Work Text:
He had always liked the fight -not liked as in something that one searches to do for pleasure but liked as in it was one of the few things that felt familiar to him. Returning to it felt like a comfort, it felt like home.
When he was a teenager, dropping to the floor under the weight of his father’s fists, he always thought that one day the struggle would end, that everything would be okay and that he would avoid the fight.
What Gavin did not realize back then was that he’d made a home out of it - out of the fight, out of the struggle and the misery. That he would only end up feeling like himself while he was in the midst of it, thinking about dying, thinking about blood. He dove into his work as a detective because he entered crime scenes filled to the brim with gore, with abused wives and girlfriends -just like his mother- with scared and manic children -just like he had been- with no places left for forgiveness. And it felt like home. He’d reached the point of no return a while ago, though he couldn’t really pinpoint when it had happened. At some point in his life he jumped into shallow waters and started treading through the mud, losing sight of the road next to him, simply because all this shit felt familiar and he knew how to deal with it (did he?).
He’d never stood a chance, Gavin thought - he’d been made into a creature stitched together with good intentions at the time of his conception but he came out askew and life hadn’t quite bent him into shape. He’ll never make it through - but he would keep going through the water, hoping.
Hoping is for idiots, Gavin Reed thinks. Yet here he is, treading the water, day by day.
November 28, 2040
The 900 stands by his side blinking in steady succession. Gavin blows out cigarette smoke over his shoulder while he waits for the machine to take in the crime scene. The rain is steady and miserable and the construction site is losing evidence by the second - nothing anyone can do about nature. Forensics are running left and right trying to construct a tent to shelter the dead body from the rain but traffic’s been diverted due to road works and the rest of the team are stuck at the same avenue alongside the rest of Detroit.
Gavin tossed his leather jacket at the forensics team and they’ve constructed a makeshift cover out of it with shovels, trash bags and Police jackets in a half futile attempt to preserve the integrity of the scene. It’s not the first shit show Gavin witnesses and the public would have a field day if they’d have any idea how many times the Police botches a murder scene. They are all, tragically, so unfortunately human.
He looks at the 900 slightly over his shoulder. One head taller, he towers over Gavin but, being a machine, he doesn’t have that self-awareness tall humans usually have - he doesn’t slouch his shoulders slightly, trying to make himself smaller, he doesn’t walk with measured steps to match everyone else's. When the 900 enters a room, he commands it without the intention of doing so. When he walks or sits down, he fully occupies the space given to him and there’s something about that, about the way he fills the empty gaps around him, that fascinates Gavin.
He inhales the cigarette smoke deeply:
“So?”
“Negative on the traces. She wasn’t killed here.”
Gavin shrugs as he stands there, under the shelter of a small crane, trying to shield himself from the rain, one hand in his pocket, shoulders bunched together as if that helps against the cold.
“I guess now we wait, then.”
“I suppose so, Detective.” The 900 answers in steady cadence.
Gavin likes it there, even if it’s wet and cold but he likes standing in the shadow of the machine next to him. It brings him comfort and he hates it that he admits that to himself.
January 13, 2041
3.23 a.m on a Wednesday finds Gavin smoking at the bar in his kitchen, a glass of whiskey next to the ashtray. He’s been playing the same song for the past two hours on repeat, to the point where it lost all sense and meaning but it covers him like a blanket and the January night is cold and lonely.
He gets like this a lot - he stays up and pushes himself into a self-imposed insomnia frenzy just so he can fall flat on his face later on and sleep for 15 hours straight. It’s been years since time held any meaning to him, and it shows - his face is strained, the deep lines in the inner corners of his eyes have deepened. They fell in line, color-wise, with his scars.
Gavin never took care of the scar across his nose, the one his father gave him when he broke Gavin’s nose one evening that feels like a lifetime ago. It darkened into a stretch of brown that matched his other scars - the ones from the car accident when his father drunkenly drove them home and didn’t stop at a red light because he was too busy screaming at Gavin's mother for one reason or another. His father didn’t die unfortunately, but at least his mother left him.
Gavin never held it against her, he only wished she would have loved him enough to take him along.
January 19, 2041
When Gavin doesn’t want to sleep, when his thoughts overwhelm him and he twists and turns until the sheets on his bed feel like barbed wire, he goes back to work.
