Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“And here it comes”, Gavin said, not sure if he was more tired or angry.

Brown across from him sighed: “Come on, Reed, you gotta get used to the plastics one day.”

“Oh yeah? You think that is just another plastic?” Gavin pointed at the new model walking in, slightly behind Anderson’s pet, eerily similar looking, apart from the eyes, jaw line and jacket. “That, my friend, is the beginning of the end of our careers.”

He leaned back and crossed his arms, glowering at the two detective models saying hello to Anderson, who - coward that he was - fled the scene as soon as he could.

The two plastics chatted with each other. Androids making small talk with each other, what a joke. Like roombas beeping at each other to signal that there was an obstacle in front of them.
Then they walked into Fowler’s office, and the hair at Gavin’s neck started standing up.

He did a quick mental headcount and sank deeper into his seat.
He knew Tina was a good partner, too good to waste on him, and Brown was keen to work with one of the assistant androids, to ‘get with the times’, God help the idiot. Which meant Callisto would be free to work with Tina, clearly dream team material, which left him in the winds, prime target for-
Fowler was waving him in.

Gavin kicked his chair back and walked over as calmly as he could. He did not want to make a scene like Anderson regularly did. He had not sunk that low yet.

He closed the door behind him, turned towards the captain and said:
“I’d rather quit.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say!” Fowler lied.

“I don’t need a new partner, I have Tina!” It was desperate and stupid, but he really really didn’t want to stand next to them and watch closely as the new robotic overlords took over his job, being fucking better at it than him.

“You have nothing to do is what you have!”
That was not true. He still had a few things to check out and, well, file away...

Connor mumbled to Connor 2.0: “Detective Reed is assigned all human-only crime scenes.”

Fowler pointed at Connor and added: “Of which there have been how many in the last few weeks? Hmm?”

Gavin crossed his arms again and looked down. It wasn’t fair. Ever since he’d missed his chance to be on the Red Ice task force, his trajectory had been stuck.

“NONE!” Fowler bellowed. “You have nothing to do! You are the most underutilized tool in my box, and-”

What the hell, that went too far! “I am not a tool! I’m a fucking person!”

Fowler lifted both hands. “You’re a brilliant waste of space is what you are!”

Okay then, quitting it was. Gavin stood to go. He would not make a scene. Maybe he wasn’t brilliant or anything, but he didn’t have to take insults lying down.

Fowler snarled: “Don’t you fucking dare! You’ve seen the bullshit we have to deal with now, and you know we need all hands on deck!”
That much was true, and Gavin might not be a team player, but he was also not one to let the squad down.

“Fine!” Gavin turned around again. “Fine, I’ll join the android crime unit! Might do me some good to see a few of them wasted!”

“Gavin…” Fowler sat down heavily. Good, maybe he saw the error of his ways. Gavin was not a good partner for an android. Although he’d seen a few cases come in that looked intriguing... well, fuck it.

He crossed his arms again. “...sorry”, he bit out. “Fine. I’ll talk to Tina, and we’ll take android cases.”

“That is not a concession you’re making”, Fowler said. “I could have ordered you to do so weeks ago. Reed, you’re a brilliant detective. Act like it.”

Gavin felt his cheeks flush but knew it generally didn’t show very quickly, so he hoped it didn’t show at all right now. Fucker had to go back from insults to calling him brilliant, did he?
“Okay, okay! I will!” Anything to end this conversation.

“Chen will partner with Callisto, since Bernhard wanted to try the Assistant combo. You will partner with Hunter.”
Just as he’d expected. Apart from one detail.

He glanced at Connor 2.0. “That’s its name? Hunter?” What was Cyberlife thinking, really?

Connor 2.0’s little snitch LED turned red, and Gavin wondered if it was insulted or also didn’t like its name. Since androids had feelings now and all.

It went yellow, then red again, switching back and forth, pulsating wildly. The light eyes narrowed slightly, and although the two plastics were off height, 2.0 seemed even taller, looking down on Gavin.
Looking right through him into all of his secrets. It was spooky as hell.

Gavin snorted: “Deviants. Fucking hell.”

Fowler said: “He’ll have a badge of his own by end of this day, so that’ll be Detective Hunter. Your new partner. Got it?”

Gavin stared at Fowler. That had to be a joke. “Just like that?!” It had taken him so long and so much hard work to get a badge, and these Ken dolls jumped out of their blister packs with badges as accessoires.

Fowler said: “Or you hand in yours. I’d rather not stare at a brain like yours without being able to use it for good. So either you get a grip or you find a different job.”

“How?! Androids have taken them all!” There was no way Gavin would give up being a cop, ever. Even if he had to quit this precinct.

Anderson’s pet started saying “Actually-” but Hunter put a hand on his arm and shook his head slightly. Then he turned to Gavin and said:
“Let’s give this a try at least, Detective.”

