human’s panic was suddenly interrupted by the message’s contents, echoing through his head in a digitized mimicry of Nines’ real voice.
I love you
Three words. Three simple words, but their effect was instant. For a split second Nines thought the interface had cut off, the silence was so deafening. Gavin’s feed of disjointed memories, his thoughts screaming wrong and make it stop, the panic suddenly all ceased, and instead there was…nothing. It was worrying on the face of it, but Nines also noticed the cyborg’s breathing had calmed down, and while he was still gripping Nines’s hand like his life depended on it, his body slowly released the tension it had been holding since they sat down.
The short message, chosen in a hurry, completely halted Gavin’s spiraling.
And now it was on Nines to follow up and explain himself.
Hoping his attempt to reach out wouldn’t get blocked again, Nines probed gently, and found no resistance from the man. He pushed through, his voice once again echoing in the interface.
I was planning on letting you know, although not exactly in these circumstances.
Along with his words, Nines also showed his memories. Stolen glances in the office when no one else was paying attention to them. Brief but gentle touches here and there, just to make sure Gavin is still there and fine. Nines always hovering just a little too close to the human when out in the field, his defense protocols fine tuned to Gavin. He couldn’t stop his feelings and emotions from bleeding through the connection. That warm, fuzzy feeling when they were close to each other. The tingle Nines felt every time their fingers touched when he handed Gavin his coffee. The worry and fear gripping his throat whenever they were in dangerous situations.
Seeing the cyborg had calmed down, the RK800’s quickly resumed the repairs, Gavin seemingly completely oblivious to any of it, locked in a trance. Nines decided to send one last thing through the connection: a memory file.
Nines was sitting at the dinner table of their shared apartment, nervous and tense. He watched as his partners sat down with him, Connor with a polite smile, Sixty with one elbow on the table, looking mildly annoyed that he had to suspend his usual evening activities.
“I wanted to talk to both of you,” Nines began. "When we agreed to this relationship, we said we would discuss everything with each other."
“Communication is key in every relationship, especially when there are more than two people involved," Connor agreed.
“Exactly. This is why I wanted to discuss something that's been… happening to me." Nines looked down nervously and took a deep breath. Biologically completely unnecessary, but it calmed him in a very human way. “I believe I might be falling for Detective Reed.”
Now that caught even Sixty’s attention. Connor’s eyebrows raised as the words sank in. He spoke up first.
“That's… a surprise. But not entirely unexpected.”
"What do you mean?”
“I might have told Connor something very similar some time ago," Sixty said, with a dismissive handwave, trying to mask his awkwardness with nonchalance like he always did. Nines gave him a stern look, meant to tell him off for not following the rules they set out about communication. The message was received. “Yeah, I know. But he's just so infuriatingly abrasive!”
"Just like you,” Connor teased. It earned him a shoulder punch. "I'm guessing both of you were cautious about telling me, considering my past with the Detective.”
"You read my mind,” Nines smiled shyly. "I'm still nervous about telling you, but I can't help feeling this way. He makes me feel like I'm not… different from anybody else in the precinct. That I'm part of the team."
“Because he's just as rude to everybody else," Sixty helpfully added.
“A very unique way to be inclusive," Connor laughed. “But it works. I admire his drive and determination."
“Me too," Nines admitted, a slight blush creeping up on his cheeks. “Still, I understand completely if you are uncomfortable with this, Connor. We don't have to bring this up ever again, if you are."
It was Connor’s turn to blush. “I'm not, and even if I were, I would never tell you not to follow your heart. It is true that Reed was very hostile to me at the beginning, and it was definitely due to him feeling threatened by an android potentially taking his job from him. But I also noticed that he was…interested in me. And that didn't stop after the revolution.”
"How did my scans miss that,” Nines wondered.
"You were too busy ogling him,” Sixty answered helpfully. That made him the next recipient of a shoulder punch. "Alright,” he said, with a clap, "are we in agreement? Should we talk to him about joining our polycule?”
The memory ended. Gavin was still speechless, staring into nothingness as he processed what he just saw. Nines was patient with him, admittedly it was a lot to take in, especially if the human was previously completely oblivious to any of the signs. Nines didn't think he was subtle about it, but he wasn't sure how good humans were at detecting subtle signs of interest.
Meanwhile in Gavin's head, his thoughts slowly took shape as he added two and two together. Of course he should have known. The signs were right there the entire time, but he chalked them up to Nines just being protective due to whatever protocols he was fitted with. Gavin thought the android just lacked awareness of personal space, or that he forewent that silly human social construct in order to execute his protocols. But why would a body guard android caress his fingers lightly when handing over coffee? Why would he check on him in situations when he was in no perceived danger? He felt so stupid.
Of course he should have guessed that Connor clocked him immediately. There was no escape from CyberLife’s golden boy's scanners. But even Sixty? Since when was he so damn irresistible to these RKs? Had he realized before, he would have–
“...Gavin? Gavin!"
He blinked as he re-entered reality. Nines was still holding his hand, gently caressing with a thumb, leaving Gavin's skin tingly. He could feel the comforting warmth of the android’s hand. He looked up to see all of the RK’s looking at him, wary but warm, even Sixty. He coughed nervously, his cheeks radiating heat. Shit, he was blushing like a schoolgirl.
"The repair was successful,” Connor confirmed. Gavin didn't even realize his arm was closed, synth skin intact and all. "And Nines told us you now know… about our interest. If you like, we can discuss it now. There's no pressure, however. We can leave you be now, your signal modulator is fully operational. We don't need to guard you."
"I, uh,” he muttered with a raspy voice. "Yeah, it's–it’s a lot to take in. But yeah, I'd like to talk about it."
Connor smiled warmly, Nines blushed like Gavin had never seen him before, and Sixty turned away awkwardly. The four of them spent a long time talking at Gavin's, and the tension and nervousness dissolved entirely by the end of the day.
The RKs eventually left, but not before agreeing to another meetup. As Gavin laid in his bed, totally exhausted physically and mentally after all he'd been through, he couldn't help but think about how he would tell Tina that she was wrong to assume it was only one of the RKs, and that it was in fact all of them who were (or were gonna be) fucking him.