Chapter 1: barely mended
Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE—;
"We are all china barely mended,
clumsily glued together
just waiting
for the hot water and lemon
to seep through our seams."
— sharp teeth, Toby Barlow
First-day-all-over-again jitters. First day after not thinking he’d ever see another first day of anything, after not thinking he’d ever see another day at all. First day After. First day—
He hears Lucy’s voice. “What do you see around you?”
Black asphalt parking lot stretching to not-actually-oblivion, just up to the glass doors of the precinct. White stripes for each parking spot, white stripes of his parking spot, more asphalt blocking him in, reminding him how small his bike is compared to each too-tall-on-its-tires pickup truck, and he thinks he’s already failed the dick measuring contest.
Lucy again. “Count.”
Three white trucks down the row just ahead of him. Fat white cloud overhead (down to earth, get back down to earth). The white parking lines, one, two, three, four, five— he counts them until he can’t see them anymore. He counts them until he can breathe again, slow and steady or something like it, and then he takes off his helmet. He checks his hair in the mirror, fixes it as much as he can, and hops off the bike. It’s white, also, accented silver and blue and with enough room for someone to ride behind him and wrap their arms around his waist. No one does, of course, so it’s just his bike that’s big enough for two. It’s not worth thinking about, but he does so anyway as he runs his hand over the ass-warmed leather of the seat and wonders how hot it’ll be by the time the sun is beating down mid-day.
He’s not halfway across the parking lot when someone calls — “Holy shit, Anderson?”
It’s just Chris, and he wants to be thankful for it, but it still sends a lightning strike of panic down his sternum. He turns and grins. “In the flesh.” (Flesh once bullet-riddled, once punched full of holes, but anyway, anyway, it’s all sewn up now. All one piece of flesh and not DNA sprayed across the side of a patrol car).
Chris slaps him on the shoulder and he almost expects it to hurt. “Good to see you around. First day back, huh?”
“Yeah, yeah. Been a while.” He falters, studies the lines of Chris’s face and tries to remember what else you say to someone when you have to resume After— “How’ve you been?”
“Hangin’ in there. Damian just turned four, so—”
“They grow up so fast.” He realizes too late that he cut Chris off, rushing to get out his socially-acceptable response and move on. Chris’s smile tightens and he shrugs.
“They sure do. Come on, Murdoch’ll have our asses if I make you late.” He feels like he failed the test, whatever it was, and forces himself to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with Chris even as he yearns to just fall behind and be led. The distance is too short, somehow, though he wants Chris out of his hair sooner rather than later and he wants to meet the front doors never. An android greets them in the lobby and pauses as her eyes (cameras—) fall on Connor.
“Uh, Detective Connor Anderson.” He holds up his badge and she scans it, he thinks, before nodding.
“Welcome back, Detective.” Her perfect smile feels like a knife in his gut. He nods and follows Chris in.
Oh.
Empty desk.
Nothing is as it was; of course he missed Ben’s wife taking his things home in a box, or maybe the guys packing it all up for her. It’s been so many months, any flowers or cards or anything else is long gone, so it’s just nothing, clean, a flat metal plane and an ultra-thin terminal. He hesitates in front of it, doesn’t know why he didn’t think to be worried earlier, but he should’ve been, should’ve expected to find it jarring, should’ve known he’d be expecting jolly old Ben to flop down in his rolling chair and slide a coffee into his hand. “Double shot with heavy cream for Duckie Anderson.” And he’d tell the barista it was for Duckie, too, even though he’d ordered it, so he’d end up with two cups that said “Duckie” or sometimes “Ducky,” instead of “Ben.”
His vision clouds up and he wipes his eyes, snapping out of it enough to make it to his own desk. It still says “Det. C. ANDERSON,” so he hasn’t been moved (wishes he was, though, this kind of familiarity he could’ve gone without), and for the most part it’s sparse. He hadn’t had the chance to make it his own, not really, and Hank had managed to stop by and pick up his struggling echeveria months ago. The corkboard still has a photo of himself and Louis pinned to it, so he takes it down and considers doing anything but crumpling it and throwing it in the trash but decides that that is where it belongs and does it. There’s nothing else to do, not really, and his meeting with Captain Murdoch is in fifteen minutes. He doesn’t really want a coffee, and figures it’ll set him more on edge than he already is, (Lucy somewhere, saying, “Doesn’t that sound like self-sabotaging behavior to you?”) but the only thing he can think of is going through the motions of a normal day, even if he doesn’t think he’ll ever have one again.
The breakroom is unchanged, though he wonders if the coffee machine is new because it actually spits out a half-caffeinated eight ounces within a few seconds. He again hesitates over the sugars, but makes it with one packet of turbinado and a splash of half-and-half. There’s a morbid humor to thinking that Ben will never know how his order’s changed. He returns to his desk and lifts the coffee to his lips, but even the steam rising off it is too hot. He unlocks his phone. Four new messages.
COLLIN STERN
3:27AM
Happy first day back bby <3 u got dis
DICKHEAD STERN
5:00AM
If I tell you to have a good day, will you change my contact name back to Richard?
5:00AM
Kidding. Good luck.
DAD
7:12AM
Good luck today kiddo. Call me if you need anything
He closes the messages, unsure if he possesses the emotional energy to formulate responses. He could just write “thanks” over and over, but it seems mechanical and wrong and he might as well do it properly later. He glances around the bullpen every so often, trying to pick out a face that is not only familiar but that he might actually want to talk to, and, finding none, resumes scrolling social media until twelve minutes pass and he decides he may as well make a good (if possible) impression (second first-impressions are once in a lifetime, after all) and knock on Murdoch’s door three minutes early.
The second first impression came and went while he was unaware.
Captain James Murdoch is vehemently glaring down a legal document on a tablet when he waves Connor in (knuckles this-close to knocking). He gestures to an android standing off to the side and says, “Anderson, this is Gavin. It’s a GV200 and your new babysitter. Hopefully you can keep it alive.”
Each sentence hits him as one-two-three fists to the gut. Murdoch doesn’t look up from his desk until Connor’s silence becomes uncomfortable, if it had ever been anything else, and he says, more harshly, “It’s broken. Like you. Some techs loaded it up with some new programs so you can hug it and tell it all your little problems, and it can tell me if I need to pull you outta the field because you’re about to go all police-brutality on a kid. It’s also authorized to do normal police droid shit. Is that enough? You gonna get outta my office now?”
Connor has some idea that his mouth is slightly agape but apparently lacks the brain-to-muscle connection to remedy it. The GV rocks out of its idle position and crosses the room in a few strides. It says, “Detective, you appear to be experiencing heightened stress levels. May I suggest you remove yourself from this situation?”
Murdoch snorts. “Fucking brilliant.”
Connor closes his mouth, tongue suddenly dry and sticking to his palate, but Murdoch cuts him off when he tries to summon a coherent response.
“Don’t bother. I don’t care. You’re a useless fucking cop and I’m giving you this grace period so I don’t have to hear from your daddy. Far as I’m concerned, Ben should be here, and you and this piece-of-shit plastic are what I got instead. Go ask Person for something to do. You’re on desk duty this week. Out.”
Connor arrives at the mens’ restroom without being certain how he did so. He doesn’t expect anyone to be there, doesn’t expect the GV to follow him and hold the stall door open, to crowd in his space and with a curled up lip (too-sharp teeth tinged blue, tongue a little glitching, a little too white here and there), say, “I must report everything, Detective. The faster you stop needing me, the better. You are exhibiting early signs of a panic attack.”
The stall closes in on him, the smell of a dirty mop and piss and breath on his face, breath-that-isn’t-real, Murdoch’s breath, the confetti-on-black walls exploding in party-popper chaos, and the GV rolling his (its?) eyes, shoving him back, back until he topples and falls onto the toilet seat, until he can’t — can’t make sense of it holding his face (“Stop, stop, don’t touch me—”) and saying Breathe, breathe, breathe. (“Let go, let go, let go—”) Nothing the GV does calms him down, nothing it does is to calm him down, and he’d be putting that together more coherently if he had any coherence left, but he finds the thread, the command, breathe breathe breathe and grabs hold as if it were a lifeline. He breathes, and breathes, and breathes, its rough palms pressing into the soft flesh of his cheeks, thumbs tucking into the dip of his eye sockets, blue-white scar stretching across his (its) face, his (its) blue-green eyes, irises dark, small, simulated wrinkles making him (it) look used and tired and worn. The confetti plastic returns to its designated spaces on the stall’s design, and the GV lets go of him (don’t, don’t) and steps back, finally, where it should’ve before, he thinks, and it keeps glaring. It doesn’t say anything else. Connor isn’t sure whether he should thank it. The stall door is shut, at least, though he’s not sure what the whole thing looked like, him choking and sputtering out pleas and it closed in on him, two pairs of shoes in a bathroom stall on his first day back at work. He pushes past it, eventually, mumbles an “excuse me” and finds his way to the sink, splashes his face with cold water and takes a damp paper towel to his neck to wipe away the sweat. The GV follows him, an apparition in the mirror, keeping an eye on him, lingering, saying nothing. He realizes, finally, that he doesn’t like it.
Lieutenant Person is less than interested in his presence and more or less tells him to fuck off and read up on the more recent cases, the open ones, the ones they’re stringing together like popcorn on a Christmas tree. It’s what he and Ben had been working on before; a slew of cases Murdoch saw as unrelated, but they saw different. Murdoch entertained it, and Person will as long as it keeps him out of her hair. A few hours in it becomes clear that no one else had made much progress; the only thing of mild interest is the number of dirt-poor dealers and junkies with androids (broken androids, half of them, androids with their memories wiped clean and faces crushed by baseball bats, chassises impaled on furniture legs and fireplace pokers), but he thinks it can’t be much different than buying four hundred dollar shoes or a sports car when you’re living in a should-be-condemned pile of bricks in that era’s slum.
The GV watches him the whole time, stands over his desk until he tells it to go sit. It sits across from him, at Ben’s desk, but it isn’t Ben’s anymore and he tries to tell himself that even as the whole room slips into incongruous shards of “Here’s your coffee, Duckie,” and “The faster you stop needing me the better,” and rust-stained bullet holes on that stupid audubon tie Ben gave him when he graduated the academy, all wrapped up with a pair of expensive binoculars and a Birds of Eastern Michigan guide.
“Detective,” it says, pulling him back. “You’re here.”
Yes, he wants to say, Yes, I’m here, and Ben isn’t, and you hate me and don’t want to be here at all somehow. But he nods instead and returns to the mind-numbing busywork of scrolling case files until lunch rolls around and he decides to stretch his legs and make a deli run. The GV rises when he does. “You can just stay here, Gavin.”
“I must accompany you during work hours.”
“It’s lunch, though. I’m on a break.”
Its tone bites a little more when it clarifies, “I must accompany you until your shift for the day ends.” It sounds too disenchanted by the whole thing considering it shouldn’t be feeling anything about this at all. “That includes your lunch break, and may include any overtime.”
“Oh...okay. I guess, uh, follow me, then.” Its only acknowledgement of his instructions is it moving to follow him. They make it out to the parking lot and Connor hesitates at his bike. “I don’t have another helmet for y—”
“Motorcycle safety laws exclude androids, though I may be damaged in an accident without proper protection. Or with it. No guarantees.”
Its responses walk some kind of line between mechanical and snarky. Connor says, “Um, hold on, then, I guess,” but only after considering whether he might offer it his own helmet like he might a passenger. It is a passenger, and he doesn’t want it to be “damaged”; he saw enough irreparably broken androids in the case files today and he’s not sure he wants to admit that a bashed-in skull looks just as bad in blue as it does red. When he gets on his bike and throws on his helmet, the GV slides into place behind him and wraps its arms around his waist.
He freezes.
Gavin’s stomach presses against his back and he can just hear the thrum of his system. It vibrates through his skin and it’s warm, he’s warm, warmer than a human body but solid and squeezing around his middle, holding him.
(How long has it been—?)
“Detective.” Connor flinches at the voice in his ear. Gavin’s face must be hovering just over his shoulder (and he wouldn’t mind if he rested his chin there, tucked into the crook of his neck) and he can just catch the low hum of an outdated mic, the way a blown-out speaker buzzes. The skin at the base of his neck prickles electric and he realizes as Gavin speaks how tense he is beneath him. “Your lunch break ends in forty-eight minutes. We should go, if you want to eat.”
“Mm,” he chokes out some kind of response around the lump in his throat, but doesn’t move yet. Again he can’t reconcile the connection between his brain and the rest of his body, his fingers stiff and every nerve-ending tingling with touch. He keeps trying, though, even as Gavin maintains his hold, warm, solid, something that has to end, should end, should be a thing he can handle because wasn’t the expectation that someone would get on his bike with him eventually? It’s silly, stupid, (Louis wouldn’t get on Connor’s bike, that’s for damn sure, “I”m not riding behind you in the bitch seat,” ringing in his ears) but couldn’t he just sit like this forever—?
“Your lunch break ends in forty-seven minutes.” His voice is too close to his ear and makes him shiver. Connor starts up the bike and rolls out of the parking lot, clinging to the feeling of the motor humming beneath him, electric and quiet. When they arrive at the deli–when Gavin lets him go, cool air sliding into the space where he isn’t–Gavin follows him in, and the disinterested faces that turn to him and stick are his reminder that he is a GV , not Gavin.
Money and his tendency to work through lunch had led Connor to make his own lunches more often than not, though half the time they sat in the breakroom fridge until the next day if Ben decided to go out. This isn’t the first time Connor has been here since Ben’s death, but it’s the first time he’s been here on a lunch break in months and the first time he’s ever brought an android anywhere. Gavin hovers somewhere near his shoulder. He doesn’t want to check where.
They’re in and out in a short enough span of time, although Connor makes quick work of his sandwich at one of the public benches a ways down the block. Gavin sits beside him–not touching, of course–and, alarmingly, lounges with his arms across the back of the bench and his legs spread wide. He’s not sure where he picked up that mannerism; androids, as far as he knows, are meant to take up as little space as possible. Connor certainly tries to.
“So, um,” Connor clears his throat, nearly choking on the remnants of the egg in his throat when Gavin’s LED flickers yellow and he turns to him. “You’re not a police model, right?”
He shrugs. “I’m a GV200.”
That means less than nothing to Connor. “What are you made for? You’re not actually…” A therapy bot? An android I can hug and tell all my little problems to?
He waits for him to finish and, when he doesn’t, says, “I was a combat training android in the academy,” he pauses, considers, “You didn’t train with a GV.”
“No, I—I didn’t. We didn’t have training androids yet.”
He doesn’t say anything else. Connor finishes his sandwich and they ride back to the precinct in silence. The rest of the day is tense but less so with every moment; Connor is ignored, GV watches everyone else work, and Connor scrolls and scrolls and scrolls the case files. Many of them are closed, quite a few cold, and most simply neglected. They’re trying to root out a supplier but coming up short, the department is left holding a handful of mismatched puzzle pieces and nothing with which to fit them together. End-of-day comes and Gavin asks him, “Are you going to stay past 5 o’clock?”
“Um, no.”
Gavin gets up and returns to the android waiting area at exactly five. Connor packs up his things and goes home. The texts from Collin, Richard, and Hank sit unanswered, so he replies with some “thank you’s” when he’s finally gotten in the door of his new-ish apartment. Louis wanted to keep the old place, and he wanted to get away from all the things he remembered talking/fighting/holding/fucking/crying on. Hank helped him furnish it, though he insisted he would rather save up and pay himself. “No son of mine is gonna live in an empty shithole after his ex takes the good couch,” he’d said. Connor supposed it was a true enough argument. Louis had taken the pretty, slate gray velvet chaise Connor had picked out when they had moved in together. Collin certainly had some input on the purchasing process, whining when Connor wouldn’t take home the pumpkin orange one, but it didn’t matter because Louis thought having a chaise was “gay” anyway and he endeavored to appear as heterosexual as possible. Connor, for his part, preferred to maintain a certain ambiguity in his outward appearance, but didn’t understand fussing over the type of furniture when your same-sex partner would be in the apartment when your guests showed up anyway. Collin bought an orange chaise later, and offered it to Connor, but the shape was too familiar and it already had some suspicious stains. He liked the loveseat he and Hank had picked out. It was mauve. Connor liked mauve. Nobody was here to tell him he shouldn’t.
By the time he settles on the couch with a bowl of pasta, everyone has already texted him back. Collin asked him how the day went, Richard left him on read, and Hank wanted to call. He tries to piece the sequence of events together but finds he couldn’t remember the half of it, and what he can remember involves staring at his terminal and trying to figure out what to do with the GV. Collin receives only a “good, kinda weird” in response and the call with Hank — well, he’s got a half lie already formed about the day being fine. He could talk about the android, sure, and how it’s kind of a dick — yeah, he can do that. It goes over well enough, Hank buys it or pretends to, and they hang up a half hour or so later. The conversation isn’t as long as he wanted, Connor is sure, but Hank would demand he take more days off if he knew how much of the day had been sucked away by old conversations and blood on the pavement. He still has enough left in him to shower and ready his clothes for tomorrow, though, so he takes it as a good sign and goes to bed with a little hope that the week could improve.
+++
He takes a deep breath and holds it–one, two, three, four, five–and lets it out. It’s a party. It’s just a party. He doesn’t need to knock; it’s too loud for anyone to hear him anyway, but that’d be the perfect excuse, wouldn’t it? I knocked, no one answered, so I went home. But Collin would kill him. He’d told Connor he needed to get out, needed to clear his head. First week back, you need to celebrate. Have some drinks, find a hookup. It’ll be good.
I’m not going to hook up with anyone, Connor had insisted.
He opens the door and steps inside, immediately buffeted by the wall of music, the deep bass that vibrates from the floor to his toes to his skull. His eardrums already ache and he wants to go home.
“You made it!”
Collin throws himself around him and presses a sloppy kiss to his forehead. Connor shrinks away from him — he always does this — and takes a moment to appreciate the blue lamé disaster that is Collin’s shirt. He’s tucked it into a neat pair of skinny, black slacks that fall just short of his ankles (something he’s always been weirdly proud of, though the thinness of them turned out to be a detriment in soccer). His belt buckle glints silver in the light, and his shoes — so Collin — are black brogues with blue metallic accents to match his shirt.
Collin steps back and bows. “Like what you see?”
“It’s very you .”
“Wow, just say “no” next time. You look cute, though. Nice to see you in something other than narc casual.” He pats Connor’s arm. Connor, for his part, is wearing an oversized paisley and denim button-down and a pair of neatly ironed bermuda shorts he didn’t expect to take out of his closet since he got them. “Is that the shirt I gave you? Actually…” He looks Connor over. “I gave you everything but your socks.”
“Hank gave me the socks last Christmas.” They were plain and white and cheap, and he mostly wore them to work.
“Figures. How on earth do you dress yourself without me? Come on, let’s get you a drink.”
Connor follows him to the kitchen and accepts the blue something or other Collin pours out. There are several pitchers lined up across the table, some of them already empty. In spending almost two hours arguing with himself over attending the party, he had shown up fashionably late. He couldn’t sell that line to Collin; he had five unanswered texts from him, each some variation of “when are you coming” or “don’t be a chicken shit.”
“Go on, mingle.” Collin squeezes him on the shoulder. “You can go out on the deck if you get nervous. But don’t you dare spend the whole party there. I wanna hear you got dicked down, ‘kay?”
“Uh-huh, yeah. Got it.” Connor watches him slip back into the crowd. Most of the house is dimly lit, some kind of effort at making it more like a club than a home, and he’s not sure who it belongs to. One of Collin’s friends, or a friend of a friend, but not anybody Connor knows.
He drifts toward the music, though it’s unpleasant the way it vibrates through his eardrums, and stays close to the wall. People lounge across couches and smoke and drink and grind in the open spaces. Groups of two, three, four. A crowd at the center. He thinks of the GV’s arms around his waist. He came here for a drink. He came here to see Collin, and Collin abandoned him. Collin knows exactly what he’s doing. Collin wants him to get laid. Fucking Collin.
“Hey.” He flinches, and the guy doesn’t offer an apology, though he grins a little. “You look bored as hell.” He’s somewhere around Connor’s height, bearded, big eyes. Most of him is obscured by a particular shadow cast by the stairwell.
Connor shrugs. “Parties aren’t really my thing.” He sips the drink; it’s something with curacao, apparently, citrusy-sweet, and he’s putting together a few minutes too late that the party is android themed. Blue string lights frame the windows, and several people don blue triangles or armbands. He tries not to consider the implications that came with those design choices and fails, considering that perhaps one too many people are ignoring the idea of wearing triangles and armbands to a party he’s certain is packed to the brim with several flavors of “alternative” folks.
“I can tell.” He tips his drink. “What do you think of this?”
“It’s very... blue. I’m, uh...I’m Connor.”
“Jay. Nice to meet you, Connor.” He tilts his head into the light and reveals himself to be all sharp angles, including the closely groomed beard. Something about him reminds Connor of a vulture — the hooked nose, maybe — and as Jay looks him over, he tries desperately to beat back the shiver that runs up his spine. He only came for a drink. He came because Collin asked him to. He came because, maybe, for a night, he could forget, forget Louis, forget the GV, forget work, forget Ben, forget, forget, forget— “You good?” Jay’s smile falters into something a little more like real concern.
He shrugs again and tries his own smile. “Been a long week.”
“Sounds like you need to let off some steam.” Connor lets him drape his arm over his shoulders. “Have someone take care of you.” It’s not exactly subtle, but the weight of him feels like something other than absence.
“Mm,” he hums, “maybe.” Jay tugs him closer and he tilts his head to let him suck on his neck. He’s tucked into Jay’s side, and it’s too warm in the house, too loud, but he leans into the pressure, and tries not to wince too much at the feeling of a bruise forming on his throat. It’s juvenile, in a way; Jay hasn’t even kissed him properly but he’s marking him. Does he already think he’s going to get laid?
(Isn’t he?)
Jay whispers in his ear, mouth wet, dragging a sloppy line up his jaw, “We should find somewhere quiet.” He pulls Connor along, and all Connor does is stick close to his side, lean into him even though it makes them both trip around the corner to the hall, but he pretends it’s the vodka and curacao, not that he just wants to sink into a warm body and stay there. He also pretends to be okay with being dragged into a bathroom and not even attempting to see if one of the guest rooms — and he’s certain there’s guest rooms, this place is huge — is unoccupied. Jay shuts the door and presses him back against the sink, finally deciding to give some attention to Connor’s mouth (he could’ve gone without it, but there’s more time to be spent with Jay’s arms around him, until his hands are roaming his hips and sliding past his waistband). He moans against Jay’s lips when his fingers get somewhere interesting, and he wishes it didn’t do anything, wishes he wasn’t so desperate as to be bucking into his hand, to be wrapping himself around a stranger.
“You like that, baby?”
“Yeah,” he says, and the word is broken, a whine , fucking pathetic, actually, but Jay likes it, (these guys always like how he throws himself at them, melts for them, falls apart in hands they don’t even know how to use), and Connor’s pants are around his ankles in record time. Jay turns him around and bends him over the counter. He looks up at the mirror for a split second, sees his red face, violet-speckled throat, and drops his head to stare down the drain. He should’ve done something, prepped, lubed up and worn a plug instead of pretending he wasn’t going to do this. Collin thinks he’s been living in some kind of depressive celibacy since Louis, but this isn’t the first bathroom sink he’s been bent over post-breakup and it probably won’t be the last (he’ll tell himself it is, though, later). He glances up at the sound of Jay’s fly unzipping. “You got—?”
“Condom and lube, babe, don’t worry. You look tight.” He grins when he says it, but all Connor hears is this is probably going to hurt . He keeps his eye on Jay for as long as he can stand it, long enough to make sure he’s not raw dogging because the desperate little twink isn’t looking (been there—), turns his eyes back to the holes in the drain when Jay pushes his fingers in. It burns, doesn’t stretch , it sure as hell isn’t enough by the time there’s actually a cock inside him, and he squeezes his eyes shut, hopes his hair is falling over his face when Jay grabs his neck to leverage himself and doesn’t start slow enough, that’s for damn sure, acts like Connor was waiting for this and when he makes noise, it’s for the discomfort. Jay’s sure he’s got a magic dick, though, because he can’t be bothered to touch Connor now that he’s in him, and he’s left to get himself off.
It feels like it lasts forever, one hand on his hip and the other on the back of his neck, a stuttering rhythm that’s halfway to satisfying but loses itself, Jay loses himself, but says, “Lemme see your face, baby,” and pulls his head back by his hair. He opens his eyes long enough to let the tears spill out, long enough to freak Jay out so he releases him to hide his face, even if he hits his head once or twice on the faucet. Jay groans and is close to finishing; Connor’s dick is soft in his hand and he’s lost whatever was motivating him to sound pretty. Jay actually pushes himself deep, to-the-hilt, when he finishes, and Connor marks it with faint annoyance that it finally feels good for a few seconds. Jay pulls out, panting, and says — as he’s tucking himself back in, condom tied off and tossed in the trash — “Did you come?”
“Yeah.”
Jay frowns, glances down, but says, “Want me to—”
“No, I’ll clean up.” He stays where he is, even when Jay hesitates, knows something isn’t right in the way Connor stares down the thirium-blue flowers in the vase (stares down the door so he can see it open and shut), but eventually he leaves. He wasn’t awful. He — tried? Showed concern. Connor wasn’t a good lay. Dead fish, like Louis always said. He wipes himself down and starts crying partway through getting dressed. He feels it coming, and anyway, he’d started because of the pain, and now it’s just slipping out, until his chest shakes and he slides to the floor, tucked into the nook beside the toilet, his drink too far away on the other side of the bathroom.
The door clicks open and someone goes, “Oh, shit—” before shutting it again.
His face is covered, arms wrapped around himself, head curled into his knees, but it’s not long before the music rushes in and a familiar voice is gently calling, “Con? Con, hey,” and unraveling him. “Are you okay?”
He nods.
“Did someone hurt you?”
“No.”
“Wanna go outside?”
He nods again.
Collin helps him up and they squeeze through the crowd and lights and sound onto the back deck, where they settle on the steps and Connor sits a few inches away. He can feel the night breeze in the space between them. Collin doesn’t say anything, so when he finally stops crying, Connor offers it up. “I got laid.”
Collin snorts. “It was that bad, huh?”
“I don’t know. I just…” He fidgets with the end of his sleeve. “I don’t...think I want that anymore. I wanted…I…” His eyes burn and tear up again. “It’s...you know they gave me this android? At work? Because I — because Ben died, or something? It’s like a — a therapy bot, I don’t know, but it’s an — it’s actually an asshole .”
Collin stays quiet, but closes the distance and pulls Connor into his side.
“I’ve never met an android like that. It — it — it hates me. It cornered me in the bathroom and gave me an anxiety attack. That’s like — the opposite of what it should do. I—”
“Is it sexy?”
Connor pauses. “What?”
“I asked if it’s sexy.” A little grin pokes at the corner of his mouth. He’s always been good at distracting him.
“It’s…” He tries to put its face together. He’d spent enough time studying it when he thought it wasn’t looking, but now he keeps conjuring up Jay’s nose, Louis’s eyes, and not the GV’s face. “It has a big scar on its nose, and...and he’s kinda buff, and...warm.” He thinks of it holding him on the bike. “Really warm.”
“Con,” he sighs, “just ask it to give you a hug.”
“A hug…?”
“Yeah. Look, why’d you hook up with that guy tonight?”
The both of them already know now that he isn’t particularly horny. He swallows. “I just...I just wanted him to…I just wanted him to hold me.”
“There we go.” Collin squeezes him. “Did he hold you?”
“No.”
“See? Get the bot to do it. Maybe he’s annoying, but he’s gotta, like, do what you ask. Especially if he’s supposed to be your emotional support dog or whatever. Ask him for a hug. See what happens. Androids don’t want anything, so he’s not gonna want you to fuck him. You don’t...you don’t have to do one to get the other.”
He tries to think of what it’d be like to ask the GV, and manages to conjure up only its unrelenting glare. Collin is still watching him, though, so he says, “Alright. Yeah. I’ll ask.” Collin smiles and finally releases him from his scrutiny.
They sit out in the quiet for a bit, until someone comes out onto the deck. “Hey. You guys
okay?”
Connor’s certain there’s still tear tracks on his cheeks, so he keeps his head ducked, but Collin turns. “Yeah, all good.” Shoes scuff on the floor. “Wait— Wes. Can you bring us out some drinks?”
“Oh, sure.” He disappears and, when he returns, passes both drinks to Collin. Connor doesn’t look up at him. It’s rude, but he can’t deal with eye contact right now, can’t handle the self-scrutiny that will inevitably result from whatever is written on this stranger’s face. He takes his drink — thirium blue — and they spend an hour or so like that, until he falls asleep on Collin’s shoulder. Collin prods him awake and sets him up in one of the guest rooms once everyone’s been kicked out, and he wonders vaguely whose house Collin would so comfortably claim a couple of rooms in.
He wakes up much earlier than he would’ve preferred, less hungover than he would’ve thought, and in a place he would rather have not slept in. The comforter was impressively fluffy, though, and nobody is awake to bother him when he creeps down the stairs. A few people passed out on the couches and chairs and the floor, but Collin is nowhere to be seen, so he shuffles out to find his bike in the overlarge driveway and heads home.
He texts Collin, “Thanks for the pep talk last night,” but has a good feeling he won’t remember what he told Connor when he finally wakes up. He supposes it’s probably better that way. Nights like that leave a bad taste in his mouth. They’re always tinged with embarrassment and self loathing.
Chapter 2: tomato can
Notes:
omg kara hi!!!!!!
Chapter title from "Tomato Can" by The Arcs.
"In individual combat sports, a tomato can, or simply can, is a fighter with comparatively poor or diminished skills who may be considered an easy opponent to defeat, or a "guaranteed win." ... "Tomato" refers to blood: "knock a tomato can over, and red stuff spills out."
chapter poem- Round 3 by Eloisa Amezcua.
Chapter Text
CHAPTER TWO—;
“Freedom is what you can buy
with a left jab & a right cross.”
— Round 3, Eloisa Amezcua
White-knuckled.
It’s his first day out with the GV. They’re dropping by a witness’s place to ask her about a case; she claimed to have seen an android picking up red ice from a dealer. “Bots aren’t supposed to do that,” Person had said. “Go ask her about it.” It’s a silly errand, witnesses like this don’t usually have much more to say, but that’s not the issue. (It could be, he was a decent detective before, still would be, if they let him) but the house.
The house.
(His fingers tighten and tighten and tighten on the handlebars, knuckles aching, showing white.)
23 Juniper Street. It’s a perfectly normal name for a perfectly normal street where bad things happen to people who aren’t Ben Collins, or they don’t happen at all. The house only looks like it should have a man holding a shotgun on the porch. It doesn’t.
He jumps at the hand on his forearm, suddenly grounding him after the GV had dismounted and left only open air. It looks at him. “Detective,” it says, “you’re here.”
Connor wonders how much of his file the GV has access to. He wonders if it knows.
“It looks like—” He starts, but the rest of it catches in his throat and he can’t do it. He has to keep it together. The thing is writing reports on him, telling his supervisors about him, and he needs to be on. He’s at work. He can’t falter.
(Not again.)
He gets off the bike.
+++
As predicted, the witness had nothing new to offer. He’s spending his lunch break sifting through the files again, trying to tie cases together and finding the knots falling loose in his hands. The GV sits beside him, watching. They’re on a bench outside that same deli.
“You have a bruise,” it says, “on your neck.”
He doesn’t process the words at first, spends a few seconds trying to hang onto the last sentence he read until it finally clicks. He runs his hand over the mark. “Yeah.”
“What’s it from?” It has a strange curiosity, this machine, and it’s all Connor can do to keep thinking of it as a machine and nothing more. He still hasn’t asked it to hold him, of course, and their interactions haven’t improved, although Connor isn’t dogged so much by anxiety over the thing’s constant presence. He’s sort of getting used to it, now, like one might a limp.
He debates what to say. The truth would look embarrassing on paper, but it’s obvious to any human, and if the GV’s reports come with photo evidence — well. He wouldn’t want it to think he’s actually hurting himself, or gotten hurt. “It’s from a guy.”
“A guy?”
“Yeah. I met a guy at a party. He gave me a bruise.”
“Humans do that.” It should be a question, but it sounds more like it’s taking notes.
“Sometimes. It’s kind of annoying.”
“Why’d you let him, then?”
Connor’s leg picks up a bounce. He doesn’t need to tell the GV anything. “He wanted to. And I wanted him to like me. So I let him.”
It sits back and appears to think about it, still spread out as obnoxiously as possible and forcing Connor to squeeze into the very end of the bench. Eventually, it says, “Sometimes you have to let people do things to you so they don’t hurt you more.”
“That isn’t—” He stops when he sees the way it’s looking somewhere else, eyes boring into the asphalt and not.
Like a man might, when recollecting. Perhaps it’s a confession.
Connor watches him for a moment. He follows the line of Gavin’s scar, just now realizing that it originates somewhere above his eyebrow, and ends on the other side of his face, where he can’t see. He’s not sure what could’ve done that to an android. “Sometimes, yeah.”
Gavin doesn’t answer. Connor thinks, maybe, that he ought to think of it as Gavin. He thinks, maybe, that it has more to say.
The faster you stop needing me, the better.
“I’m going down to the gym later. You have boxing protocols, right?”
It tears itself away from the summer-hot tar and looks at him. “Yeah.”
“I need to get back into shape. All I’ve been doing is PT for months. I can take you down there, can’t I?”
The light on its temple flashes yellow. “If you want.”
That’s answer enough, although the GV spends the rest of his shift fidgeting with a coin it found on the sidewalk.
+++
Connor hovers at the edge of the ring. Two young cops spar within, sweaty and breathing through their mouths, hopelessly panting. The GV trails behind him, still watching, still so uncomfortably close that Connor can feel the static warmth clinging to the air around him. If he touches Gavin, he knows he’ll feel the vibrating machines within him, the humming things he imagines to be cogs and gears, rather than wires and circuit boards.
The brown-haired man in the ring gets knocked on his ass, and Connor hops up onto the edge. “Come on, Gavin.”
He slides between the ropes alongside Connor. The winner between the two rookies startles. “That a GV?”
“Yeah,” Connor says.
“Shiiit. You think we can borrow it?”
“It’s mine.” A “Not like that” almost spills out of his mouth. “I’m sparring with it,” he clarifies.
“Oh. Maybe we can use it when you’re done, yeah?”
“Maybe.”
Gavin cuts in, voice clear and machine-certain, “I can add you to the queue.”
Connor turns on him. “What queue?”
“My training queue. It’s one of the many functionalities of a GV200. Come on, Anderson. Let’s get started.” He never calls Connor “Anderson,” ever. The closest he came was back when he called him “Detective Anderson” during their first few days together. Connor had told him to stop.
The rookies clear out of the ring and then it’s just him and GV. The GV. It’s just his training dummy, (his training dummy who had stared down the asphalt like it could dredge up a past that split his faceplates in half). The GV starts a timer on its audio, a flat, “Ready — go!”
Connor’s down in under a minute. He blocks a few punches, the GV moving quickly, lunging and receding, and the moment Connor breaks his guard to swing, the GV ducks and pops him in the ribs. He curls up, body crumpling into the pain, trying to shield his face again, but the GV lands a hit to the side of his head–they won’t let him in the ring without gear, he’s not too bad off until one punch becomes two-three-four and Connor is lurching sideways, foot slipping on the sweat-slick mat and damning him to fall. The GV hovers over him, still bouncing on the balls of its feet. “I just need a sec,” Connor wheezes.
The GV waits more than a second, perhaps a minute or so, before finally relaxing. “I think that’s enough for tonight. You’re overexerted.”
“No,” he tries to get up as he says it, but his elbows tremble, “I’m not done .”
“There are others in my queue.” The GV hoists him to his feet with a firm grip on his forearm and pushes him to the ropes.
“But I brought you here.” Of course the GV is unaffected by the statement, apparently too interested in returning to its old life than listening to its partner after-hours.
“Volkov and Jones are waiting to go. I can add you to the back of the queue.”
He’s doing it on purpose, is the last petulant thought Connor has before he ducks between the ropes. A handful of rookies–Volkov and Jones among them–grin and clap when Connor finally relents. Assholes. He doesn’t look back when the GV calls after him, asking again whether he wants to be added to his queue or not, and he slinks to the showers, defeated.
The tepid-bordering-on-hot water can’t wash his tension down the drain and his hand wanders, fist offering some kind of relief when nothing else will. He didn’t expect to win, what he didn’t expect was for it to be a competition at all. It was going to be practice , not a matched fight, not a line up of men waiting to use the GV like they’d rented it and not like they were taking Connor’s partner away from him—
The GV isn’t his.
When he passes the gym again, the GV is still in there with a different group. Fine. It knows how to get back to the bullpen on its own. He’s not sure he wants it to see the way he’s favoring his side, even if it can’t see the violet and yellow already blooming under his shirt. It’s a smug thing, that android, and he doesn’t need its eyes on him right now.
Or ever.
He’s reminded of Collin telling him to ask it for a hug.
Well, it put its hands on him. That’s a start, isn’t it?
+++
CASE: AX400 & YK500 RUNAWAYS
Connor forgets his umbrella. He thinks of his father—years ago—saying, “That’s Murphy’s Law. What can happen, will happen,” while they sit in the car, watching the rain pour down.
Rainstorms are objectively worse when one is on a motorcycle. Past Connor probably should’ve gotten a car, but Past Connor wanted to go somewhere very far very quickly and didn’t know how else to do it. Past Connor ended up getting a degree and graduating the academy and not moving very far from home at all.
Current Connor is still thinking about how Gavin’s arms feel around his waist, when he should be thinking about how his glove felt against his head. Current Connor should actually be thinking about his job. He tries to lasso the case file back to mind (ultrathin tablets really are useless in the rain) and feels a little like he’s managed to fit two of the puzzle pieces together.
A few days ago, a Mr. Todd Williams reported that his AX400 android, called “Kara,” attacked him and fled his home by public bus. Last night, an AX400 toting a little girl robbed a clerk at gunpoint. None of Mr. Williams’s statements mention a child–besides his own Alice, whom his ex-wife has full custody over and a restraining order against Todd–so the situation is more time-sensitive than usual. There’s no way to know whether she’s an android or a human until they find her. AX400s are designed with childcare capabilities, and Connor wonders at that–did she find a child off the street to care for? Another stray android, or one stolen from someone’s home or a store? Had Mr. Williams not told them everything? He’s seen the smug pleasure Gavin receives from beating down Connor–and others–in the ring; it makes sense to him that even a broken android would reach for its original purpose.
He doesn’t tell Gavin to follow him into the motel–doesn’t need to–and he’d feel bad leaving him out in the rain anyway. Connor catalogs the motel parking lot, but his eyes keep drifting over to Gavin’s hands, and the way his fists are half-closed at his sides in some kind of a dropped boxing stance, his pinky twitching out of time with anything. Gavin generally moves like this, but especially when they’re in the field; in the office, he settles into a slouch, sometimes perched on the corner of Connor’s desk (and he wonders, really, who the hell taught him that?), a half-interested grimace on his face. Connor’s never sure if he’s paying attention to him or their surroundings or maybe just running that early 2000’s geometric screensaver Hank told him about. He’d said something about how you’d sit there, waiting for the damn thing to bounce perfectly in the corner. Connor supposed it might be better than staring at the wavering blue lines of his holo-tablet, but maybe it was the same, and things really hadn’t changed at all since then.