There is always some work to do, even if the Police station only functions with a skeleton crew at those strange hours of the night. His colleagues have stopped asking him why he is at work in the dead of the night on his days off, they just nod when they see him and rarely approach him. Gavin has steadily taught them that on such nights especially, he doesn’t want to be talked to. The androids are always there however - autonomy or not, most of them are still happy to fulfil a job and charge up in the docks provided for them there and that is the case with the unique model RK900.
When Gavin waltzes in the station at 2.20 in the morning, his eyes are only searching for the steel and Thirium partner that is most often assigned to him. No one else looks forward to working with Gavin and Gavin himself doesn’t look forward to working with anyone else either. But this specific partnership had worked well for him since a year ago when he was given the option of working with the 900.
The machine rarely talks unless talked to and Gavin can ride his car with the 900 in it for hours in perfect silence. He likes the silence. He likes the silent companionship the machine offers and he often finds it that the android's presence calms down his thoughts.
The 900’s eyes become more aware when Gavin crosses the threshold of the Police station from the reception and the machine’s slight turn of the head doesn’t escape him. The android follows him with his eyes as he crosses the glass-walled area that separates the charging docks from the desks.
Gavin stops in his tracks, face to face with the 900, who almost offers him the hint of a smile:
“What’s up, tincan?”
There’s no malice in his voice.
“Good morning, Detective Reed. Today is your day off.”
Sure, his colleagues don’t ask about his habit of working when he’s not supposed to be working anymore but the machine always does. If Gavin wouldn’t know better, he’d say the 900 actually gives a shit about his well-being.
“It is. Do you wanna solve some crime with me anyway?” Gavin grins. It’s fake and his upbeat attitude is tired and worn out around the edges. But a machine can't tell.
“What are we looking into?” The android asks as he pulls himself away from the charging dock. He always makes direct eye contact, which is unnerving for Gavin, who only does it when he wants to fight. A year into their partnership, almost two years into android deviance and he wants to believe he got used to it but he really hasn’t.
“Let’s do some paperwork for the bar brawl last week, that was a fun one.” Gavin waves the 900 over his shoulder, in the general direction of his desk.
The morning light finds them hunched over Gavin’s computer screen, the android’s arm holding onto the back of Gavin’s chair, his other hand propping his weight on the desk. When Gavin leans back, he is enveloped in the scentless presence of the machine behind him, something that still takes him by surprise, that lack of warmth the human presence usually gives out when in close proximity to another. But it is a presence none the less.
He could lean back and fall asleep like that, he thinks. He could have a dreamless sleep under the shelter of the android’s body, die between those arms too and he feels peaceful about that thought. Strange thing, to be so alone that even the proximity to a machine that plays at being human makes you yearn for its touch.
“Detective?” Gavin comes out of his reverie and turns his head over his shoulder, looking up at the android. His eyes pierce into Gavin’s like icy needles that look like they know everything Gavin is trying to hide. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”
“You drifted away for a moment.”
Gavin waves the issue away with his hand, shaking his head “It’s just lack of sleep.”
“It is your day off, you can go home and sleep if you don't feel well.”
“I don’t want to sleep, it’s fine.”
“Detective Reed-”
“I said it’s fine!” The reply slashes through the air, hissed and sharp. Following it, something unexpected happens - the hand of the android, the one resting on the back of Gavin’s chair, slips over and to Gavin’s shoulder. It doesn’t squeeze, it doesn’t do anything, just rests there, reassuring almost, completely present.
“Alright, Detective.”
It’s slightly warm, Gavin can feel it through his sweater. They don't warm up their hands unless they have to, for some medical reason or another, or to comfort humans - and usually that is an application reserved for pleasure androids, or for those who work with children or in the medical field. He had no idea the 900 could do this. The android’s fingernails shine in the low light, created to perfection, his long, slender fingers wrap around his shoulder easily.
He likes that hand on his shoulder, he likes the weight of it. He likes the way the metal skeleton moves beneath the synthetic skin, like another life beneath a life. He lets that hand linger there as he talks, until he can’t deal with it anymore and he runs outside to the smoking area. The android doesn’t follow.
When Gavin takes out a cigarette from his pack of Marlboro, he realizes his hands are shaking.
January 28, 2041
Gavin doesn’t stop the engine, the android usually gets out by himself, wishes him a good night and they both go separate ways. It’s 11.10 at night and it’s been snowing all day. Gavin warmed up the car but he can still feel the cold in his knees and back, like the ice had made a permanent home between his bones. The car crash he'd experienced in his childhood had made his bones sensitive to the cold but it's one of those things he just learned to live with. Much like his psyche, his body had not healed quite right.