He did not sound like Connor at all. The voice was similar, sure. The same roughness and eerily human imperfection. But deeper, firmer.
It instantly turned him into an individuum.

Gavin had no idea how to react. Before he could pull himself together, Hunter nodded at Fowler and asked: “Do we have a case?”

“Hundreds. It’s choose your own adventure time in the bullpen.”

Hunter nodded, then turned to go, and actually held the door for Gavin. No. Just, no.
He slapped his hand away and snarled: “I can do that myself!”

They went over to his desk directly, Fowler behind them already calling in Tina. She threw Gavin a look as she passed that said clearly that she’d done the same math and felt sorry for him, but not as sorry for herself. Well, he got Hunter, while she got her future girlfriend to work with, if she played her cards right.

Gavin threw himself into his chair and pulled up the android caseload. Hunter was coming around the table to stand behind him.
It was so fucking strange how alike he and Connor looked… and how not alike at all. While absentmindedly checking for the cases that had seemed connected at first glance, he pondered if this was like with him and Asians.
He hadn’t been able to tell Asians apart as a teen, at all. But it had taken only two movies and three seasons of a sitcom starring Asians, and suddenly he could even tell if they were like, Japanese or Chinese or mixed. As if a switch had been moved from Off to On in the back of his brain.

Maybe one day they’d all be able to tell apart all the sales bots as well.
He glanced at Hunter. On the other hand, Hunter was a different model, apparently.

One that liked to loom behind him. He could feel his neck hair start to stand up and his shoulders tighten.
Gavin chose a good example case and decided: “That’s us.”

Hunter asked: “...why?”

Gavin already had enough of it.
He pointed to the file and said: “No android needs to steal parts yeah? So the perp was a human. Now, I saw several similar break-ins in the list already. Be a good robot and compile them. They’re probably connected in some way. Then cross-reference them with the sex offender registry, the one for spousal battery, and medical professionals.”

Hunter didn’t react at all. Gavin added: “Are you already doing it? No? Then get a move on!”

The android had the gall to say: “This sounds like a very random list of orders. I will not assist in merely making us look busy.”

“It’s not random, dipshit.” Gavin frowned at the file and hoped to God he was wrong. “I know the type and I have a hunch.”

He stood up and brushed past Hunter, intending to shove him a bit, like he’d shoved Connor so often by now, but it was like hitting a brick wall. Gavin barely kept himself from stumbling back, while the fucking plastic simply kept on watching him.

Gavin snarled: “Know what that even is, huh? A hunch? Hunt this one down, Siri, I’ll enjoy a donut in the meantime!”

At least humanity was still better at pattern recognition, apparently.

Tina had walked to the breakroom, not even throwing him a glance, but clearly waiting for him.

“My condolences”, she greeted him. “Let’s drink a toast to your late career. It had been ailing for a while, so maybe this is a blessing, for it to finally pass on peacefully.”

“Want some coffee in your face, bitch?!”
She had already pulled him a cup, and he cradled it between his hands.

She smirked: “I’ll have to restock the popcorn…”

“It’s just an android. Couldn’t even see some basic connections between cases even when I pointed them out to it.”

“Sure. But they can learn.”

Gavin let his head hang. “Yeah. Congrats on scoring Callisto.”

“I wish.”

“You will, come on. The moment she sees you in action, she’s a goner.”

“You’re such a romantic.”

“Fuck you!”

Tina’s grin faded slightly as she looked behind Gavin, where Hunter now stood in the entryway.
“Let’s go”, the plastic said.

Gavin snorted. “Yeah, you don’t order me around, pal.”

Hunter nodded. “Suspect’s a plastic surgeon, lootings in walking distance of his address, break-ins well within range as well, restraining order of last girlfriend is active, and he was a regular at the Eden Club.”

Gavin snickered: “Plastic surgeon? Oh boy, can’t decide which pun to make first…” He threw Tina a glance, who rolled her eyes.

Hunter seemed not amused, probably hadn’t installed any humor. He repeated: “Let’s go.”

Tina called after them: “Have fun!” Gavin flipped her the bird without looking back.

In the car he finally clued in to the most amazing detail of what Hunter had reported: “Wait, Eden Club collected data? I thought they weren’t supposed to do that!”

“They didn’t. But the hosts and hostesses have memories.”

That… was beautiful. Gavin stared at the android and with rising delight, and tried to imagine the sheer panic spreading through town once that bit of news broke.
“Oh holy shit!” Those perverts had it coming, but it was also a good thing Tina would restock the popcorn. Justice and entertainment. Perfect.

“You’re not on the list”, Hunter said out of the blue.

“Why on earth would I be?!”

The android shrugged, eerily human in its movement, and said: “I analyzed the way you look at me. And Connor. You’re clearly sexually interested in androids. Why not rent one, ever? Even just to try it?”