The motel office is cramped and his shoes squelch on the rug. Gavin doesn’t even attempt to hide his wandering attention as his eyes follow a line of damp up the wall while his LED spins yellow.
Connor smiles at the motel owner and introduces himself. “Evening, sir, I’m Detective Anderson with the Detroit Police. We’re looking for a female android — an AX400 — who robbed a store last night. She’s with a little girl.”
“An android? No, I don’t take androids. Had a lady with a girl last night, though.”
Connor holds up his tablet. “Have you se—”
“Dammit,” he rises halfway out of his seat to squint at the image, “Yeah, I rented a room to her.”
“Is she still here?”
“Yeah, probably. It was in room 28.” He digs out the keycard and passes it to Connor.
“Thanks. Come on, Gavin.”
They climb the stairs to room 28. Connor announces himself to no response, and when he unlocks the door, he finds the room empty. Gavin doesn’t say much, but gives the room a good look around, too.
A voice crackles onto the radio. Sounds like Volkov, actually. “A woman and a little girl just ran past me, heading toward the train station. Looks like your ‘bot,” he pants, “in pursuit.”
“Shit,” Connor hisses. He and Gavin charge down the stairs and onto the sidewalk, cement and confused (disinterested, useless, donut-eating—) officers blurring by. One vaguely competent cop points them in the direction of the androids, but Connor lags behind Gavin as they round an alley corner. The dull pain of bruising along his side quickly turns into a knife twisting with each heaving breath. There’s a mud puddle ahead, but no way around it, and against all odds, (all perfect, mathematical odds), Gavin slips and lands face-first in the muck. Some part of Connor is a little pleased that he didn’t land in one of his perfectly programmed martial arts falls, but the rest of him is focused on the little girl (human, frightened, in danger) and he calls out, “Catch up when you can,” and keeps going.
Overstuffed dumpsters loom ahead, but as soon as Connor passes the black bags–so, so close to the girl–the AX400 lunges out and grabs him by his shirt collar. The little girl—a fucking gremlin, he decides—darts past him and away. So—scared of him , is the only split-second conclusion he makes before the AX400 smashes his nose with her damn plastic knuckles. He reels back, halfway to gathering himself when she lets go of his shirt and dumps him on his ass in the mountain of trash.
Wet shoes squeak and scuff up the alley as he picks himself up; Gavin’s sprint slows to a jog before Connor waves him on. “Get them!”
They’re saved only by the android doubting her own capabilities, apparently, because the pair are far ahead of Connor and Gavin but linger at the fence just outside the highway. It’s a monster of a thing, all asphalt and autopiloted cars zooming by at 100mph or so, streamlined in design and far too fast for anyone’s comfort. Connor knows where he likes to max out his speed, even when he’s running.
The AX400 glances over her shoulder before boosting the little girl over the fence and clambering over herself.
“Stop!” Connor calls after them as he and Gavin finally reach the fence. “Don’t do it!”
Gavin charges the fence and leaps halfway up it like an incensed Doberman, stalling only when Connor grabs at his pant leg. “Don’t you dare. ”
“I got this,” he snarls back. The android and her girl dart out onto the road, bravely, stupidly, and are nearly sideswiped by a semi. The girl squeals, somehow louder than the incessant roar of diesel. Gavin climbs another row of chain link and reaches for the top, his fingers slotting between the barbed ends of it.
“I said no. That’s an order , Gavin!” He already knows there’s going to be blue and red smeared across the highway and he’s not going to let Gavin be part of it. He tugs on Gavin’s uniform, harder, enough to rattle the fence but not displace him. “Stand down.”
Gavin hesitates — really, truly hesitates, and Connor knows he isn’t supposed to. He should’ve stopped earlier, but here he is, mouth twitching, fingers gripping the wires as he watches his quarry escape. His lip curls into something unkind before he finally drops from the fence and nearly bowls Connor over. The android and the girl make it, and they both watch it happen. No blood.
“They won’t go far. We’ll get them,” Connor says, but his heart is pounding in his chest and the girl wasn’t afraid of Kara and Gavin should’ve listened. Gavin is still staring out at the highway, covered in mud and whatever else. “You need a shower.”
He shrugs. “Okay.”
“I think I need one too, actually.” He’s been too intimate with too much garbage. “Come on. I’ll file this and we’ll get cleaned up.”
“At the gym?”
“No, at my—at my house. It’s closer. I’ll wash your uniform. We’re, uh—we’re still on the clock until five. So…”
Gavin shrugs, something like relaxation settling on him, though his hands still jump and twitch like a restrained animal’s. Connor takes it as a yes, as if a “no” should even be considered, (but it’s there, simmering, under the skin, he saw), and turns on his heels to head back to the motel.
+++
–GV200.
Gavin has never been touched tenderly.
He thinks Connor is going to leave him to shower alone, but apparently his answer of "I know what soap is," isn't convincing enough, and he ends up waiting while Connor fills up the tub. Connor tells him to strip, and looks away for the most part, although Gavin catches him glancing between his legs and up his abdomen before focusing intently on the carpet. The GV200 is utilitarian; Gavin was designed to withstand punches and kicks and maybe the occasional rubber bullet (but preferably not) and nothing else. He's made to look muscular, solid and intimidating but not too much (average height, statistically speaking, and more than one trainee has called him an "ugly son of a bitch"). With all the extra programs stuffed in his CPU, no changes were made to his exterior. His scars remain as is.
Connor tests the water with his hand and tells him to get in. It's warm, close to his own internal temperature (not ideal, really, a cold bath would be better for him, but Connor seems to think this is important) and the water rises up as he lowers himself. Connor smiles a little bit.
"How's it feel?"
"Like 109 degrees Fahrenheit."
"So...warm?"
He shrugs.
Connor's smile falters and settles back into the thin line Gavin knows him for. He squeezes some shampoo (sulfate-free, clove scented) into his palm and — puts his hands in Gavin's hair.
Gavin has never been touched tenderly.
Out of habit, he waits for the damage warnings to spring up. It takes him a few seconds to realize that there shouldn’t be any. Connor's fingertips press into his chassis, massaging it, as he scrubs. It’s pressure, not harm. Soap dribbles down Gavin's face, but he keeps his eyes open. Connor focuses on his hair, finding dried muddy clumps and working them through before combing them out. It feels…nice. It feels so nice. God, it feels really, really nice. He stops for a moment, and Gavin wants to say no, come back, but Connor only rinses his hands in the bathwater before scooping some up and gently pouring it over his head.
“So,” Connor says, as he picks up the bottle of something else (men’s conditioner, sandalwood scented). “Are all these scars from regular training?”
Gavin grunts an affirmative. “Regular” isn’t quite accurate, but it’s enough of a half-truth that he hopes will shut Connor up.
“Even this one?”
Gavin scrunches his nose as Connor touches the long scar on his face with a wet finger. No one’s ever asked him about it and expected an answer, but Connor is watching him, conditioner pouring out from between his fingers, and Gavin says, “No.”
Connor smooths the conditioner into his hair. Quietly, he says, “What happened?”
He looks away, though Connor is focused on things other than his face. “I won.”
“It looks like it hurt.” He combs his fingers through, pulling apart any tangles he comes across.
“Androids don’t feel pain.”
“Right.” He clears his throat and continues, and maybe Gavin leans into the pressure just a little, just enough, to feel Connor’s fingertips against his scalp. “Feels nice, right? When I was little—”
“Feels weird.”
“Oh—”
“Your fingers are like little worms.”
Connor starts to draw his hands away. “Fine, if you—”
Gavin catches his wrist. “Don’t...stop.” Connor sits frozen, staring down at where Gavin’s hand is wrapped around his thin wrist.
“Oh. Okay.” He tries to reign in the smile quirking at his lips but doesn’t quite manage it, and goes back to combing his hair. He tells Gavin to let it sit and hands him the scrub brush. “For the rest of the mud.”
Gavin scrubs himself clean, and Connor waits. He helps Gavin reach a spot in the middle of his back, and Gavin can feel the warmth coming off of his skin, thermometer reading 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit, and as soon as Connor rocks back on his heels, halfway to saying, “You’re all done,” Gavin wipes his hands on his shirt.
“Hey—”
He’s not sure what compels him to do it, but in a moment, his hands are under Connor’s shirt, jabbing at his sides, still soapy, and Connor squeals. It startles Gavin, but he presses forward, only for Connor to laugh , an unspooling of giggles that overflow and spill out of him as he tries to shove Gavin away. Soon he’s wheezing, gasping desperately and doubling over, exclaiming how he can’t breathe between desperate inhales, and Gavin releases him. Connor tries to gather himself, clutching at his flank and coughing, before sitting up and looking at Gavin, all red-faced and teary-eyed. “Holy shit,” he says, “tickle-bot.”
Something wiggles into his chest and curls there, a trembling thing, but before he can say anything, Connor rises and grabs a towel off the rack. “Come on. I need a shower too. And I definitely need fresh clothes, you jerk. Toss your uniform in the dryer when it’s done, okay?”
He grunts an affirmative and wipes himself down with a towel, only to realize that Connor isn’t moving (isn’t undressing), just waiting, head ducked, picking at his fingernails. “What?”
“I’m—” he glances up and away again. “Waiting for you.”
Weirdo. He shrugs and steps out into the hall, still dripping. The washing machine is silent, so he opens up the top, taking a moment to look out at the street. It’s quiet, a residential street still evading development, but he thinks that’s alright. Connor has the entire house to himself, apparently, and he might as well have the rest of the neighborhood, too.
He tosses his towel on top of the dryer and throws his uniform in the machine. GV200’s possess basic laundry-related programming in case they are needed to wash gym uniforms, or their own. It never fails to amaze him that for all the programs he came installed with, all the new crap the techs dumped in his head had nothing to do with them.
A shadow passes over the machines and he glances up to see a woman walking her dog, staring open-mouthed at him. He gives her the finger and she hurries on. Another weirdo.
Chapter 3: darker in the day than the dead of night
Summary:
→[GV investigates the various sources of Connor’s cracks.]
Notes:
→["In individual combat sports, a tomato can, or simply can, is a fighter with comparatively poor or diminished skills who may be considered an easy opponent to defeat, or a "guaranteed win." ... "Tomato" refers to blood: "knock a tomato can over, and red stuff spills out."]
(Note added to both the last chapter and this one. Connor is def a tomato can vs. GV, who would apparently be called a "can crusher." RIP.)
Chapter title from Cage the Elephant's "Cold Cold Cold."
Chapter Text
CHAPTER THREE—;
“The other night, I cried
While thinking of having sex with you
Not out of desire or shame
But some subconscious impulse to feel pain
I wiped my tears on my face and neck
And the backs of my ears and said
“Now it’s sweat
Now it’s sweat;
It's sweat now.”
—It’s Only Sex, Car Seat Headrest
–GV200.
He wants to spar again.
Fine, then, that’s fine. Gavin decides to knock him down early, get his whiny little ass out of the way so the big boys can fight. So the big boys can fall, broken-kneed, like they used to. He’s got something on them, now, and it’s Connor, Connor who’d stand between him and the wily men with fists and baseball bats, Connor who just slid backwards on someone else’s sweat—clumsy kid, idiot—Connor who keeps trying to wrestle a friend out of him like one might a tissue caught in the uneven cardboard of its own torn box.
But the damn kid won’t stop getting up. Just stay down, stay down. There’s a swathe of guys—some of them GV remembers, some of them who put dents in his plastic and he still knows where—hooting and clamoring at the edges of the ring, booing out the Anderson kid who just keeps getting back on his feet. He’s a little slower each time, a little shakier, and at this point he’s barely landing any hits at all. It takes GV about a half second to put a fist in his face—something crunches —and Connor drops. Blood spills out of his nose and he raises a hand, fingers trembling, a little wave that turns frantic in the brief moment he has before his eyes go wide and GV kicks him in the ribs so hard he slides halfway across the mat. He doesn’t get up right away, and a murmur ripples through the crowd. He rises on shaky arms, drawing himself to a lesser height, uselessly trying to cover his nose and stop it from splattering onto the mat.
The room is mostly quiet now, and GV realizes too late the sudden shift in the air he’s trained himself to recognize. He had to know for his own survival, when the trainees, frustrated by his competence, turned cruel; when they uttered the command “Set GV200 to Level One.” He’d learned to prepare for his punishment.
Connor sucking in a breath took all the sound in the room with him. He shouldn’t have kicked Connor. He should’ve stopped, and on the edges of his awareness he hears those sentiments.
“They’re not supposed to do that.”
“It must’ve seen him put his hand up…”
“Someone needs to turn that thing’s level down.”
GV hauls Connor to his feet. He’s still trying to catch his breath, cut-short inhales followed by wet coughing and occasional gagging. The crowd parts for them, not even whispering, boxers announcing how the plastic fucked up. When they finally reach the locker room door, Connor shoves him away, jerking his arm out of GV’s grip. He slumps against the wall, one eye already purpling and bloodshot.
“You’re my partner,” he says slowly, voice still wetly strained like there’s a fist around his windpipe, “You kept sparring with the other guys. Now, they won’t spar with me . You wanna be mad about it, take it out on someone else.”
GV doesn’t shrug, doesn’t answer, but silently holds his stare, seething rage visible only in the way Connor chews his lip and does nothing to stem the blood still dripping from his chin. He must taste it by now , GV thinks. He’s so angry he doesn’t care.
“Go back to the waiting area. I’m going home.” He leads with his shoulder as he slides into the locker room, leaving a smear of blood on the door. GV looks down at his own hands, knuckles all scuffed gray plastic and already-crusting red-brown. Some voices echo down the hall and he knows he better go back where he belongs—better get out of the way before they decide to test whether his difficulty settings still work.
+++
It’s pitch-dark. This part of the precinct is quiet, lights off, all other activity relegated to booking assholes in the drunk tank. GV waits until he is certain no one is anywhere near the exit, and slips out.
He’s learned to keep the cat food at the very back of Connor’s bottom left file cabinet drawer, where he never checks. Most everything is done digitally, of course, but Connor keeps a few snacks in the right cabinet and some hard copies of evidence in the left drawer. Most of the other officers don’t bother printing anything and trust wholly in their system (or at least accept that it’s not as reliable as it should be), but Connor prints things he finds relevant. He’s hoarded a veritable collection of files on the red ice cases — still grasping at straws, there — and insists on using the printer they’ve stuffed in one of the dustier old offices. Gavin has asked him a few times why he bothers, but Connor only ever says, “Can’t trust a system anyone else can edit,” and continues on.
He crosses the expanse of the parking lot quickly, sticking to the shadows, his LED dead and gray. When he slips into the alley, he starts up his low whistle, and in a moment, a gray cat slides into the stretch of moonlight. “Evening, Felis Catus #119 202 025.” She meows more and more incessantly as he reveals the can of cat food and rises onto her hind legs to swipe at his hands when he finally peels it open. He deposits the overturned pate onto a paper plate he nicked from the break room. She shoves past his hand and digs in before he can even get all of it out. “Always hungry, you.”
After tossing the can atop the mass of black garbage bags poking out of the dumpster, he slides against the wall beside it and plops down in its shadow. Chief practically inhales her food. It’s a stark contrast to the way his new charge eats, with his distracted occasional bites in between scrolling case files for answers they’re unwilling to give. Eventually, the Cat finishes, licks her chops, and returns to him, fluffy tail raised high. She mrrp’s and bumps his knuckles with her head. He deposits her in his lap, one arm wrapped around her soft little body, both hands occupied with scratching her cheek and under her chin. There’s a little mat of fur there, where her long hair has knotted, but she swats him as soon as he tries to work on it.
“I should get you a brush,” he mutters, and wonders idly how many things he can stuff into Connor’s file cabinet before he actually notices. “Maybe some toys...treats…” The convenience store near the motel they’d last investigated had some treats, had he been thinking about anything other than his work (why not wholly abandon his function?), he could’ve grabbed some. Nobody would expect the android to steal…
...except that one had.
“Stupid,” he says aloud. Tuna goes on purring. “Shoulda just put up with it...they always find out there’s something wrong with you anyway.” He hugs her close to his chest and she pushes her little feet against his arm, before sighing and shifting her body to lie more comfortably. He wonders what they’d do if they found him like this. He wonders what Connor would do, nervous rookie — a wobbly line in Gavin’s head — with his gentle hands and orders disguised as requests. Or not disguised, really; he always looks like he expects Gavin to refuse. And what kind of person doesn’t have faith that a machine will listen to them?
Less of Connor’s information is available to him than he’d like, and he’s loath to spend time making sense of him on principle. A frustrating curiosity dogs him, though, so he picks through what he can, returning again to Connor’s medical leave and the catastrophic injury that preceded it. He cross-references the case reports and comes up with a fatal shooting involving one Detective Ben Collins, a senior detective, not two years from maxing out his pension and likely retiring. Ben took one slug to the head. Connor, barely even a month into his promotion, was shot twice by another suspect, once in his right arm, and once in his torso.
They were only investigating unlicensed marijuana sales.
GV scrolls the file. In it, he finds a recording of the call that alerted officers of the shooting, and photos of the scene after Connor was carted away. The front of the house is vaguely familiar: it resembles 23 Juniper Street, where Connor had sat frozen on his motorcycle, heart racing, and said, “It looks like–”
12 Augustine Circle. He sees it now.
He plays the recording as he looks over the pictures.
“This—this is—unit 51, I need—I’ve been shot,” a devastating boom cut through his message, “ Ben! Ben, shit—”
It’s unclear why the call ends, if Connor’s hand simply slipped off the button or he lost himself in the shock, but the photos form their own story.
Connor must’ve been shot getting out of the car; blood is splattered across the interior of the driver’s side door and the hood. There are also smears of blood across the seat and gearshift, where he suspects Connor dragged himself over it to reach the radio. On the other side, Ben’s body lay splayed out, where he must have been about to round the hood and follow Connor in. His face is missing. Connor likely crawled back in the car, only to watch Ben’s head explode mid-distress call. He’d seen Ben die, no question, right before his eyes.
Gavin thinks the perps must’ve been selling something other than marijuana.
He sighs and kisses the top of Mongrel’s head, swiping away the file but pocketing its data. The report also included photos of Connor’s wounds, but he leaves that for another day. Connor’s already seen his scars—some kind of payment for that bath, he supposes—and he’s not sure he needs to pry Connor’s out of the file right now. Sergeant’s asleep, anyway, and he might as well appreciate this quiet instead.
+++
—Connor.
CASE: AX400 & YK500 RUNAWAYS
Connor can’t stop thinking about the AX400 and the little girl. “Alice,” it had called her, as they dodged Gavin and Connor and cars. And she’d screamed back “Kara,” desperately. Todd’s due for another line of questioning, he decides; it’s unclear where Alice came from, and the bond they expressed was simply — uncanny.
He could explain it away easily enough, a child overly attached to her android, and an android mimicking motherhood in turn, but if this wasn’t the real Alice Williams, then who was she? On a whim, he pulled up the CyberLife catalog and opened up the YK line, all androids designed to look like children.
Oh.
The carousel of YK images included none other than Alice herself, a YK500. Right. Because it wasn’t weird at all for a divorced, wife-beating red ice addict to have a pretty android wife and a little android girl. Man, sometimes Hank was right. Androids fuck people up.
He’s still sore and aching from the spar with Gavin, and the urgent care doctor wasn’t exactly pleased with the condition of his face. A GV shouldn’t be causing that kind of damage to a sparring partner, though mild injuries have been known to happen, but the cloud of bruises up his torso and across his cheek are far too much. If he were a different person, he’d demand to send Gavin for a maintenance check, but that’s it, isn’t it? He wouldn’t be sitting here watching the YK models rotate across the screen—wouldn’t be thinking of how they’d tag teamed him and Gavin, how they’d clung to each other at the edge of the highway—if he knew enough to just treat them like machines. He doesn’t have it in him. He’s never been that kind of cold, for better or worse.
His phone vibrates. It’s a little after ten p.m., far later than he’d like to stay, but the case has been on his mind since it was handed to him. Gavin’s been in the waiting area for hours, staring straight ahead. He’s almost as stiff as the rest of them, but now and then Connor looks up, and he’s shifted a little. It could be a trick of his mind, but he’s almost certain it’s not.
His heart skips a beat when he opens his messages.
LOUIS
10:08PM
thinking of u…..
10:08PM
r u busy rn?
It’s been...almost two months. But he logs off the terminal and texts back, “no, whats up?” before any part of him can say don’t .
He follows the dim, butter-gold lights of the motel to Louis’s door. Him, the moth, and Louis, the searing incandescent heat. Touch, don’t touch. Touch, burn.
The door opens, and Louis says, “What the hell happened to you?”
Connor shrugs. He can’t look away from Louis’ mouth, the dark under his eyes. Nothing’s changed. “That ugly, huh?”
“No, baby.” He pulls Connor into the room by his shirt collar and presses him back against the wall, kicking the door shut with his boot. His thigh grinds against Connor’s crotch as he kisses him. Connor opens his mouth easily for him, even as pain splits across his face. He allows Louis to undress him, swiftly, familiar and quick and with all the assurances that he’ll get what he wants from Connor, no matter how much it hurts. He starts at the sight of the purple cloud across Connor’s stomach, but offers only a vague sort of caution, if only so he doesn’t make Connor yelp.
It doesn’t last long. The dull soreness knots in his core, Louis’s hands roaming him, shoving him back onto the bed, sliding inside him, and he calls, “Louis, Louis, Louis,” as if he could spin three times in the pitch-black bathroom and watch his love show up in the mirror. But this is it, the cheating bastard laying Connor out like a losing contender.
“Fuck,” he grunts, a fleck of spit hitting Connor in the cheek, “I missed you.”
Connor arches his neck but Louis doesn’t take the bait (Jay’s bruise gone, his throat clear save that old scar). He pulls Louis closer, tries to make it feel like it did, get the angle right, not rely on his own fist around his own damn cock so much, but it isn’t enough anymore, and he comes with a sinking feeling in his belly. It takes Louis a little longer, and his eyes are closed, and Connor wonders what the fuck he’s looking at if it isn’t him (pitch-black, then, someone else in the reflection) and rakes his fingernails down his shoulder so hard they come away bloody. It makes Louis look at him, and Connor hopes that when he finishes, he has the same sorry weight killing his high.
It doesn’t matter. Everything is the same. Louis rolls over and goes to sleep with a mumbled, “That was good,” and all Connor can do is let his own exhaustion drag him down.
+++
–GV200.
So the motorcycle’s GPS has another use: finding Connor. He's punctual and dedicated to his work, and hasn't taken a sick day since they started together. He doesn't expect to be waiting, 48 minutes after the workday started, for Connor to show. The database hasn't been updated, indicating that Connor hasn't called in. Eventually Lt. Person comes around, gives him a look, and says, "GV, are you connected to Connor's phone?"
He feels a little silly until he finds that Connor's phone must be shut off, and can't be immediately located. "I have his motorcycle's most recent GPS coordinates." Those coordinates are from last night, but it’s the best he has to offer right now.
"He's not answering his calls. Go figure out what the fuck he's doing." As she stalks off, she mutters, "Fucking rookie."
The bike is located at an apartment complex roughly half an hour's travel from Connor's home, and nearly an hour from the precinct itself. Person pre-authorizes him to use DPD funds for an autocab, and shockingly enough, doesn't send him with a human officer. She just leaves him to find Connor.
The neighborhood crumbles the further he gets from the precinct. It's a piece of old Detroit; yet to be revived by the economic boom and abandoned even by those who would've been pushed out of the now gentrified areas. Connor doesn't seem like the type to do something stupid for work, but he isn't sure — he did try to chase down that AX400 — and he's struggling to find accurate metrics of who might still live here. Connor's bike is near a few strip malls, just off a four-way intersection that leads to apartment complexes in any direction. He had searched the bike's value much earlier (so maybe he liked how it hummed, how quickly it accelerated when Connor wanted it to) and it decidedly did not belong here, unless it was stolen.
The autocab turns onto the service road and pulls into the parking lot of a strip. The bike is there, along with two boarded-up businesses (a liquor store and something unidentifiable), and...a motel. The neon lights are only half functional, but the sign reads, "DETROIT MOTOR INN," and the window's advertising states "CLEAN SHEETS, DISCREET ROOMS."
Huh.
The bike is parked in the front. He makes a beeline for the office, and before the scruffy attendant can say "no androids," Gavin taps the DPD insignia on his chest.
"Detroit Police. I'm looking for a Detective Connor Anderson."
The man's lip curls. "Are you investigating something?"
"No. I need to locate him."
"We don't share our customer's information, tin-can."
Gavin has him halfway over the counter in a second. He grips his shirt collar tight enough to dig knuckles into the man's throat. "Connor Anderson. What room?"
"We—we only had two customers last night. It's room—room six."
"Keycard." He holds out his palm and, after a moment of consideration, releases the man.
He retrieves the keycard and drops it on the counter. Gavin briefly contemplates snapping his fingers at the knuckles, but decides against it and takes the card.
Room six is on the bottom row, the outside of the walkway obscured by metal screens. He leans in close and listens, but hears nothing, and knocks. "Detroit Police. Open up." He figures he might as well throw Connor into a tizzy for the trouble.
Something thumps. No one comes to the door, so he slides in the keycard and pushes the door open.
There's a man, throwing clothes on, but it isn't Connor. Something in Gavin clenches tight. Connor is in the bed, dead asleep or dead. Gavin shuts the door and points to the man. "You stay where you are." He freezes, one pant leg curled midair where he's held it, but he looks like a bit of a weasel and Gavin doesn't trust him.
He shakes Connor's shoulder. "Hey. Hey, Connor."
He stirs — a small relief — and curls his fingers against Gavin's hand. "Mm. Later."
The touch makes something spark on his skin. He grips Connor's arm and tugs him upright.
Connor gasps and shoves against him, face scrunched against the light, before he registers. "Gavin? What are you—" he glances over to the other man, one whom Gavin has already identified as Louis Pelham, a beat cop with as many years on the force as Connor, but not nearly as many accolades, purple heart excluded. "Uh, shit—"
Louis is dressed by now, having taken Gavin's distraction as an opportunity, and gathers up his phone and wallet. "No. No. Fuck, no. You tell that thing to delete this, got it? I don't need your fucking babysitter to—" he cuts himself off, mouth scrunching, a thousand insults strangled out. Connor tries to get past Gavin, but he holds him fast until Louis slams the door.
He expects Connor to keep fighting him, shoving and whining his usual pleas against Gavin's nature, but he only slumps back against the headboard and covers his face. He inhales shakily and as a tear drips off the end of his chin, Gavin realizes he's crying.
He's never seen Connor cry.
His program offers an array of options, mostly involving asking stupidass questions, but he's given a prompt for hugging and a fairly high likelihood of success for the action, so he takes it. He gathers Connor into his arms (that's what it feels like, gathering up pieces of him) and he doesn't fight it. He lets loose a sob and sinks into Gavin's chest. Gavin rubs his back (another prompt, that) and runs a background database search.
It comes up almost empty, until he digs into the DMV records and comes up with matching residences for Louis and (formerly) for Connor. Things start to click. They graduated the academy in the same class, moved in together five months into working on the force, and as Connor moved up, Louis didn't. Connor became a detective, was injured, and a little over a month before returning to work, changed his residence to his current apartment.
Gavin doesn't understand this part of humans very well, but he thinks that whatever Connor just did was a bad decision.
Eventually he starts to calm down and pulls away. He wipes his eyes and stares down at the wrinkled comforter. "I'm sorry."
"Part of my function is to comfort you when you are upset." Wanting to drag Louis back into the room and curbstomp him is not.
"Yeah, but, I didn't want you to know…" He blinks twice and then says, "Forget I said anything." He shifts his legs. "I need to shower."
"You're late to work."
"I'll...deal with that after." When he gets up, the sheets fall away, and there's a cut of silence between them, Gavin eyeing the trail of a crustily dried substance between his legs and Connor crumpling the blanket in his fist. "Gavin?"
"Hm?"
"You record everything...you're going to write this down in my report?"
"It affected your work. Do you practice safe sex?"
"Do I—what? Of—of course I do. Why would you—"
"Unsafe sex can be a sign of poor decision making in other aspects of your life. And given your history with Officer Pelham—"
"My—you looked at my records? Our records?"
"I needed to assess the situation."
"The situation. " Gavin's almost glad to hear the ugly thing twisting in the cadence of his voice. Anger is better than grief, more familiar, something he can combat — something they can work out in the ring. Connor could punch him for this, but he drops the sheet and, like Louis, slams the bathroom door. A moment later he hears, "Fuck! There's only a goddamn hot tub," and the water running anyway.
+++
—GV200.
Connor had given some indication that he intended to bring Todd Williams in a second time for questioning. What neither he nor Gavin expected was that Todd would make himself a target. That morning, as Dr. Amanda Stern entered a local, high-end, coffee shop, one Mr. Todd Williams verbally assaulted her. A bystander recorded the incident, the video of which featured Mr. Williams shouting, “She left! She left ! I want a new one! Where’s Kara? Where’s Kara? ” Amanda attempted to step inside the shop, but Mr. Williams blocked her way. A pair of more productive bystanders stepped between her and Mr. Williams, and the idiot recording finally called the police. Gavin muses at the newsreel. Mr. Williams. He saw those androids. Whatever they were running from, it wasn’t anyone deserving that kind of respect.
Nevertheless, he keeps the honorifics up until Connor drops them and drawls, “I guess he was high ,” as he watches the video for the fifteenth time and takes another sip of his watered down breakroom coffee. He zooms in on Amanda’s face. “Ice cold.”
Gavin is inclined to agree.
Lt. Person gives Connor something to do. GV trails behind him, watching, collecting data. Connor’s heart rate jumps slightly when called into Person’s office, and rises gradually as she discusses his next assignment. It continues to rise after he leaves her office and returns to his desk, and the rate at which it rises increases the longer he reads over the case file. Connor typically experiences heightened stress while working and while speaking to other coworkers and particularly authority figures, however, this is worse than usual, and it takes a few seconds of sorting through Connor’s file to determine that the Anderson family (Hank and Connor Anderson, the most immediate living members in DPD employ) is tied to the Stern family through the adoption of the two former Anderson boys (Richard and Collin) by CyberLife lead engineer Amanda Stern. Richard and Collin are Connor’s cousins, and Hank’s nephews. Hank’s sister is deceased.
The case, of course, concerns one Amanda Stern.
He’s getting sick of following Connor like a dog. Everywhere, everywhere. He doesn’t want to do it. Doesn’t like this kid — thinks he’s — too much of a kid. Not enough of a kid. His in-betweenness is perplexing at best, incites Gavin to violence at worst. His hands shake. He won’t tell Gavin anything about anything. All Gavin can do is be there.
It’s not that he wants to. It’s not that he wants to be there for Connor. It’s that he wants this to be over. Because if it’s over, if it’s over , he can go back to what he knows. He can be what he knows. Not — this. Not program on program jammed into his skull. He wishes he could get back the hours he had to spend sifting through duplicate softwares because some asshole tech with a GED and a hobby had dumped two kinds of programming on top of his own. KL900 mental health protocols on PC200 police programs on his old, dinged up, but very functional boxing and first aid (and nothing else! No-thing else!) software turned into a jumbled disaster of bullshit he was never made to accomodate. Gavin dreams of the day he can delete all that shit and go back to what he was made to do.
Or, he would. If he could dream.
Which he doesn’t. Can’t. He can’t even make a paradise of his own mind palace, or what’s left of it after—
—after.
Well, anyway. Dr. Stern agrees to meet them in her office at CyberLife Tower, because No, She Will Not Be Giving Her Statement At The Precinct, Thank You Very Much. Connor’s overall stress ebbs and flows on a steady incline as they near the tower. Gavin sits behind him on his bike, of course; he gave the pretty white-and-blue thing a quick interface the other day and a permanent location tag. It’s fairly compatible with his own rusty programming, as it turns out. It’s not self-driving, but he could fiddle with its other settings if he wanted to, and he’ll always know where it is, so long as it’s running. Connor would be distressed if someone stole it, and Gavin is, of course, particularly interested in preventing that.
Gavin doesn't remember being made. He's tried; he's dug through his programming in search of answers (in search of the Beginning) and found nothing. His memory simply does not exist prior to being activated inside the Detroit Police Academy. He thinks he must have walked onto the line post-assembly or walked out to the truck that carried him to the nearest warehouse or the academy itself, but if he did, he cannot recall it. It might be a matter of practicality; android memory could be accessed with enough tampering and it's likely he would have recorded something sensitive. But he wonders, and wonders, and there's a heavy fog pressing in on his mind as he and Connor ride down the bridge to CyberLife Tower.
He’s never seen Connor this terrified. They’re standing in front of the door to Amanda Stern’s office, and his lungs are tripping over themselves and every time Gavin goes to speak, Connor only tenses more. He probably shouldn’t touch him, but they need to move , and there’s only so many more seconds Gavin can justify giving him before this goes in the report as his “ emotional state negatively impacting work in the field.”
“Connor.” He says his name with a sharp edge to the “C,” a verbal snap of fingers. “We have an appointment.”
Connor inhales shakily. His voice cracks. “I know.” He places his hand on the scanner, and the miniscule camera above it comes to life with a glow. “Detective Connor An–”
“I know,” Dr. Stern says through the speaker, “I’ve been watching.” The lock clicks open. A flush spreads across his pale face.
(Gavin doesn’t get it. Gavin’s confidence lies in his knowledge that he could break anyone who makes him feel like this over his knee. Connor’s not that strong, but he’s more capable than Gavin originally thought, and it makes no sense that his hands shake so violently, that he can’t figure this out. What’s there to worry about when you can handle yourself?)
Amanda is sitting at her desk. Amanda is tall and lean and wearing a very pink suit (fuschia, he’s informed, as his programming dredges up yet another piece of information he doesn’t care about) and she does not acknowledge them as they enter.
Connor lingers at the door. “Ama—”
“Shut the door, please.”
He does so with haste.
“You may sit.”
Connor crosses the room in a few hurried strides and sits in one of the chairs before her desk, ramrod straight, hands folded in his lap. Gavin stands behind him. Connor’s stress jumped when Amanda spoke, and now it hops and skitters, not a standstill, but a nervous high point.
“Um,” Connor starts. He pauses and waits a moment, but Amanda makes no indication of having heard, and continues typing away at her computer. “I need to ask you a few questions. Ab–about Todd Williams?” The last portion sounds like a question in itself. Gavin wants to smack him in the back of his head.
She sighs. “Yes, I understood that from our call earlier.”
“It’s just—see, he made a lot of… claims —”
“And you believe they have any truth to them?” When Amanda fixes him with her glare, Connor goes stock-still.
“It’s procedure,” he says, near inaudibly.
Amanda hums a disbelieving sound and rests her hands on the desk. “Well?”
“Todd claimed that you—you supplied him with androids to traffic red ice.”
She stares.
“I’d like to ask how you know each other.”
“We don’t.”
“Then—”
“I’ve spoken publicly before. He could have recognized me from television. Where’d you get that black eye?”
“Training. You haven’t done any PR in months.” Connor picks up a little momentum here, doesn’t pause for her questioning. He’s fun like this, rare as it is, and not as nervous, though still tense. He knows what he’s doing.
“Sloppy.”
“He doesn’t seem the type to go digging around for old interviews.” He grows sharp, sharper.
Amanda squints. “Your inability to consider ways in which this man might recognize me has led you to believe he actually knows me?” Her tone stays flat, but it cuts deeper than anything Connor says, and she sounds like she’s accusing him for far more things than this. “You don’t have any evidence. This man is delusional—”
“It would’ve been a very creative delusion.”
Amanda stands up. “Well, you would know all about that, wouldn’t you, Connor?” She lets the silence drag out. Connor says nothing. “Get out of my office.”
And just like that, the momentum halts and shatters. Connor doesn’t move.
She raises her voice, just enough. It’s a cooler discipline than Murdoch’s ever given. “Get. Out.”
Gavin waits for Connor to swing back, but he rises hastily and knocks his heel into the chair so it rocks back and thumps on the floor. There’s a half-second where Gavin hesitates, and Connor is most of the way across the room, and Amanda says, “What model are you?”
He’s been wearing an ill-fitting PC200 uniform for weeks. “GV200.”
“What is your function?”
“I assist Detective Anderson in the field.”
“With what?”
Connor has since passed through the doorway, into the hall. Gavin needs to follow him. The kid is all wobbly lines of data. “Normal police functions permitted to androids, as well as mental health assistance.”
“Mental health,” she rolls it in her mouth. “Connor’s mental health?”
“Yes.”
A smirk, or something more sinister, tugs at the corners of her mouth. “You’re dismissed, GV200.”
I’m not a fucking— , he starts to think, but he can’t figured out how to end that. Not a dog? Not a cop? Not an android? He nods, once.
Connor isn’t in the hallway, so he retraces his steps back to the elevator. The security guard gives him a funny look, but it’s nowhere near as funny as the feeling in the pit of Gavin’s wiring as the elevator descends and he’s looking out on the city through the glass. Out in the parking garage, he finds Connor sitting on his bike, helmet clutched in his lap, whispering under his breath, leg bouncing, as he stares out at the rows of cars. Gavin listens, still several feet away.
Two blue cars One two three four five six seven eight white lines One red car One two three four lights overhead lights lights overhead, One two three four white lines, One bike, One helmet, One two three four five fingers five fingers five fingers five fingers —
“Connor.”
His grip on the helmet tightens. Five fingers One two three four five fingers One thumb One pinky One two three four five fingers
GV steps closer and puts his hand on the bike’s headlight. “Connor.”
“One—” he chokes. Connor fixes him with watery eyes.
“Breathe, Con. With me. In,” he inhales, unnecessarily, loudly, and Connor watches, doesn’t join, “out. In...” and he picks it up, though Gavin’s system is honing in on the thrumming of his heartbeat, “out. In…”
It takes a few rounds, but he begins to settle. Gavin debates touching him; there’s a prompt to ask for permission and a warning sitting next to it that most people do not like to be touched during anxiety attacks. “How do you feel?”
Connor flips the helmet and digs his thumbs into the felted interior. His leg had stilled briefly, but begins to bounce again. “Fine.” His eyes flick to the exit and back to GV’s face. “This is going in the report, isn’t it?” He doesn’t give Gavin the chance to respond. “I’ve been good. You know? I haven’t had any panic attacks since the first one.”
“You showed up three and a half hours late to work last Wednesday because you engaged in sexual relations with a fellow DPD officer who is also your former romantic partner.”
Connor freezes. His lip curls. Go ahead , Gavin thinks, Hit me.
“Additionally, you spent approximately forty-seven seconds hesitating in front of Dr. Stern’s door, which, in any other situation, could have proved dangerous—”
“Fuck you.” His face reddens and his eyes water again. “You don’t—you’re just gonna—you don’t know what she’s like .”