“Will you be going home, Gavin?” The android asks, turning his head to the side, gently almost.
Even Gavin can tell the machine is making an effort to subdue its tone, to talk beneath the noise of the traffic, and it strikes him as terribly strange. It’s such a shock to Gavin he forgets for a second that the 900 is not flesh and bone.
“What’s it to you?” Gavin stumbles through the words.
“Are you going to see someone?”
Gavin cocks his head to the side, frowning: “Excuse me?”
“What I mean is - if you are not, I would like to join you.”
“I’m gonna go drink myself to sleep in my kitchen, if you really have to know. To my knowledge, you don’t drink.”
“I don’t. But I would like the companionship, if that is alright with you.”
The companionship? Gavin is trying to wrap his head around that statement as the headlights of all the cars out on the road cross over the android’s face. Taking queue from the silence between them, the machine speaks again. His tone is measured and calm: “I understand that what I might be feeling can be classified as loneliness. It happens during the night, when almost everyone is gone or when I am on standby and you are away. I would like to try to not be alone for a while.”
“And you would want to not be alone with me.”
“You’re the only person I have been close with all this time, Gavin. Everyone else avoids me and you’re the only one who works with me.”
Gavin almost opens his mouth to spit out something stupid but stops himself in time. It’s rare he does that so he just turns the steering wheel to the left and starts to drive back home.
January 29, 2041
The apartment is cold - Gavin can’t afford to heat it all the time, so he relies on layers of sweaters, socks and three blankets. He doesn’t deal well with the cold but at this point the winter’s sharp bite has become nothing more than another part of this miserable life he has to put up with.
The 900 trails in Gavin's shadow, stepping inside the small studio apartment with what might even be a curious glance that he only notices in passing. Gavin hasn’t allowed anyone in his apartment for God knows how long. It’s his sanctuary, the little bubble that keeps the rest of the world at bay but he admits to himself that the reason why the android is there is because the 900 is work too. The machine stepping in tune with him across the tiny hallway brings along the horrors of their work, all the grime and gore that comes with it, which means that the 900 is a comfort to Gavin too- that he is a home too, in a way.
He turns on the lamp next to the bed - across from it, the small bar that separates the bed from the kitchen with only a small carpet in between, is already set up with yesterday’s whiskey. Gavin drowns down the last few stale drops left in his glass and pours himself a new one. His leather jacket gets tossed on the back of the chair.
The android stops at the corner of the hallway, steps away from where Gavin is checking his almost empty fridge. He can feel the android take it all in and he lets him - he lets the 900 check his entire vinyl collection with just one glance, he lets him see beyond the open closet door, see he only owns a handful of clothes, see he’s only been eating noodles for the past week and that he has three different types of coffee on the kitchen counter.
Gavin doesn’t really know how the mind of an android functions but he figures all the information the 900 is gathering about him is processed in a few seconds and stored safely somewhere in a drawer in that mind of his.
He turns the music on - he always has it on at home, the same playlist, filled with obscure songs that talk about obscure things. It plays in the background relentlessly until Gavin can’t even hear it anymore. It accompanies his dreams, his morning coffee. Fills in the empty spaces in between his breaths, the echoes of the things he can’t rid himself of.
Gavin brings the glass to his lips, looking at the 900 standing there, searching the corners of his small apartment with those icy eyes. They’d assigned a name to him, Gavin remembers, but the machine never uses it, unless prompted to and Gavin never uttered it either. He finds it ridiculous.
“Are you going to stand there all night?”
The android turns his attention towards him and blinks once, purposefully almost, measuring Gavin up and down the same way he did when they first met. It takes him a moment to make a decision and he sits down on the other side of the bar, hands folded one on top of the other next to the whiskey bottle. His body fills the space again - Gavin's small studio apartment suddenly looks like nothing but a feeble cage that is trying to contain an animal much larger than it was intended for. But this beast, in spite of the space it occupies, is subdued.
“Is this better?”
Gavin shrugs as he sits down facing him: “It’s weird to just stand there. You wanted to come join me, might as well make conversation while you’re here and not look like my bodyguard while at it.”
The whiskey goes down his throat and it burns him. It’s pleasure and it’s pain, drinking hard alcohol, but Gavin doesn’t love himself so his self-destruction is a tacit understanding between himself and a body he doesn’t relate to anymore since a long time ago. He’s an empty shell and he thinks that is the reason why he and the 900 got along so well - no matter his deviance, the machine across from him is still just a shell of wires and liquid. Gavin learned a long time ago that feeling any other emotion save for emptiness is a waste of time.
The glass is halfway up to his lips when the 900 speaks:
“This is a thing I am not used with-” he stops himself for a moment, the first time in a year Gavin’s seen the robot falter, scramble for words “This is a thing I don’t like,” he corrects himself “this empty talk. The way humans dance around words and the things they mean or don’t mean. It’s hard for me to catch on to metaphors. It’s difficult to understand subtext and double meaning.”
Gavin swallows and nods, confused: “Alright…”
“I will speak openly.”
He nods in the direction of the android again and gives him the green light to do so by pointing the glass in his direction.
“I like being around you.” The android drops it without any decorum. Gavin doesn’t know how to hide his shock so he just sits there, still as stone. “I am happy, I think is what I feel, when you come in to work when you shouldn’t and I am happy when you talk to me. I am happy in your presence and I think it’s because, to use your own words, you don’t ‘bullshit your way’ through conversation.”
Gavin got that - it was one of the reasons why he felt comfortable with the machine too. There were no embellishments. Gavin didn’t have the patience for them and in most people's eyes, that made him an asshole. Admittedly, he could be nicer about it, but he'd lost the patience for that a long time ago.
“What I fail to understand is your role regarding myself.”
Gavin doesn’t understand if this discussion is going in the direction he thinks it is or if he is just imagining it. He reaches for the crumpled pack of cigarettes in the back pocket of his jeans and fiddles with the lighter. His hands are shaking.
He inhales the smoke looking at the glass and then exhales it towards the ceiling.
“What do you mean?” He asks.
The android’s hand moves fast and it touches Gavin’s face carefully, like he’s something fragile (he is). It takes him by surprise so much he forgets to flinch away.
“What happens inside you when I do this?” The machine asks and he asks it honestly. The question hangs in the air pure and filled with grace, untainted by expectations.
“I don’t understand what you mean.” Gavin says, but he does and he hasn’t been touched by another person or a machine, in years. The hand is warm and keeps warming up on his cheek to the same temperature a human’s hand would. He can feel all of himself shake and he can’t stop it, he’s shivering as if he is very cold but he isn’t.
Deep down inside, at his very core, this touch and the promise it carries with it terrifies him.
“You search for me, I think. You chase my shadow every time we are close and you hide in it. You look at my hands often like they’re something you want but you never touch them. You search for me first whenever you enter the station and when we are in a group of people, your eyes address me first, even if you speak to everyone. I don’t understand it completely, but I think I do.”
Gavin’s throat is filled with words, all of them ugly and he stifles them with a long drag out of his cigarette. He brushes the android’s hand away from his face but his gesture barely carries the malice he initially intended to bring with it - it only looks tired. The 900 allows it and his hand rests back on the bar, fist half clenched. He looks at it with a frown and then looks back at Gavin.
“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Gavin clears his throat, exhales the smoke “and you sound weird. I didn’t know you could talk like this.”
“Like what?”
“Long sentences.” Gavin chuckles at his own joke but he knows it’s not funny right now. The silence stretches uncomfortably.
“Do you want me?” It drops like a bomb in the tight space between Gavin’s whiskey-filled glass and the ashtray “When I ask this, I mean lust. Do I bring you comfort?” His voice is terrifyingly smooth, soothing almost. The next question flows like honey, like a melody to Gavin’s ears, that’s how tender it is: “Do you want me to?”
If he says no, things will change - inside him. If he says yes, things will also change - for both of them. How does he maintain the status quo? How does he keep this from happening? He knew the 900 had thoughts of his own but he did not assume they were this deep; he never assumed they would probe so far into his own psyche, he never assumed the machine was even watching him in that way.
The seconds pass and when Gavin doesn’t deliver, the android leans in across the bar, towards his face. Gavin doesn’t give in, he stands his ground, dark eyes against bright ones. They are ice but ice in the sunlight, ice with life in it, shimmering into consciousness under the arctic light of spring.
“Do you want me to?” The android repeats in a whisper “Because I do.”