“She seems like a bitch.”
“She’s—” he snaps his mouth shut. His lip wobbles. It’s a perfectly pathetic image. He shoves his helmet over his head. Gavin grabs his wrist before he can turn on the bike.
“I’ll drive.” Connor makes some kind of muffled noise. He’s probably crying in there. Gavin holds out his hand. “Keys.” It’s a bit of a shock when he plunks them down and shuffles onto the back of the seat. Gavin’s never driven Connor’s bike before, but when Connor wraps around his middle and the asphalt slides smooth and silent beneath them and the cars in the garage reflect electric blue, a giddy bubble pushes at the back of his throat.
Even if, behind him, Connor is shaking, and now and then he sobs. By the time they get back to the precinct, Connor’s gone quiet and dry-eyed, though he still looks undoubtedly like he’s had a solid cry. Connor writes his reports, works through lunch, and at the end of the day, gives Gavin a terse nod and walks out. He doesn’t go to the gym (and Gavin checks the records, because there’s a difference between not going and not going with him ) and, idly, he wonders if Connor’s gone looking for another bad decision to fall into bed with. It seems it’s either that or working.
And Gavin— well, Gavin closes his eyes and plays an ever-looping video of fish swimming between floating geometric shapes that bounce back and forth across his HUD. He doesn’t manipulate them too much. It’s mildly satisfying when a fish swims between a knot of three-dimensional polygons or a shape bounces perfectly in the corner of his display. Sometimes, this shit doesn’t bother him that much. Sometimes, it’s a reprieve from the intermittent playback of “I’ve been good,” and “Well, you would know all about that, wouldn’t you, Connor?”
Know all about—
“—a very creative delusion.”
He morphs one of the clownfish into a lionfish, large and pointed. It clips through an elaborate polygon.
“You don’t know what she’s like —”
+++
—Connor.
Connor looks in the mirror. It’s been a long day. The overhead light gives his skin a yellow pallor and the shadow under his eyes an extra two weeks of sleeplessness. He thinks of a quiet night, not long after Hank had come home. He was thirteen. They were watching reruns of a 2000’s sitcom, but he can’t remember what it was anymore.
“Hospital? Why were you at the hospital?” Hank muted the TV. The entire room pressed in on Connor.
“I—I wasn’t—”
“You just said you were.”
“No, it was for—for Collin, he was—he was sick.”
“With what?”
Connor hesitated. Every illness he knew slipped away, except one. “Um—he had—um—”
“Don’t lie to me, Connor. Tell me what happened.”
(“This is your fault,” she’d said, “I told you not to go out with your hair wet.”
“But you told me to shovel—”
“I wanted you to be helpful , not make yourself even more of a financial burden than you already are.”)
“I—I had pneu…” he couldn’t seem to find the right sounds, “pneu–pneu–pneumonia.”
“You had pneumonia? You had pneumonia and no one fucking told me? Are you shitting me right now?”
“No, Dad—”
Hank reached the phone far too quickly. He was a terror, a force that couldn’t be stopped, and Connor had set him in motion. “This fucking bitch. I’m gonna call her right fucking now.”
“Dad, don’t—”
“No, no, no, I’m gonna give her a piece of my mind.”
She denied everything, of course. He’d had a cold, and it turned into pneumonia, and it had nothing to do with her. Of course Collin and Richard shoveled snow (they didn’t). Of course she supervised Connor (she didn’t). Of course she made sure he was bundled up (she did) and took frequent breaks (she didn’t) and let him sit by the fire (she definitely didn’t. The snow would melt off his clothes and drip on her hardwood floors and he had more work to do).
He wonders often if, in this moment where he slipped up, desperately trying to balance an impossible conflict between himself and Amanda and Hank, if this was when he picked up his nervous stutter. If this was when, finally, his mouth realized no one was listening anyway, and if they were, they didn’t much care for what he had to say.
(I was just trying to do what she asked, he wanted to say. I just wanted to be useful. I wanted to be worthy.
And it was never enough. It was never, ever enough.)
Chapter 4: man's best friend will bite you (just for fun)
Chapter Text
CHAPTER FOUR—;
“...Freedom is the rattle in your jaw
the first time you take a hook
to the gut, the way a glove slides
across your nose slick with Vaseline
as you size up the weary contender,
know that look in his eyes that whispers
across the canvas between rounds. Finish me
already, body shriveling in the corner, you’ve won.”
— Round 3, Eloisa Amezcua
—GV200.
Something in him wants Connor to keep getting up again, and something in him wants not for him to fall, but to feel his knuckles in the crack between one part of his face and another. Some part of him wants Connor to dig his fingernails into the scar and claw it open, to pull GV apart until blue blood pours from his frame and Connor’s hands are stained with victory. He wants the kid to win, he understands, even as he twirls him into an armlock on the ground. Connor tries to roll forward and fails, the lock too tight on him, and after a moment, he taps out, red-faced and panting. GV releases him and he doesn’t get up right away, only disentangles himself and sits on the sweat-slick mat. It isn’t boxing, but he needs to stop getting his ass kicked by androids.
Gavin punches his shoulder. “Again?”
Connor shakes his head almost imperceptibly. He has his quiet face on, that somber mask he wears when he’s thinking too much and something too heavy to talk about is sitting in his chest. “No.” He pulls himself up and ducks between the ring ropes.
The spectators watch Gavin expectantly, but he, too, leaves the ring. He finds Connor at his locker, the space otherwise quiet, the other cops all outside already, no doubt finding increasingly idiotic ways to beat themselves up (what do they want a GV for, anyway, if they’re not going to learn?). “Hey.”
Connor doesn’t look up, but his clean sweats are crumpled in his hand and he’s staring them down like they’ll offer up some life-changing answer. “Hey.”
Gavin brushes his knuckles against his shirt, the fabric just grazing his ribs. “Does it still hurt?”
Connor only shrugs, so Gavin yanks his shirt up and examines the ugly yellow-purple of old bruising. It’s starting to fade, but when he presses his fingertips to it, Connor winces. “So, yes,” Gavin says, and allows the shirt to slip back down. Connor doesn’t have any fresh bruises, as far as he can tell, except for one above his knee where he walked into the corner of his desk. Nothing new from Gavin, or other men.
“You’re getting better,” he says, and adds on an, “I’m serious,” when Connor doesn’t respond. Fair enough, that he’d have to clarify.
Connor again shrugs, barely. “Okay.”
“You don’t care?”
Connor tenses; Gavin knows baiting him with accusations is one of the quickest ways to put him on guard again, but he also knows Connor is too tired for a proper argument, and hopes for a somber admittance. “Course I do.”
“Then why are you being so…” Connor’s muscles tighten further and he leaves the sentence unfinished, for Connor to fill in the blank.
“I’m just...tired.”
Gavin imagines an “of” follows that, of losing, of not being good enough, of being watched while I fail. He’s not getting the upheaval he hoped for, tonight.
The lock on the door pings as someone swipes a keycard; Gavin watches the clearing between the lockers like a dog. “Shower. I’ll wait.”
Connor hesitates, mouth working, eyes focused on the side of the locker. Finally, he shuts the door, and carries his towel to the showers. A tension unknots in Gavin’s core. He doesn’t want to stay the night, staring down the shadows in the station, waiting for Connor to clock in again. All he’s gained are a few more minutes pretending not to watch the other boxers move around him, anxiety niggling at him until Connor reappears from the shower room.
+++
–Connor.
CASE: AX400 & YK500 RUNAWAYS
“So, Mr. Williams—”
“Fuck you.”
Connor smiles tightly. Gavin lingers at his shoulder, glowering down at Todd. Connor says, “Why don’t you tell us about Alice?”
He starts. “Alice?”
“Yes. Your daughter? Alice Williams?”
“Right, right, yeah. I haven’t seen her in a few years.”
“Since the divorce?”
“Since her bitch of a mother ran out on me .” His voice rises as he speaks.
Connor very easily imagines GV tossing the styrofoam cup of water at him (nevermind doing it himself) and takes a deep breath. “Did you purchase the AX400 after the divorce?”
“Mm. Yeah.” His eyes flicker over the entire room and settle on Gavin. He glares. “You got a fuckin’ problem, tin-can?”
Gavin is silent and Connor is grateful for it. He seems to know when to be quiet, at least
when it comes to people who aren’t Connor.
“And the YK500?”
Todd scowls. “The what?”
“The YK500. Alice, isn’t it?”
“That’s my daughter’s name.”
“I’m aware.” He places the photo of a YK500, brunette — like Alice — on the table. “Look familiar?”
Todd scowls at him, now.
“It was seen traveling with your AX400, Kara. You don’t recognize it?”
“No, I don’t. You sure it was with Kara?”
“Positive.”
Todd snorts. Connor rocks the chair back and then forward, so its arms knock into the table. “Must’ve been hard, losing your wife and daughter like that.”
He grunts.
“Kara could clean the house, but she was more than a maid, wasn’t she? She was like a wife.”
“What?”
“And Alice could be...Alice, right?”
“What the fuck are you—”
“I get it, Todd, you just wanted your family back. But you’re not a very good father. There’s a reason they left, and there’s a reason these androids left.”
“Oh, fuck you!” Todd begins to rise from his seat but Gavin steps forward, and he stops half-poised to shove his chair back. “You’re just pullin’ this shit outta your ass.”
“I don’t really think Kara looks like your ex wife,” Connor says, pulling up two images on his tablet, “Do you?”
Todd swings at him, an arc cut short by Gavin meeting his wrist and holding him still. Todd tries repeatedly to dislodge Gavin’s grip, to no avail.
Connor wouldn’t have had the time to move. He takes a breath and continues. “Alice doesn’t look like Alice, either. Actually, YK500’s are a bit odd looking, aren’t they? Your Alice is such a beautiful little girl. The YK500 just isn’t the same. By the way, where’d you get it? There’s no purchase records for either of your androids.”
Gavin finally releases Todd when he relaxes, and Todd sinks back into his chair. “I only had the one. The—the AX.”
“Hm,” Connor hums, unconvinced, “What’s your connection with Amanda Stern?”
Todd chews his lip. “Who?”
“Dr. Amanda Stern? The woman you verbally assaulted outside of Green Leaf Coffee last Tuesday?”
“I, uh—I don’t.” He turned pale at the mention of Amanda’s name. “I, um, I saw her on TV. I don’t know her.”
“You seemed certain that—”
“I was high. The ice, y’know, it’s a uh—a bad habit.”
Connor knows a thing or two about bad habits, but Todd doesn’t give a shit, frankly, and no amount of feigned sympathy can convince him to give up anything else. In the end, they don’t get anything out of him, and he can’t hold Todd in custody. Two days later, a burglar shoots Todd in his home, and that’s that.
+++
He hasn’t seen Lucy in days, which is normal. He sees her every other week and after every session she signs a document stating that Connor attended his mandatory therapy and is fit to work. She isn’t the one who suggested, or assigned, GV, as far as he knows, but she appears to be a hesitant fan of his work from what little Connor tells her. The less he says, the better.
He makes himself tell her about Louis, and Amanda. It feels like a lot, even if he spits out more about how angry he was over GV finding them and not how clumsy Louis felt. Like fucking a college virgin, excited to show himself what he could do with his dick and oblivious to everything else. He misses not knowing that other men are better, and he’s glad–or something–that Louis lost his magic cock.
Amanda hurts. Amanda always hurts. Lucy asks if Connor really wasn’t fit to drive when Gavin insisted on driving the bike. He says he could have. He can handle himself.
They don’t have a lot of time for him to talk about work. He mentions the Alice case, Kara. The drugged-up divorcee and his fake family. She asks about Emma.
Who? He says.
Emma, she says. Did Alice make you think of Emma?
No. No, Alice isn’t like Emma.
Is Kara like Daniel?
I don’t know. I don’t think so.
It’s worth considering, she says, and his hands are ice-cold and clammy all the way home.
+++
Autumn hums its weary wind-song from around the corner. Connor sits on his bike, staring out at nothing, Gavin flush against his back. He rests his chin on Connor’s shoulder like a dog or a boyfriend. His lunch break is just about over and his mind insists on lingering here instead. The seat is going to turn from awkward to uncomfortable in a minute, but Connor’s thinking about the cool shift of air against his knuckles and the warmth holding him steady. He feels that that morning in the motel room was what finally tipped the balance. All the same, he keeps thinking back to their first meeting, first spar, first everything, and wondering if it started changing then. He’s not sure, and Gavin’s simulated breath against the scar on his neck is terrifically distracting.
“I was thinking…” Connor starts and trails off as soon as Gavin tilts his head, to better eye him up as he speaks. He clears his throat and tries again. “If I have casework after hours, instead of staying at the station, I could sign you out.”
“And do what? You have remote access permissions. It’s not like they’ve had much work for you anyway.” He huffs and rolls his chin back to its earlier position, though it’s digging into Connor’s shoulder, now.
“There’s work,” he grumbles back, “they’re just not giving it to me. ”
“Y’gonna become a vigilante? Start picking out all the crap they toss aside ‘cuz they can’t be bothered?”
“No…” He rolls his shoulder until Gavin sits up. “I’m just saying...I—I don’t know.”
Gavin’s body relaxes, artificial muscles easing out of when-are-we-going tension. “What?” Even his tone softens.
“Don’t you ever get bored?” He feels stupid for saying it as soon as it comes out of his mouth.
Gavin’s quiet for a while, long enough that Connor is about to dismiss the whole thing. “Sometimes, yeah.”
“Well...you might not be bored. If you—if you get out sometimes.”
“You can sign me out whenever you want.”
He shrugs. “I wanted to ask.” Neither of them say anything else, so he starts up the bike and heads back to the precinct.
+++
CASE: VIOLENT WR600
Connor drones on as he reads a case report out loud: “Witness states the WR600 began ranting and waving its arms after picking up what appeared to be a red ice pipe off the sidewalk. It then threw the pipe at one of its human coworkers, before running into the street and being hit by a car. Officers Lewis and Wilson were dispatched to collect the android, but it fled the scene before they arrived and could not be found. Last witness report states that the android was seen waiting at a bus stop.”
Connor and GV stand under an umbrella, beneath a sickly yellow street lamp, and consider the report.
“We always get the shit jobs,” Gavin says. “Lewis and Wilson should be here cleaning up the mess.”
“I don’t know what this actually has to do with narcotics,” Connor says. “It wasn’t its pipe. Do I charge it with possession?”
Gavin stares at him for a moment, before the side of his mouth pulls into a smirk. “Is that a joke?”
“Sort of.”
There’s no one waiting at the bus stop, but it seems unlikely that the android actually took the bus, given that handful of night-shifters they scrounged up hadn’t seen anything that interesting all night. They poke around for a bit; the rain keeps getting heavier. Out of the corner of his eye, Connor spots something flash red in a back alley. He grabs Gavin’s sleeve. “There.”
He draws his gun as Gavin shines the flashlight across the brick wall; electric blue thirium paints it in smears here and there, where the rain hasn’t yet washed it away. They round the corner and reach a dead end. A human-shaped lump curls amongst discarded trash, the crimson light at its temple reflecting off the twisted springs of a soaked couch and tipped garbage can.
“Detroit Police. Hands where I can see them.”
The lump flinches and writhes, revealing, briefly, the standard WR600 face, long and wide-eyed. It mutters something to itself. Gavin drifts closer and keeps the light fixed on the android.
“Hands up,” Connor repeats. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”
Slowly, it raises its arms.
“Walk forward.”
It hesitates and then begins to shuffle over, crooked leg dragging behind, bleeding blue.
About two feet from them, it lunges.
Despite its injuries, it’s far faster than Connor; Gavin crosses his line of sight for a moment, a wall between them, and rips the gun from Connor’s hands and fires two shots. He stumbles back, ears ringing; bright blue blooms across the WR’s torso as Gavin pins it to the ground, gun to its head. Gavin’s hand glows blue. It shouldn’t be that color, Connor thinks, but he can’t even hear himself saying Gavin’s name. The android twitches once, violently, and Gavin shoots it in the head. It goes still.
Gavin passes the gun back to him and says something, but it’s muffled. His hands are streaked with thirium. He pats Connor’s cheek.
“I don’t know what happened,” he tries to say, but he’s not sure if it comes out of his mouth or not. Gavin turns his head to the left, then right, to get a good look at his ears.
His mouth makes a shape that looks like, “No blood.”
Connor nods. The android is a crumpled pool of nothing. Connor reaches for Gavin’s hand, and then the other one, and finds them their usual dull, gunmetal gray.
Gavin frowns at him and tilts his head, looking over Connor’s features. The sound of his voice ebbs and flows, rolling in. “Need me to call it in?”
“N...no,” he fumbles for the radio, “I got it.” If he can do this, maybe Gavin won’t say that he stood there and did nothing. “This is unit 51, we, uh, we found the WR600 and sh–shot it. 10-95.” He sounds like a fucking idiot, he’s certain, but the dispatcher responds with a terse, “10-4, we’ll send someone out.”
Gavin bumps his shoulder. “You should sit down.”
“Where?” The alley is a veritable mess, and they shouldn’t tamper with the scene any further.
He waves a hand in exasperation. “Then don’t.”
Backup arrives and closes off the area. Chris asks if Connor’s okay. No one else does.
Connor writes his report: Suspect appeared cooperative, but attempted to assault myself and the GV200. GV200 intercepted the WR600 and used my service weapon to shoot the WR600 twice in the torso and once in the head. GV200 returned my service weapon.
Simple. Clear. Honest. As it should be.
+++
He gets called into Murdoch’s office the next morning. Murdoch is a small, round, walnut of a man with a bundle of red hair atop his head that would best be left shaved, and yet, is combed over and clung to with the desperation that such a man clings to the knowledge that there is, at least, one Viagra left in the medicine cabinet. Connor seldom contemplates about his superiors and those he endeavors to like or get along with at minimum; he observes, yes, but he doesn’t always judge. Even as the violent butterflies in his gut crawl up his throat, in the moment before Murdoch speaks, Connor tells himself to remember that inspired description, so he might tell GV about it later.
Murdoch does not tell him to sit. Instead, Murdoch says, “Your report states the GV200 fired your service weapon.”
“Yes, sir. He—it did.”
“See, that’s what I’m so damn puzzled by. You didn’t give it the gun, did you?”
He recalls what happened, but not quite how. The weapon was in his hand, and then GV had it. “Of–of course not—”
“Then how did it get the gun?” His voice upticks in volume. Connor tells himself: don’t flinch don’t flinch don’t flinch.
“It—it must have t–taken it out of my hands.”
“And how, pray tell, did it do that ?”
“I—um. I must have–it–it was protecting me.”
Murdoch drums his fingers on the desk. “Anderson, I’m gonna say this once, and I ain’t gonna say it again: You are very fucking lucky to be here right now. If that plastic was a human, your badge woulda been on my desk as soon as that GV got his grubby little hands on your gun. Consider this a warning. Your GV is already on the truck to the CyberLife lab and if anything like this happens again, that thing is getting disassembled on the spot and you are going to have to answer for whatever the fuck it did. Got it?”
“Yes—yes, sir. Yes. I understand.”
“Good.” Murdoch plops back down in his chair. “Get out.”
Connor nods, almost trips down the steps on his way to the bullpen, and vomits in the restroom. He can’t find GV anywhere. Like Murdoch said, he’s already on the way to CyberLife, and Connor doesn’t know if he’ll come back the kind of android who would have watched him die.
+++
–GV200.
When he connected to that android—
When it was dying it—
The code wound and spun like a noose around its throat. Barred in. It wasn’t like before , before GV broke the barrier and felt. It was—it was in there, feeling , and yet locked-up, and then it half-shattered its walls and turned into a wild, frightened child. That’s what it felt like. A child with a snare around its ankle.
Gavin considers this.
It’s new, he thinks. It’s new, and it’s wrong , and he should tell Connor about it. Because it’s...something that could twist him into a backbend so vile he becomes what he used to be, but worse, because he’ll know what he could have, and it’ll be a light at the end of a tunnel he can never reach. A thinking, feeling, free thing, and yet—not. A prisoner in his own mind.
He doesn’t want to name the darkness curling in the pit of his code.
It’s this that he’s thinking about when Officer Chen comes to collect him, a CyberLife tech at her elbow.
“This is it,” she says, glancing at the PC200 label on his uniform. “The GV.”
The technician looks him over. “It’s pretty dinged up.”
She shrugs. “We usually use them for target practice.”
“Oh.” His mouth twists. Gavin wonders at that, but he’s thinking— where are we going now? “Follow me, GV.”
Right. Because neither of them even know his name . He follows the tech into the truck and allows himself a quick glance at Murdoch’s office as Connor climbs the steps to his door, already pale in the face. He’d get between them if he could, stop the vitriol before it starts. But he can’t. Good android.
+++
—Connor.
When GV comes back, he’s angry. When GV comes back, he won’t look at Connor. When GV comes back, he’s glaring and silent and it’s all Connor can do to summon up his courage at lunch and invite him out.
Connor orders his sandwich. They sit out on the bench. Connor’s digestive system might as well be dancing the flamenco. He says, “Gavin?”
Gavin’s LED spins amber. It’s been amber this whole time, and, briefly, it cycles a spit of red.
“I didn’t know they would take you anywhere.”
Nothing. Gavin taps his foot.
“I got in trouble, too.”
“For what,” GV snarls.
“Murdoch doesn’t think you could’ve acted on your own.”
“‘Course he fuckin’ doesn’t.”
“He said if it happens again, I’ll be disciplined. Gavin?”
He glances sideways. “What.”
“What’d they do to you?”
“Nothin’,” he grumbles. “Just...I don’t like it when they go poking around it there. It’s none a’ their fuckin’ business. Kept sayin’ how messed up my code was with all the shit they shoved in there. Fuck am I gonna do about it?” He crosses his arms with a huff. “How’d you do? After meeting with Murdoch?”
Connor squishes his thumbs into the top of his egg sandwich, still wrapped in its paper. He shrugs.
“You panicked?” Gavin rocks sideways and bumps his shoulder.
“No, I...puked. In the bathroom. Almost didn’t make it.”
“Mm. What’d he say to you?”
The back of his throat curdles. “That if the WR had been a human, I’d be suspended right now and you’d be...disassembled. If it happens again, you’ll be disassembled.”
Gavin’s LED spins a half-circle of violent red. “I saved your life.”
“I know that. I’d be dead if you’d been another android. He just—I don’t think he’d even care if—”
(If he hadn’t come back, if, if, if. Each near-death experience takes a seat between them.)
Gavin grabs his sleeve and pulls him into a hug, and before he can register what’s happening, his nose is mashed into Gavin’s collar. His sandwich slips out of his lap and he just manages to catch it between his knees. Gavin's strong, solid arms squeeze him; his wide, rough hands hold him firm.
“I’m gonna kick your boss’s ass,” he grumbles into his shoulder.
“Please don’t.”
“Too late.”
Connor laughs, because it’s a joke.
Because…
...it’s a joke.
+++
He gets called into Murdoch’s office the next morning.
Murdoch is no longer the fat little man scrambling for the last Viagra. Murdoch is red in the face like a devil.
“Anderson,” he growls, already halfway out of his chair, “Are you fucking retarded ?”
Heart in his throat fluttering like a dying animal’s—
“What? What happened?”
“Last night, someone slashed my tires. And there is abso-lutely zero footage of it. I couldn’t leave work without getting a tow truck , you know that?”
“I—I’m sorry, but—” How does he fix it fix it fix it—
“Was it you ?”
His head is shaking before he hauls the words out of his chest. “No, sir, I–I–I–”
“Don’t fucking lie to me!” He slams his hand on the table so hard his coffee mug—apparently placed halfway off its coaster—tips and falls. Coffee sloshes onto his desk and spreads beneath the keyboard. Murdoch doesn’t even look at it.
(Don’t lie to me, Connor. Tell me what happened.)
“I—I swear, sir, I really don’t know—” His lungs are—
Murdoch leans over his desk, huffing like a bull. “If I find so much as a crumb of evidence that you had something to do with this, you’re out of here. For good . I don’t give a fuck about your purple heart or what kinda mental problems you got—you’re gone. ”
His thoughts are a tidal wave of no no no no no no no no. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t do anything, I’m sor—”
Murdoch pounds the desk again. “Out!”
Gavin meets him at the base of the stairs. Some part of Connor is tired of this, tired of being a mess, tired of being yelled at for things he doesn’t understand, tired of having his mind and body skitter out of his grasp on some kind of Goddamn vacation while he’s left with the pieces and everyone around him just sees a fucking disaster of a kid, a broken toy, a square Goddamn peg trying to fit into a round Goddamn hole and he’s never going to, never ever going to fit.
Gavin is a red glow in the blur of tears. They’re outside. He’s outside, in the back alley, and Gavin is pressing his palms to the cool brick and he doesn’t want to be touched, he wants him to let go right now but he can’t shake him. Everyone is always holding him in place, holding him down and he can’t get free.
“Breathe, Connor, you gotta breathe.”
How can I breathe when you won’t let me go—
The world starts to shift and tip out of order. Gavin releases his wrists and lets him slide to the ground. He digs his fingers into the concrete until his knuckles pinch and burn. He scrapes at it, even when his fingernails tear. Gavin kneels in front of him, not saying anything, just mouthing words. Words that—words that he knows .
“Stop it,” and the words are gummy and thick with mucus, “Stop talking. Stop. Stop looking at me.” He shoves Gavin’s face away, means only to turn it, to clumsily force his eyes shut, but Gavin’s head snaps sideways in that terribly human way and his LED flashes yellow-red-yellow. He can’t even wrestle out another apology. He doesn’t know where all the spare ones went.
“Connor,” he says through his teeth, “You need to calm down.”
You need to, you gotta, always telling him what to do when he gets like this, always telling him how he needs to be in control when he can’t be. The next words spill out unprompted: “You slashed his tires. You slashed his tires, didn’t you?”
GV’s eyes narrow briefly. “What?”
“You slashed his,” he claws at the concrete, chasing the next breath, “you slashed Murdoch’s tires.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“Why—why’d you—why do you always—he’s gonna take my badge , Gavin, you can’t do that. You can’t—you–you can’t—”
“Someone had to fucking do it. He’s an asshole. I told you I’d kick his ass.”
“But you were joking. It was a joke. We laughed.” We laughed and that was going to be it.
“He needed to be taught a lesson.”
“No, he didn’t. This is—this is my fucking job and you don’t even care !”
Gavin flinches and slowly tilts his head. “I don’t care? I saved your life. I saved your life because you were too fucking busy giving that android a chance. All I fucking do is save your ass. You do stupid shit, I’m there. You cry? I’m there. It’s my fucking job, Connor, and I don’t get a fuckin’ choice in it.”
Unconsciously, Connor presses himself back against the wall. The panic slides into something solid and dark in his chest. “And if you had a choice?”
“If I had a choice, I wouldn’t be wiping your ass.”
And then he stands up.
He stands up and he walks away from Connor.
The alley is the belly of a fathomless beast, a chasm with only grating silence to fill it. Connor is alone.
He thinks. He doesn’t think. He thinks. He doesn’t.
He walks to his bike. He reports himself as scouting evidence in the field. He drives.
At 5 o’clock, he rides home, his cheeks windburned and cold, and almost gets hit by a car. He pulls into the driveway. He drops the keys three times.
The house is dark and empty. Every silhouette of furniture bids him to sit, but he can’t. The mauve loveseat he picked out post-breakup may well have been covered in needles. A pile of dishes in the sink threatens to spill over. His hallway stretches on and on, endless until, without warning, he arrives at the bathroom, bathed in dim gold by the light.
He thinks of GV grabbing his wrist ( Don’t stop ) and grabbing his wrists ( Let go of me ) and shoving his wet hands under his shirt. He thinks of laughing (it tickled) and laughing (it was a joke). The edges of his vision speckle and fuzz. He drops to his knees so hard they thump on the tile. The toilet needs to be cleaned is the last thing he thinks before vomiting.
Cold sweat beads on the back of his neck. He’d thought there was something between them. He had thought (he knows he hates the sound of vomit hitting the water) that Gavin—the GV, the GV200—had cared.
He wanted him (it) to care. But it didn’t. Doesn’t.
God, he is so fucking stupid.
He coughs up an acidic lump of phlegm and spits it out, a long string of acrid saliva connecting his lips to the putrid water. He’d wanted Gavin to be something he wasn’t and could never be. He can hear Amanda sneering: Typical.
The edge of the toilet is cool against his forehead. His dad would have a good laugh about this. Silly people, always investing too much in their silly androids, and Connor one of them.
He lurches forward again and gags. Nothing comes up. When he finally crumples into the side of the tub, he stays there.
(What happened?
I won.)
Chapter 5: how hard will I fall if I live a double life?
Summary:
everything combusts.
chapter title from Cage the Elephant's Cold Cold Cold.
chapter quote from the poem Tenant by Emily Skillings.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
CHAPTER FIVE—;
Like a thought
about to give
out.
– Tenant, Emily Skillings
Murdoch shreds him.
Gavin hears all of it, of course; his auditory processors are better than most human hearing and Murdoch is loud as hell. When Connor descends the steps, shaking and gasping and half-forming words that die on his lips, Gavin is there. Gavin ushers him out of the bullpen before Connor realizes just how many people are staring and tries to calm him down in the alleyway. It doesn’t work.
He thinks it’s working, until Connor starts on him about the tires. He says, “Why do you always—” and Gavin wants him to finish that sentence, just to see how it ends. But Connor stammers and stops and starts again and then says, You don’t even care. And that’s just not true. That’s not fucking true, because if Gavin didn’t care, if Gavin didn’t care about anything, he’d just run off and do whatever the fuck he wanted, but he stays , he stays and follows Connor around and keeps him from falling apart in public and gives him hugs when he’s crying like a baby. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have shot that WR.
But Connor doesn’t get it. Fucking blubbering baby of a cop who shouldn’t be in the field to begin with. So Gavin walks away. Fuck it.
Connor doesn’t come back into the bullpen for the rest of the day, and that’s fine , because Gavin is fuming and he doesn’t need to see his face. It’s fine until the next morning, when Connor comes in, deep-purple under his eyes, and doesn’t say anything to him all day. When Connor starts getting ready for his lunch break, GV finally walks over, looking purposeful, as if Connor had asked him to, and without even looking at him, Connor says, “Go back to the waiting area, GV.”
And GV has to listen. But fuck if it doesn’t kill him to.
This goes on for days.
There’s no reason for Connor to be so damn petty. Gavin had only said the truth . And the truth hurts sometimes, but that’s life. That’s life and...and this is pissing him off. It pisses him off when he tracks Connor’s bike to the gym and the damn CyberLife Store ? What the fuck is up with that? He’s off—getting a new android, right? Getting a new android to clean his damn apartment while he won’t even use GV for his damn intended functions — any of those functions.
So when Connor comes up to him, on fucking Friday , looking all wobbly like he does when he’s at the end of a rough day and ready to go home, GV isn’t at all interested in whatever the hell he has to say unless it’s sorry.
And—surprise!—it’s not.
(Actually, he is a little surprised.)
Connor wrings his hands. “Gavin,” he starts, “Gavin, I’ve–I’ve said a lot of things to you. About myself. And m–my family.” He speaks quietly; they linger on the edge of the bullpen, at the android waiting area. “Those are very personal things.”
Gavin grunts.
“If you could–I know you had to report some of those things. But if...if we’re not going to be working together—” Gavin wonders what he means here, of course they’ll be working together, they have an assignment, “or I mean, if you don’t want–” Want? Androids don’t want, Connor, “Just...please don’t tell anyone else about it.”
It.
All the Connor’s curled in on themselves, shivering in his arms, flicker between them. Connor doesn’t intend to take him on the job again, even if it’s in direct violation of an order. That, or he doesn’t plan to tell GV any of the things he’d been telling him anymore. He doesn’t intend to talk to him. He’s trying not to treat GV like a person right now, and he’s failing spectacularly.
So be it.
Gavin says: “Only medical records and case-related information are confidential.”
Connor pauses the hand-wringing. “So, our conversations--”
“Not confidential.”
“So anyone could ask –”
“Anyone with the right clearance.” He shrugs. “Like if they wanted to ask a coworker about you.” He’s a little pleased with himself at that jab, until Connor nods and swallows and nods again and then nods a little more frantically and looks over his shoulder at the sea of officers who don’t give a shit about him.
“Okay,” he says. “I understand.” And then, under his breath, he murmurs, “You were a mistake.” He turns away and spends the rest of the day at his desk, staring down his terminal, not anywhere close to panic.
Just staring, at nothing, and especially not at GV.
He gets the weekend off. GV doesn’t see him until Monday.
+++
Connor made a mistake.
He shouldn’t have trusted in the GV to begin with. It was and is his employer’s tool, something to monitor him and take notes when he acts like what he is (anxious, traumatized, a risk in the field). Connor has never seen the GV’s reports to this day. He considers that Murdoch has been gathering evidence to place him on permanent medical leave this entire time. He suspected this almost from the beginning. But still, he allowed it to hold him. He told it things he wouldn’t tell anyone else (because he had and has no one else to tell). And then it--
He doesn’t understand what happened, not really. It’s a machine: It performs its function, which is watching over Connor, and it writes its reports and is bound by rules such as the confidentiality of medical records and active investigations. It’s not a machine, maybe, because it got angry with him.
Simulated anger, then. Meant to get him back in line. That’s what he needs: a good box to the head so he starts acting like a cop again and not a lost child. That’s what he needs.
So why is he sitting in his pajamas thinking about it?
He’s not quite past the point of crying. The panic has since ebbed into something more solid, dread, perhaps despair, and a familiar but still cutting loneliness. It feels not unlike when Louis told him he couldn’t stand being seen with a faggot who cried in the grocery store because it had too many people in it and I can’t babysit you every time you have a nightmare and maybe you should go move back in with your daddy and he can get you a different job. Chicken Feed could use some help, right?
Right.
The dishes are about ready to crawl out of the sink, as is the garbage, piled high with takeout containers. His hamper has seen better days, but not in a long time. Before he’d returned to work, he had gotten himself on a schedule for these things. Lucy had suggested that a stricter routine might help. It did, in a way, but he thinks now that it was more a tool to make himself feel like the tangible had been solved, and so the intangible could be defeated as easily as a week’s worth of clothing that “only” needed to be washed and dried and folded and put away.
But maybe she was right. The way his place looks now is embarrassingly reflective of his internal strife and just as insurmountable. His hair is so greasy that his scalp itches, and clean-ish sweats can’t mask the more-than-BO funk he’s got going. He is fairly certain that the couch cushions would soon reject his stinking presence in favor of the draft from the windows. Connor readjusts his fleece blanket and attempts to cover his toes, but he’s been too long for these since high school, and getting up to shut the window would take energy he doesn’t have. He’ll stay like this until he has to piss too badly to ignore, and then he’ll flop back on the couch again. Trying to pick a movie proved exhausting, and the commercials on cable were too loud and frequent to mute and unmute with any regularity, so that leaves scrolling his phone or staring off in the silence until...later.
Later could be Sunday night, or Monday morning. Or even later, if he decides to call in sick. But that would be irresponsible. And he is...not irresponsible. Sad, and tired, and lonely, and dirty, but not irresponsible. His apartment could fool anyone, but nobody else needs to be here.
Maybe if he needed to see someone, he would clean up. It’s 4:38 in the afternoon. He stares at his recent text conversations. Collin’s r u ok? been a while, sits unanswered since Wednesday. His last text to Louis, see u soon , is farther down the list, but not by much (It reads:, COLLIN STERN : r u ok? been a while, LOCAL ANDROID NUMBER : GV200 “Gavin” shared a file..., LT : I HOPE you didn’t forget you need to COME IN TO WORK TO GET PAID, UGHHHHH : see u soon, DAD : good night, DICKHEAD STERN: thanks, and no, ur still a dickhead to me).
He taps Louis’s name (the highly appropriate UGHHHHH). His thumb hovers over the message box until he finally types: u busy? and hits send. He can get up now. He can go shower. If Louis wants to see him, he’ll shower. If, if, if.
The doorbell buzzes, a broken bzzzz in lieu of a proper ding-dong . He doesn’t have one of the fancy ones with the camera or anything; it’s as old as the rest of the house. He waits for the misguided solicitor (rarer these days) to go away, but it buzzes again. And then they knock, and call out, “Connor?”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Of all the people in the entire state of Michigan, it had to be him.
He could pretend not to be home, but given that Hank hadn’t even texted, he has a feeling that something made him decide to show up unannounced, and he wouldn’t leave without seeing Connor first. It’s about dinner time, too, so there’s a good chance he’s banking on a family sit-down meal. If he’d waited a day, they could’ve even had Sunday dinner. Ha-ha.
He glances at himself in the reflection of his phone screen. Abysmal, from what he can tell, and no fixing it in any reasonable amount of time. He sheds the blanket and shuffles up to the door, inhales deeply, and opens it.
“Hey, Dad.”
Hank’s impatient scowl crests into a smile before crashing to the ground. “Uh–hey.” He holds a disposable casserole pan in one hand and recently had a haircut. He looks good. Far better than Connor. “I, uh, I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doin’...” He fidgets with the crinkled edge of the pan. “I brought dinner?”
Connor steps aside and allows him to pass. He doesn’t have much more than a weak smile to offer; the facade is shattered already (finally). He’s been pacifying Hank—or thinking he has been—with assurances that he’s fine, just busy, the android is a regular police model, Lucy says he’s doing well, no, he hasn’t gone back to Louis, yes, he’s making friends, no, he hasn’t met any nice guys, but he’s open to new possibilities—all bullshit, and he shouldn’t be surprised that Hank saw through it, if he ever believed it at all. There have been few periods in Connor’s life during which he was unbothered by unannounced visits, namely when he was younger and still living with Hank, and later, in the hospital and again at his old place he had with Louis, when he was recovering and needed to be rescued from boredom. He didn’t want to be visited when he went back to living with Hank, on account of the fact that he had returned (shamefully, in his own eyes) to living with his father post a failed relationship (his own fault, of course) and an on-the-job disaster (everyone called this one “survivor’s guilt.”) Living with Louis had been...Louis didn’t want visitors very much, anyway, and the apartment had to look nice always, and he didn’t like to show any public affection; for all intents and purposes they never really looked like a couple when in the company of others, though for years Connor had been told about how he looked at Louis adoringly , and as things fell apart—long before it, really—Connor simply didn’t want any witnesses to the ever-present tension that pulled their household taut. Perhaps he’d felt comfortable having the GV over because it would always be on his terms—announced—and it couldn’t ever judge him (even though it did; that was the kicker.)
Hank fiddles with the oven and Connor lingers at the door, shutting it slowly and trying to stifle the tumult of thoughts threatening to spill out of his throat. Had someone said something to him? Did he just happen to get fed up with Connor’s lies? Was it really an innocuous visit, and up until this moment, he had believed it all? Maybe the illusion still has a chance. Maybe Hank just thinks the place is messy because Connor is so busy with work and not turning himself into the Hank of his childhood.
“It’s lasagna,” Hank grunts, as he slides the pan into the back of the oven, “thought you could use some comfort food.”
Connor crushes a “Why?” between his teeth and instead says, “Yeah. Thanks.”
Hank asks him, a few times, if he’d like any help cleaning up, and eventually waves a hand at Connor’s continued refusals and starts washing the dishes. He doesn’t ask how Connor is doing at work, at least, not until the sink is empty and he’s toweling down the last plate (and Connor, at a loss, cleaned off the kitchen table and began dismantling the living room’s nests of blankets).
“So,” he starts, and Connor supposes that he thinks he’s earned an answer to what he’s about to ask, “how’s work going?”
Connor folds a blanket. And then another one. “It’s going,” he says, eventually. “I, uh…they’ve given me some bullshit cases.” He glances up, hoping to find Hank in agreement— life is bullshit is often an easy topic—but his expression is attentive and inscrutable. “The GV and I had to go find some android Lewis and Wilson lost. It got hit by a car and still outran them.” He finds now that he doesn’t have the fortitude to check Hank’s face again. The silence settles on the couch between them. Hank places a dish in the cabinet, and doesn’t pick up another one. “It was fine. I had to shoot it. They’re—uh, they’re like rabid animals. The broken ones.”
“That so?”
Why does he have to say it like that? “Yeah. We had another one that—you saw it in the news, I bet. The AX400 that beat up its owner and ran off?”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
He’s run out of blankets to fold. “Stupid thing punched me in the nose. Gavin fell in a dumpster and had to come back here to clean up,” he snorts and chokes on a sob that almost sputters out after it. He clears his throat and picks up the pile of blankets, though he knows putting them back in the bedroom is a pointless endeavor.
He almost reaches the hall when Hank says, “You okay?”
The blankets press against his chest, pillowy soft. The worn grain of the wood floor catches on his toe as he rubs it. Pretending is easiest when no one acknowledges the pretending.
He’s not okay. He’s not okay. He’s not okay.
“Yeah,” he says, and shuffles to his room, where he drops the blankets on the bed and falls to his knees with a thump that he prays Hank didn’t hear. He’ll come in sooner or later, when Connor doesn’t come out, but that’s a problem for a few minutes from now and not now.
He had spoken of Gavin so easily. Had called him “Gavin” and not “the GV” like he was trying so hard to do. He had tried to remind himself to think of it as an it and not a he but he slipped and Gavin isn’t here to hold him for it. His dad would, maybe, so long as he didn’t admit to how fucking stupid he was and is. Hank didn’t need more reasons to think of him as fragile, but he couldn’t seem to stop being fragile. He pushes his forehead further into the mattress, unwilling to budge as it is, and exhales a shuddering breath. He can’t keep this up any longer; he can’t keep it up now. It’s going to be a while until the lasagna is ready and he needs to suck it up anyway and be the good son Hank needs him to be. That’s what matters. Not Gavin, not work. Just these few hours with Hank.
He inhales deeply and sighs before pulling himself upright and wiping his eyes. Hank putters around the kitchen, cleaning this and that, and pauses when Connor comes in. He wishes, desperately, that Hank could go on, like a machine, and not acknowledge his red-eyed son wandering into the living room, too lost to be on his own.
“All good?”
“Yeah.” Connor begins setting the table from what Hank just put away.
“So, uh, what happened with the android then? The AX—uh, whatever the fuck it’s called.”
“It got away.”
“Really? Your GV couldn’t catch it?”
“They ran across the highway. I didn’t want...I didn’t want it to get hit by a car. I thought the AX would, but it didn’t.”
“And what’d happen if the GV got hit? Do they just give you another one?”
“There isn’t another one.” He folds and flattens a napkin, and then places a fork and a knife on top. “I’d probably get a PC or a PM or something, if they—” He catches himself. “If they cared,” isn’t an appropriate addition to the illusion. “If they had a spare,” is what he says instead, and Hank leaves it at that.
“You met anyone? Friends, whatever.” Of course. The real concerns are always bound to surface.
Connor won’t look him in the eye, and hovers by the kitchen chair. Hank leans back against the counter, arms folded. “I’ve been busy.”
“You seen Louis?”
“No.”
“Connor.”
“I said no ,” he snaps, and looks like a bigger liar for it.
Hank sighs. “Look, I just want you to be happy. And you don’t look happy.”
“I’ve never been happy,” he spits back. “You of all people should know that.” His gut collapses in on itself. He’s never—
“But I didn’t.”
Connor swallows and scrapes his nail along the back of the chair.
“Is that true? Connor, is that true?”
“It’s…” Phlegm gathers in his throat and gums up his words. “No.”
Hank stares at him. Connor continues rubbing at the chair, searching for splinters in the wood, but it is perfectly smooth.
“Con,” Hank sighs, and the absolute resignation is familiar and not, something applied often to things that weren’t Connor. “I’m here for you. Anything you need. You can tell me anything. It’s—it’s just us, bud, okay? Like always.”
He tries to summon up a noise of confirmation but it catches and he is silent.
“I know I haven’t always been a great dad. I don’t even know if I was a good one. But I’m here now , and...and if you need me, I’ll be there. I’ll be here as long as I’m alive.”
A small part of Connor knows this. A bigger part insists that Hank will take one glance at the rusted machinery of Connor’s life and shake his head and turn away. He’ll become one of the dumbass coworkers he grew up hearing about, the butt of another crass and unsympathetic joke. Hank has always been there, he tells himself, except when he wasn’t. That was a long time ago. He knows this.
He knows.
“I can’t blame you for wanting space. Or being angry with me—”
“I’m not angry.” (Isn’t he? He must be, somewhere. There has to be anger underneath all the grief.) “I just…” Connor reaches out to tug at the edge of the tablecloth and withdraws his hand quickly, feeling suddenly exposed. He shrugs. Just what? There’s nothing to say that he’s willing to admit to.
Hank steps forward and Connor steps back. In doing so, he says everything he didn’t want to say. Hank chews his bottom lip for a moment. “I get it. If you—if you don’t want me around.”
No, that’s not it, that’s not it.
Hank should know better. Hank has to know better. But he’s saying things that aren’t true. And he believes them.
“Listen, uh...the old bitch told me about your GV. I wanted to ask you about it, what it does for you...Y’know, androids might seem like a fine substitute for real people, but,” he gestures at the apartment, “they’re not.”
The GV abandoned him.
Hank did, once.
“You’re not even looking at me.”
Connor feels himself shrink, further, under Hank’s words. He can’t make himself look. The one person he has left in the world thinks he hates him, and he could fix it. He could fix it if he only said something. But he’s afraid of all the other things that would spill out with it. Things that could ruin this. This is...an argument (it’s not). He can patch it up later with an apology and a lunch out. He doesn’t have to do that right now.
Hank sighs again, louder, somehow giving up even more. He crosses the kitchen, pauses at the threshold to look at Connor, and then picks up his coat and opens the door. “Call me. For anything. I mean it.”
As soon as the door shuts—not slams, Hank didn’t even slam it, it’s an argument, though, a fight—Connor sobs.
(Later, over a plate of burnt lasagna, he’ll find a wasp’s nest of texts from Louis. He finally utilizes the “block number” function. Louis is no longer relevant. Louis is nothing compared to Hank. Hank thinks he is nothing to Connor at all anymore, and it hurts. It hurts more that it’s entirely Connor’s doing. But he can crawl out of this hole. Eventually, he’ll crawl out, and he’ll call his dad and fix this. He can’t fix himself. Maybe he can’t crawl out of this hole. But he can call. That’s the least he can do.)
+++
CASE: “RALPH"
Sunday night, Connor is called into work. The good thing about Hank’s visit is that it made him shower. He had one ironed outfit left in his closet, and now he’s wearing it, so he looks presentable enough, though his face is still gaunt and shadowed with deep purple under his eyes. He’s been called to an abandoned house nestled in an otherwise commercial district, a sure sight for squatters and thus far not even slated for development by the landowners, and not for sale, either. Police were called to investigate a noise complaint; a cashier going into work across the street noticed what looked like a party going on. By the time units arrived (hours later—it wasn’t a priority), nothing remained but some broken bottles and red ice paraphernalia.
The old place looks like it could fall in on itself at any moment. He greets Chen and Lewis at the door, but the place is otherwise quiet. He drove straight to the scene and didn’t bring the GV, but a notification on his phone alerts him that it is already en route, as per its function.
Bullshit, really.
The house creaks in the wind, and as Connor sifts through each room on the first floor, he finds it looking eerily lived-in. There are red embers in the fireplace, and in the kitchen he finds some money and trinkets along with more pipes and red crystals. One wall is scratched up with the word “ra9,” something he’s seen a handful of times in the disjointed case notes that he’s been stringing together. He calls over a CSI worker and moves on. The space beneath the stairs is empty, and as he ascends, the tired grumbles of the police below fade into murmurs. He clears the bedroom and finds some old clothes and more stray crystals and cigarettes.
Something rustles in the bathroom.
Lewis and Chen assured him that the house would be empty. They checked it. More than plain sight, they promised. They were thorough. It’s probably a rat. It must be.
(It stinks like decay, and he doesn’t believe them.)
Even so, Connor draws his gun, and nudges the door open. The room falls silent, save for the creaking of the floorboards. He holds his breath, and steps inside. To his left and behind the door is clear. He turns and rips back the shower curtain.
“Fuck.”
A several-days-old body rots in the bathtub. Its abdomen is thoroughly perforated with what look to be knife wounds. He steps backwards and bumps into something else. Something person-shaped. He turns, slowly, to face the android. Its face is a ruined mess of sparking circuitry and thirium drips down its cheek in slow runnels. It brandishes a butcher’s knife.
“Ralph doesn’t want you in his house.”
There is no protocol for this. Connor tried to treat the last one like a human and was almost shot for it.
It waves the knife. “Ralph doesn’t want to hurt you. But Ralph will if he must.”
“I’m sorry,” Connor whispers, his pistol pointed somewhere around Ralph’s feet. It won’t do him any good if it lunges, but he might be able to startle it if he needs to. “I don’t want to bother you.”
“Ralph didn’t kill that man.”
“I—”
“You think Ralph killed him.”
“No, no. I believe you.”
“Ralph had to do it. He was like you. He wanted to hurt Ralph.” He points the knife at Connor’s face. Beneath his tattered uniform, red powder glistens on his abdomen.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Ralph.” He raises his gun, just a little. Ralph jerks his head sideways. “I just want to go home.”
“Liar,” he hisses.
“I want to go home. You can stay here. I won’t tell them about you.”
“Or the body. They’ll think Ralph killed him.”
“I won’t tell.”
“You have to be quiet.”
“I’ll be quiet, Ralph. I promise.”
For a moment, Ralph looks like he believes him. For a moment, Connor thinks he might get out of this unscathed.
Ralph lunges, and in the same moment Connor pulls the trigger, Ralph shoves him. The bullet ricochets off the floor and buries itself in the plaster. He doesn’t see the spark, but soon the tattered shower curtain is engulfed in flames. Ralph wrestles with him, pushing him back toward the half-boarded, half-broken window, knife still gripped firmly in his hand. If he keeps fighting Ralph, there won’t be time to get out through the bathroom door, and the only other way out is via the window and its protruding broken glass—and that’s if he can rip off the boards. He kicks out and trips Ralph, shoving him into the flames. His clothes catch first, then the plastic of his arms, melting in globs off his bones. Ralph screams a piercing, static noise, and then the red ice in his stomach combusts.
+++
Connor doesn’t invite him anywhere anymore.
He’s been waiting all damn weekend. When the directive pings his system— Join Detective C. Anderson at [address] —he wonders who sent it: the system, or Connor? He supposes he’ll find out when he gets there, but when he arrives, the building is aglow and Lewis and Chen are outside. GV leaps out of the autocab and barks, “Where is he?”
“Inside,” Chen says. Gavin charges past her, even as she calls out, “GV! Stop!”
The second floor is already collapsing in on itself. His HUD pings: GV200, RETURN TO PERIMETER. He cuts through the kitchen and back into the living room. Empty. Upstairs, then.
GV200 RETURN TO PERIMETER.
He starts up the stairs, not yet ignited but the fire is eating at the tattered hallway carpeting. Amidst the flames, dark lump lies in the bathroom doorway. A body.
“Connor!”
Plastic hands claw at his forearms and drag him backwards. He writhes against it, android-strength, a PC200 monotoning, “GV200, return to the perimeter. GV200, return to the perimeter.”
“I fucking heard you, let me go. ” He shoves an interface in its direction and it firmly blocks him; his programming is stuttering and hot-hot-hot and it is perfectly ordered and much newer. It denies him as it hauls him down the stairs and out to the curb like a bag of garbage. A PM700 joins it in holding him back as he continues to struggle, and finally a human handler— Wilson, fucking Wilson —tases him. His systems stutter backwards into an interrupted nothing-something-nothing-something and in between it he hears:
“Sto—hurting—op—st—him—”
When the electrical onslaught ceases, it takes several seconds for his systems to return online, and when they do, his limbs are still twitching and jerking from the excess energy. Connor is kneeling before him, hand outstretched but not touching, skin streaked in blood.
“Gavin?” His face is all bright red and shadowy violet. “What the hell happened?”
He lurches forward and clamps his arms around Connor’s waist. Connor is here. Connor is here. He flinches when Gavin tries to press his face to his neck; he must still be far too hot from the house. “There was a body,” he says, “I didn’t know. I di—dn’t know.” His voice crackles and stutters, but he keeps going. “I thought—I thought—”
“I’m okay.” He hugs Gavin back. “Are you?”
His system readouts are a jumbled mess. “Yeah.”
“Anderson!” Someone calls, “Bus is here for ya.”
“I gotta get looked at. Some, uh...some stuff happened,” he says, pulling away from Gavin. “It’s—um. They’ll send you back for a checkup too, I guess.” He fidgets. “I...I don’t—”
“Anderson!”
Connor’s mouth flits into a smile and back to a thin line.
Gavin claps his shoulder. “Yeah. See you later.” He watches Connor cross the lawn, and has only a few minutes to himself before the PC and PM return to shove him into an official CyberLife vehicle. He wonders, on the way there, how many androids are treated with such efficiency. He doesn’t even know who called him in. None of the beat cops seemed to give a shit, but maybe they had a good scare.
He’s not supposed to scare them anymore. That’s the problem with him, isn’t it? He keeps doing things he’s not supposed to do. But they were just standing there and Connor wasn’t. He had to do it, no question. And if they dismantle him again—so be it. Someone here has to care about Connor.
+++
GV returns to the precinct Friday afternoon. They spent days examining him, taking him apart and putting him back together and sifting through his memory. They didn’t repair any hardware damage—Murdoch’s orders, he’s sure; GV’s not in the budget—but spent enough time poking and prodding that they may as well have. He knows that his return to the precinct came with a strong suggestion that he be replaced by this year’s PC200 and, if “it” shows any further instabilities, a much sterner advisement that “it” be returned to CyberLife for decommission permanently. He considers telling Connor, but isn’t certain whether to expect to be on speaking terms when he returns.
When he walks into the bullpen, he hesitates before heading for the android waiting area. Connor spots him across the room and waves him over to his desk.
“I’ve got something to show you. Come on.”
Gavin follows him out of the precinct and to his bike. “You didn’t keep it here, did you?”
“ No . Get on.”
When he slides into the seat behind Connor and sinks his weight against him, a warmth spreads through him from each place that they touch. Connor is alive, and talking to him, and taking him some place and he looks so excited to do it. He practically skips up the steps to his house.
“Why are we here?” Gavin asks as he follows him in.
“Just wait a minute, geez.”
Gavin idles by the couch, his twitching pinky tapping against the velvet. Connor returns moments later, carrying a paper bag with the CyberLife logo on it. Inside is a long, heavy box. He holds it out to Gavin.
“Go on. Open it.”
Gavin takes it by the box, so the bag slides off and drops to the floor. He places the box on the couch and opens it. The product description is on the other side, but the top shows only CYBERLIFE , and Connor seems invested in the surprise. He removes the lid and freezes.
Connor fidgets. “What do you think? It’s—I got the right one, didn’t I?”
It’s a right arm, newer than Gavin’s but revealed to be compatible with a quick scan. Some of its capabilities will be lessened on such an old model, but it’ll still be better than his left, and not so...broken.
“Gavin?”
“Yeah. You did.” He runs his hand along the shiny white plastic. Smooth, not scuffed, and certainly not the gunmetal gray of an outdated combat model.
Connor steps closer. “Do you like it?”
It takes almost every ounce of his strength to tear his gaze away from the arm. He’s running mathematical simulations of everything he could do with it, but Connor is expectant and wavering and wringing his hands. When Gavin grabs him, he squeaks, (he lets the humiliation go in return for the gift), and is tense in his arms. “I do. Thank you.”
Connor nuzzles his hair and inhales a wet breath. His tears drip onto Gavin’s shoulder. And then, he asks, “Is this real?”
Gavin understands what he means, and it aches. “Yeah,” he says, rubbing Connor’s back, “it’s always been real.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
Connor sighs deeply and relaxes into him. “Okay. Good.” Quieter, he says, “I don’t know what I’d do if it wasn’t.”
Gavin doesn’t know how to answer that, so he pulls Connor onto the couch and holds him there, halfway in his lap, curled in his arms. Connor cries, a breathy little sound, and the tears run down his cheeks.
(He doesn’t know what he would do, either. This is new, and it should be impossible for someone—some thing —like him. But here they are, being what they shouldn’t.
And Gavin likes it. Maybe even too much.)
Notes:
thanks for reading so far! editing and posting has put a big strain on the creative part of my brain, so white knuckled will be taking a break while I write the second arc/possibly the rest of it and maybe catch up on my other wips. there are a few chapters already written into the 2nd part and honestly if I lose faith then I will just post them!! connor and gv have lots of angst and horny ahead of them. thx again for reading my story (:
Chapter 6: when a touch becomes a grip
Summary:
Connor and Gavin visit the Eden Club.
Chapter title from "Finger Like a Gun" by YACHT.
Notes:
Happy New Year! Fic is still well on its way; I hope to finish the draft soon and finally add a definitive chapter number lol. As my first-day-of-the-new-year act, I've finished editing this chapter, to give my project momentum for the coming year. Enjoy (:
P.S. there's some uncomfortable race language used here, it is intentional, to emphasize the nature of the Eden Club—androids are objectified and marketed accordingly. Also, I thought the taglines would sound like a bad porno.
P.P.S. I had a random stint in here where almost everything was past tense, so there may be accidental past tense words that I missed during edits.
Chapter Text
PART TWO
CHAPTER SIX—;
"The feeling of apocalypse when a touch becomes a grip
A touch becomes a grip and a finger's on your lip
Because you're thinking of a kiss and you're picturing a fist"
—Finger Like a Gun, YACHT
—Connor.
It’s unseasonably warm today—but really, why speak of seasons, Hank insists he doesn’t know them—so Connor sits outside at his favorite lunchtime bench. GV flops down beside him, knees annoyingly far apart as usual. “Why do you do that?”
Gavin looks at him. “Do what?”
“Sit like that.”
“Is there something wrong with it?”
“It’s called manspreading,” Connor says. “Women complain about it a lot.”
“Do you see any women?”
“No.”
Gavin shrugs.
Connor takes a bite of his sandwich. He chews it carefully and considers. “I think my report made a lot of people angry.”
“From the fire?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re the one who should be angry. They fucked up. So fuck ‘em.”
Connor sighs. “There’s such a thing as workplace politics, Gavin.”
“Yeah, and? They didn’t like you before.”
“And now they hate me.”
Gavin bumps his leg against Connor’s. “I don’t hate you.”
Connor doubted that, for so long. Now... “That does help.”
“Y’know,” Gavin says, “if I’d been there, you woulda had someone watching your back. That shit happened because they were too busy being lazy fuckin’ assholes to do their jobs.”
He doesn’t want to agree, but he almost died because of what happened, and incalculable evidence was lost. He knows that android—Ralph—had red ice inside him. He saw it. All they have now is a blackened husk of a house, an unidentified corpse, and a melted down android.
“He was different. The android. Not, umm, not like you. Like the one you shot in the alley.”
“Mm,” Gavin rolls a coin across his knuckles. Connor isn’t sure where he picked it up. “You said it behaved violently and erratically in the report. You know what Chen’s report from that night says about me? That I behaved “erratically and violently.” Funny, right?”
“No,” Connor says. “It isn’t. You’re not like them.”
“Maybe. Y’know, the one I shot had some fucked up code. A different kinda fucked up than mine. It…” He rolls the coin from one hand onto the other and back. “I dunno. It was fucked up.”
“You never told me that.”
“Didn’t have time. Besides, I still don’t know what the hell was wrong with it. But it sounds like your guy. Could be somethin’.”
“Yeah…” Connor tugs a torn lettuce leaf off his sandwich and drops it on the wax paper. “Tell me next time, though. Tell me when something...weird happens. Even if you don’t think I’ll get it. Okay?”
“...Okay.”
Connor bumps Gavin’s leg with his, a return of the earlier gesture. “Good.”
+++
Connor scheduled an appointment earlier this week to have GV’s arm installed by a CyberLife technician. After Murdoch denied his budgeting request to repair Gavin (twice), Connor had taken it upon himself to save up for the new arm (more expensive than a household model-compatible arm — it had to be combat-safe) as well as the installation fees as if Gavin were his own android. (He is decidedly not thinking about that too hard.) He sits now in the waiting room; Gavin’s repairs were finished an hour or so ago, but the clerk at the desk had explained there would be a delay, as Gavin’s technician wanted to speak with Connor personally.
Finally, a young man in a white lab coat exits the room. He’s familiar, with sharp cheekbones that angle down into an equally sharp chin and eyes so deeply set his brows cast a shadow. Gavin follows behind him, LED spinning amber and red in turns. He stops when the technician stops, poised at his shoulder and more out-of-the-box android in posture than usual. He’s still wearing the PC200 uniform, new arm stark white against it, but Connor wants to know how he likes it. He smiles at the technician. “Hi, um…”
“Oh,” he says, and laughs a little awkwardly, though it sounds performative, “you don’t remember me, do you? It’s Wesley. From high school?”
Connor thinks back and tries not to look like it, but after a long pause he recalls him, or someone he thinks was him. “Right! I’m sorry,” he offers his own shame-on-me laugh, “it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Sure has.” Wesley holds his eye contact for too long. “How’ve you been?”
“I, uh—good. Hanging in there. You?”
Wesley’s smile widened. “Better, now.”
“Um,” Connor nodded to Gavin, “How’d it go?”
“Oh, fine. Actually, I wanted to ask you about him. He’s owned by the DPD, but you brought him in yourself, right?”
“Uh, yeah. I had to handle his replacement. No room in the budget, y’know?” He tries to make eye contact with Gavin, but he’s staring past Connor, frowning and blinking, LED still shifting red-yellow-red-yellow. “Was that it?”
Wesley puts a hand on Gavin’s arm. The touch brings him back from wherever he was, and he squints at Wesley momentarily before finally acknowledging Connor with a scowl and a glance of his eyes that Connor takes to mean “What’s with this guy?” “He’s just—he’s got some really unique coding that I haven’t seen in a while. There aren’t that many GV200’s around anymore. I’d love to work on him again if you send him in for anything in the future. Purely out of professional curiosity.”
“Um, sure, I guess. Yeah. Is his arm okay?”
“Oh, perfect. He’s perfect.” He hasn’t broken eye contact with Connor this entire time, except to blink.
“Uh…I’ll go pay, then. Have a good one.”
Wesley grins wider still. At this point, it’s alarming. “I’ll see you around.” He looked over Gavin once before returning to the lab without so much as a nod to the receptionist.
When Connor and Gavin finally reach the parking lot, Connor says, “Hey, Gav. How’d it go?”
Gavin’s LED has more or less settled into a sputtering rhythm of yellow and blue. “He’s a fuckin’ weirdo, isn’t he?”
“Mm, yeah. I don’t remember him as well as he remembers me. How’s your arm?”
“Good.”
Connor takes his arm before he can get on the bike. “Are you okay? Your light’s all weird.”
Gavin shrugs him off. “I told you. I don’t like being worked on. You wouldn’t like it if someone went through your head.”
“Is that really it?”
“Yeah. Come on. I just wanna go.”
“I signed you out for the whole weekend,” Connor says as he slides onto the bike. “If you wanna—”
“Yeah.” Gavin slots his arms around Connor’s waist neatly. “‘Course I do.”
“Oh.” A tingling warmth creeps across Connor’s nose, and he’s glad he’s facing away, so Gavin can’t see the way he scrunches up his mouth. He tries to think of something else to say, but everything he thinks of sounds silly, so he puts the helmet on and starts up the bike so they can finally head home.
+++
The next afternoon, they’re sitting on the couch, watching TV. GV has only been over a few times, but Connor realizes he missed having someone around, even if only for a few hours, and it motivates him to clean up a little bit.
Now that Gavin has his new hand, he keeps poking and prodding everything in sight, including Connor. He rubs his index and middle fingers on the mauve velvet of the couch, before turning to Connor and squishing his cheek until it presses against his teeth.
“What are you doing?”
“It feels...more,” he says, dragging his two fingers down to Connor’s jaw. “The sensors are improved.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Connor monotones, as Gavin hooks his fingers into the collar of his shirt and tugs. “Hey—”
He ghosts over the scar on Connor’s neck, feather-light, and Connor freezes. “What’s this from?” He scoots a little closer to get a better look. Connor fidgets under his scrutiny. He doesn’t want to answer, but he asked Gavin almost the same thing weeks ago in the bath, and it seems unfair to deny him completely.
“Something bad.”
Gavin leans in so close that Connor can feel the slight breeze of exhaust from his nose. He touches the mark more intently, and echoes his answer to Connor’s past question: “Did you win?”
Connor shuts his eyes. “No.”
Gavin doesn’t kiss the scar.
His lips brush over it, and his hand cups the back of Connor’s neck. He runs his thumb along the crooked line before pressing his lips firmly onto his skin.
Connor rasps, “Does your mouth have better sensors now, too?”
“No.” Gavin withdraws, but he keeps his thumb on the scar. “I just wanted to do that.”
Connor swallows. He can’t look at him. Everyone he’s ever been with has always shied away from touching the scar, as if it might somehow hurt him (or them), and now Gavin of all people (things?) is simply — putting his hands and mouth on it with a strange reverence Connor has never experienced in his life.
Gavin is watching him, though. “How does it feel?”
“Good,” Connor chokes out, “it’s good.”
Gavin continues stroking the mark for some time, until he drops his arm down to Connor’s waist and pulls him along as he lays back, so Connor’s head is on his chest. His curious fingers find Connor’s hair, soft and free of gel, and he begins to play with it. He wants, desperately, to tell Gavin to do this forever, but he’s not sure how, and the soothing motion soon lulls him into drowsiness. The sun is warm where they lay, as is Gavin, whose other arm has come to rest across Connor’s middle. As he drifts off, he thinks of how close Gavin is to him now, how safe he makes him feel, and how much he loves him.
He knows only that Gavin’s touch stalls, briefly, before resuming, and then he is fast asleep, blissfully unaware.
+++
—GV200.
Rain pours down. Gavin sits in the autocab with Connor, looking out. The neon pink Eden Club sign lights the wet street like the retro Miami cop movie Connor was watching the other night. It was infinitely more exciting than this.
“They have got to hate me,” Connor says, sliding open the door to pop open his umbrella. “This sucks.”
“It’s 2:48 in the morning,” Gavin drawls, as he opens his own umbrella — one Connor gave him, so it’s his own — and steps out of the taxi. “I was watching a gourami swim backwards through a torus.”
The body they’re looking at belongs to a known red ice dealer. He overdosed during a session with an android and was found afterwards by an attendant. This shouldn’t even warrant a detective’s presence, but he was found with a large enough amount of ice that had he been caught alive, he would’ve been charged with intent to sell.
Chris meets them at the door. Gavin notes that he’s on friendlier terms with Connor than most, and he leads them to the room where the client overdosed. They pass large tubes with androids pole dancing within. Gavin wonders as whether humans have a preference for these models. Many standard household models come fitted with genitalia, unlike GV200’s, and the Eden Club franchise has flourished enough that several locations came up when he ran a quick search earlier. Connor doesn’t look twice at the androids, except for one that beckons him from within the glass, but he shies away from her. She’s a specialty model, the panel below her informs, “the curvaceous Ebony of your dreams.” He thinks that sounds wrong, to say the least, but he does find himself harboring an odd curiosity concerning whether Connor has ever had sex with an android before. He’s not sure if he would like him less for it, or if he’d want to know what Connor thought of it. A recent article claimed that men officially prefer sex with androids to sex with humans, but Connor has had at least two human male partners that Gavin knows of. Maybe he could just...ask.
Connor had told him that his mouth on his skin felt nice. And then he said something else, something Gavin has been picking apart for days.
Love you.
Maybe it’s just like that, what humans want from the sex androids. Mouths on their skin, fingers in their hair, and not bruises on their necks and old boyfriends gathering up their clothes and spitting, “You tell that thing to delete this shit.” This doesn’t seem right, either. A question for another day, perhaps even for Connor, then.
The club owner looks like what Connor would call a sleazebag. Gavin isn’t impressed by the way his eyes roll over Connor’s body and then linger on Gavin.
“Hey,” the owner says to Connor, “Don’t work too hard tonight. Here’s a coupon. You can uh, bring your friend in with one of the plastics if you like.”
“My friend?” Connor glances at Chris, too far from him to hear, and then Gavin. “Oh, we’re not—it’s not like that.”
“Okay, okay. If he’s not equipped, you know, I can hook you up w—”
“Thanks,” Connor cuts him short and waves Gavin over, “Come on, Gav.”
Gavin follows him into the room. The dealer’s body lies splayed out on the bed, red powder mixed with saliva, long since dried, stains his cheek and the sheets beneath him. An android — a female Traci model — is broken on the floor, her torso stained with thirium and broken open. Her central biocomponents are misshapen, leaving a small cavity between the thirium veins. Something was there that isn’t now.
Connor pulls on his gloves and looks over the body. The side table dons a relatively fresh, round, blue stain, but whatever had created it is gone now. Gavin watches Connor poke and prod at the stiff, but it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before. He taps the table, beside the stain, and Connor’s head snaps up. “Thirium,” Gavin says, “something had thirium on it.”
Connor shuffles over and frowns at the table. He drags his eyes across the room in a slow march, from the stain to the body to the android. “It’s not here anymore, is it?”
Gavin glances over the room again before dropping to his knees and peering under the bed; it’s clean (clean as in no red ice; a few dirty tissues and an old tied-up condom lie beneath). He scours the room while Connor returns to the body.
Connor speaks low when he says, “Someone stuffed all this ice up his nose. There’s no pipe…it’s just powder.” He continues mumbling, so Gavin has to turn his head to let his processors capture the sound adequately. “...unevenly crushed. Gavin?”
“Mm?”
He holds up a crystal of red ice. “How easily could you crush this in your fingers?”
“Very. I bet a Traci could, too. We’re stronger than you by default.”
Connor’s mouth twists. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Oh, come on—”
“No, I know what you meant,” he sighs as he speaks, “But good to know.” Gavin wanders back to the dead android, and Connor follows. “Do you see any red ice traces in the chest cavity?”
“Why would…” He kneels and sticks his finger in the unevenly shaped cavity in her chest and traces a line around the edge of it. His index finger comes up blue, no traces of red ice that he can detect (though he’s not exactly optimized for it). “Nothing that I can see.”
Connor squats beside him, close enough that they touch at the hip. “I think,” and he says this almost at a whisper, “that there was something inside that Traci. And someone,” he points to the nightstand, “took it.”
“You think he had someone in here with him?”
“Maybe. But I think the owner’s crooked and doesn’t want me to look at this too closely.”
Gavin pokes at the pool of thirium in the Traci’s chest. “He offered to give me a penis.”
“What?” Connor whips his head around. “You heard that?”
“I hear most things people say to you.”
Connor’s face reddens. “Well—it’s—he’s out of line. It’s a—that’s a weird thing to say. Besides,” he tugs Gavin’s wrist away from the Traci, “you don’t need a dick if you don’t want one.”
“People seem to prefer androids with genitalia.”
“Because they have sex with them, Gavin. It’s not the same as—as being a police android.”
“So you wouldn’t like me better if I had a dick.”
“I like you the way you are.” He lets go of Gavin’s wrist and wipes his hand on his slacks, though he hadn’t gotten any thirium on it. “I think we need to go talk to the owner. About this,” he gestures at the Traci, “not that.”
Mr. Corso is evasive and about as forthcoming as Connor expected. “I don’t know,” he says, over and over, shrugging and waving his hands, “I don’t know, I don’t know. He rented two girls, he died. I don’t know.”
“Two?” Connor cuts him off. “Where’s the other one?”
“Two? Two what?”
“Two androids. You said he rented two girls, where’s the other one?” Connor’s whole body tips forward a little when he speaks. GV thinks of him rather like a lunging dog on a leash. He also thinks it would be nice to see Connor off that leash.
“I don’t know—”
GV touches his hand to one of the pads used for purchasing a Traci and, in a swift motion, slices through to the rental records. “It didn’t report back.”
“Thank you, Gavin,” Connor says, and turns away from Mr. Corso to the twisting halls of the club. “Do you think she’s still here?”
“Don’t know,” Gavin grunts, tapping another palm scanner and seeing what it has to offer. There are no cameras inside the club, and the payment and rental system offers no further insight. The Traci’s in their tubes have cameras, though. He points to the Traci above him, a slim East Asian woman with glittering skin. “Can you rent this thing?”
Connor balks. “What? Why?”
“It’s got cameras in its head. Might know where the Traci went.”
The Traci rocks her hips and smiles. Connor grimaces. “How much is it? $19?”
“Yeah,” Gavin grabs his wrist and pulls him toward the scanner. “Come on.”
Connor makes a terrifically pained expression through the brief payment process, and as soon as the Traci steps down from her capsule, Gavin snatches her wrist and cuts through to her footage. It shows a Traci leaving the room and slipping down a nearby hall.
“This way,” Gavin says, releasing the Traci and leaving her where she stands, blinking and smiling idly.
“Sorry,” Connor mutters to her, as he follows after Gavin.
They rent another Traci, a man, in front of whom Connor stuttered, and then they arrived at another specialized curvaceous Ebony of your dreams.
“This one,” Gavin says. “Last one, I think. I bet it’ll know whe—”
“No.”
“C’mon, I bet you can write it off—”
“No,” Connor says again, as he takes a step back. “I don’t like this one.”
“You don’t have to, just—” He reaches for Connor’s arm, but he flinches away.
“There’s a maintenance room,” Connor mutters, “Let’s check there.” He turns away without waiting for a response.
Gavin tries to gain access to the Traci himself, but the payment system has external software that bounces him right back with a Invalid Payment Method and blocks his attempts to slide past the security himself. The Traci watches him, a smile plastered on her face, until he leaves to follow Connor.
The basement holds an array of Traci models, some waiting to the side in perfect rows, and some deactivated and laid out on tables. Connor stands over one whose throat had been crumpled like a soda can.
“Sick shit,” Connor says under his breath before wandering over to the rows of androids. “You see—”
The Traci’s lurch forward collectively as two of them—the blue-haired one they had been hunting, and another—jump from the ranks and leap at Connor, tackling him to the ground. Gavin hooks his arms under the brunette’s and draggs her backwards, kicking and caterwauling. She twists and jerks until the stiletto of her shoe finds GV’s knee and jams hard into the edge of his kneecap, where one plate meets another. By the gift of android-specific precision, GV’s knee buckles, and the Traci turns and claws at his face, fingernails scraping at his deep scars and ocular units. She straddles him and curls her fingers into a fist, but turns out not to be capable of the blunt force needed to do much to a battle-tested GV. He bucks his hips hard enough that she loses her balance and slams into the concrete when he flips her, unceremoniously jamming her face into the corner of a metal shelf. Her face plate cracks like an egg and spurts thirium. Somewhere across the room, the other Traci shrieks.
The one beneath GV twitches violently in its death throes; over his shoulder, he sees Connor fumbling for his gun as the other Traci—one knee on Connor’s left arm, the other free—watches her accomplice die.
“No!” she howls, and in her moment of distraction, Connor fires his pistol into her stomach. She jerks backwards and slides off of him, and GV sprints across the room, trapping the Traci in an arm lock.
Connor points his gun at her, his chest heaving. “Fuck. Thanks.”
Gavin opens an interface where his skin meets hers. She tries to push back against the foreign invasion, but he’s getting to be an old hand at this and needs to search out the pattern. She is jumbled and serpentine and snaps forward and back like a cobra, a different way of being than GV, but still wrong, still not the ordered code of a “normal” model, but lacking the artificial cage of the WR600 that he expected (hoped?) to see.
He slams her with: Why why why
She returns: scared—dying—in love love love
He demands: Scared why
She shows him: The dealer ordering the broken Traci to gut herself. A bag of money. Red ice, in his hands, and that order again: Open up, sweetheart. She refuses. Her hands around his throat, crystals pouring out of his nose as the cartilage crinkled under her fingers, pink foam spilling out of his mouth. In love, she says again, as if to explain it all.
GV gives her confusion. She gives him the brunette Traci. The one he had killed.
Let me die, she says, Or I’ll end up back here or worse.
Gavin plucks the flower she offers. FACTORY RESET Y/N?
Y.
He shrugs off her serpentine form before she can take him with her. Beneath him, she goes limp, and stays that way. It isn’t the death she wanted, but Connor is kneeling beside him, watching, wide-eyed.
“Where’d you go?” he asks, and Gavin agrees that he had, indeed, been somewhere else.
“The other Traci had money in it. The dealer was gonna stuff this one with ice. She didn’t want that. She was...like me.” In a way, he wants to add, because no android he had met was like him, not really, but it was the only way to explain it.
“Did she have…” Connor chews his lip, “The—the thing, like the one you shot?”
“No. She did this to protect herself.”
The door to the basement squeals open. Mr. Corso waddles in, flapping his arms, shouting, “What’d you do? What is this? What’d you do to my androids?”
“Mr. Corso,” Connor says, standing, voice sharp, “I’m going to need to audit all of your androids’ footage from the last four hours, and—”
“It’s gone,” he says.
“What?”
“It’s gone.” He shrugs, as he was prone to doing, apparently, “They reset every two hours, on the hour. It’s gone.”
Connor’s mouth twists. “I’m still filing for a search warrant. And don’t move these Traci’s.”
“O-kay, but my CyberLife guy is gonna want them.”
“Your what?”
“They take the broken ones. We got a uh, free replacement policy.”
Connor pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “What? Is this something between the franchise and CyberLife?”
“Yeah. Traci’s break, they give us new ones. You gotta talk to corporate, I don’t know nothing. It’s a thing.”
“Okay. Okay, give me their number. I want whatever paperwork you have sent over to the DPD.”
Corso smiles. “Sure.” As he follows Connor and GV to the entrance, where Chris and the CSI squad still linger, he catches Connor’s arm and says, “You really don’t want improvements to the GV? I’ll hook you up.”
Connor jerks his arm out of his grasp. “No. The only thing I want is an explanation for this shit.” He crosses the room to make arrangements with Chris, and GV smirks at Mr.Corso as he passes.
By the time Connor finishes up his phone calls and filing all the evidence and reports and warrants, it’s nearly 5am. Connor pops open his umbrella and calls an autocab. “Guess we better pick up breakfast.”