Gavin’s body yells, shudders beneath his skin, yearning, reaching. But his mind holds the fort, keeps the walls up. He is a fortress, he’s always been but he is also derelict and empty - its inhabitants long gone, dead from starvation and mad with isolation. He’s analysed him well, this android - he knows him well, this machine, because he understands Gavin doesn’t have it in him to make a move so it’s the 900 that moves his hands up and places them on his face.
The kiss is strange - the mouth that meets his is cold but it warms up quickly. The tongue is smooth and it feels slippery almost, but it’s not unpleasant. The android’s lips are softer than Gavin would have ever assumed they could be, though he’d wondered many times how they’d feel to the touch. He often imagined just pressing them with the tips of his fingers, tracing their curves, one end to the other.
“I will speak openly. Reply truthfully.” Gavin says, mellowed from the kiss, the cigarette burning itself out between his fingers. The 900 doesn’t move away, not completely at least, they’re one breath away from each other as Gavin speaks: “Are you afraid?”
“Of what?”
“Of this.”
The android takes a moment, eyes locked onto Gavin’s and Gavin can feel the lie form on the tip of his tongue. But he hears the truth come out instead:
“Yes.”
So is he - he is terrified. And he can’t stop shaking. A part of him wants to cry - the other wants to rage. He chooses neither and kisses the machine again. Blindly, he puts the cigarette out, drops it in the whiskey glass and reaches out for the synthetic man on the other side of the bar like he’s clinging on to him for life. And perhaps he is, who knows?
And why does it even matter?
He’s long been past the point of no return and he’s kissing a life without a life but which is still more alive than he himself has been in a long time.
When Gavin opens up his eyes, it’s still dark outside. The holographic watch on his night stand states it’s 3.45. The streets beyond his window are quiet and he can see the yellow neon lights shimmer beyond the curtains. Next to him, the weight of the android presses into the mattress Gavin only has one pillow and the machine lays in what Gavin can only guess is a self-imposed stasis with its head tucked over its arm. Its LED light shines in red, settles into yellow and then in the familiar, peaceful shade of blue.
“Are you dreaming?” Gavin asks the shadows, not expecting an answer in return.
“Not really.” Comes the reply. The android smiles and opens its eyes, finding Gavin’s face in the dim light “I was watching you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Replaying the previous hour.”
“You recorded all that?”
“It’s a memory.” A pause, then a realization: “I can delete it permanently, if you want me to.”
Gavin wants him to. Who knows how that ‘memory’ could be used against him someday?
“You can keep it, if you want to. But you have to delete it when this is over.”
“When what is over?”
“This.” Gavin lazily moves his fingers in their general direction.
“Doesn’t this mean we will stay together?” Comes the question. A slight frown, the LED turns yellow for a moment.
Gavin turns away from him and lays on his back, staring at the ceiling “Things end.”
“I am not human, Gavin. I may have emotions similar to yours but they are constant.” Gavin turns his head towards him but doesn’t ask the question. The 900 continues: “I don’t know if this is love, but if it is, it will stay the same. Machines don’t falter. We are perpetual in our -” he scrambles for the word. Finds one but decides against it. It takes him a moment before he says: “in our devotion.”
Gavin puts both hands on his face, rubbing his eyes to the point of pain. He tries not to pull them out and simply covers his face, sight swallowed by the darkness. If he allows hope in, if he lets love slither between the hollow places of this apartment, the aftermath will devastate him. The body next to his own is a machine. But he’s the only one he’s spoken truthfully to in the past ten years.
“How am I supposed to love you if I don’t even love myself?” Gavin asks the darkness. His heart beats once, twice. The silence feels surreal and endless. He shouldn't have said that. It's weak.
The darkness puts two hands around Gavin’s wrists and gently pulls those hands away from his face. The circular LED shines a serene light, shimmering across ice blue eyes that search for Gavin’s dark ones, and there is, in spite of what Gavin had always believed, tenderness in there.
“I don’t know if this is love.” The machine repeats. Gavin can see the million ways the android can be cruel in those eyes and he can also see life and patience and the infinite gentleness the machine next to him is capable of. “But if it is, if I love you enough, maybe you will too.” The android says, locking on to its new purpose.
Gavin doesn’t want to burden other lives with his own - with his dirt and all the shit that overflows from his mind and his heart. He’s been there before: discarded and cursed at for all these things in his mind he is not strong enough to control.
But the android beside him is a tall wall, a heavy shadow, heavier than all the other shadows Gavin’s searched for shelter under and this weight, with its soft lips that kiss him relentlessly, hungrily almost, promises to hang on. To heal.