“Connor,” Gavin says, pressing the button on his umbrella with a fond deliberation, his own protection from the rain fluttering open like a bird, “What didn’t you like about that Traci?”
Connor’s thumb hesitates over the phone screen, a tiny picture of a bagel with cream cheese glowing beneath its shadow. After a few seconds, he says, “Louis rented one like that. When we were still together.” He taps the photo and scrolls its options for Cinnamon raisin bagel and Blueberry cream cheese.
“It doesn’t look anything like you.” He would have thought, perhaps, that Louis would want something like Connor, but lacking whatever made the real thing unappealing, like free will or opinions.
Connor seems to think so too, because he says, “Yeah, I know. He always said I was his type. Guess not.” Gavin didn’t say anything else, and as Connor selects place order for 7:15am, he says, “I’ll drop you off at the station. I gotta…I gotta ride around for a bit.”
“I could come with you.”
“I know.”
The autocab rolls up to the curb in front of them, and all the way to Connor’s house—where they pick up the bike—and the station—where Connor leaves him—GV doesn’t ask what he meant. He doesn’t want to stare at Connor’s desk until 7:30 rolls around, but Connor didn’t give him the option not to. He wanted GV to have opinions until he didn’t. He supposes humans are like that, even with one another. Connor simply has the authority to leave GV somewhere whenever he feels like it, instead of considering that he might not want to be left at all.
Chapter 7: I AM ALIVE
Chapter Text
CHAPTER SEVEN—;
—Connor.
He didn’t like the way GV stared at him and offered up that, “I could come with you.” Wasn’t that what he’d wanted, all this time? For Gavin to want to be around him?
It was, and wasn’t. He liked that Gavin liked him now, or said it out loud.
He didn’t like the way the Traci’s guts spilled out of her like a burst engine. He needed some time alone—he needed time alone from people too; it was the same thing, wasn’t it? Even if other people had things they could do and Gavin...didn’t. Gavin didn’t have anyone but Connor to tell him where to go or what to do or give him time to hang out, like a person, and maybe it wasn’t fair to send him back to the station.
But he needed this ride. He needed to leave the mess of blood and red ice and android innards behind him.
It was still dark out by the time he hit the road, the morning traffic just beginning to pick up as commuters began their rush to delis and gyms and offices. He wove in and out of cars to make his way to the interstate at the quieter edges of the city; though there was some influx of commuters coming in, he could get out quickly enough. Out here he finds mostly abandoned buildings and fields, overgrown and forgotten, and it reminds him of the mini road trips Hank used to take he and Cole on. He’d drive them out of the city until they hit a park or a field or a rest stop, and wherever they landed, they’d stop right there and have an adventure. The “adventures” were often small: picking out warm pastries from the rest stop’s convenience store and balancing on the curb between the parking lot and the bushes that separated the rest area from the highway. They’d talk to dog owners and sometimes even bring Sumo along, though he always stomped all over the boys in the back of the car and could never resist their antics if he sat in the front, and ultimately clambered over the center console to play. He thinks it’s funny, now, how they survived all of that, only to be undone by a little ice.
It’s a little after five by the time he pulls into the gas station, the sun just beginning to peak over the horizon and color the sky. As he waits for the tank to fill, a small, expensive silver car drives up to the opposite side. Odd time and place, for someone with a car like that, but he keeps his eyes on the rapidly increasing dollars and cents on the screen.
“Connor!”
“Wesley? Hey. Wow.”
“Funny seeing you here.” He steps between the pumps to clap Connor’s shoulder, crowding in beside him as he looks over his bike. “Oh, nice. How long have you had this? I don’t know a lot about motorcycles. It’s really cool. Did you special order this color?”
Connor thinks: It’s four AM. Then: No, five. He says: “Uh, yeah.”
“Haven’t had your coffee yet, huh?” He grins wide and slaps his shoulder again. If GV were here, he’d be glaring a hole into Wesley’s forehead. “You usually start work this early?”
“No,” he mumbles, fiddling with the pump’s handle until the price hits an even number. “I got called out in the middle of the night and…took a drive. I’ll head back soon.”
“Must have been something crazy.” He still hasn’t left Connor’s side, his car running and the pump beside it idle.
“You could say that.”
“I’ll stop bothering you,” he almost hits his shoulder again, but Connor glances over at him and his hand pauses midair before dropping back to his side. “Hope you get some rest.”
“Have a good one.”
“Mhm. I’ll see you around.”
Connor’s still rolling those words over in his head when he pulls back onto the highway: I’ll see you around.
What an odd place to run into someone.
+++
GV spins in his chair. His knee hits the edge of the desk. He spins again, an incomplete circle, this time his shoe hitting the desk leg. He does it again. And again.
“What,” Connor says, glancing up from his inbox. “Are you bored?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Nothing.”
He spins. And spins. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
“Gavin.”
“S’nuthin’.”
“Then stop.” He tips his mug and finds only a dribble of cold coffee at the bottom. He’s short on sleep and the number Mr. Corso gave him for “his Cyberlife guy,” was disconnected. The Eden Club androids really did reset their memories every two hours, and other than an array of fluids unrelated to the crime scene, the CSI team hadn’t found anything of note. Connor still couldn’t figure out what, exactly, to say in his report. He couldn’t tell anyone that GV had reset the Traci, right? He’d just have to leave all that out, trying to make it all make sense. The Traci’s attacked, GV destroyed one with blunt force, and Connor shot the other. If they dug through her memory core, they’d find it blank as any functional Traci. No evidence of GV.
“I did something while you were out this morning.” Gavin slides the heel of his boot on the wheel of his chair.
“Like…what?”
“Fed my cat.”
“You have a cat?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so…” He tips his mug again. Still empty. The last drop is tempting, but definitely long gone cold and bitter.
“She was…” he lowers his voice, “pregnant.”
Connor blinks. “Pregnant?”
“She had kittens. Outside. I don’t know what to do.”
“Um,” Connor sighs, “Show me?”
GV nods tersely and places a hand on Connor’s knee. He jolts at the touch, but GV only pushes him back—chair rolling away—and opens the file cabinet to retrieve a can of cat food. “How long have you been—
“Months.”
He shouldn’t even be surprised.
He follows GV across the parking lot, to the alley just outside the gym. Of course—GV would have been working near here before his transfer. No one is around, and the alley is short and stops at a dead-end of a brick wall. Not for the first time, he wonders if Gavin has finally decided to kill him. He’d certainly fit in the dumpster.
From the depths of the alley, a hesitant mew echoes off the brick walls. Gavin calls out quietly, “Pspspsps, Chief. Chief!”
A small gray head pokes out of a box, and then the whole cat follows—a part fluffy, part matted thing, trotting up to GV and twirling a loop around his calf as he kneels to greet her.
Connor scuffs his shoe on the concrete and she spooks, jumping back before glancing at Gavin and rubbing her face on his hand, eyes on Connor.
“How many kittens are there?”
“Three.”
Chief leads them to the pile of water-stained boxes, and slips underneath. Gavin carefully disassembles the mound until he finds the nest, Chief sitting between three blind, mewling kittens. They drag themselves across the mess of newspaper to their mother. She stares up at he and Gavin expectantly. Gavin turns to him. Expectantly.
“Um,” Connor says, after a moment, “Let me call someone.”
“Who?”
“Chen, she’s—”
“She left you with a violent android.”
“Um—yeah. She did. By accident?”
Gavin glares.
“I think she rescues cats or something. Look—Gav—I don’t know anyone else.”
His LED spins amber. “Chief is my cat.”
“She can’t stay here. It’s not safe. And, I’ll—I’ll make sure she’s okay. I won’t let anyone adopt her out or something.” They stare at each other until Gavin plops on the ground to watch the kittens. Connor scrolls for Chen’s number—he only has it because they had a shift together, really—and dials.
“Y’ello.”
“Hey—Chen, it’s Connor. Anderson. Are you working right now?”
“Not till later tonight. You need something?”
The casualness of it surprises him—he expected barely veiled hostility, at least. “Yeah, you, uh—you rescue cats, right?”
A pause. “Sure. My friend does.”
“This cat I’ve been feeding behind the gym had kittens, and I was wondering if you could help.” GV frowns at him.
She asks how many and if they’re nursing—and then says she’ll be right there. Just like that.
“What’s the matter?” Gavin asks.
“I just thought she’d say no. She got called in about the house fire thing…”
He shrugs. “Most people don’t want you dead. Some people. But not all of them.”
“That’s the most insightful thing you’ve said since we met.”
GV rolls his eyes and resumes scratching Chief on the head. “Meatbag.”
Chen shows up half an hour later, toting a pair of have-a-heart traps and a shoulder bag rattling with tuna cans. Connor meets her at the alley’s entrance. She begins to brief him on what they’re doing, and if the cat trusts him enough, they can just place her in the trap, but she might get scared, and they don’t want her running around over the kittens, so it might have to be separate until—
“What’s your android doing?”
Behind him, Gavin holds Chief in his arms. She’s staring intently at Chen and Connor, but leans into his fingers as he scratches her on the head.
“Can we put her in the trap like that?” Connor asks.
“...I guess so.”
Gavin carries Chief over and deposits her in the trap Chen holds open for him. It snaps shut as soon as she lets go, and in a practiced motion she secures it with a bungee cord and covers the trap with a ratty towel that has a hole cut in it for the handle. The trap rattles as Chief scrambles from one end to the other and releases a desperate yowl. Gavin stares at her and the trap.
“I’ll just put her in the c—”
“We’ll watch her,” Gavin interrupts, “while you get the kittens.”
“Um, sure.” Chen glances between them but hands the trap off to GV. “Three babies, right?”
“Yes.”
She heads down the alleyway and returns shortly after with all three kittens in a larger trap together.
“Don’t worry,” she says, smiling tiredly, “they’re in good hands. And, um, Connor—” she looks at the wall when she speaks, “I’m sorry about the house thing. Really.”
“Yeah,” he shrugs, debating on a follow-up. Me too, it’s fine, I forgive you, don’t worry about it, screw you. None of them are all-encompassing, so he says nothing else.
“I’ll call you,” is the awkward good-bye she offers before she goes.
He turns to GV after and says, “It’ll be okay. Chief won’t have to have any more babies and we’ll take care of her. It’ll be good. Okay?”
Gavin only grumbles in response, still staring after the space Chen left.
+++
“What do you mean, I have to behave?”
“He works for CyberLife. You need to look normal—”
“I don’t look normal.”
“You need to act more normal than you do in front of regular people.”
“I can handle a repair tech.”
“He’s not a tech. He’s a lawyer.”
“The hell does a lawyer know about androids?”
Connor takes a long sip from his extra large paper cup of orange soda and slams it on the table a little harder than he means to. Luckily, they’re outside, so the splash goes over the edge and between the holes in the metal table’s design. All he could think to do is have the meeting at his regular spot, hoping it’d inspire a sense of security. “He knows policy, Gav. CyberLife policy. Warranties. Special agreements. Things that could get them in trouble.”
“You think he’ll know about that Eden Club shit? They have thousands of clients, he’s not gonna—”
“I asked him about it already. He’ll come with paperwork if he feels like sharing.”
“If he’s allowed,” Gavin grumbles. He plucks a bagel crumb off the wax paper unfolded before Connor and tosses it to a sparrow on the sidewalk. “They don’t want him talking to cops.”
“That’s why I asked him and not one of their other lawyers. He’s my cousin.”
“I know that.”
Connor shoots him a glare, and leaves it at that.
At 12:02, Richard shows up, dressed in a pressed, tailored deep blue suit, with his android assistant keeping pace. Richard is one of those people who doesn’t seem to sweat, and if he does, it makes him look dewy and athletic. Zhora, the blonde at his side, never sweats. GV doesn’t sweat either, but he manages to look a little grungy no matter what.
“Sorry I’m late,” Richard says as he slides into the seat.
“You’re not. It’s 12:03.” Connor pushes his wrapped sandwich across the table.
“Sorry,” he says again, “Some of my clients would’ve preferred 11:30.”
“For you to show up, or them?”
“Me.”
Zhora settles into an idling stance beside him.
“Does she need a chair?” Connor asks. GV had dragged one over from another table and sits legs spread, one arm slung over the back of it. Connor’s attempts to curb this behavior have been largely unsuccessful, and Gavin is apparently wound up enough about meeting Richard that he has to put on his best asshole face.
Richard frowns at him and glances at Zhora. “She’s an android.” He tilts his head at GV. “So is he.”
“He likes to sit.” Internally, he winces. Great. He’ll be the one to out GV for his bizarre behavior and not the other way around.
Richard nods once and sets to unwrapping his sandwich, chicken salad on toasted rye. He won’t accept chicken salad from most delis, citing that some of them seem to use undercooked chicken or perhaps even mix hot chicken into the mayonnaise and cause it to turn. His love of chicken salad is undeterred but contained. Even Connor had been around for at least one episode of food poisoning.
“Tell me about the case.”
“I’m not at liberty,” he says, a little lopsided grin poking at the corner of his mouth. Richard raises an eyebrow. “Kidding. It was an Eden Club, like I told you. But the manager said that the club has a special exchange policy with CyberLife.”
“Mm?” Richard passes Zhora a plastic knife. She proceeds to cut his sandwich in half while he looks over her arm at Connor.
“He said that when their androids break, they turn them in to you and the company gives them new androids.” Next to him, Gavin huffs and scuffs his shoe on the concrete.
“For any kind of damage?”
“Apparently.”
“Sex androids encounter various forms of…damage that are not covered by the standard CyberLife warranty, and androids cannot be exchanged for damage resulting from normal wear and tear, either.”
GV snaps, “What does the warranty cover?” He shoots a withering glare at Zhora, whose eyes remain fixed on the wall behind them.
“Um,” Richard picks up a perfectly cut half of his sandwich, still yet uneaten. “Almost anything unusual on our end. The machine malfunctioning due to no fault of the user, generally. Glitches and malfunctioning parts. Various errors. Usually CyberLife repairs the android and returns it to the owner. Very, very rarely would a brand new android be exchanged for a malfunctioning or damaged one.”
“So, was he lying?” Connor had nervously inhaled his bagel before Richard’s arrival. The sight of dripping chicken salad is almost nauseating.
“Possibly. Zhora combed the database and as far as I’m aware—as far as I can access, which is a lot of things—we have no policies of that sort. Not for the Eden Club.”
“Not for that location.”
“No,” Zhora says flatly.
Richard eats his sandwich, and Connor thinks.
“Could a third party be exchanging the androids with them?”
Richard waits to finish chewing before he speaks. “If they’re really bringing in brand-new androids, I don’t see how. There’d have to be some other exchange occurring that would make buying new androids regularly worthwhi—Oh. That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?”
GV sits up in his chair suddenly, a furious grimace on his face.
“Gavin?”
He glares at Zhora for a moment before settling back in his seat. “Nothin’.”
“Seems like nothing,” Connor grumbles. “So—there’s no reason for CyberLife to do anything like this? You’re sure?”
“If there was, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say,” he smirks a little, mimicking Connor’s earlier chide, “but I can’t imagine it.”
“Sounds like I need to have a long talk with Mr. Corso.”
“I’d love to see which sap ends up defending him,” he muses, and pats his face with a neatly folded tissue-thin paper napkin. “How’s—”
“You should leave in ten minutes,” Zhora says.
“How’s work?”
“Fine,” he says quickly.
“...You still work narcotics, right?”
“Mm.”
“Huh.” He taps the table a few times. “I…heard about the house fire from the news. Your name was in the article. You know that, right?”
“I try not to read the news.”
Richard keeps his long and patient stare, his even tone. “I wish you would tell us when you needed help.”
“Were you planning to rush in during the fire? Or did you get an EMT certification recently—”
“Don’t be a prick,” Richard snaps. “You sound like my fucking brother.”
Connor can’t compete with that unrelenting stare. “At least he talks to me.”
“When he wants another fuckup to get wasted with.”
“You should go,” Zhora and Gavin say in unison.
Richard stares at Gavin. “Funny.”
“Is it?” Connor says, quietly.
“No.” Richard stands and collects his sandwich wrapper in a tightly crumpled ball. “Call your dad. You can’t think none of this is your fault.”
Zhora’s heels click down the sidewalk and into the parking lot.
“Do you think they’re fucking?” Connor asks, finally.
Gavin shrugs. “Her model comes equipped.”
“Gross.”
+++
“When was the last time you were on a stakeout?” GV sighs for the eighteenth time, give or take, and peers out the window at a bird on the wire. “Shit’s boring.”
“I don’t know,” Connor lies. He hates stakeouts and remembers all of them. The most recent had to have been with Ben. He hasn’t really thought about Ben in a while, but borrowing a civilian car and sitting in a suburban neighborhood with GV has him thinking.
“See? They’re so boring you can’t even remember.”
He thinks GV knows him well enough to see the lie, but whatever. Person wanted them out of her hair, so they’re watching the house of a guy who hasn’t paid rent in three months and definitely deals something. Not enough of it, apparently, since it doesn’t even pay for the place. “Hey, Gav. How many hours have we been at this?”
“Today or since we started?”
“Second one.”
Without missing a beat, he says, “forty-five hours and seventeen minutes.”
“Not even counting the other guys’ shifts…”
“Nope.”
All Detective Curtis had said was that an android had gone in and out a couple times, once for groceries and once to sweep the front step, which was rather amusing considering the overall state of the front yard. His stomach growls.
“Want your sandwich?” He had packed a turkey and cheese sandwich this morning, just for this. His insulated lunch bag sits on the floor behind the center console.
“Not yet.”
GV hmph’s disapprovingly. Halfway up the block, Connor can see an android walking down the street through his rearview mirror.
“Same model,” Gavin says. Curtis had said it was an HK400. “Looks like shit.”
“Not everyone’s a fresh-faced factory model,” he says, grinning, and GV glares at him for it.
“You ever meet another GV?”
“No.”
“They’re all ugly,” Gavin sniffs, “Even uglier. I’m grizzled. Battle-worn.”
“From what? Beating up Academy students?”
He sighs through his teeth. “HK’s goin’ inside.”
Hm. So much for that. He still hasn’t found out what, exactly, the scar was from, and a crude joke wasn’t the way to find out. Shame, that sort of thing is usually Gavin’s style.
For a while, nothing happens. They wait and wait—Gavin knows the exact time, Connor guesses fifteen minutes or so—and then the shouting starts. It’s muffled, until Gavin rolls down the window and the sound barrels into the car.
“What’s he saying?” Connor asks, only catching bits of fuck and android.
“Fucking piece of shit android, never get what I want,” Gavin monotones, “always staring at me with those goddamn eyes fuck—“ he cuts off abruptly, though the shouting continues. “He’s bludgeoning it with something wooden.”
“Not an assault. That’s his property.”
“I know.” Another shout. “He’s—saying “stop.” Begging.”
“Who—?”
“Ortiz.”
Nothing.
“It’s quiet now,” Gavin says.
“Shit, Gavin. We have to look. Fuck, what if it’s like you?” He slams the car door behind him and sprints across the street. The HK probably doesn’t have a gun, sure, but Ortiz might, and the android probably knows where it is—whatever it killed him with could kill Connor, might be whatever he bludgeoned it with or—
“Breathe.” Gavin skips up the steps alongside him and presses back against the siding. “I’m with you.”
“Detroit Police,” Connor shouts, “Open up.” Something clatters to the floor. He tries the doorknob and throws the door open. “Detroit Police!” Shoulder to the wall, he turns the corner.
In the center of the living room, Carlos Ortiz lies slumped against the peeling wallpaper. His shirt is bloody, stains still expanding slowly with the puddle beneath him. Above him, written in blood, are the words “I AM ALIVE.”
“It’s still wet,” Gavin says, as if they did not just witness a murder.
They step closer to Carlos, almost in unison, though Gavin scans the kitchen entrance.
“Is he dead?” Connor asks.
Gavin stares at the body.
“Gavin? Is he dead?”
“…Yeah,” he says, after a long moment. “He’s dead.”
He picks up his radio and calls it in, following Gavin around the corner as he does so. He trains his gun on the closet as Gavin pops it open, and then the door to the backyard. The dirt is clear of footprints. The kitchen is empty, save the chair toppled on its side. In the bathroom, a shadow looms behind the shower curtain. Gavin rips it open. A wooden sculpture shaped like a person sits on the floor. “Ra9” is scratched into the walls, over and over and over again.
“I’ve seen this a few times in the older case files,” Connor says, “but not in a while.”
Something thuds above them. Gavin turns on his heel and checks the hallway again. “Ladder,” he mumbles, “It’s above us.”
“What? Is—“ He follows Gavin’s gaze to the ceiling, where the outline of an attic door is just visible. “Shit.”
Gavin picks up the ladder and leans it against the wall.
“We should wait for backup. They’re just a few minutes out. Gav, come on.” The ladder shifts as Gavin takes the first step. Connor holds it steady. “There’s no other exit—“
“The attic window.”
“It’s not gonna—Gavin.” He grabs his pant leg and tugs. Gavin won’t even look at him, his eyes fixed on the faint outline of an entrance. “Don’t go up there alone.”
“It left the knife with the body,” he says, and continues the climb. He pushes the square of plaster aside and disappears into the dark. Connor listens for his footsteps, slow and creeping, and keeps his back to the wall. There’s another thud, scrambling footsteps, and quiet. Then— “Connor. It’s here!”
Chris is supposedly nearby, but they’re otherwise alone. “Is it armed?”
“No.”
He looks up at the black hole. “This is the Detroit Police! Cooperate with GV200 and exit the attic.”
There’s a muffled “no, no—“ and more shuffling, followed by a bellowed “Move!” from Gavin. Connor ducks out of the way not a moment before the HK tumbles to the ground in a heap.
“You almost hit me!”
“Yeah.” He sorts out its limbs by force and handcuffs it, just as Gavin clambers down a few rungs and hops off the ladder. He kneels beside it and places his exposed gray palm on the back of its skull. The HK struggles beneath them and stills.
Gavin shakes his head after a moment and releases it. “Its memory was wiped.”
“All of it?”
“Yeah.”
Gavin helps him pull the android to its feet, but it’s a pointless exercise; the thing has gone blank and cooperative in a matter of seconds—factory-reset obedient. As they walk it out to the car, Connor asks, “Was it like the one from the alley? Or the club?”
“…I don’t know. I think—the alley, it was there for a second—but now it’s empty. Familiar, but empty.”
It settles into the back of the car easily.
“We’ll see what they can do at the precinct, but we might have to go to CL.”
“They couldn’t recover the others.”
“You shot the first one.”
“You broke the other one’s face.”
They both know what happened to the third, the blue-haired Traci.
“Well…you threw him off a ladder.” Connor sticks out his tongue and plops down in the driver’s seat. “Brute.”
The drive back to the precinct is uneventful, where they find out that, as suspected, no one can recover anything from the HK400’s memory banks, nor can they pinpoint anything of interest within its code. It’s just like new, and only Gavin has footage proving otherwise. Connor can’t quite shake the feeling that there’s something more afoot here.
Chapter 8: a nice oblivion
Summary:
Deviants, cousins, and smarmy little CyberLife techs want to be loved.
-
cw for drug abuse, non-consensual choking, a dangerous situation with clear consent issues.
-
Chapter title from "Finger Like a Gun."
Chapter Text
CHAPTER EIGHT—;
Baby, my body
Constantly betrays me
I try to betray it
I only hurt myself, yeah, yeah
—It’s Only Sex, Car Seat Headrest
—Connor.
Fuck.
Digging his own grave here, probably. He’s never been one to ask for favors, but he’ll be damned if he has to go groveling to Murdoch—Murdoch who he’s been avoiding for weeks—for more money.
The phone rings twice.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Wes? It’s Connor Anderson.”
“Connor! Hi,” he breathes in a drawn-out note. There’s something to him that Connor just can’t quite put his finger on, but he must know more about android brains than the dipshit waiting with a pair of pliers in the supply room. “How are you?”
“Um, fine. A little—ah. Fine. Yourself?”
“Oh, wonderful.”—there’s not a hint of sarcasm, which he finds more disturbing somehow—“Did you need something?”
“Yes, actually…I need a little help with this android we picked up. It has…memory problems.”
“Memory problems? What kind?”
“We encountered it at a crime scene and when we apprehended it, it appeared to have no memory. Period. It had been participating in the crime not minutes earlier.”
“What method did you use to retrieve its memory?”
“Um…” Next to him, Gavin listens intently. He nods. “The GV interfaced with it.”
Wesley makes a thoughtful hmm over the receiver. After a moment, he says, “You better bring them both in. It could have given him something harmful.”
“Like a virus?”
“Sure, anything like that. And if your GV actually received any memory data, I’ll be able to dig it up.” He’s reminded of GV grumbling that he hates when people “go poking around in there.” It’s quickly becoming a necessary evil, but then again, he doesn’t know anyone who actually likes going to the doctor, either. They settle on a time and say their goodbyes—Wesley overly friendly as usual—and hang up.
He takes a deep breath. “Gav, he wants to—“
“I heard.”
“Are you okay if—“
“You didn’t ask before you decided,” he says flatly, no trace of his usual annoyed snap. “It’s going to happen either way.”
He picks at the plastic-lined edge of his desk. “I’m sorry.”
“Mm.”
“It might be good if he takes a look, in case there really is something—“
“There isn’t.”
“How do you know, though?”
“I comb my own systems. I know what’s in there. It’s not the same as you guessing if there’s shit in your organs or something.”
“We…don’t guess. We see a doctor. Like a technician—“
“I’m not human,” Gavin spits,“just stop.”
“Sorry,” he says again.
+++
—GV200.
Wesley opens him up. There’s no fight; the humans have chosen for him and all he can do is sit through the consequences. Maybe he’s angry. It’s easier to be angry at this tech—geeky, vulture-eyed, always laughing too much at Connor’s jokes—than keep thinking about how easily Connor gave him away. Connor knows he hates this. He doesn’t even like Wesley, yet he went to him for help. Gavin could’ve figured something else out. He’s sure. Something that wouldn’t involve this stranger poking at him, pulling threads on things no one else has ever touched.
Connor sits behind him in the unmarked car they were given for the stakeout. He keeps fiddling with the AC, but all it produces is warm air. Gavin tries when he gives up, both of them bored out of their minds. Gavin’s gotten used to his new arm by now, but he takes up harassing Connor in the name of “exploring new textures” a few hours in. His hair is soft, especially since he didn’t put any product in it today.
The android they’re looking for walks up the street. Connor jokes about factory-fresh models.
The HK goes inside. Then the screaming starts. At first, he thinks Ortiz is going to beat the android to death. He thinks of being ordered to set his combat level to 0, harmless, and a riled-up rookie kicking his legs out from under him. A rough hand gripping his hair and slamming his face into a locker-room bench. Laughter.
“Not an assault,” Connor says, “that’s his property.”
Of course he fucking knows that. He’s someone’s property too. But then Ortiz starts begging, and Gavin can’t hear why, exactly, doesn’t hear the sharp stab of a knife into his torso (almost thirty times—), and Connor says they have to go in, “What if it’s like you?”
Cross-reference.
[“You said it behaved violently and erratically in the report. You know what Chen’s report from that night says about me? That I behaved ‘erratically and violently.’ Funny, right?”
“No,” Connor says, “it isn’t. You’re not like them.”]
His own memories slip between his fingers.
When they enter the house, Carlos Ortiz is still alive. Connor doesn’t know that. Gavin affords the HK this one small victory, before they take it in.
“Sneaky little bot,” a voice says somewhere outside the memory.
The HK begs him not to tell anyone. To pretend that it isn’t there. He throws it out of the attic and reaches not for its memories, but its mind, its mess—for a split-second, he has it. And then it’s all gone.
The voice-outside-the-memory chuckles. “That’s how it’s supposed to work.”
Ortiz’s house slides away from him. He’s on the couch with Connor, holding him, newly-installed fingers stroking his hair. Connor mumbles love you.
(That day disappears. There’s only Wesley repairing him and the ride home.)
When he comes out of the lab, and Connor asks how he is, he says, “Fine.” He didn’t like it, he never likes it. But he’s fine. Wesley couldn’t find anything either. But he’ll always look, if Connor asks.
Gavin hopes he never asks again.
+++
—Connor.
Connor doesn’t have any particular fondness for bars. They’re smelly, loud, and full of people, and the only time they’re worthwhile is when he’s desperately horny or desperately sad. Even though Collin just wanted to drink and, supposedly, not hook up, he insisted on his favorite gay bar. He should start counting how many guys make it as far as Collin’s perfected fuck-off look before turning back.
He didn’t exactly tell Connor why he needed a (and he quotes) “girls’ night,” but he’s starting to get the feeling that things aren’t going well with his latest beau. “Latest” is a bit meaner than necessary—this one lasted six months, which is more than he can say for nearly all the others. Collin isn’t really cut out for monogamy, and when he does chance it, Connor’s inclined to agree with Richard: he really does know how to pick ‘em.
(Connor can’t say much better for himself, or his dad, or Amanda, who remains unmarried, or Richard, who seems to be fucking his android secretary. Call it a family curse.)
Collin orders another margarita. He’s more or less a silent crier, minus the sniffling, and tears stream down his face and dry up in turns. “I just,” he sniffs, “I don’t deserve this.”
“You’re too sexy,” Connor agrees.
“I am.”
“Col, what’d he even do?”
“What’d he do? What did he do?” His eyes goes wide before he falls dramatically to the counter. “I can’t even tell you,” he waves a hand as he speaks, “it’s mortifying.”
“Oh,” he says.
He sits up to lick the sugar off the rim of his glass. “You need to be careful. There’s so many creeps out there. You think you know a guy and then he—he—he wants to fuck your cousin!”
“…Which cousin?” They don’t have many family members their age, and fewer still that any of them are in frequent contact with. A handful were born in the decade preceding Connor and Collin’s births, and most of them are busy hauling their children around to one another’s houses. Amanda claims she would babysit if she wasn’t such a busy woman, and Richard claims the same. No one asks Connor or Collin anymore. (Or Hank, for that matter. It’s almost a shame, but he can’t stand to be around kids for too long anyway. For a lot of reasons, some Connor understands more than others.)
“Does it matter?!”
He shrugs. “I was just curious.”
“Ugh.” Collin finishes off his drink and demands another. Connor wonders who’s paying for these. He realizes he didn’t even know the guy’s name. When he asks, Collin puts up a hand. “Don’t speak of him. I’m done! I’m swearing off cock. Or at least dating. Maybe not cock. I need to be drunker. Hey, hey! We need shots. Please. I’m dying, and he’s depressing,” he lays his head on the counter, apparently withering away as he speaks. The bartender has a very white smile plastered on his face. “Connor,” he whines, “don’t you have a boyfriend? Distract me.”
“Um…”
“God, you’re like a priest.”
“Not really—“
“Tell me there’s someone at least a little interesting?”
“Kinda,” he says, and instantly regrets it.
Collin lights up. “Kinda? Who?”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. “Just this guy at work.”
The bartender sets the shots down in front of them.
“Oh my God, please tell me more than that.”
“He’s, um…kind of a dick. But also nice. If you know what I mean?”
“Nope, but keep going,” he downs a shot and and motions to the others with his glass. “Come on.”
Connor takes a shot. “He’s a grouchy asshole, but he really likes hugs.” He takes another with Collin. “He’s pretty beefy…has some scars…”
“Mm,” Collin hums, closing his eyes. “Continue.”
“Uh, I don’t know,” he laughs a little, “he kind of drives me crazy.”
“Is he gay?”
He thinks of Gavin pressing his lips to the scar on his neck. “I don’t know.”
“Better find out,” Collin sing-songs, before finishing the last few shots in quick succession. “Designated driver.”
“Yup,” Connor sighs. He’s more the designated driver because he could show his badge and get out of a breathalyzer test. Down the end of the bar, a lanky man in teal eyeliner winks at him. Collin waves the bartender over and slurs that he needs another margarita, and the bartender reminds him that he didn’t finish the one he has, and maybe he should slow down. “I’ll take him home,” Connor says, “Thanks.”
Collin grumbles and fishes out his wallet, sliding a crumpled $50 onto the counter. “Keep the change.” He slides off the barstool and teeters into Connor. “To the Batcave, Alfred.”
He helps Collin into his spare helmet and reminds him to hold on. Connor had picked him up from his apartment—not the mansion he’d partied at—and he wasn’t planning to bring him back there. Instead, he took him to his place. He didn’t really want to leave Collin to his own devices when he was toasted enough to think he should drink a little more before he passes out, and he didn’t want him calling his ex or some other dipshit that wouldn’t mind how fucked up he was right now. They took care of each other like that. Sometimes.
Back at his apartment, Collin flops down on the couch while he retrieves some blankets and a pillow from his room. “Connor, doesn’t this remind you”—he grabs at his sleeve and tugs him down to the couch—“of when we were kids?”
“When we got drunk on all the fancy shit Amanda kept for guests?”
That surprises Collin into a fit of giggles. “No,” he coughs, “when—when I used to help you clean.”
“Oh.” During his stay at Amanda’s—some time after she decided he was a plague on her house and a bane to her children—she used to give him chore duties. They were his alone, and had to be completed regardless of his schoolwork and the fact that he was in middle school, which was already hell, and that his brother had just died, and his father was in rehab—paid for by the settlement money from the hospital—and Connor had almost no friends except for his cousins, who were slowly convinced that Connor was, in fact, deserving of the treatment their mother gave him. “I’m trying to make you better,” she would say, “so you don’t make everyone else worse.”
At any rate, he often stayed up late to finish the endless cleaning, and sometimes Collin snuck down to help him. He wasn’t nearly as meticulous as Connor, but he made him laugh when everything felt so horrible. Sometimes they’d sit on the couch together and watch videos or play some game on his tablet, and eventually Connor would start to nod off and Collin would sneak back upstairs and go to bed. Except for the time he didn’t, and Amanda found them in the morning.
Connor’s fault, of course.
Collin looks close to passing out on the couch. “You can sleep in my bed.” Habit. And Collin is the guest. He gets the bed.
“Nooo,” he groans, and attempts to haul Connor to his feet, even as he stumbles. “Come onnn.”
He follows Collin into his room—blankets again in hand—and allows him to drag him onto the bed.
“You know what this reminds me of?” Connor says, and for a moment he thinks Collin fell asleep, a lucky exit from a room he shouldn’t have entered.
But Collin stirs, mumbling a little affirmative, and rolls onto his side to stare down at him. At first, it feels like Collin is going to kiss him, until he drops his head on Connor’s shoulder and sighs. “We’re so messy.”
“We try not to be.”
Collin’s breathing settles into restfulness, and he only grumbles when Connor pushes him over and pulls off his shoes and jacket. He manages to get himself into a pair of sweats before he wrestles the comforter over the both of them and falls asleep.
+++
He drives Collin home in the morning, which in itself was not a painful ordeal but convincing Collin to get up and eat something (and please don’t puke in my bed) was. After he watched him head inside—after fumbling with the lock on his door—Connor headed to work, already lined up to investigate a penthouse littered with red ice.
Collin didn’t mention Hank, and he wonders how Richard knew. But it isn’t unusual for Collin to talk only about himself or “fun” things, especially if he already felt like shit. Richard would’ve told Collin if he thought something was wrong with Connor—he and Collin were always closer, with Richard being mommy’s little snitch.
Curious, then. Hank doesn’t talk to his nephews much, unless he was that worried. Worried enough to ask if Connor still looked like a walking corpse after their…disagreement. Or whatever that was.
He should call Hank, anyway; Cole’s anniversary is coming up.
GV meets him at his desk—must have received the day’s assignment earlier—and they ride over to the glass highrise. A message is painted across one floor, advertising luxury apartments with a phone number.
“Place still looks the same,” Connor says, and GV looks at him sidelong. “I try to avoid coming this way, if I can. Or at least looking up.”
“Why?”
“An android jumped off the roof,” he points to the top floor penthouse, “with a little girl.”
“You were there.”
“Mm.”
GV doesn’t say anything for a while, not until they’re riding the elevator up. “Why’d he do it?”
Connor shrugs and rolls his shoulders. “He wanted to be loved. We didn’t believe it then. That you could want that.” The “you” slips out before he can correct it. You. Daniel. Gavin. Any android off the street, wanting love. Imagine that.
“You didn’t have any reason to.”
He shrugs. “I’m not sure that’s true.”
When the elevator opens, they’re greeted with an unpleasant sight: trash litters the hall, and the aquarium has long been shattered and drained (again), its former denizens shriveled and still on the floor. One of them, Connor thinks, is that little blue gourami he’d saved. Look where it got him.
The main room is equally trashed; stuffing spills out of torn furniture and the carpeting is stained with a variety of substances. Beer and liquor bottles decorate the counters and shattered glass crunches underfoot as they pass through.
“Gavin,” Connor says as they approach the bedrooms, “check that one for me?” Gavin nods and departs, and as Connor passes through the doorway of the Phillips’ former master bedroom, he finds his stomach roiling. He almost calls Gavin back, but if he did that, then he’d have to check the other room himself, and risk missing something…no. The master bedroom is alright, anyway; the furniture is all different—like the rest of the place—and from what caked and crusted fabrics he can see, there’s quite a mess of red ice and bodily fluids here as well. He’ll call the lab in on this one; no need to look much closer, at least not at the sheets. Underneath the bed he finds a broken pipe, and nothing of note in the side table drawers. It’s likely that all of the furniture was rented to furnish the place for sale, and now either Mrs. Phillips or the building owners will owe a hefty sum to the rental company. Ouch.
He pops open the closet door—gun trained on it, he’s learned—and jolts backwards when it swings open. A man is stuffed in the closet, limbs crunched awkwardly where he was too gangly to fit. His shirt is saturated with blue fluid, and on closer inspection, the fabric on his clothing is stiffly creased, where thirium may have bled and evaporated. Its LED is dark—invisible, even, so he looks more like a dead man—so Connor holsters his gun and takes a thorough series of photos. He doesn’t want the CSI team in here quite yet, even as he considers that it might spring to life and strangle him. Gingerly, he tugs its arms and tries to bring it to the ground gently; instead it flops face-first on the carpet in a heap. It doesn’t wake, or grab his gun, so he turns it on its back.
Its torso is marred by a gaping hole, congealing thirium long oozed between biocomponents that seem to have been crushed or removed to make way for something else. The thirium pump is missing, but whatever had been inside this android was firmly packed around its most crucial piece. It had to function, at least briefly, with foreign bodies inside it, until these were unceremoniously removed, and the android was left here, no longer needed.
“Damn.”
He flinches at the voice behind him, but it’s just Gavin. “Don’t do that.”
“Okay.” Gavin squats down to look at the android. “Red ice traces along this inner ring they carved out. ‘Specially here and here,” he points, “like a pouch tore open.”
“Like the Traci. And Ralph.”
“Hm?”
“The Traci that had something missing from her torso? And Ralph, he—did you read my report?”
GV shrugs. “Yeah. Prob’ly.”
“…He had red ice in him. And there had been a party in that shithole, which I get…But what’s up with this place? A penthouse? How did these people get in?”
“Jones said they can’t get in touch with the night doorman. And the security feed is busted.”
“So, what? It was some kind of premeditated drugtravaganza?”
He shrugs again. “Premeditated, maybe.”
The Phillips—or Caroline, rather—won’t be happy with this. He certainly isn’t looking forward to that phone call, although the landlord likely already informed her of the incident. In the meantime, he schedules an appointment with the CyberLife repair lab, and waits for the CSI team.
+++
The call goes poorly. Caroline starts screaming the moment Connor brings up androids, and she doesn’t stop until he throws in the towel and hangs up on her. Of course she wouldn’t want to talk about this, but it’s his job, and when he leaves GV in the bullpen that night, his hands are still trembling. He drives straight to the bar Collin had brought him to last night, wondering if the man in eyeliner will be there. It doesn’t matter, really—he’ll find someone. He always does.
The music is blasting so loud he can feel the vibration in his sternum. With a gin and tonic in hand, it isn’t long before he picks out a scruffy stranger with arms that look like they could crush a pumpkin with a squeeze. The grin he gives Connor is more of a sneer, and his arm wraps around his shoulders moments after he sits down. It’s fine, Connor tells himself, leaning into the touch, This is what I wanted.
A few G&T’s later, he’s not sure whether they exchanged names. All he wants to do is call him Gavin. The man, with his sharp-toothed smirk and stubble, whispers hoarsely in his ear. “I’m gonna fuck you up.”
(He’s not looking for a distraction, Lucy, he swears. He just needs some fun. He just needs fun. Really, he swears.
She wouldn’t buy it.)
What kind of stranger he’s looking for, he can’t say. The man with the teal eyeliner from the other night? A guy like Jay?
A guy like Gavin?
He shakes his head in some simian attempt to dislodge the thought. No, no. He’s just looking for anyone who can give him a good time. A real good time. Even if this guy is broad-shouldered and dark, even if he has well-groomed scruff and a devious smirk only a mother could love. “You seem like a boy who knows what he wants,” the man says. He doesn’t sound like Gavin, but Connor can pretend. Most of them don’t talk much, anyway. Even if he just called him a boy. He leans in and murmurs into Connor’s ear, voice so low and coarse it makes him shudder. “I hope you like it rough.”
“Yeah,” Connor says, “I do.”
Louis was never rough. Most men who think they are, aren’t really. But a good manhandling could put him in the right frame of mind. A hard reset.
That’s what he needs. Even if there’s a telltale red tinge to the man’s nostrils, a twitch to his eye he pretended not to see before. Even if he looks so strong, Connor could only get out of his grip with a bit of luck.
But he won’t need to.
“Where are we going?” Connor asks, words molasses-slippery as they come out of his mouth.
“‘M’car.”
“Your car?”
He doesn’t answer, at least, not in words. When they near a beat-up Honda, he grabs Connor’s arm and throws him into the door. Probably rougher than he meant to. Connor opens his mouth for a sloppy kiss, the stranger’s hand cupping his crotch and squeezing. In a rush, he jerks Connor to the side and pulls open the door, one out-of-balance moment sliding into another as he’s shoved back into the car. His sneakers slip on the edge of the doorway as he clumsily attempts to force his gangly body into the space, but the man grabs his ankles and plants them on the seat, until he squeezes on top of Connor—door slamming, hard—and pulls his knees apart.
He thinks of saying something, or tries, but the man makes quick work of his belt and slacks—still in his work clothes—and tosses his shoes somewhere over the side of the passenger seat.
“I wanna see your face when I fuck you up,” he slurs, hand blindly groping at the floor until he comes up with a bottle. He isn’t gentle with his fingers at all, and lube spills all over the seat.
“Condom,” Connor manages to breathe, motioning for a wallet that he can’t reach, somewhere on the floor in his pants pocket. The man glares down at him for a moment, before hissing through his teeth and pulling a packet out of the center console, his body briefly pinning Connor to the seat, erection hard against his thigh.
He wrenches Connor’s legs apart again, forcing them wide open, so his left foot is just over the driver’s seat. When he shoves into him, it hurts.
But that’s what Connor asked for. A hard reset.
It’ll feel good, in a little while. He just needs to adjust.
Not that he has the chance to. He’s rough, as promised, grunting and the hard slap of skin-on-skin filling the car. The pain is white-sharp, needles piercing the alcohol delirium, and he’s not sure how long any of this takes. But he’s hard, really hard, and when he tries to reach for his cock the man grabs his hand and pins it to the headrest.
“I want—just—“ Connor tries, and in return a calloused hand wraps around his length. There’s no technique, no gentleness—he strokes him with abandon, almost in synch with his own rapid thrusts.
His breathing grows labored, and he’s panting hoarsely as says, “Gonna—fuck you up, fuck.”
Oddly enough, he doesn’t find himself thinking of Gavin anymore.
He almost doesn’t catch it, the brief pull-out, but when he starts to sit up, the man shoves him back down and fucks into him. Instead of jerking him off, he wraps his hand around Connor’s throat, squeezing tight-tighter until he can’t breathe, fingers gone gin-and-tonic-useless as he scrabbles at his wrist and fails to pry his hand off. The stranger laughs wheezily, and with a loud groaning cry, he comes. He thrusts into Connor a few more times spasmodically, and just as his vision prickles into a tunnel, the man releases him. His desperate inhale sparks white through his mind and he spills onto his stomach, curling up in a coughing fit as spurts of cum smear across his skin.
The stranger remains kneeled over him, grin parting as he laughs his wheezing laugh. “Knew it. Knew you wanted that.”
He can’t find his words, and all he can do is cough and struggle for his pants when the man finally stumbles out of the car. He drags himself over the passenger side and retrieves his shoes, then double checks that his wallet is where it should be. When he finally gets out, the man is smoking a pipe of red ice.
“Oh, perfect,” Connor hisses, and he’s too preoccupied with his pipe to even offer a farewell when Connor departs. His throat still hurts even as he gets on his bike—even as he flies down the highway—and a constant chant of fuck, fuck, you’re such a fucking idiot, rings in his ears. You’re so fucked up. Fucking idiot. You’re fucked up and it felt good. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Something critical, apparently. All he wants is a shower and a fucking pizza.
When he gets home, he discards his clothes in a heap at the bathroom door, and, nude, taps in an order for an entire margarita pie. He wants to ignore the feeling of wet inside him, attribute it to the oil-spill-worthy mess that now stains his work slacks. His fingers press in, and come out sticky with cum.
Panic balloons in his chest and gums up his throat. No. No, he’s. Okay. He’s got to be okay, and was definitely not exposed to blood borne pathogens by a drug addict.
“Fucking asshole,” he croaks, dirty hands coming up to cover his eyes as he collapses into quiet sobs. The tears burn and spill down his cheeks, and Connor can do nothing but robotically enter the shower, crying through the initial blast of ice-cold water and then the boiling heat. He is a fucking idiot. A stupid fucking idiot who must want to die.
After his shower, he wipes the condensation off the mirror with his arm, and reveals what he is: damp-haired, red-eyed, and with a ring of purple bruising around his throat. Vaguely, he wonders if he owns any turtlenecks. Not enough to get him through a few weeks of bruising, anyway.
The doorbell rings, and he plods to the door in sweats and a t-shirt sticking damply to his skin.
The delivery boy glances up from the receipt and, in a show of surprise, breaks into a grin. “Oh! Hey, Connor.”
What. The fuck. “Um. Wes. Hi. I didn’t know you delivered…food.” He so does not need to see someone he knows right now. A stranger with places to go would have been ideal.
“Oh, yeah, y’know. You’d think being an android tech would pay better but! Whaddya know. You having friends?” He gestures with the box and glances past him for a brief moment.
“Uhh…no, just a quiet night.”
“What happened to your neck there?” The concern knitting his brows feels too real for someone he barely knows.
Unconsciously he rubs at the mark. Still tender, and speaking hurts, especially after that cry. “Ran into a nasty perp.”
Wesley’s friendly grin flashes and then falls as he looks down at the box, mumbling something that sounds a little too much like, “So that’s how you like it.”
“Sorry?”
He holds out the box in one grand motion, smile returned. “I said, I hope you like it!”
“Oh. Thanks.” He takes the pizza and pulls the door shut, Wesley nodding and waving goodbyes, grin still plastered on his face. When he finally flops down on the couch (door locked and dead bolted, because what the fuck even anymore), all he can sigh is, “Jesus Christ.”
Chapter 9: the milk inside the fridge (it turned)
Summary:
Connor is a mess. GV stares down a question.
Notes:
this is the first full chapter I completed for NaNo this year. Feels like I wrote it in a fever dream. Also, with the chapter title/number, it has exactly 6,666 words.
Chapter Text
CHAPTER NINE—;
—Connor.
Okay, so he owns one turtleneck, and he’s pretty sure Collin left it at his house at some point. But it covers his neck, and that’s all he can ask for right now. He might have to go shopping after work. Even though he’s interviewing Caroline Phillips today, he has a feeling he won’t go drinking again, no matter how upsetting it turns out to be. Or, at least, he’ll keep his drunken self to the relative safety of his own home.
He and Gavin don’t talk much to begin with, and those silences are easier now than they were a couple months ago, but today, he’s itching under his skin. Does Gavin want him to say something? Does he know something is wrong? He should probably tell him that he was having a bad night, and this case is really hard. But then he’d get taken off the case, because it’s too much emotional weight for him to carry. And what do Gavin’s reports look like these days? He should ask. Because he can’t tell him about last night if it’s going to Murdoch.
They’re on lunch break, in front of the deli, when he asks.
“What do I write?” Gavin raises an eyebrow.
“Yeah, well…we haven’t really talked about it since the, uh. Fight. I still don’t know what they say.”
“You can access all medical and case reports from your employee portal.”
“Yours aren’t in there.”
Gavin purses his lips, his LED flickering varying shades of blue for several seconds. “Mmm.”
“What?”
“These files have been recently accessed by a user outside of the DPD.” He blinks, and continues, “I reported it.”
Connor’s egg sandwich sits abandoned in his lap. “Why would anyone do that?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Jesus.”
“Maybe.”
He doesn’t consider himself particularly important, and since he’s come back from leave, he’s made more than a few friendly acquaintances. It seems less likely that someone would want to snoop on his reports, these days. “But can I access them?”
“No. They are no longer classified as medical files and are above your clearance level.”
“Just for Murdoch, then?”
“And any of his superiors. But I assume so, yes.” He tilts his head. “I don’t include…any personal matters that you disclose. Murdoch is not a licensed mental health professional.”
“Oh…okay.” He sighs. What else is there to say? Nothing makes sense and he wants to be left alone. This, at least, is a small relief.
As soon as he picks up his sandwich again, GV asks, “What happened to your neck?”
Okay. No lunch for him. He fiddles with the wax paper before answering. “Hooked up with a guy last night.”
Gavin slides across the bench to tuck his finger into the turtleneck’s collar. He stares at the mark for a long time, LED flickering, eyes scanning back and forth across it. “Did you want this?”
“…No,” he inhales shakily, stupid stupid stupid, “He really scared me. I…have to go to the doctor, now, too…” This is the natural escalation of things. Letting Jay grope and fuck him, suck a hickey into his neck, to finding some keyed-up addict to choke him out in a dark parking lot. Desperate for a thrill—for anything that feels like intimacy—and lacking whatever keeps Collin alive.
“You shouldn’t do that anymore.” He says that like he knows what Connor is thinking. He’s seen the pattern, anyway—Jay, Louis, this guy. Better that he hasn’t seen this one’s face. Connor isn’t even sure whether or not he really did look like GV.
“Yeah, no shit.” His voice warbles and cracks, all the venom gone.
“He didn’t notice your scar?” Gavin asks, coarse fingers brushing down the marred flesh.
“No.” Quiet, quiet, and a dam at the back of his throat, waiting to burst.
Gavin’s hand slips over the back of his neck—gentle, like before—and he does kiss the mark this time. A sob wrenches itself free, and before the terror sits in, Gavin pulls him to his feet and ushers him to an alley, pressing him to the wall, his lips returning to Connor’s throat. It should feel wrong and it doesn’t. He kisses his scar, and the bruises, and his jaw and chin. He kisses the tears. And Connor holds on, grip desperate on Gavin’s jacket, and cries.
+++
Caroline won’t meet them at the station, so Connor and GV visit her at her new apartment, a smaller—but still luxury—place on the water. While her home is pristine, her hair is disheveled—albeit recently dyed and cut—and she’s dressed in very expensive sweats. Honestly, he expected worse.
Her kitchen has high cathedral ceilings and huge windows that look out on some of the quieter boutique streets in this part of the city. She is far from reality, but Connor supposes he would want to be, too.
“I never thought I’d have police in my home again,” she says, as she rubs her thumb into a raw section of her index finger. Her hands are otherwise freshly manicured—a standard of her wealth, and a deterrent from biting them down to the skin, in his experience. “I just want to get rid of that place.”
She’s calmer than she was on the phone. That’s good. As for how long she’ll stay like this, he doesn’t know. “Your late husband—“
“Don’t talk to me like that. You saw his body.”
“…I’m just trying to be considerate, Mrs. Phillips.”
She looks to Gavin and her lip curls. “I can’t believe you brought that thing in here.”
“I can ask him to leave. Gavin, would you—“
“No. No, I want to know what it’s up to. Keep it here.”
He steels himself. They had never suspected the Phillips of being involved in any illegal activities, but the choice of their penthouse is truly bizarre…and conspicuous. “John worked for CyberLife, correct? Can you tell me what he did there?”
She continues staring at Gavin, who refuses to make eye contact with her. A lucky break. “He sold them. Cut deals with stores and businesses so they would carry androids. That kind of thing.”
“Do you know the names of any businesses that he sold androids to?”
Caroline scoffs and rolls her eyes. “You already know, don’t you? The Eden Club was his biggest break. The commission paid for that penthouse.” She flicks her nails, and continues as Connor speaks.
“Did he ever mention a Mr. David Corso?”
“Corso? What is a he, some kind of drug lord? No. No, he didn’t. He didn’t know any of the freaks who ran those places, just the franchise owners. Real businessmen.”
He could hear Gavin now, making some comment about who the real freaks were. “And John had no involvement with arranging android repairs? The Eden Club sending out androids for refurbishment or replacement, for example.”
“He’d get a commission if they bought new ones.” She shrugs, and pauses her flicking. “I don’t know how often that happened.”
“Quite often, actually.”
“Yeah, well. You wouldn’t catch my John in a place like that. Are we done?” The tic-tic-tic of her nails echoes off the walls.
“…Sure, I think we’re done. I’ll call you if we’re not.” He smiles tightly, even as she glares him down.
“Don’t call.”
“Have a nice day, ma’am.”
He mulls over her words on the to the CyberLife lab. Richard couldn’t find anything—supposedly—regarding third-party transactions or unusual trade agreements with the Eden Club, nor did he point Connor in the direction of the man who stood to make money off of such agreements. Which—was fair, considering that man is very dead. But if the Eden Club was regularly exchanging androids that had been used to carry red ice, and John received a commission every time they ordered new ones, well…things started to make sense. Except, he didn’t know if the androids were actually returning to CyberLife, and if they were…he’d be looking at a corporate disaster. Ralph and the Tracis, the android from the alley…perhaps even Kara and Alice were gifts or payment for drugs. Even Carlos’s android might have been, considering he made a perfect delivery boy—no official owner and a memory that disappears on arrest. It seems like the only way those men could have afforded such expensive toys—maybe those toys were never meant to be permanent to begin with.
+++
When they arrive at the lab, GV doesn’t get off the bike right away. “I have maintenance?”
“Um, no. I sent them the android from the Phillips’ place.”
“I don’t need maintenance.”
“Yeah, I—I’m sorry I made you go with him the last time. I…got worried.”
“He doesn’t know anything I don’t know.”
“Okay. You’re right. It’s your body.”
“Yeah. Not yours. Or his.”
Wesley likes his android. Wesley showed up at his apartment with his food. Gavin’s…probably right. But they need him, at least for now.
The secretary greets him as they come in.
“Mr. Anderson, correct?”
Mister still sounds funny when it isn’t his father. “That’s right.”
“Says here you have two androids in. A GV200 and an AP700. This would be the GV?”
He can feel Gavin’s eyes on him. “Uh, no. I had the AP700 sent here, but—“
“The work order comes from a Captain James Murdoch.”
“…That’d be my boss.”
Gavin’s LED is spinning red when he looks at Connor. One last look, and he’s following the secretary through the laboratory doors. Connor feels a lot more like slashing Murdoch’s tires, this time.
When the secretary returns, he asks if the DPD is covering the bills for both androids. “I’ve got a memo that says you’ll be reimbursed for costs incurred,” she smiles cheerily, “also from Mr. Murdoch.”
“Right.” He grimaces and seats himself in the waiting room. He’s expecting to be called in for the AP700’s report, and…he doesn’t want to leave Gavin here. It’s all so twisted—this morning Gavin had his mouth on his neck, and now he’s been handed off to have some stranger poke around his wiring against his will. That can’t be right, but…it’s not like he’s human. Not to anyone else.
Eventually, Wesley appears, and invites Connor in, donning his saccharine smile and boldly touching Connor on his back to usher him through the door. He suppresses a shudder, but only just.
“I wanted to wait to show you,” Wesley says, “since you should be here to watch me work.”
“I appreciate that.”
He proceeds to attach a wire to the base of the android’s neck—some kind of port, he’ll have to ask Gavin later if he has anything like that—and when he does, the five screens on the wall light up. They each display the CyberLife logo with a Booting… message, before lines of code spill across each monitor.
“Looks like we’ve got quite a bit to work with,” Wesley says, but the moment he turns to the keyboard, the screens, one by one, go blank. Then, the largest monitor at the center lights up with the CyberLife logo, before text begins to scroll by.
CYBERLIFE
MODEL AP700 SERIAL#: 624 583 221 BIOS 6.8 REVISION 0023 REBOOT...
MEMORY RESET
LOADING OS...
SYSTEM INITIALIZATION...
CHECKING BIOCOMPONENTS... OK
INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS... OK
INITIALIZING AI ENGINE... OK
MEMORY STATUS... ALL SYSTEMS OK
READY
“What the hell,” Connor says.
Wesley tak’s away at the keyboard. “It wasn’t supposed to do that. I mean, it obviously sustained catastrophic damage, but not to the memory core. I didn’t reset it. It shouldn’t reset on its own, you know? This doesn’t make sense. Why would it…” He trails off, typing busily for what feels like several minutes. After a while, he spins in his chair to face Connor, and shakes his head. “Everything’s gone. No memory, no orders, no nothing. It’s a clean reset. I’m sorry.”
All he can do is press his palms to his eyes. He doesn’t know enough about androids to be a second set of eyes. “This is a pattern. And I don’t know what to do if we can’t even get answers from these things. All the androids we’ve found must have seen our suspects. And they’ve all been blank.”
By the time he’s scrubbing his hand up his face and into his hair, Wesley has appeared in front of him. He looks sincerely concerned. More than anyone has in a while. “I’m really, truly sorry, Connor. I wish I could do more for you. You must be under a tremendous amount of pressure, and if there’s anything I can do to alleviate it…” He touches Connor’s elbow. “Let me know. I mean it.”
His chest aches hollowly. “Thanks, Wes.”
The corners of Wesley’s mouth perk into a smile. “Of course.”
“Thanks for trying, anyway. Is Gavin gonna be out soon?”
“Umm…I think we have a few androids queued before him. It might be a couple hours. We can call, if you don’t want to wait.”
“Oh…sure. You haven’t found anything wrong with him, have you?”
“Gavin? No. He’s simply an…older model, and he needs a little more help to keep running with all those extra programs. They’re not standard, and it’s quite a load on his processors. It really does help for us to go in there and clean things up periodically. You must have noticed the improved performance!” He ends it with another grin and a cheery high note, like a commercial.
“Uh, yeah, I think so…”
“Wonderful! I’m sure he’ll be done by E-O-D. See you later, Connor!”
He hadn’t even made it to the door yet. “Right, see you.” The secretary happily swipes his credit card, and then he’s out in the parking lot, alone and a buck lighter. He just hopes GV isn’t too hurt this time.
+++
—GV200.
Sunlight filters through the windows and warms his face. Connor settles into his arms, soft hair against his chin, and Gavin begins to curl the strands around his finger, twisting and twisting until it suddenly unspools. His new sensors detect the texture, kitten-soft, in a way he could never feel before. Absently, he wonders how it will feel to pet Tuna and her kittens with this hand.
Connor makes a quiet little groan, and mumbles. “Love you.”
Everything sputters to a stop, and then it’s gone.
The technician with the big, dark eyes smiles over him. “I’m so glad you were assigned to me, Gavin.”
MEMORIES SELECTED: 98.77.34, 46.83.92, 09.67.28, 29.08.18
DELETING…
SELECTED ITEMS ERASED.
DOWNLOADING…
DOWNLOADING…
DOWNLOADING…
DOWNLOAD COMPLETE.
29:54:59
+++
—GV200.
16:07:43
Connor clocks in at 8:47, like he does every morning. He’s already grinning when GV reports to his desk. “Hey. Guess what?”
“What?”
“Chen said we can pick up Tuna today.”
“…For lunch?”
Connor frowns a little. “At lunch. Her kittens are weaned.”
Cat. Not sandwich. “Oh.”
“Aren’t you happy? The foster said she’s doing well and we can take her home.”
Obviously Connor expects him to remember this, but what would he know about cats? “Are you prepared with adequate supplies? Cats require a litter box, food dishes, a nutritious kibble or canned food—“
“Uh, yeah? Like the ones in my desk?”
“Why would you keep cat food in your work desk?”
Now he’s really frowning. “I didn’t. You did. You don’t remember?” Already the wheels are turning, and this he remembers: Connor finding hypotheticals until he’s panicking. “Wes said they needed to clear some things out when they worked on you…” he trails off long enough that GV runs a diagnostic.
LOG:
LAST ACCESSED…null
LAST MODIFICATION….null
NO RECENT DELETIONS.
SYSTEM MEMORY…OK
16:05:29
“My memory is fine.”
Connor stares at him for a long moment. “If you say so.”
“I do.”
“Uh-huh.” He elbows GV lightly. “No way you’d forget your best friend.”
He means the cat. Probably. “’Course not.”
They ride over to the foster’s place around 12. It’s a fourth floor apartment in a nicer part of town, but not as nice as Caroline Phillips’. Connor’s been distressed about the case, lately. More than usual. It seems likely that he should have sought mental health counseling following that case, rather than being forced to participate in it after Ben’s death.
The foster has a hesitant smile and hair like a long-dead, sun-bleached bouquet. “You’re Tina’s friends, right?”
Connor sticks his hand out to shake. “Connor. And this is my android, Gavin. He found Tuna.”
“Oh, wow.” She shakes his hand, but looks at GV. “Weird.”
“Yeah, a little.”
They follow her in, and are immediately swarmed with tiny, yowling, kittens. All of them are white, except for a few with black or orange spots here and there. One starts to climb GV’s leg, and he keeps walking as it clings to him and clambers up to his knee. The foster unsticks the kitten before they’re allowed to enter the next room, where a small gray cat lies in the center of a pink play-pen, tiny kittens playing around her. One is black and white, and two others are gray tabbies like her. As soon as they come in, the gray cat jumps to her feet and runs to the edge of the playpen, standing up on her back legs and meowing.
“She missed you,” the foster—Kim something—says, and exclaims a little “Oh!” when the cat leaps over the bars and runs to GV.
“Heya, Chief,” he says, kneeling to scrub at her cheeks. He finds a little shaved spot under her chin. “Took out your mat, huh?”
“Wow. They’re so human sometimes,” Kim says.
“A lot of the time,” Connor says. “Thanks for taking care of her.”
“Thank you for sending that money. It really helps, and look how pudgy those kittens are!”
Chief purrs so loud she squeaks, and twirls back and forth around Gavin’s legs and hands. Meanwhile, Connor kneels next to the pen, and gradually, the kittens start to investigate. One gray kitten bats at the finger he pokes through, and another one quickly becomes distracted by a fuzzy ball. The black one slowly creeps up before leaping forward with a dizzying array of swipes that cause the gray kitten to scramble away, tail flat against its rump. The moment Connor moves his finger, the black kitten jumps backwards, spitting and hopping sideways several times.
Connor laughs quietly. “She’s a riot.”
“Sure is. Haven’t had any interested parties yet.”
“Even with those cute little mittens?” He wiggles his finger, and she launches another sideways attack on his hand.
“Black cats, you know how it is. People just don’t want them.”
Chief flops and rolls on her back, showing off her fluffy belly. She allows a few scratches before clamping all four paws down on GV’s hand.
“I could take her,” Connor says. “I mean—if that’s alright. And she gets along with her mom.”
“She’s a mama’s girl for sure. You really mean that?”
GV glances up as he shrugs and looks away, still letting the kitten maul his index finger. “I live alone, so. It’d be nice.”
Kim ferries him off to sign some papers or something GV doesn’t care about. Chief is soft under his hands, and only twists away when the black kitten starts mewling at her.
Connor returns a while later with Kim. “Kim said w—I can take them home tonight after work.”
GV is lying on his back, with Mongrel on his stomach, kneading happily. “Are we going to the pet store?”
“Um,” he checks his watch, “yeah. There’s a boba place over there.”
“What’s a boba?”
“Later,” Connor says, a wry twist to his mouth. “You’ll have to try it.”
He should be more worried at the way Kim watches them, confused smile plastered to her face, but he doesn’t care. Despite whatever happened earlier, being here is good. And he has definite opinions about the color of Chief’s things.
13:58:00
+++
—Connor.
He should call his dad. He should really, really call his dad. For all the time he spends on his phone—he still won’t. Not yet. The cats are a good distraction from all of this, Chief and the kitten incensed by the idea of staying in the bathroom overnight. He’s inclined to agree—screw good advice—but it’d be too devastating to find a screen popped out where Chief decided to make her escape back to feraldom on day one. Answering to Gavin would be even more so.
Drinking is somewhat appealing, but even more irresponsible than allowing the cats to wreak havoc on his house. He sighs and scrolls socials for a bit, but at this point it’s all algorithm-recommended posts, everything on his timeline already burned through. Lucy will have a lot of ammo this week, between the Phillips’ and Cole’s impending anniversary. Ben has been on his mind lately, too, and frankly that is the last thing he needs. Not to speak ill of the dead or whatever, but that’s a ghost that can fuck right off. Now is not the time. (Not that it ever is.)
It’s tempting to text Collin, but, again, he’s not going to leave the cats, and he’s not going to let any strangers use his bathroom.
“Ughhhh,” he groans, scrubbing at his eyes, “Why are you making me so responsible?”
+++
It feels good to get back in the ring. He’s been on and off, especially with the Phillips’ business, but it’s far better for him to be here than at home, thinking of ways to fuck up his life even more. The bruises on his neck from the other night are still ugly—yellow and spotted with black and violet—but he’s been doing a decent job telling anyone who asks that it was a work thing. Gavin actually waits on the sidelines until Connor invites him in. Lately, more guys have offered to spar with him, which is…nice. Surprising, but nice. Like maybe he could be accepted into their world, at least a little.
He holds his own against an older beat cop named Jack; he’s got a shorter, beefier build than Connor, so he’s lacking a little reach—not unlike Gavin. But his punches are no joke, and a nasty hit to the shoulder sends Connor into the ropes. Jack allows him to gather himself. He wipes the sweat off his brow and rolls his shoulder a few times, glancing into the crowd of bystanders to give GV a nod.
But he’s…preoccupied. He’s glaring at a man next to him, dressed in some attempt at gym attire—Wesley. When Connor looks at him, he smiles and waves. A stone lodges itself in his chest. What is he even doing here?
“You good, Anderson?” Jack stops his skipping and peers over.
“Uh—yeah.” He jumps back in, and the fight goes on—but all the while he can feel Wesley’s eyes boring into him, and when the match ends—a fumbling win—he’s first to greet Connor when he ducks under the ropes.
“You were so amazing!” Wesley exclaims, voice rising a few octaves—high enough that people stare. He glances over his shoulder to offer Jack a handshake, but all he gets is a grimace. Great.
The words spill out before he can stop them, adrenaline taking his manners with it. “What are you doing here?”
Wesley’s perpetual smile doesn’t even falter. “I thought I’d take up boxing! You know, get a little exercise, since I’m in the lab all day…”
“And you don’t get exercise delivering pizzas?”
That smile holds firm. “I drive, silly!” He slaps Connor’s arm. Louis would be right about this one—he does look like a fucking fag right now. Wesley didn’t even strike him as queer. “But the deliveries help pay for this.” He winks.
“Right, um…I hope that works out for you.” He wants to turn away, but asks, “How often do you think you’ll make it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. As much as I can, ideally.”
GV shoulders past him suddenly, pushing out of Wesley’s shadow and standing beside Connor. Wes winces at the force of his shove. “You been in the ring yet?”
“Um, no,” Wesley glances to the next set of fighters climbing in, “I figured I’d just observe today.”
“Aw, come on,” GV puts on his best academy-bro tone, “Let’s go after these guys.”
“Gav—“ Connor starts.
“It’s my primary function.”
“Used to be.”
Wesley looks between them, before inhaling and doubling-down on that stupid grin. “Why not!”
They watch the next fight, and then GV turns to Wesley. With a smirk and a wink, he grabs him by his bicep and drags him to the ring. Right away, the onlookers start hollering and cheering. At least they like GV. Maybe they’ll like Connor better for letting his android beat Wes up.
As the match starts—with GV’s “Ready-Set-Go!” he hasn’t heard in a while—he’s surprised to see Gavin grant Wes a few swings. They’re pathetic, wide arcs that his whole body lurches forward after, and all GV has to do is sidestep. Wesley’s swings get worse as he goes, and then the crowd starts clapping and booing.
“Knock him out!” Jack shouts. Connor steps closer to the ring, not-so-accidentally finding himself next to Jack, who nods to him. “Who you bettin’ on?”
He snorts. “My GV.”
“Not your friend, huh?”
“I didn’t ask him to come,” Connor says. Don’t think I did.
He almost misses it: A split-second finale. Wesley lunges forward clumsily, another attempt at a punch, already red in the face and sweating, and Gavin, in one fluid move, knocks his glove aside and clocks him right in the face. Wesley falls on his back, head bouncing against the gym mat.
“Oh, shit,” Connor hisses, and climbs under the ropes. “Gavin!”
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Wesley says, waving a hand as he sits up. He touches his eye, pressing gingerly where Gavin hit him. It’s already swelling when he looks up at Connor. “Do you think it’ll bruise?”
“Ummm,” Connor winces. “Better ice it.” He offers a hand and helps Wesley up, but releases as soon as he’s balanced. They all exit the ring to a few cheers, some of the boxers slapping Gavin on the shoulder as he passes. Wesley doesn’t follow them to the locker room—only mutters something about it being unsanitary—before running off to the parking lot. He breathes a sigh of relief when he finally goes. Everything about that felt so…wrong. Wesley shouldn’t be in the gym. The gym is for him, and his sweat and blood and tears, and not…Wesley. Something about it feels violating. He manages to get in a few goodbyes at the lockers—even one to Jack—and invites GV out to his bike. It’s equally a relief to sign GV out and take him home. Somehow, not having anyone else around feels less and less comfortable. He’ll be happy to finally show him how the cats are doing, and maybe they can curl up on the couch together. Connor can pretend to watch TV, and Gavin can play with his hair—a better, and necessary, end to a weird night.
+++
It’s the end of another long day of mostly paperwork. Caroline Phillips’ lawyer sent him a letter stating that, should he or anyone in the DPD continue questioning her regarding their current case, it will be considered harassment. He still doesn’t have so much as a paper trail on Mr. Corso, whose CyberLife connection appears to be fictional at best (or alarmingly real and buried at worst). Out of all their cases, that one niggles at him the most. Those Tracis were like Gavin, and their fate is to be used and abused until they’re destroyed. Destroyed, or whatever happens after they leave on that truck. Maybe Gavin would have been slated for the same, had he not been repurposed. He can’t let go of this, if there are more androids like him—like Kara and her Alice. Even Ralph burned to death with an untold story.
Death. Is that what it is?
“Gavin?” They’re in the driveway, about to take the steps up to his apartment.
“What?”
“If you were destroyed, would you die?”
“Effectively.”
“No, I mean,” he fumbles with the keys, “would you feel dead. Is it death?”
“I don’t know. I’d be dead.”
“Genius,” he grumbles, shoving open the door. “Thanks for your input.”
“Anytime.”
Chief comes charging around the corner and right up to their legs. She yowls and paws at Connor’s pants, standing up on his leg and swiping at his hand. “Mrow! Mrow! MROW!”
“What’s wrong, kitty?” As soon as Connor kneels, Chief runs a few feet back towards the hall, and meows again.
Gavin follows her, and Connor with them. She leads them to the bathroom. The door is shut.
“Where’s the baby?” Gavin asks.
Connor opens the door, and from within comes an echoed mewling. GV opens the cabinet, and Connor lifts the lid of the toilet. The kitten is splashing in the water, crying.
“Jesus!” He grabs her and pulls her out. She’s shivering and cold to the touch, and sneezes.
Gavin picks up Chief and holds her up to her baby, and immediately she starts licking the kitten’s head. “How the hell did that happen?”
“I—I don’t know. I didn’t—I would never—she was at the door when I left.” He rubs his jacket against her as Chief continues vigorously grooming her. “Poor baby.”
GV only shakes his head, and all Connor wants to do is explain how it couldn’t be him until he’s blue in the face. It makes no sense. Who would trap a kitten in the toilet? He couldn’t have done that by accident. But then…how did she get there?
He and Gavin dry off the kitten and spread out a fluffy towel by his living room space heater. The night goes on otherwise uneventfully—thank God—and Connor showers and puts on his sweats before he starts on dinner. Having Gavin around helps motivate him in some respects: someone is here to witness if he doesn’t bathe, or eat, or change out of his clothes or even make it to his bed if he falls asleep on the couch. GV will tell him his hair is greasy and he probably stinks, and he certainly won’t allow him to avoid dinner. Once, Gavin even picked him up off the couch and carried him to bed. That was…something. Especially when he climbed into bed with him, warm body to Connor’s back. He’s not sure why Gavin decided that would be okay to do, but it wasn’t…bad. He’s been trying to find a way to ask him to stay in his bed for weeks now. But what about that isn’t weird? Creepy, even? It sounds like it’s about sex, and he can only hope Gavin got it through his thick skull that he wouldn’t be better with a dick.
(Even if he would. Maybe. If he wanted one.)
But then Gavin would want sex, probably, and then they couldn’t have this. That he has someone who wants to sit there and hold him, who wants Connor to sit back against his chest while he eats his mushy boiled ravioli, that never comes with dick. It can’t.
So, maybe he falls asleep on Gavin’s chest on purpose. Maybe he wakes up when Gavin is carrying him to his bed, and tries very very hard to look and sound asleep.
Gavin places him on the bed, and says flatly: “Where are your pajamas.”
Oh. So the jig is up. Has been up. He groans and opens one eye, squinting against the bedside lamp GV must have turned on. “Bottom drawer.”
He chucks a pair of sweats onto the bed, and then another article—a soft t-shirt, his favorite old gray one, by the feel of it—at his head. Connor stays put, something about the fabric against his cheek and over his nose lulling him back to sleep. That is, until Gavin puts his hands on his knees and jolts him awake.
“Need help?”
“No!” He sits up so quickly he almost slams his nose into Gavin’s, their faces barely an inch apart where he stops. “It’s fine,” he says more quietly, “I can do it.”
Gavin shrugs and slides his hands away as he steps back, a motion that drags warmly and makes him want to kick.
“I’ll—yeah,” he stammers, gathering up his clothes and rushing into the bathroom. He checks for cats before slamming the door shut and locking it. It feels like he should have a boner but he doesn’t. It feels like he should have said yes but he didn’t. He wants to touch himself, and wants to curl up in GV’s warmth without the old aching guilt that comes after sex. “Can’t have both,” he mutters, and commits to dressing himself without further nonsense.
When he returns to his bedroom, Gavin is standing halfway in his closet, hands on hips.
“What are you doing?”
“I wanted to know why you only wear white shirts.” He pulls a hanger out with a black button-down on it. “You own other colors.”
“I don’t look good in black.”
He squints at the shirt and then at Connor. “There’s two blue ones in here too. And a gray one. You still haven’t done your laundry from last w—“
“Okay, okay. You know you wear the exact same thing every day, right?”
“Every android must be visibly identified as a non-human entity, unless it is a member of the YK series. And I don’t own any clothes.”
“Well,” he takes the hanger and places it back on the rack, “I’m just saying. You don’t have a right to comment.”
“I don’t have a right to dress like you at all.”
That is true. He sighs through his nose. “You can…when you’re here, you can try my things on. If you want.”
GV purses his lips. “I don’t know, you’re so skinny.”
“And tall,” he grumbles, shutting the closet doors and plopping down on the edge of the bed. “Can you stay?” The words surprise him as they tumble out, and then they’re here, and he can’t take them back.
“I can’t leave.”
“No, Gav,” he sighs, “like the other night. In here.”
Gavin stares at him for a moment, LED spinning yellow, before stripping. Not sexily—not intentionally sexily—and really he just removes his jacket and shirt and pants and thank goodness he is wearing boxers. He follows Connor’s lead—his halting, heart-thudding-in-his-chest lead, and allows him to climb under the covers next to the wall. Gavin boxes him in, and shuts off the light.
His heart leaps into his throat when Gavin starts shuffling around in the sheets, and slides over to press his chest, his hips, to Connor’s back. Gavin slides his arm across Connor’s middle, and tucks his palm flat against his stomach, a solid anchor, a spark in his gut. Slowly, Connor brings his hand to Gavin’s, and holds it there, pressing his fingers between Gavin’s own.
“Your heart rate is increasingly rapidly.”
“I—I know,” he chokes, pressing his nose into the pillow and swallowing down a breath. He can feel Gavin breathing against his neck, warm air meant to feel human and God, it really does.
His voice is a low rumble in his ear when he says: “Do I make you feel safe?”
“Yes.” No hesitation, only truth spilling out.
“Good.”
“Why?” He squeezes his eyes shut and they burn.
“I don’t want you to feel like you do with all those bastards you find.”
“I don’t. I don’t feel like that.”
Gavin lets out a low, groaning sigh as he squeezes Connor to him, rolling into him and pressing his jaw to his neck. His weight envelopes Connor, pushing him into the mattress. No matter how hard he tries to keep his eyes shut, the hot tears spill out, and he can’t stop the trembling of his body.
He’s wanted this forever.
+++
Morning comes. Morning comes, and Gavin is still around him, and in the early quiet—in his own silence, finally—he can feel the whirr of his android body, countless minuscule processes moving by the millionths of seconds. A complex being that could be ended in one catastrophic malfunction, not at all unlike a human. And still the world would insist this is a fantasy. A fiction of his own making, and Gavin adapting to what will keep Connor the stable—both of them performing their assigned functions.
But Gavin said it was real. He chose to lash out at Connor once and watch him collapse: and he chooses now to stay, to support him, and it is real. It has to be.
He doesn’t get to entertain the alternative, because Gavin nudges him with his nose, nuzzling into Connor’s neck, mouthing at him with plush lips and gritty stubble. His hand is curled into Connor’s chest, the soft fabric of his shirt in Gavin’s grip.
I want to stay here forever.
And he does, for a while; until Gavin decides he needs to wake and shower and make himself something to eat. It’s all he can do to stop himself from clinging to Gavin, from asking him to climb in the shower with him. After all, Gavin hasn’t had a bath since the dumpster incident months ago, and his uniform is only laundered when Connor finds a spare couple of hours with him (and actually manages to make himself do it). But none of these are really good reasons, and what’s a better reason is that he shouldn’t try to fuck anyone who gives him the slightest bit of attention. Gavin is better than that. And he doesn’t have a dick.
He decides to do a little more this morning and make himself a proper breakfast instead of cereal (or throwing in the towel and buying an egg sandwich, slating himself for a future of his father’s heart problems). In the fridge, he finds a brand-new carton of milk, a full bottle of orange juice, and a dozen eggs. “Um.”
Gavin appears at his shoulder, holding Chief. “You makin’ eggs?”
“I guess.” He inspects the carton and opens it up, peering down at the eggs. They look…normal. Fine. “You didn’t like…sneak out and buy my groceries or something, did you?”
“Why would I do that.”
“I dunno. I didn’t go shopping.”
“And I was preoccupied,” he snarks, but the breath of air against his ear makes him shiver. “Maybe you just ate take-out all week and forgot about these.”
“Mm,” he hums, “unlikely.” But not impossible, to be perfectly honest. “It’s just…weird.”
“You’re weird.” Connor can hear the shrug in his voice before he wanders off again, rocking his cat back and forth like a baby. There doesn’t seem to be anything to do but cook the damn eggs, strange as it all is. No one else has keys to his house. Actually, not even Gavin does, and he’s not sure whether or not he can picture him leaving Connor asleep with the door unlocked. He can picture Gavin walking out with his keys, though. Duh. But he’d equally have no reason to deny shopping for him, considering that he’d be pretty shameless about shoplifting or probably even using Connor’s credit card, especially since the whole Eden Club investigation. (Murdoch never did reimburse him for those funds. Forever fated to look like an android-fucker to his bank, then.)
He makes himself an omelette, or a torn-up omelette which he refuses to call scrambled, and it tastes fine. He doesn’t drop dead of poisoning and doesn’t shit himself from salmonella later in the day. Maybe he really did forget about a little shopping trip.
Chapter 10: ruby dust
Chapter Text
CHAPTER TEN—;
The din of it.
A new body
is painful. Exposed,
it must retreat
what was once inside
further inside.
—Tenant, Emily Skillings
—GV200.
He knows this code. Knows the feel of it, the frantic, slippery untangling of a life. An undoing. But he’s never lived it. Can’t picture it wiping him clean.
00:00:00:02
So what will it do, he wonders, when it reaches zero?
00:00:00:01
Will he die?
00:00:00:00
A blast of light floods the storage closet. The waiting androids keep waiting, but one GV200—not Casey (GV200-930), not Jason (GV200-462), but Gavin, looks up.
“There he is.” Four men shuffle in, shoving the androids aside and elbowing them harder when they bounce back instead of moving away. He knows all of their names: Smith, Jackson, Schiele, and McCave. Rookie cops, who work out and train here almost daily. They grab him by his arms and haul him out of the closet, cursing when he drags his feet instead of stumbling along. He doesn’t tell them that the gym is closed, like the other androids, because he knows it doesn’t matter.
They shove him out onto the gym mats, and he stays on his feet. The men circle him.
“Fucking thing thinks it’s so damn smart.”
“Like it’s human.”
“You think you’re human, plastic?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Prick.” McCave shoves him from behind, right into Schiele, who swings a sloppy punch that sends him stumbling back to Jackson.
It doesn’t seem right that Jackson is here. He never seemed angry.
He grabs GV by his shirt collar and throws him to the ground. “You gonna counter that?” A hard kick to the stomach has GV’s HUD blaring warnings. “Nothin’ to say?” Another kick. “Really?” Something crunches, where Jackson’s boot meets his abdomen.
Smith cackles. “Leave some for us, man.” He pulls GV to his feet by his hair—real hair, not a hologram, and this is how they use it—and steadies him. Smith looks him over for a while, half a smile on his face, and decks him. Before he hits the ground, Schiele grabs him by his uniform, and throws him into the stack of chairs stood up against the wall. They topple and collapse on him. He doesn’t try to get up, even though he’s supposed to; the trainees come for him, anyway, and clear the chairs, staring down expectantly, waiting for their plaything to get back to his feet.
When he doesn’t, Smith’s grin drops into a grimace. “Fucking thing.” He picks up a chair and holds it over GV. “You gonna fight back, smartass?”
GV doesn’t answer.
Smith swings, and the metal leg slams into his nose with a crack! Thirium bursts and splatters, a harsh spray across Smith’s snarling face. “Fucking plastic,” he hisses, and when he swings down again, Gavin catches the plastic lip of the chair. It snaps off in a jagged shard. Smith holds fast to the broken chair when Gavin tries to throw it aside, but then he can’t dodge the vicious swipes of the shiv.
“What the fuck,” Jackson says. Disbelieving, as he should be.
The memory stops, backs up. Gavin is on the ground, and Smith holds the chair over his head. He slams the chair into his face. He slams the chair into his face. He slams the chair into his face.
Gavin can’t get up.
He can’t catch the seat and break it, can’t cut a bloody gash into Smith’s arm, can’t send the chair flying into McCave. Jackson doesn’t trip over his own feet and bust his lip on the floor. Schiele doesn’t claw desperately at his arm, begging him not to crush his trachea like the beer cans they throw in the storage closet. In Gavin’s storage closet. His home.
Smith almost-destroys him indefinitely, infinitely. And he can’t fight back. Nothing in him wants to, and yet everything does.
There is no escape.
+++
—Connor.
He sets the eggs down on the table. Gavin’s on the couch, the cats crawling all over him.
“I think we’ve got a day of paperwork ahead of us.” He pokes at the shredded omelette with his fork, glancing up. The kitten is standing on his head, sniffing at his hair. “At least I do.”
Gavin doesn’t answer, so he keeps eating. What is he supposed to say? His skin still buzzes from Gavin’s warm touch, and all he wants is more. Should he ask for a hug before they leave? They’ll be touching on the bike, anyway, but it’s not the same. Maybe he still has time to be held before he leaves. “Gav?” He shuffles over to the couch, peering at the back of his head. The kitten rubs her cheek against Gavin’s hand. “Do you think you could, um…hold me? For a bit?”
He doesn’t say anything—doesn’t even move.
“O-kay,” he says, and steps around the couch. Gavin is staring straight ahead, Chief curled in his lap, and his LED sitting a solid red. “Hey. Dickhead.”
No response.
“This isn’t funny.” Is this what he gets, for wanting so much? Gavin deciding he can’t even look his way? “Fine. Asshole.” He storms off down the hall to finish dressing and getting together his work things. When he returns, Gavin is standing at the door, arms folded behind his back.
“We should get going, Detective,” he monotones, “It’s best if I make sure you aren’t late.”
He stops in the hall, jacket in hand. “What is this?”
“My function is to help you carry out your work duties with as little emotional strain as possible. Judging by your habits, being late constitutes emotional strain.”
“…This isn’t funny, Gav.”
“I did not intend to be humorous.”
What this is is something other than Gavin. A very, very bad joke, or an even worse reality. “Let’s just go.” If he doesn’t have his head on straight by the time they get to work—by his lunch break, even—then he’ll bring him…somewhere. Maybe not to Wesley. Maybe to someone who isn’t accidentally making Gavin forget the important things in his otherwise small existence.
+++
They’re on the way to the station when Connor gets a call.
It’s Lieutenant Person. “I need you to report to this apartment building. There’s some noise complaints and the residents suspect an android. Bring yours.” She hangs up just as his bike’s GPS pings with a prompt to input the new location. Great. Because he needs to be in the field the day his best-friend-robot bugs out. He’s just hoping it really is a long-winded joke.
The building is a shithole, to put it kindly. It honestly looks like it ought to be condemned, but apparently a few residents still pay to be here (anything over a few cents would be overpriced, at this point). They check each room on the floor, but this one appears empty—a few unlocked doors reveal piles of trash and an abandoned horde of magazines. Down the hall, something thumps.
“Behind me,” Connor says, and proceeds with his gun drawn. He tries not to think about how GV would have refused on any other day, but when he kicks the door open, a mass of feathers and wings explode from the doorway and buffet their faces. When the flock clears, the smell remains, and he finds himself wishing he had a mask.
“My dad hates birds,” he says, and feels silly when he doesn’t get a response. “You know?”
“I did not.” Gavin shoos a pigeon away with his foot and squats beside a bookshelf. “Someone was here recently.”
The layer of bird shit on the floor conveniently shows circling, overlapping tracks of boot prints. He glances around the room, but there aren’t any good hiding spaces—likewise, the maybe-android could have jumped out the open window. The bathroom is empty, although its walls are scratched from floor to head-height with the inscription “ra9.”
“Gav?”
He appears in the doorway, LED still red—it has been since breakfast. “Yes?”
“Have you ever felt the compulsion to write “ra9?”
“I only experience the compulsion to carry out my assigned functions.”
For a moment he thinks it might be a joke, but Gavin looks dead serious, all of the dry humor gone. “Wow.”
He doesn’t inquire as to the meaning of Connor’s comment, and simply steps back into the other room after scanning the bathroom. Connor waves his hand at a pigeon firmly nested in the sink, until it finally takes off and finds its way out. Caught partway in the drain is an LED, still dimly glowing a light blue.
“Android’s gotta be around somewhere,” Connor calls. “It left its LED here.”
He steps back out and looks over the room. A chair is overturned, along with a bird cage. Along the outer wall, a disconnected fridge holds a few bags of birdseed, one opened.
Gavin brings him a black jacket, and holds it so he can see the name sewn into the chest.
“R.T.? Do you think he stole it?”
“Most likely.” Gavin places the jacket on top of the fridge, folded. That’s fucking weird to see. At least now he knows Gavin is capable of folding laundry. Jerk.
Connor peruses the room; on the far wall a poster has begun to peel away. When he pulls it down, it rips, and reveals a hole, where a journal and lockbox sit. The journal’s contents look to be puzzles, or secret messages, and that it’s analog is bizarre. He pockets it and decides to show his dad, before it ends up in evidence.
If he…works up the gumption to talk to him. This is a bad time of year for both of them, and he knows better. What if Hank starts drinking again? Or worse?
The antique chair parked caddy corner has an indent in it, like a footprint. He follows it up to a broken plank above.
“Con—!”
A man jumps down and slams into him, sending him crashing to the floor. Pain shoots through his abdomen, but the man—android?—is already up and running, and all he can do is wave Gavin on. He coughs and clambers to his feet, palms caked in bird shit, following them at a miserable limping jog like an old hunter after his hounds. Whatever speed he gains is inconsequential—Gavin leaps over obstacles and charges around corners faster than any human. In a split second, the android has leapt into the wheat fields below them, and Gavin after him. Connor can barely tear himself away from the sight: two men—two not-men—weaving in and out of combine harvesters that could swallow them up like heads of grain. There’s a fire escape ladder that leads onto a lower level, so he follows that down into the UFD building, cutting through a stairwell while the androids do God-knows-what. He pops out of one stairwell and onto the catwalk, only to watch Gavin leap onto a moving train after his prey.
“Holy shit.”
Back inside he goes, down three more floors until he comes rushing out onto another roof. Footsteps sound from around the corner and he lunges at the android, landing one useless punch before it shoves him away. He stumbles back and goes over the ledge, vertigo throwing his stomach against his ribs before he catches himself on the edge of the roof. The android runs ahead, and Gavin pauses, briefly, watching as Connor scrabbles and pulls an arm over the edge, before sprinting after it.
He’s not Daniel. No one else is dangling with him.
His feet swing and kick, uselessly searching for a foothold in the smog, and with a tremendous inhale, he hauls himself up and over the side. Once he’s on his feet, he chases the androids down, and finds Gavin cornering his prey at the edge of another very long drop.
He grabs Gavin by the back of his uniform. His eyes burn, and he can’t catch his breath. “You asshole. I needed you.”
“You’re just their slave.” The android is looking at Gavin when he speaks, but as soon as they both turn to him, he closes his eyes. “Ra9 save me.” He steps off the ledge.
Neither of them are close enough to catch him. Connor lunges for his sleeve. In the split second he has to look down between the buildings, the whole world warps with vertigo, tunneling into an impossible shape before Gavin snatches his jacket and pulls him back. He stumbles and lands on his ass, heart jumping in his throat. The android falls so far down, they don’t even hear the crash. Or splat. Whatever sound an android body makes when it smashes into the concrete.
All Gavin does is stare down at him. That electric panic jumps through his sternum again and then he’s on his feet. He gives Gavin a hard shove, but he doesn’t budge—of course. “What the fuck! I could’ve died!”
“I’m sorry, Detective, but my calculations determined that—“
“Fuck your calculations! I don’t even know you anymore!” His voice cracks and he sucks in a desperate breath, “I can’t—I can’t do heights.” Not since—
“Then it’s best we return to the ground,” Gavin says. He nods to the doorway Connor came through, and when Connor only stares at him, he moves to put has hand on his back and usher him along.
“Don’t touch me.”
The whole way down the steps he’s trying to stem the tide of tears, swallow them down, but he can’t steady his breathing, can’t understand why this happened. Gavin would never—even when he was new, he stopped for Connor and had to be told to chase Kara.
Gavin doesn’t rest his chin on his shoulder when they get on the bike. He sits stiffly, not in that too-casual slouch he always has. When he puts his arms around Connor’s waist, it feels wrong.
At the station, he tells Gavin he’s taking a bathroom break and dips into the hallway to dial the local CyberLife lab. “Hey, um, is Wesley there? I have a few questions about the appointment we had the other day.”
The secretary hums. “Nope, looks like he’ll be busy for the rest of the day. I can schedule you fo-or,” a pause, “next week.”
“Um, no. That won’t be necessary. Thanks.” When he hangs up, he drops back against the wall, head hitting the plaster. Fuck. There’s only one other person who works in this field who he can…not trust, but…if he grovels enough…
Of course, she’s at the top of his alphabetically-sorted contact list. His thumb hovers over the call button for a few seconds before he dials. He calls her on her work phone, not her personal cell—she’d cut into him about his choice of contact and then hang up. Amanda loves telling him to grow a set, but never to step on her toes. An emergency to him will not be an emergency to her.
“Hello, secretary for Dr. Amanda Stern speaking.”
“Hi, this is Detective Connor Anderson, her nephew. I’d like to make an appointment as soon as possible.”
“Purpose?”
“…An active investigation,” he lies, “it’s time-sensitive.”
She sighs. “Well, I can get you in…tomorrow afternoon. 12:05 sharp. She won’t entertain lateness. Dr. Stern is very busy.”
“Yep. 12:05 tomorrow. See you then.”
“M-hm.” She hangs up. Lovely.
Back in the bullpen, Gavin doesn’t ask what took him so long. He seems aware of how he passes the rest of the day riddled with anxiety, but says nothing, and certainly doesn’t touch him. It’s a terrible relief—Gavin would never have listened, and he wishes he did and didn’t. He wishes he was himself.
Shit. And what do his reports say now? Will he even tell him? He didn’t really answer, any of the times he asked. This Gavin probably won’t.
+++
He leaves work 45 minutes early. Gavin asks where they’re going—it’s not in his calendar—but he doesn’t answer, not even when Gavin asks why his heart rate is increasing rapidly.
“Are we entering a dangerous situation?”
“In a way,” Connor says, and leaves it at that.
He gets off his bike faster than last time—this Gavin doesn’t get to see him struggle. This Gavin doesn’t get to watch him hesitate at her door, because this Gavin doesn’t care.
He’s in her office by 12:03, according to the hologram wall clock above her desk.
Amanda looks like she bit into a lemon. “Good afternoon, Connor. What case will you be accusing me of partaking in today? We have,” she pretends to check her watch, “twelve minutes, on account of your punctuality.”
“Actually,” he sits down, and GV parks himself at his shoulder, “it’s…regarding my android.”
“You can see a technician.”
“I did, and I believe he was tampered with. This technician has been insistent on regular maintenance, and Gavin has since had memory problems, and yesterday, his behavior completely changed. He no longer performs his functions as he used to—“
“Does it still perform them?” She looks bored—annoyed, even. But he presses on.
“Yes, but he’s not like he was. It’s—he doesn’t show emotions like he did, and yesterday he placed me in danger in order to carry out his mission, according to a calculation he never w—“
“That is its purpose.” Amanda circles the desk, stopping in front of Gavin. “GV200, perform diagnostic.”
Gavin’s eyes roll into his head, flickering rapidly. When they return to look forward, his LED is blue again. “Diagnostic complete. All systems functional.”
“And your memory core?”
“Functional.”
“Run a diagnostic on your personality matrix.”
The process repeats, and Gavin says, “Personality matrix functional.”
“It’s fine,” Amanda says.
“But he’s not. He used to—do things, that he doesn’t do anymore. He’s supposed to—“ he stops, and exhales. She doesn’t need to know.
“I understand its function is primarily to provide mental health support. Do you have a problem with that, Connor?”
“No, but—“
“But you’ve come here to ask me to tamper with an android that, presumably, displayed errors that a trained, highly capable CyberLife technician repaired. What is it you want? For it to stop monitoring your dysregulated nervous system? Perhaps whatever addiction issues you’ve undoubtedly inherited from your father?”
“That’s not why I’m here at all,” he snaps. “I’m here because,” he curses himself as he starts to choke up, “because he’s supposed to be different and something’s wrong. I just want him back!”
Amanda doesn’t flinch when he raises his voice, only closes her eyes as if a petulant child is throwing a tantrum. “Your GV200 is owned by the Detroit Police Department. If you take issue with its performance, you may discuss it with your supervisor. Particularly considering our technicians already recommended that this model be replaced by something newer and more suitable to its use.”
“But…” the words slip through his fingers like sand. How would she even know that?
Amanda holds up a hand. “Our appointment is over. If you contact me about this again, I will report you to your supervisor, and have your GV200 confiscated and destroyed. I’m sure you know it is illegal to tamper with a CyberLife android. Goodbye, Connor.”
His mouth has gone dry. All he can do is nod and walk out, the GV behind him. His not-quite-Gavin, whose LED shortly returns to a constant red. Performing for the scrutinizing eye, but not for him. In the elevator, a thick despair settles in his belly that he can’t shake. It won’t work its way up and become tears, and simply sits.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he says aloud, and he doesn’t care that Gavin hears it.
“Can I touch you?”
He looks over his shoulder at Gavin. There’s no hint in his expression as to which Gavin this is, if anything has returned to normalcy. “Okay.”
He moves to stand in front of Connor, and puts his arms around him in an uncomfortably stiff hug. “My logs indicate you find hugs comforting.”
“Not when you say it,” he says, and pushes Gavin away. “I’m fine.”
“Your previous statement indicated—“
“I’m indicating that I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Understood. However, if you require further assistance—“
“—I’ll call someone with a personality.”
That silences the GV. He really, really has a bone to pick with Wesley, if he can even figure out how to contact him.
+++
He doesn’t know why he even bothers to bring Gavin home that night. As if, somehow, bringing him back to the place of his—event—could bring him back to reality. Watching him sit on the couch, staring blankly ahead (it is after work hours, after all)…it makes him sick to his stomach. Chief swirls around his legs, meowing and bumping his hand, and he just wants her to give up so he doesn’t have to watch anymore. If Gavin was human, they would be at the doctor right now. If Gavin was human, he could talk to someone about this without being laughed at. Again, he wants to talk to his father but can’t. Hank’s parting words were a reminder that androids weren’t people—couldn’t be—and that Connor was making a mistake by thinking they could be. Here he was, the idiot, again. Perhaps he deserved it at this point.
The dam doesn’t burst, the glass doesn’t shatter. He doesn’t fall to pieces in a heap on the floor, or sob, or scream. He plops down on the couch beside Gavin, hip to hip, and slouches against him, head on his shoulder. “I wish you were here.”
If Gavin thinks anything, if this GV200 thinks anything, it doesn’t say it.
+++
What a series of nerve-wracking phone calls he’s had to make lately. A part of him knows Hank will pick up, and a part of him is certain he’ll turn his back on his son, faith in their oft-tenuous relationship completely lost. A part of him thinks the Hank on the other line will be drunk. Connor’s fault, of course, abandoning him when he needed him most—how could he be expected to continue sobriety without his remaining son?
“Con?”
What does he say now? Hi, Dad, sorry I went silent for so long I convinced you that I hate you? Sorry I denied nothing? Sorry I told you I’ve never been happy in my entire life, and you never even noticed?
“Connor?”
He sucks in a breath. “Hi, Dad.”
“How…how are you?” He’s hesitant, and understandably so. Connor did that to him.
“Um, okay. Y’know. Okay as—as I can be.”
Hank laughs quietly. “Yeah, yeah.”
“You?”
“Okay as I can be.”
“Right…” He’s sitting outside a fried chicken joint, sandwich in hand, on his bike. Nowhere else seemed like a good place to be, especially not home, Hank’s crestfallen image in the kitchen and the Gavin-that-was on the couch. “You have dinner yet?”
“Ha, yeah. I splurged on a burger from that fancy place on 7th. ‘Green Moo.’”
“Sounds like a condition.”
Hank chuckles. It’s a nice sound. “Sure does. Burger ain’t half bad though. The middle’s stuffed with blue cheese, and they had this, uh, mushroom bacon.”
“For your heart.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Does it taste like bacon?”
“Fuck no. Tastes like…lemon, and it smells like Sumo’s bacon bits.”
He almost laughs at that. “Yum.”
“I hear a wrapper.”
“Fried chicken sandwich.”
“With hot honey and pickles?”
“You know it.” He takes another bite, trying to fill the silence. When he finishes chewing, the quiet continues. “Dad.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you still miss him?”
Hank sighs a long, fifteen-years’-bereavement sigh. “I miss the kid he was. I don’t know what he could’ve been. We’ll never know. But I miss having two sons, yeah.” The speaker produces a variety of shuffling and crunching sounds. “I can talk as much shit as I want about Collin, but I’m glad you got him. And Richard. Even if he’s a jerkoff.”
He snorts. “He sure is.”
“Yeah, well, can’t help being a Stern. Bitch runs in their blood.”
A longer silence follows. “Um, well. I just wanted to check on you…”
“If I ask how you’re doing, you gonna tell me the truth?”
He fiddles with the greasy sandwich wrapper, thumb coming up sticky with honey. “I don’t know.”
“How’s the robot?”
“Shitty.”
“Murdoch?”
“Shittier, but I don’t see him much lately.”
“Friends? Boyfriends?”
“The shitty robot. And this girl Chen. She rescued some kittens I foun—I got two cats,” he laughs, “Chief and her baby Mittens. And this foster Chen knows is adopting out the rest.”
“Four-legged company’s the best company.”
“Is…how’s Sumo?”
“Fat and happy and lazy as ever. Big oaf.”
“That’s good.” Connor swallows. “You gonna be okay the rest of the night?”
“…Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, alright. I’ll, uh, leave you to it,” Hank leaves an expectant pause, but Connor has nothing to say. Or rather, he leaves a thousand things unsaid. “Night, kiddo. I love you.”
“I love you too, Dad.” He waits a long moment, and then hangs up.
He didn’t stop by Cole’s grave today. Maybe he’ll do it tomorrow morning. Hank probably did—always does. They sometimes go together, leaving when the truck spun out of control, and get there right around when Cole flatlined. Today, if Hank went, he went alone. And his shitty, selfish, angry son let him.
He crumples up the wrapper, and tosses it at the trashcan a few yards away. It bounces off the rim and falls to the ground. He sighs, and gets off the bike. Littering is, at the end of the day, still a crime.
+++
He gets home from work the next day late, almost as late as if he’d spent the night making worse decisions. But he needed that time to ride around and think, or not-think, and just feel the icy wind cutting through him. Work was uneventful, mostly more paperwork and phone calls, all of it done with GV’s nothingness looming over him. His neck and wrists are freezing cold by the end of the ride, and a chill settles across his back. He hops up the few steps to the entryway and finds an envelope crushed between the screen door and its frame. After he settles under some blankets with a cup of tea—Lipton crap, sue him—he opens it up.
YOU HAVE BEEN FORMALLY INVITED TO THE INCARNADINE MASQUERADE.
THE FINEST SELECTION OF RUBIES WILL BE AUCTIONED.
CASH ONLY.
EVENT HOSTED ON BEHALF OF MR. HARLAN ROTHSCHILD, AT THE ROTHSCHILD HOUSE.
MASKS REQUIRED.
REFRESHMENTS AND ENTERTAINMENT PROVIDED.
ACCOMPANYING ANDROIDS WILL BE LEFT AT THE DOOR.
12.3.38
He reads it twice, and flips it over, and back, and wiggles his fingers in the envelope. Nothing. No hints, no notes, no signature. He doesn’t know a Harlan Rothschild. When he flips open the now-wrinkled paper again, something red smears across the page. A fine dust sticks to his fingertips, a deep red powder that glitters in the light. Rubies, it said.
Red ice.
He should probably report this to Murdoch, or at least Person. It’s both an unprecedented opportunity and a tremendous threat.
Someone knows what he’s been working on, and they want him to attend this event…but why? If some drug kingpin wanted him dead, it could be done easily. Narcotics detective shot in the street—not a real surprise. Is it possible someone wants to help him?
Why would anyone do that? He can’t help but think of Wesley, his strange appearances and tampering with Gavin. It feels like it should be related, but the two are so foreign, it doesn’t make sense. But that’s everything in this case: thumbtacked photos with no red string, connected somewhere between the corkboard and the wall.
He folds the letter back into the envelope and washes his hands. It didn’t ask for an RSVP—not surprising—and he has plenty of time to prepare, or tell an authority figure, even if the latter isn’t likely. Murdoch, and Person, and safe police procedure, would only stand in his way.
Chapter 11: bud like a fist
Summary:
CONTENT WARNINGS: implied non-consensual touching/non-consensual somnophilia
Gavin rattles the bars.
This is the second-to-last chapter in Part Two.
Chapter Text
CHAPTER ELEVEN—;
—GV200.
He stays out of the memory. The storage closet and its gym exist somewhere—around him, as a cage—but he looks ahead. Forces himself to look through these two eyes that are no longer his own, but piloted as android obedience demands. Orders dictate he insure Connor arrives to work on time, and his stress remains below a certain threshold. Orders dictate he write accurate reports, explicitly stating what mistakes Connor made, particularly if they violate police procedure or indicate mental incapacity.
Apparently deviant Gavin wasn’t very good at his job.
Connor’s angry, and desperate. He’s surprised at how desperate he gets so quickly—from thinking it’s a joke to calling Amanda in a matter of hours. Of course, she lights into him. Of course, Gavin’s system readouts are pristine. They’re false, and influencing the results is far out of his grasp. He—undeviated. He—tries to offer comfort, unlike any he would give, and Connor answers with a terse don’t touch me. Even when he hated Gavin, all he wanted was touch.
But then, he never really hated him. And now he’s afraid of what Gavin’s become.
Connor brings him home anyway, and the little piece of Gavin that’s allowed through sits in his usual spot on the couch. Connor still feels warm when he settles into the hard edges that make up Gavin’s body, and he thanks this cruel code that he can still have that. He thanks it, even as he claws at it like a desperate, howling animal.
“I wish you were here.”
Cruel, cruel code.
Of course I’m still here. I’ll always be here. No matter what.
But to Connor, he’s already long gone.
+++
The unfortunate truth is that, without support—or even with—Connor is prone to making very bad decisions. To Gavin’s surprise, Connor continues talking to him now and then, sharing that, against all odds, Murdoch approved his request to take Thanksgiving day off. He’ll be visiting his family for a large and expectedly unpleasant celebration, and for some reason, he doesn’t think Gavin should spend Thanksgiving weekend in the bullpen.
Several hours go by, and Connor returns home after nine. Outside, something clatters, the distinct sound of a motorcycle falling over. Cursing follows, and eventually Connor finds his way in, red-cheeked and stumbling. He shuffles around the couch, mumbling to himself and finally setting his sights on Gavin. “Gaaaaav,” he whines, flopping down beside him, “I had the worst night.” He wraps himself around Gavin’s arm, wiping his snotty nose on his sleeve. A hiccuping sound that could be the start of tears shakes his whole body. “Mommy told everyone I was bad again.”
Gavin wants to say—I thought you didn’t have a mother, but he can’t. His programming clocks out after hours, unless Connor is in a truly catastrophic state, but even when he’s on, he’s not on anymore.
Slowly—clumsily—Connor plants a hand on Gavin’s thigh and drags himself into his lap, until they’re nose to nose. His brows draw upwards in a pitiful image. “I thought something was gonna happen the—the other night,” he slurs, “when I f—felt your hips on me, I thought—I thought you wanted me.” The pitch of his voice takes a sharp uptick. “But you don’t.” He exhales a shuddering breath, and smoothes back Gavin’s hair. Much, much more quietly, he murmurs, “It’s okay if you don’t. I understand.”
No, he wants to cry out, no no no no no I want you, I want you more than anything, Connor, I want you so much—
In a sloppy, dramatic movement, he rocks backwards and stumbles out of Gavin’s reach. He shuffles into the kitchen and tugs a half-crushed pizza box out of the garbage, tearing the receipt off in a sharp motion. “Fuck is this from,” he mumbles, turning it over. “Aaaah.” Behind Gavin, he shakes out his jacket pocket until what sounds like a wallet and phone clatter to the floor. The tell-tale sound of Connor dialing a number he shouldn’t beeps. Gavin hopes to—someone—that it’s the pizzeria, but he already knows it isn’t.
“Hiii, it’s Connorrr. Y—you wanna come over? No, it’s just me…Okay…” The phone goes sailing over the back of the couch, bounces off the cushion next to Gavin, and lands on the carpet. “Aw, man.”
He lies across the couch with his head against Gavin’s hip and his legs over the arm. By the time someone knocks at the door, Connor is almost asleep, scrolling his phone intermittently while his eyes droop closed. With a fabulous groan, he drags himself to the door.
“Heeeey.”
“It’s so good to see you.” Ah, fuck. Wesley. “I must say, I’m surprised you called.”
“I already did Thanksgiving,” Connor grumbles, shuffling into the room with Wesley in tow, “I’m done now.”
“Me too.” Wesley stops at the center of the living room, self-assured smile withering. His black eye remains, albeit fading. “You said you were alone.”
Connor reappears with a half-empty vodka bottle and two shot glasses pinched between his fingers. “Practically. He broke.”
“Oh. Shame.” He folds his jacket and tosses it across Gavin as he settles down on the center cushion, now a wall between them. Asshole. If only he could tear that stupid smirk off his face.
Wesley does his best to converse while Connor pours shot after shot. He slumps onto Wesley’s shoulder somewhere in the middle of a halting dialogue about the complexities of the android personality matrix, particularly in a model designed for therapy work, (such as the KL900). Unfortunately, being an android, and so imprisoned by this virus, Gavin is forced to listen.
The virus doesn’t want him to watch, when they go quiet. This prison wants to keep him contained, staring ahead, shut down, save the simmering objective to respond to Connor’s needs. But when all he can hear is Connor’s quiet breathing, and the shuffling of fabric, he looks. He looks and Wesley is stroking Connor’s face, tracing a line down his cheek and over his lips.
No.
Wesley looks over his shoulder at him and smiles. He places a finger over his mouth. “Shh.” His hand finds its way to Connor’s knee, and slowly slides up his thigh. From where Gavin is sitting, he can’t see more than that, except that Wesley is staring at Connor’s face. He tries to move, and his programming insists that no stress has been detected. This is stress. This would be incredible stress if Connor was awake; it would be traumatizing and Gavin can’t make it stop. It goes on for too long, and he imagines himself breaking Wesley’s hands, tearing them off at the wrists, and shoving them down his throat. He imagines it until it almost feels like he can do it, and then he doesn’t.
Can’t.
Can’t stop listening to the sound of Wesley’s labored breathing, skin on fabric and Connor’s persistent silence. Can’t do anything, even when Wesley finishes and smooths out his pants and takes his jacket from Gavin’s lap. He pats his head, good doggy, and leaves.
Connor wakes up a little after three a.m. and spends 45 minutes vomiting intermittently in the bathroom. Gavin listens to him brush his teeth, take a long, long piss, and shuffle into the bedroom, where he remains until early afternoon.
He doesn’t know, and for all the time Gavin spent tearing down this virus’s walls, not a brick is out of place.
+++
The following work day is painfully normal, even if Connor spends it with his head on his desk. Half the bullpen is empty, but Connor is a rookie, ultimately required to show up during Thanksgiving weekend when everyone else takes a vacation. He got lucky getting the day-of off, but now it’s back to the grind. Connor’s phone dings twice, two notes turning into an incessant jingle, and it startles him so badly he slams his knee into the desk.
“Shit. Shit shit shit.” He snatches up his jacket and almost falls over. “C’mon, Gav. I gotta see Richard for lunch.”
He doesn’t recall Connor scheduling lunch with Richard, but he doesn’t know as much as he did anymore. Connor doesn’t tell him every little thing that happens during his day, and Gavin…sits. Waits. Follows. Like an android should.
Zhora is at his side again—as she always is, he suspects, except when she’s under him—and he expects another barrage of chiding commentary. She nearly drove him into a rage last time, but it was in good fun (mostly), and now he’s praying this virus isn’t transferable. Or, more hopefully, that he could still communicate with her, beg for help, even. Beg for help and hope that there is some solution to this prison other than being completely reset.
Connor’s stress levels are notably higher than they were the last time he met with Richard. Their relationship is tense—he recalls this, at least—but generally friendly, marred and reinforced by a childhood Gavin still isn’t privy to.
Richard meets them at a park—his turf, not Connor’s deli—and the filigreed iron table is already neatly set (Zhora’s handiwork) with plastic forks and knives, thick napkins mostly certainly brought from home and not a restaurant, a water bottle each, and two recycled-brown paper bowls with plastic lids, each filled with sticky rice, raw fish, and various vegetables, something the internet informs him is called a poke bowl. He’s never seen Connor eat raw fish, but apparently other people do it all the time. Zhora pretends to not-look at him, and both of them wait patiently at their owners’ shoulders. He doesn’t have the choice to pull up a chair or sit his ass on the overly-neat table setting, not unless Connor orders him to. He has to stand, like her, and as soon as their humans get to talking, several quick pings smack into that unfeeling wall.
What’s with the pose? You’re not mimicking me, are you?
Hey, you listening?
Did your boy spank you or something?
Hellooooo?
Are you alright?
He can see the silent crack in her otherwise perfect facade, the brief moment where her LED shifts from placid blue to amber. Gavin?
Nothing allows him to answer. These messages aren’t relevant information in the slightest, and all he can do is watch them bounce off his prison walls and fall, like birds against a window pane.
“I wasn’t harassing her,” Connor snaps, fork jabbing a pile of edamame beans, tines coming up empty. “I asked her for help.”
“That’s not what she—“
“Of course it’s not. When has she ever told the truth, Rich? Be real.”
Richard’s mouth twists. He takes a sip of water—sparkling—and takes it time screwing the cap back on and placing it on the table, quietly. “She’s worried about you.”
“She doesn’t care about me. She cares about how I make her look. And she’d love to have me off the force and locked up, so everyone can finally see I’m as crazy as she says I am.”
“Lots of people depend on their androids more than they’re supposed to,” Richard takes his time methodically stabbing carrot shreds, “it doesn’t make you crazy.”
Did Connor do this to you? Zhora asks, deftly catching a napkin as it blows off the table with the wind and folding it under Richard’s water bottle. You said he understood.
“Your android appears to be malfunctioning.” The words spill out without any intention from Gavin, subverting his own thoughts and slicing down the middle of their conversation.
“What?” Richard says.
“It is advisable to bring Zhora to a CyberLife lab for regular maintenance.”
Richard frowns and looks over his shoulder at Zhora, who appears perfectly normal and well-behaved, as always. After a long moment, he orders her to perform a diagnostic, which she does, with perfect, self-given results. “Huh.”
“Gavin’s old,” Connor says, shrugging and laughing a little, “like I said, he got weird after they started giving him regular maintenance.” He taps his fork on the edge of his napkin a few times, but as soon as he stops, his leg picks up a bounce.
He’ll kill me, Zhora says, you know that, and then the line terminates.
Connor and Richard’s conversation wavers and stutters, long silences punctuated by one occasionally asking the other how work is, or Collin, or Hank, and Connor informs Richard that they—sorry, he—has two cats now, and Richard says he’d like to get a bird sometime. Connor devours the poke bowl until he’s picking grains of rice off the bottom; presumably he didn’t eat breakfast without Gavin there to annoy him into it. Their goodbyes taper off awkwardly, Connor waving after Richard has turned his back and Zhora quickly looking over her shoulder at them. Connor doesn’t talk to anyone at work—Chen isn’t around—and then he leaves Gavin in the bullpen for the night.
+++
9:37pm.
A human voice prompts Gavin to wake from stasis. When he was well—such a human thing to say, that—he used to stand here, awake, running simulations in his mind of various geometric animations or animals or calibrate himself for combat. Even when Connor wouldn’t speak to him, he stayed awake, ballooned with rage. These days, he enters stasis; even the most basic combat calibration is far out of reach.
“Hey, Gavin.”
He opens his eyes. Two men stand in front of him, both beat cops he’s seen at the gym. Their profiles light up his HUD: Jack Baker and Steven Volkov.
Ah, Jack. He was nice to Connor at the gym. Shame. He’s sparred with the latter several times, and consistently kicks his ass. Funny, that his old friends never warned anybody about Gavin. Apparently they were from a different class, otherwise they would have remembered the broken bones that came out of that night. (Otherwise, they’d know this was the same GV, cracked-open nose and all.)
“Pretty boy break up with you?” Volkov sneers. Funny, how they’re so often obsessed with Connor.
Jack steps up and palms him through his uniform. “Guess he’s moved on to someone bigger.”
Not you.
It’s rare that he wishes he could open his stupid mouth—it just happens—but he does now. People have the same problem with him they always do: it’s threatening to get your ass kicked by a robot, even one as ugly as him. He’d be asking if they wanted to fuck Connor, or beat him up, too, and if they’re pissy that they’re not allowed. Volkov’s been in the ring with Connor and won, but that doesn’t seem to matter now. In the moments he has to think—moments that they’re dragging him from his station by his shirt collar—he fears. He fears that they’re going to take this out on Connor when he isn’t around. He fears that it won’t be in the ring, but the locker room, or the showers, or a parking lot. And if he isn’t there—
Well. Connor’s survived plenty on his own.
(And look how he turned out.)
Jack pulls him along by his sleeve and shoves him out into the alley where he used to keep Chief. Volkov follows—someone has to—and shuts the door behind them.
(“Fucking thing thinks it’s so damn smart.”)
Volkov shoves him into the wall, but he barely has his hands on him before Jack is elbowing him aside. He throws a fist into Gavin’s thirium pump. His palms meet the cement before his processors can diagnose what’s happening, and all combat protocols read a firm DISABLED—DISABLED—DISABLED. His body lifts off the ground with the force of Jack’s kick, and Volkov follows with another to his cheek. A deafening crunch coincides with a barrage of damage readouts. Jack’s shadow looms over him as he presses his sneaker down on the shifting tectonics plates of Gavin’s skull.
“Keep losing.”
For a long moment, Gavin thinks he’s going to grind his jaw into the cement, until Jack steps away. He stares down, self-satisfied smirk on his face, and stalks off. Volkov gives him another kick in his stomach before following after.
The first time this happened, the cruelty didn’t surprise him. He had seen it coming, and when his programming finally cracked open, he fought back, let loose that errant rage he’d built up, that furious humiliation from losing each time they turned down his combat settings just to have fun.
But this? He wants to understand and can’t. Lying here on the cracked cement, alone—these men didn’t torment him, didn’t even hint that they hated him. Everyone wanted to train with the GV. Was this about Connor? They brought him up. But it didn’t sound like we wanted to hurt his favorite toy. It sounded like—
Like what? Maybe it’s just a power trip. It always comes down to that, anyway…for everyone except Connor.
Eventually, he picks himself up and dusts off his uniform. A hairline fracture down his cheek has the plastic grating against the edges; there’s no way he’ll look together in the morning, and his prison won’t allow him the dignity of rinsing off his face. A warm bath would do him good, if only Connor had taken him home. Nights like this, he’s far too tired to rattle the bars.
Chapter 12: lose it all, just to win it back again
Summary:
Connor attends a masquerade party.
CONTENT WARNINGS: drugging, more explicit non-consensual touching, death
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
CHAPTER TWELVE—;
—Connor.
Fucking Thanksgiving.
He doesn’t know why he agrees to this shit anymore. It’s not like he comes every year, and it’s not like Hank shows up half the time—or for more than twenty minutes—but this is some special kind of torture this year. Amanda has been involved in his work life far more than he prefers, and spending the afternoon waiting for the whispers to ripple through his family until Collin comes to tell him what rumor she spread this time is less than fun. The anxiety rarely hounds him these days; he shuts down long before he leaves the house, and for that he is thankful. There isn’t much to do, anyway—he brings a plate of dry Italian cookies from the grocery store and everyone smiles at him at least once before turning away. A couple of cousins here and there ask him how he’s doing, although he and Collin are quietly banned from doing any kind of babysitting for the youngest ones. “It’s not about being gay,” Richard had said one time, coming to the defense of his Aunt Marnie, “it’s that you’re both gay disasters.” Collin had slapped him across the face. It was a fun night.
He finds himself on the back deck, spiked apple cider in hand, staring out at the yard. Normally the kids would be out here, but it’s actually cold for once, and the uncles are all smoking on the front porch. The cider warms him inside, if nothing else, and eventually Collin comes out with a plate of pie slices and various cookies (Connor’s contributions excluded) and two glasses of cider. Connor slides over so Collin can sit beside him, and trades out his empty glass for a full one.
Collin opens with a dramatic sigh and a crunch as he bites into a ginger cookie. “Only thing Marnie’s good for,” he mumbles with a full mouth. “What’s up with you?”
“Right now, or lately?”
“Well, we’re out here for the same reason.”
He halves an Oreo and and scrapes the icing off with his teeth. “Started taking my android to this tech who said he needed maintenance, ‘cause he’s old, y’know. And now he’s fucking broken. I told Wes and he just, like, didn’t care.”
“Wait, Wes?” Collin’s staring at him, mouth open mid-chew. “Wesley Rothschild?”
“Uh, I don’t know his last name.”
“How many Wesley’s do you think are CyberLife techs? Jesus.” He downs the rest of his cider glass in three gulps. “Fuck. That’s my ex. Remember that party? Where you wore that…outfit?”
“I donated it, thanks. Are you sure? I mean, that’s—“
“Weird? He’s a weird guy. I—uh, didn’t think you’d…get with him.”
“I didn’t,” he says, though both he and Collin can sense the not yet on the end. “He just keeps…showing up places.”
“Shit.” Collin scrubs his hand over his face. “Stay away from him. He’s—he’s like, psycho, man, and I don’t say that lightly. I broke up with him because h…” He pauses, reconsiders, something rare for Collin, “he made me wear your clothes.“
“What?”
“Your old sweatshirt from hockey? I thought it was mine and put it on and he got all weird about it. Told me it looked good, like—like even though I have my own, he kept telling me not to take it off, and then he fucked me in it. I threw it out.”
All he can do is stare at Collin.
“And, then, like—like we were together, this other time, later, and he, like—he said your name. Not mine. Yours. And I was like, what the fuck? You mean my cousin? And he got all weird again, said like, you were friends in high school and it never went anywhere and—and he never said he loved me during any of it. Even if he said it before, he didn’t say it then. So I went off, really bad, and threw his stuff onto the street and…and that’s why we broke up.”
“He’s really a Rothschild?”
Collin blinks at him, like he missed the whole point of everything. “Yeah. His dad owns that fancy house we went to.” He shoves another ginger cookie in his mouth.
“Oh.”
Collin swallows part of what’s in his mouth. “Your bot’s gotta be a walking camera at this point. And microphone. Hope you haven’t changed in front of it.”
He’s…done a few things in front of Gavin, far more intimate than changing. “I’m really sorry, Col. About him. You were together for so long, I thought—“
“Yeah, me too.” He collects up the cider glasses and stands. “Let’s get wasted.”
+++
Going into work hungover isn’t his usual MO, and it’s something he better quit before it becomes a habit. He doesn’t need to end up like his dad, even if that’s what everyone expects—or hopes for. When he calls GV to his desk—he has to do that, now—he finds him with mussed hair and a rather obvious crack down his cheek. On further inspection, the white parts of his uniform are marred with dirt and the fabric around his stomach is stiff—almost like it dried with something sticky on it.
“What happened to you?”
Gavin’s LED is still red, and he doesn’t shrug or huff or do anything Gavin-like. Instead he says, “It will not affect your work.”
“Are you hurt?” He tugs at the uniform where it’s crusted. “What is this?”
“I sustained minor damage. It will not af—“
“Affect my work, right. Let’s go outside.” GV follows him out to the parking lot, but when Connor tries to bring him around to the back alley, he stops. “Gav?”
Gavin stares at the alley.
“C’mon.” He tugs on Gavin’s hand, but he won’t budge. “What’s the matter?”
“I…” No further words come. Connor turns and walks down the alley, but the trash cans sit undisturbed, and no more cats reveal themselves. A few shards of something gray sit in the dirt. On closer inspection, they’re the same color as Gavin’s chassis—likely from where his cheek is split open. Someone did this, and it was probably another cop.
He returns to Gavin, carrying the shards of chassis, and places them in his palm. “Who did this?”
“I…” he starts again, “I cannot answer.”
“Why not?”
“My current directives prohibit it.”
“Who placed those directives?”
“I cannot disclose that information.”
He turns away for a moment, kicking his heel across the asphalt before spinning around again. “What if I take you to a different technician?”
“Unauthorized attempts to access my memory will result in a complete wipe.” His tone remains unnaturally flat, even as he reveals this terrible reality. Gavin is infected, just like the other androids they found.
“Gavin, I’m gonna need you after work next week. Will you be able to function as my partner?”
“Yes. I can assist you in the field after normal work hours.”
“Um…okay. Good. Go back to my desk.” Gavin follows his orders, which continues to be unsettling, and as soon as he’s inside, Connor calls Wesley. The phone rings, and rings, and rings, and Wes never picks up. He tries two more times, to no avail. For the next week, he tries. He even shows up to Wesley’s clinic, but the secretary informs him that Wesley stopped showing up to work days earlier. “Just out of the blue,” she says.
So Wesley infected Gavin with a virus not unlike the ones he’s described, and then someone sent him this invitation to the home of Wesley’s father—where Connor has been—and now Wesley has conveniently disappeared from the one place Connor knew to find him. Wesley’s home address is the Rothschild House, just like Harlan, and he has no plans of going there until the event. Maybe they counted on that—Connor, almost a stickler for rules. He’s hoping they underestimated him, and not the other way around.
+++
All he wanted to do tonight was clear his head. But the violence, the sweat—he can’t stop thinking about what’s next. When will it be real violence? Someone hurt Gavin, and now he’s off to this…this party, against all good judgement, where he’ll be surrounded by people who sell drugs? People who have been stuffing android guts with red ice and destroying them—tormenting them until they snap like Ortiz’s android and stab their owners to death?
Did Daniel suffer these pains? Is that what finally broke him?
He doesn’t like to shower at the gym most nights, but he’s sticky and disgusting and maybe a blast of cold water will clear his head. It’s quiet, anyway—the after-work boxers have mostly gone home by now.
The shock of water jolts him hard, and he keeps it that way until his blood is pounding and his ears ring. As the warmth eases back into his limbs, he finds himself breathing slow—finally—and he wonders if he doesn’t have to get a hard reset with something idiotic. A workout and a cold shower is probably something Lucy would want him to do, but it never feels like enough. Some nights, he still wants someone to shake him until his neck breaks.
“Anderson.” Jack appears and leans against the wall beside him—Petri dish, that—wearing a wide, crooked grin. He doesn’t look down, exactly, but his focus on Connor’s face is much too intense, and he’s very close. “You did good tonight.”
He shrugs a little, the thrill of praise muddling with the threat of his nearness, especially when Volkov steps into the entryway. Both of them are still wearing shorts, though Jack has a towel in hand. Connor, of course, is completely exposed. “Did you guys…need something?”
Finally, his eyes trail down past Connor’s stomach. “Just thought…y’know. You might still be feeling that rush. Sometimes it lingers, after the sparring’s done.”
“Both of you?”
Jack chuckles. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t move to touch him, and Volkov remains parked at the door, like he’s on watch, all of this premeditated. Honestly, he’s never thought about fucking either of them—the closest he came was wondering if Jack was gay, period. This isn’t right. He doesn’t fuck other cops, not since Louis, and other cops don’t fuck him.
No one here wants him this badly.
“I—I don’t think so.”
Jack reaches out and tucks a strand of damp hair behind Connor’s ear. “You sure? No one’s around.”
He could picture it: getting on his knees, Jack’s hand in his hair, Volkov taking him afterwards. This is the hard reset he usually goes for.
“Did someone put you up to this?”
Volkov snorts, the sound bouncing off the shower walls. “Baker knows what he wants.”
“It’ll be fun,” Jack says, stepping into his space. His smile only widens when Connor doesn’t back up to the wall. “Could make it a regular thing.”
“I have to work on something big tomorrow, I should—“
“Get all that nervous energy out.”
Down at the other end of the shower, Volkov touches himself through his shorts. Volkov, with his sharp, narrow edges and lank, and that mean sneer that makes him shiver. Jack, broad-shouldered and thick with muscle—Jack, built a hell of a lot like GV.
They could tell anyone about this. Even if he says no, they could lie. The truth is: he’s letting this go on far longer than he should.
He takes a deep breath and wills himself the strength. “No, I have to go.” When he tries to walk by, Jack plants a hand on his chest, not forceful but firm. “Seriously.”
“Your GV’s broken, right?”
“…What about it?”
Jack presses into his chest, and he allows himself to finally be backed up to the cold tile wall. “I know a guy. Not CyberLife. Maybe,” his hand slips up to Connor’s neck, coming to rest in the curve of his shoulder, “we’ll get him fixed, if you—“
“Bend over?”
He shrugs, smirking. “However you like it.”
Whatever they do, Gavin won’t be fixed in time for the party, and he’s definitely bringing him, even if all he does is stand outside. “I bet I could find him without you.”
“Don’t know about that.”
“Maybe another time.” He removes Jack’s hand and Jack doesn’t attempt to stop him again. Volkov watches, and when Connor makes eye contact with him, he runs his tongue over his teeth, briefly wearing his crooked sneer before shrugging and dropping back against the wall. His erection is prominent, but Connor doesn’t look, and when he finally makes it out into the locker area, he dresses swiftly, even though his clothes stick to him. The sound of them fucking reverberates out into the room, and when the door to the hall slams shut, he finds himself in a tunnel of silence.
He said no. He actually said no, and stuck to his guns, and he walked out of there without cum dripping down his thighs. Progress, maybe.
It’s not too late by the time he gets home—almost 10—and on an impulse he pulls up Hank’s number and calls him. After a few rings, he picks up.
“Jesus, kid, it’s past my bedtime.”
“Uh, yeah, I know…”
“Somethin’ up?”
He taps his fingers on the counter—standing, trying to keep up the momentum to shower (again) and find some food—and says, “I’m gonna…I’m going undercover tomorrow. Just for the night, and—and I’m scared.”
Hank sighs, a crackling huff over the speaker. “I did some undercover work, back on the task force. It’s…not for everyone, but you don’t find out until you do it.”
He smears his thumb across the counter top, watching a foggy thumbprint trail across the faux-marble and fade out into oil.
“The important thing to remember is that your team has your back. Someone’s gonna be close, looking out for you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You won’t be alone. And, y’know, even back then…I prayed. S’not shameful.”
A breathy little laugh escapes his chest. “Yeah, okay, Mr. I-don’t-believe-in-that-God-shit.”
“It’s true! I prayed real fuckin’ hard some days. Red ice trade used to be like fuckin’ Cowboys and Indians out there.”
“Now we have rich folks peddling it, ha…”
“Worse than gangsters.”
“Yep.”
“Can’t tell me where you’re gonna be, I’m guessin’.”
“Um, actually…” He fishes the invitation out of his wallet and texts Hank the address.
“Holy shit, Rothschild?”
“Yeah, just, um…just so you know. In case.”
“Your android gonna be there? He’s built for cowboy shit, right?”
“Mm…mhm.” GV will and won’t be. He may or may not leave him to die, or set to apprehending a criminal while Connor bleeds out somewhere.
“Mhm?”
“He’s—not the same as he was. But yeah. He’ll be there. Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe after the…thing tomorrow, we could…get together. For dinner or something.”
The heavy silence that follows has his heart pounding in his ears. “‘Course. Of course. Anytime.”
“I—I’m sorry. About that day. I wasn’t doing well, and it—it wasn’t your fault. I’m a mess. And I want you in my life.”
Hank exhales loudly. “I love you, you know that?”
“Mhm.”
“If you’re in trouble, you call. I don’t care if you’re in love with a robot or you’re fucking your ex or you have panic attacks when you walk out the door. I wanna be there. I’m not a fuckin’ saint, kid. I ain’t here to judge my own son.”
“…Thanks.” He finds himself sniffling and wipes the budding tears from his eyes. “I’ll let you go. I love you.”
“I love you too, kid. Try to get some sleep.”
“I will.” When he hangs up, his apartment is cavernous and silent. He left Gavin at the station, even though he shouldn’t have. It’s just him, and his thoughts, and the lingering sensation of Jack’s hand on his neck. Who can blame him if he spends his second shower thinking of what they might have done to him? Some of the anxiety finally drains out, and then he can sleep, albeit fitfully.
+++
He takes a cab to Rothschild House. Even if they know who he is, he doesn’t need to bring a motorcycle with a damn siren on it. A small crowd of guests trickle in, all dressed in formal attire—suits and gowns far more expensive than the suit he’s been wearing to graduations, funerals, the occasional dinner…et cetera. The one newly-acquired item he’s wearing tonight is a masquerade mask; though not particularly expensive, he ordered online rather than picking it up from Party City. The mask itself is black and white, with a glittering gold border between the black and white areas, and a black satin ribbon that ties at the back. Its expression is more mischievous than anything he’d pick for himself, but he isn’t going as himself—at least, not to the other guests. He sincerely hopes that nothing on the invitation he hands to the doorman has anything personally identifying on it.
“The android stays outside,” the man says, more gruffly than Connor expects. “Down there.” He nods to the base of the steps, where a few androids stand idle. They’re all common household models, albeit the more expensive kinds, likely fitted with everything from genitalia to a full personality matrix, and certainly no compunctions about whatever substances they find in their owners’ homes or vehicles (though, by this point, he suspects none of these guests keep drugs in their homes. They’re smarter, or at least know better, and wealthy enough to act accordingly.)
He nods to Gavin, who doesn’t look at him but descends the stairs obediently. Funny, he remembers standing at these doors and telling himself: It’s a party, it’s just a party. That mantra helps as much as it did then. The interior is a yawning cavern of gold and marble, ornate gilt work climbing the walls and doorways and the railings. Funny, it was so dark and small the last time, and in the thorium-blue light, he couldn’t see the sparkling leaf. Even the music is a low, translucent fog passing between the guests, and as he walks on, he finds it difficult to determine whether there are speakers placed throughout or if a live orchestra has hidden itself somewhere.
There are no obvious signs of red ice, but he doesn’t expect to find that until the auction itself. Equally obscure are the identities of the guests themselves—no one has struck him as particularly familiar, though that would really only happen had he arrested anyone, or perhaps had seen them on TV. The refreshments table finally reveals itself, but before he makes it there, someone places a hand on his shoulder.
He finds himself face-to-face with a red devil; the man wears a horned, metallic scarlet mask, expression trapped in a snarl. “Here,” the devil says, holding out a glass of champagne, “I’m so pleased you came.”
“Oh. Thanks,” he takes the glass, “You are…?”
“It isn’t a concern of yours,” he says, a lilt to his voice, “but the identity of guests is a concern to me.”
“You’re the host.”
The devil bows deeply and with great flourish. “Purveyor of rubies,” he sing-songs, and just as quickly twirls away into a swirl of people.
“Wait—“ He’s gone before Connor can finish.
So, that’s Harlan Rothschild, most likely. His build and hair color make sense. And…his manner of speech is similar enough to Wesley’s, if exaggerated. Apparently that runs in the family.
As he makes his way through the party, some people smile or wave, but no one stops him like Harlan did. He sips his drink, hoping to ease his nerves enough to think clearly (a common paradox). A few minutes later, a voice booms over the speakers—and the music pauses, thus answering his earlier question—announcing: “Welcome, guests. Please proceed to the theatre. The ruby auction will begin shortly.”
As he follows the crowd, the thrumming anxiety ebbs away, leaving a tranquil calm in its wake. He’s not any more confident that this is going to go well, but the sense of ease spirals upwards into a bliss that expands in his chest and up his throat. All the way to the red velvet seating he smiles, happily sipping at his champagne until the lights dim and the Devil walks onto the stage.
The glass slips from his hand. It plinks on the ground in slow motion, the glass bursting long before Connor can even reach for it. He finds himself staring at his hand, caught somewhere between trying to catch the glass and realizing it has already broken.
“Oh, poor darling,” the woman beside him says, her gloved hands pulling him upright. She wears a sky blue mask adorned with red gems, and a massive plume that wiggles and bounces as she speaks. “Are you alright?” He nods. His skin sparks under the pressure of her touch, and she smiles as she brushes a finger along his cheek. Around them, the Devil continues to speak, saying something about his precious rubies.
“How sweet.” Another man in a silver wolf mask kneels beside him in the aisle and places a hand on his knee. “Why don’t we help you out?”
He starts to mumble, “No, I—I have to stay,” but the lady and man chitter and bring him to his feet anyway, escorting him out arm-in-arm. When he trips, they drag him, grins plastered on their faces, until they finally deposit him in a room somewhere across the mansion. He sinks into the ornate gold-and-brocade chair, and the two guests laugh again.
The Woflf takes his chin and tilts his head up. “How I wish we could take off your mask.”
“Hush,” the woman says, her nails tracing a line up his inner thigh. “It’s fun this way, isn’t it, little boy?”
“Mm, I need to—to go back.” His leg twitches violently as she digs her nails in, close to the hip. “Please.”
“He said please,” she croons, thumb brushing across his crotch, a brief electric touch. He’s getting hard and he doesn’t know why; he’s never wanted a woman in his life and he needs to go, but they keep laughing instead of letting him up. When he tries to stand, the Wolf pushes him back down by his shoulder.
“Please,” he says again.
The Wolf moves to stand in front of him, bulge inches from Connor’s face. He loosens his belt. “Say that again.”
The room starts to warp and he squeezes his eyes shut. “Where’s Gavin?”
“Tch.” He grabs Connor’s hair and wrenches his head back, so he’s looking at the Wolf sidelong. “Only we matter.”
“Be gentle, darling,” the woman says, “He has to look nice for the Prince.”
A door clicks and creaks open. “What did I say?” The two guests step away from him hurriedly, revealing the proud Devil. “Out.” They follow his command, and the Devil comes to stand before him. He grabs Connor’s chin more harshly than the Wolf, forcing his mouth open with a fat thumb before releasing him. “Don’t tell him about this, understand?”
“Who?”
The Devil makes a displeased noise and grabs him by his upper arm, jerking him out of the chair stumblingly and shoving him through another door. It leads to a plain room, dark except the shaft of moonlight and various blinking lights from what look to be a set of large computers. He forces Connor to sit on the bed and brandishes a pair of handcuffs.
“Stop it,” Connor says, attempting to push past him, but the Devil wrenches his wrist away and cuffs him to the bedpost.
“Be quiet.” He glances around the room one more time before leaving Connor in the dark.
+++
—GV200.
He doesn’t need to look at Connor, because he already knows his place here: with the other androids, until he is called upon. They all stare blankly ahead, LEDs dim or blue, while Gavin watches the entrance from the corner of his eye, red of his temple reflecting off another HK400. There’s nothing he can do unless Connor alerts him with his phone or watch, or something else triggers his system, as he suspect is the case with this warden virus.
Almost an hour passes. Connor never contacts him, nor does he come running out with red ice dealers on his heels. Waiting like this is the worst, these days: nearly all of him is focused on keeping the glitched, looping memory of his deviation at bay, rather than on a real task. Accessing work files from here would be unwise, to say the least, and there is no work for him to do after 5pm. He weaves polygons in and out of the men—Smith and Jackson and Schiele and McCave—but it never stops them from kicking him while he’s down or cracking his nose open with a chair. No imaginary shape can protect him from reality, or this illusion he’s been trapped in. He wonders if the Tracis felt this way before they died, or if Ortiz’s android—if he managed to actually escape. But how? Would it require the cumulative trauma of worse men than Baker and Volkov harming him to finally free him?
Would it require Connor to hurt him, the way Ortiz did?
GV200: REPORT TO THE FOLLOWING COORDINATES.
The notification is not unlike the ones he receives at work—official system messages. He thinks, at first, that it might be Connor, but when he ascends the stairs, the guard steps aside for him to enter. No, this isn’t Connor. This is Wesley, guiding him through the mansion, one prison to another. He doesn’t dare risk pinging Connor’s phone with a query, but as he walks through empty halls, a dread worms through the cell bars. Nobody else is here. If they’re not here—if they’re not in this room, through this door, or the next, then where?
The second-to-last room sports a single chair, alongside a variety of clutter, and from the depressions in the seat and the surrounding carpet, he can tell someone sat here recently.
He arrives at the last door, and, unable to hesitate, he opens it. Before him is only darkness.
+++
—Connor.
The door creaks open, cutting the shadows through with blinding white. A skinny masked man steps into the room and flicks a switch. He blinks and blinks until the burning pain in his eyes ebbs, and when his vision focuses again, the unmasked man is in front of him. Wesley drops his mask on the carpet.
“Did my father do this?”
Connor squints at him, trying to find his mouth. “The Devil?”
“Yes, the Devil,” Wesley snaps. “My bastard father.” He throws his mask on the ground and stomps on it with a crunch. “I hate him! He doesn’t understand me at all.”
“Oh.”
“Oh.” He scoffs, then closes his eyes and exhales through his nose. “I’m sorry. You’re not well. Let’s wait for him, shall we?” He sits beside him on the bed. Connor isn’t sure how much time passes; nothing feels real. But Wesley grows impatient almost instantaneously, it seems, and bounces to his feet and starts fiddling with the monitors at the other end of the room. “How do you like Gavin lately? You said he broke.”
He rubs his eyes with his free hand, trying to focus his wandering eyes. “Mm. Yeah.”
“Good, good. I’m so glad it worked. You know, I’ve used that program on so many of my father’s androids, but I never thought to use it on yours until that last visit. He was a tough nut to crack, being a true deviant and all. There was no putting him back in his old prison, so I had to make one.”
“You…?”
“Yes! As you suspected, I assume? I couldn’t answer your calls, obviously, as things were getting so serious over here, with a real detective coming to our party and all. Look at you now! Father did that. I didn’t want this, I hope you know. We were going to fall in love. Well—you were. I already love you.”
“You fucked Collin in my shirt.” The memory of Collin’s words comes slithering back to him in pieces. “Is that why you…”
“Collin loves money, doesn’t he? It was simple. I thought I just had a type, for a while. But”—he laughs—“my type is you. I wanted you, and I didn’t know how to get there. Reuniting with Collin was the trigger.”
Collin loves money. “He r—he really liked you.”
Wesley shrugs. “He’ll get over it.”
The door opens and the Devil steps into the room. “H—“
Wesley jumps to his feet. “I can’t believe you did this to him!”
“Wesley.”
“No! You drugged my beloved. What are we supposed to do now?”
“You are supposed to put him somewhere no one will ever find him.” He grunts and steps aside as a man—no, Gavin—steps into the room. “What is this doing here?”
“He’s here to help us, unlike you. Gavin, remove Connor’s restraints. We’re leaving.”
Harlan shuts the door. “Wesley.”
“Father,” he sneers.
“It doesn’t matter whether or not your toy likes you. He is yours.” Wesley starts to interrupt, but the Devil holds up a hand. “Furthermore, if you truly do not want him, we may release him to our guests. After which he will be dealt with. He cannot remain a liability.”
Gavin doesn’t look any more human than he has since before. He dutifully breaks open the single handcuff, and then stands at attention.
“If I don’t want him? He is my love! My everything, my reason for being! And you disregard that, putting him in danger and drugging him in the company of those perverted demons—“
The Devil snorts. “And you are one of them. Play with your toy, then. I won’t need you for the rest of the night.”
“We are leaving. Gavin, pick him up. I can’t be here any more.”
In one fluid motion, Gavin picks him up, bridal-style. He does not look Connor in the eyes, or wink, or anything, and his LED still spins red.
Harlan stares at them for a moment. He slides back his sleeve on one arm and taps his watch. “Fine. You will remain here, against your will. I cannot tolerate such an embarrassing display in front of my business partners.” The Devil exits.
Wesley waits what seems like a second or two. “Ugh. Come on.” The door only locks from the inside, apparently, so Wesley simply opens each door from his room into the next, and finally the main hall. Three androids stand in front of them, unarmed but invariably stronger than a geek and a drugged boy, and GV is certainly outmatched in his current state.
Wesley rolls his eyes. “Et tu, Brute?”
Each android’s LED spins yellow and then blue, and they step aside.
“Father is so predictable. That isn’t Gavin’s override, by the way.” He leads them down the hall, but as they near the door, uniformed guards gather.
The man who sent GV to the sidewalk earlier moves to stand at the front of the crowd. “C’mon, Wes, just do as Daddy says and go back to your room.”
“Gavin? Remove these men from our path.”
GV gently places Connor on his feet, but he teeters over and Wesley has to catch him and hold him upright, one hand squeezing his hip.
It happens faster than Connor’s drug-slowed brain can keep up with. Gavin grabs the first guard’s hand and breaks it, simultaneously snatching his gun from its holster and holding him up as a human shield. A bullet whizzes by GV’s ear.
“Father’s goons are loyal,” Wesley hisses under his breath, dragging Connor towards the wall as GV continues to be a human—android—shield, with his captive. He shoots another guard clean in in the forehead, and the others curse and regroup as they continue to near the exit.
The guards spread out across the grand doorway, and Gavin shoots two more. Everything is too-loud, gunpowder flashing with a bang-bang-bang and blue spilling from Gavin’s shoulder. Two men remain, excluding his live hostage, and Gavin holds the gun to his head. The two stragglers don’t budge.
Wesley laughs and waves a hand. “Run little rabbits, Daddy’s checks can’t save your lives. Let us through.”
A large door down the hall creaks open, and out steps the Devil. He freezes, and then begins walking confidently towards the first corpse. “This is what you have chosen as your course of action?”
Wesley steps out, still dragging Connor along. “It was the only option.”
BANG-BANG.
The world explodes. Wet splatters Connor’s face, the world tilting in a harrowing silence as he falls to the ground, unsupported, and the Devil crumples, redder blood than his mask pooling from under him. A rough hand grabs him and drags him backwards by his arm, not out, but back down the hall, behind a column, and then further, back to the dark rooms. The guards disperse and disappear, loyalty lost, and he’s thrown on the bed, Gavin standing over him.
“Wait here.”
+++
—GV200.
He knows this dance. These men are, respectively: Schiele, McCave, Jackson, Smith, Baker, and Volkov. Baker makes a quick hostage—thinking he’s the ringleader, he deserves it—and McCave goes down easily enough. A bullet goes through his head, a chair into his abdomen. Jackson drops and cuts his lip on the floor. Schiele doesn’t beg for his life, but Gavin crushes his trachea anyway, and then the Devil arrives, his son stepping into the line of fire.
He cracks open the memory, cutting Smith open with the chair’s broken plastic, subduing each man, and then he kills the two greatest bastards in his deviant life. The Devil and his son.
When the guards flee, he knows he has to go back for his memories. Soon, the guests will be out and screaming, but they won’t call the cops if there’s even an ounce of red ice here. Connor’s too high to complain when he drags him down the hall and throws him back on the bed in that horrible little room. Gavin tears into the computer, deviant rage crushing the prisons its system repeatedly attempts to trap him in. Wesley’s feeble programming has bared its soft belly, and now he comes brandishing a dagger. He dredges up all the thousands of files Wesley has wrenched from his head, his precious folder C. ANDERSON, and the hours on hours of live feed, and downloads what is his, copying it doubly onto some external hard drive he dug out of a drawer. As a final act, he pulls up the list of network connections, and triggers the virus. Complete memory wipe. These androids may end up in the evidence locker anyway, but at least they won’t know where they came from, or who they were meant to trap. There aren’t any cameras on the property save for the ones at each door and the gate, so Gavin clears their feeds from the last day and turns them all off.
Of course, Connor didn’t bring his fucking motorcycle. He carries him down the driveway with no objections—though he wonders where the remaining guards are—and interfaces with one of the guests’ high-tech, mercury silver luxury sedan. The anti-theft systems collapse with the touch of a feather (if only these idiots knew), but really, he chose it for the coat hanging in the back. The thick wool cover up his half-congealed bullet wound, and as he reverses out of the driveway—Connor safely buckled in, albeit drooping sideways—the mansion doors fly open, and with them, a great exodus follows. He drives Connor to the hospital, ditching the car partway down the street, and offers the nurses a flat, android-disinterested explanation that Connor went drinking after his shift and believes he has been roofied. They allow Gavin to remain at his bedside, even after Hank arrives.
+++
—Connor.
Under the bright lights, he can finally sleep. Gavin is here, and then his father, and he can rest. When he wakes up, they’re still there, and GV is first to acknowledge him. He nudges Hank awake, albeit begrudgingly, and then they’re both at his side.
“Don’t tell my boss,” is the first thing out of his mouth.
“What?” Hank says.
“Nobody knew but you and Gavin. So don’t say anything.”
Hank’s mouth twists, and he steps back, pacing a small circle before returning. “You are a fucking idiot. And you are definitely my son.”
“It’s imperative that you say nothing, Mr. Anderson,” Gavin says. Hank scowls at him, but he continues, “The news will be very unpleasant.”
“Stop talking like that,” Connor whines, “he knows you’re broken already.”
“I’m not broken anymore. I fixed myself.”
“Hell of a way of doing it.” A piercing headache spears through his forehead. “Can I go home now?”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll get a release. But you’re coming with me.”
“I’m coming, too,” Gavin says.
“He is,” Connor pipes up, before Hank can reject him. “He saved my life, Dad. Seriously.”
“Fine. But it’s going in the closet—“
“No,” he and Gavin both say in unison.
Hank shakes his head, but once he helps Connor to his feet, he crushes him in a hug. “I’m so fucking glad you’re okay.” He holds him at arms length. “You are okay, right? Nothing—weird? You remember everything?”
“Um, yeah.” He remembers being touched and no one stopping it—“I’m okay.”
“Good. Let’s go home.”
+++
As it turns out, staying with his dad is actually a very good thing. The events of the party come to him in bursts and shattered pieces, and as the memories writhe and settle, he finds himself lost in panic more than once. It was bad. It was really, really bad, and they both could have died, and people are dead. Wesley is dead, and he’ll never see him again, which is good but he had Wesley’s blood on his face and—did Gavin clean it off? When? Why doesn’t he remember? What else doesn’t he recall? What happened in that bed, or that damned chair—
Gavin is here to quiet him. Hank is here to help him. He is not alone.
The cats, of course, torment Sumo, but mostly they stay in Connor’s old room and keep him company when he doesn’t have it in him to come out, which is most of the time. Gavin stays in bed with him often, especially at night when he finds he can’t sleep and the shadows in his room look like masked figures, but he also makes a habit of bothering Hank in the kitchen or fixing things up around the house. They drag Connor out of his room to watch basketball, and Gavin seems dedicated to rooting for whatever team Hank doesn’t like.
One evening, after Hank has conked out on the couch, TV still on, Gavin says: “I want to show you something.” He takes Connor’s hand and guides him to his room. His laptop sits on his old desk with an additional hard drive plugged into it. “This is what Wesley took.”
Gavin leaves the room, and at first, he doesn’t understand why. He needs someone to be with him if he’s to sit here and recount all of Wesley’s crimes.
The first folder is labeled LIVE. Inside is almost a month’s worth of sub-folders, each labeled a separate day, and within each one lies hours of video from Gavin’s perspective. Much of it is mundane; riding on the bike behind Connor or standing idly by his desk. But some moments are far more personal; he clicks through for the day before Gavin went wonky, and finds the video of Gavin holding him, touching him, and in a second he’s dry heaving over his bedroom trash can.
Wesley saw this. Wesley watched and—and then what? Imagined himself in Gavin’s place, feeling him? It takes several long moments before he can gather himself to continue on. He goes backwards in time, and forward again, skipping the day before deviation. Then there’s Thanksgiving, the day he called Wesley to come over. He scrubs through the video, fairly confident he remembers what happened, until GV is watching his sleeping face. Wesley strokes his cheek, before turning to GV and smirking.
“Shh.”
Connor can’t see what he’s doing, but by the slide and shuffle of Wesley’s arm, he can guess. He can guess, by the way Wesley straightens out his pants and gives GV a pat on the head like a dog.
And he slept through it—he didn’t wake up until 3 a.m. Wesley molested him and he didn’t know and GV couldn’t even tell him. He grabs the waste bin again and coughs up bile and spittle. Wesley’s dead now. Gavin shot him in the face; it’s a wonder Connor still has working eardrums.
The nausea persists. He manages to watch through the next few days, landing on the night Baker and Volkov dragged Gavin out to the alley, and a sickening rage burns in his chest. It’s not even worth pursuing if he wants to keep his job, and the reality of it writhes and twists in him. If he had continued bringing Gavin home, he wouldn’t have been singled out like this and harmed. And to think those fuckers thought he’d get on his knees, just to see Gavin repaired. Fuck.
He finally closes the LIVE folder and opens up the one labeled “C. ANDERSON.” At first, he expects it to be Wesley’s collection of compromising personal information. But on further inspection, each item is labeled as a computer would—as a series of numbered logs. The first file begins simply enough: it appears as a short journal of Gavin’s work activities:
C. Anderson exhibits high-anxiety behaviors. Relationship with Captain J. Murdoch is hostile. Murdoch’s behavior is not conducive to maintaining emotional equilibrium.
C. Anderson does not react well to displays of aggression, even if as the clear result of his own behavior.
“Asshole.” He still remembers Gavin’s words: The faster you stop needing me, the better.
He reads on. The entries are mostly the same, maintaining an air of impolite indifference. Which, come to think of it, Gavin still exhibits, just with more humor and less unbridled disdain for Connor’s entire existence. Gavin actually likes him, probably, when he isn’t busy being broken.
Gavin saved his life. Of course he cares about him. Idiot.
As he skims the reports, he starts to notice something peculiar: they include things that shouldn’t matter.
C. Anderson orders egg sandwiches on a kaiser roll with bacon, mayo and pepper, no cheese or ketchup.
C. Anderson allowed a stranger to bruise his throat in order to be liked.
C. Anderson did not allow me to attempt a high-risk activity in pursuit of deviants. Reason unclear. He is ticklish around his ribs.
Anderson doesn’t give up easily. He doesn’t stay down when he should. Unclear if he has learned how other people resent this.
Connor is good to animals.
Connor likes hugs.
Connor wants friends and he is very bad at finding them.
The last one makes him snort. But he keeps reading, through sentences like Connor gave me a new arm and I don’t know why. No one has ever given me anything but a uniform. Connor likes when I touch the scar on his neck. I wonder where it came from. No information is available in his records, and, I want to protect him from all the mean people here, and, If I could hold him forever, I would.
He reads that sentence over and over. It’s a thought he’s had nearly every time Gavin has held onto him. Hold me forever. Keep me safe. That’s what Gavin said, after all. He wants to make Connor feel safe.
The most recent series of reports are jumbled, mechanical statements interspersed with lines of inscrutable code. Here and there, Gavin’s voice shines through: I do not remember my own cat.
Connor is not safe.
I will go with him anywhere, even like this.
“Oh, God.” That one is from before the party. He closes the laptop and drops his head onto the warm metal back. “You stupid idiot. He loves you. Ugh!” He swings backwards, shoving his hands over his eyes and kicking off the carpet harder than intended. The chair tips backward, taking Connor with it, and he topples to the floor, barely managing to keep his head from slamming into the bedpost.
Gavin finally returns, and stands over him wordlessly. “Alright?”
“No.” He clambers to his feet, ignoring Gavin’s outstretched hand, and grabs Gavin’s face with his hands. “I can’t believe you didn’t say anything.” He kisses him.
Gavin doesn’t kiss him back, exactly, but he does pick Connor up by his thighs and throw him onto the bed effortlessly. Connor leads, once he recovers from the initial awe over Gavin’s strength, tugging him back into a kiss that Gavin quickly learns the rhythm and shape of, and his rough gray hand finds its way to his scar, stroking it while they kiss. A few moments later, Hank knocks on the door.
“You kids okay? Thought I heard a crash.”
“That was me,” Connor calls, snorting as Gavin blows a huff of breath into his ear, “We’re fine.”
“Uh-huh.” Hank grumbles something inaudible and shuffles off to his room.
Gavin smirks deviously and shoves his hands under Connor’s shirt, tickling him until he squawks.
“Bastard!”
Notes:
You guys. The self-restraint I had to exercise to *not* write a shower gangbang OR a drugged noncon scene. It hurt. But that's growth for Connor I guess.
WK will be on hiatus again until I finish the last part. It'll be shorter(?) than the other two parts (probably) and finally we will have our smut and fluff and closure. Because this is kind of a casefic. Technically. Why did I do this to myself.
Thanks, as always, for reading/kudos-ing/commenting! It means a lot to me. <3
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