Okay, sure the plastics were attractive, that was by fucking design though and had nothing to do with Gavin’s tastes. And he sure as hell would never fuck one!
“What the fuck?! I’m, I’m not fucking interested in you! Eeeww! No!”

Another shrug, then silence. Gavin crossed his arms and sank into his seat, trying to shake the thought of android sex, which really, really had no place here.

After a long moment, Hunter asked: “What did you mean when you said ‘You know the type’?”

“Well, perverts who rent androids to get off! It’s pathetic!” And he was so not sexually interested in plastics.

“Then why the battery charges and sexual offenses against humans?”
Really bad at actual detective work, it was a relief. Although yeah, how long would it take them to catch up? Especially if Gavin kept on explaining shit.

He’d known this would happen. The moment he’d take up android cases, he’d seen how fucking perfect those machines actually were by now, and also met far too many of Elijah’s pals.
“Guys like that don’t see humans as people either. There’s only themselves and everybody else is a machine, either plastic or flesh and bone, but slaves to their programming either way.”
God, he hated the type.

“Sociopaths.”

“Nah, not all of them. It’s just the notion of humans as” - Gavin threw up air quotes - “‘Fragile machines’. No souls, no nothin’ else. You feel somethin’? That’s just your brain chemistry reacting to stimuli. You’re a… a slave to… to your own... body.”
He’d see how well he’d make it through this one case, but he really wasn’t sure he could dive into Elijah’s shit again.

He’d tried to take him down again and again, and nothing ever worked. The man was fucking teflon.
At least Gavin was a good cop in general, even if he’d never catch his cousin.
He really didn’t want to leave his own town, but… well.

One case.
And then he was going to take a long hard look at his options.

Chapter Text

Gavin had known the moment they had the address, but seeing the villa basically confirmed it: Dr. Hertle was a sick fuck.
No decent human being took up this much space just to demonstrate their own wealth and status. The house could have been nice, Gavin supposed. Maybe with like, four mountain bikes up front, or the lawn torn up by a playful dog or something. At least a cat on the porch.
But it was pristine and… dead.

He rang the bell, steeling himself to deal with one of those guys.

Hunter standing behind his shoulder just an inch too closely did not help Gavin’s mood.
Of course Elijah would fuck up the settings for personal space. Made total sense.

Out of the blue, Hunter said: “I think there’s an android screaming outside of human hearing range.”

Gavin turned to stare at him. “What?!”

“As if the voice emitter had been deactivated, but the android is still trying to scream.” Hunter’s LED was stuck on yellow.

“Jesus! Well, screams noticed!” At least now he was legally allowed to kick in the door. “Stay behind me!”

He drew his gun, safety dutifully on for now, and methodically went from room to room.
Hunter stopped in the hallway for a moment, cocked his head, then walked through the kitchen out the backdoor.

With a “Hey!” Gavin followed. The plastic had heard screams out of his hearing range, so of course he would know where they came from. Nonetheless. Solid F in communicating your intents to your partner.

There was a workshop in the corner of the backyard, surrounded by rose bushes and neatly trimmed flower beds. It was painted dark red, in a color matching the bricks of the villa.
Gavin’s imagination was already filling it with a robot torture chamber, or at least some kind of fetish outfit. Utterly typical shit, this.

He jerked his chin in the direction of the glorified shed and lifted his eyebrows at Hunter, who nodded, but gestured at the thick wooden door. Team communication already improved. Fucking fast-learning plastics.
Gavin nodded back and took up position.

Hunter kicked in the door with a crash, and Gavin called out: “Detroit police, don’t move!”

Immediately, shots were fired, and even though Gavin had a good vantage point, he didn’t even see Hunter move, much less dodge the bullets, the android was just suddenly over there, punching the perp out. Hertle crumbled, and Hunter absentmindedly disassembled his weapon, then let it fall onto the countertop Hertle had stood by.

Gavin whispered: “Holy shit”, and slowly straightened up from the automatic crouch.
He looked around, taking in the rest of the scene. An android body was hanging from the ceiling, without legs, but with six additional arms, not moving at all.

Gentle, low music was playing from hidden speakers. Gavin went over to the control panels that also showed security cameras - Hertle had his back to those when they’d kicked in the door, pure luck on their part - and shut the music down.

He could see more android parts, but no other torso or head, which meant this counted as only one victim. Although, who knew how many the sick fuck had played with and then discarded before.

Hunter was standing in front of the vic, looking up at her. He’d snapped his fingers, now he reached forward to put his hand on the chest above her breasts, over her heart, and his hand and her chest turned white, skin deactivated.

“Yo, Hunter, what are you doing?”
Gavin frowned and went around the other side of the workshop, to look for other victims, but also to get a look at Hunter’s LED, which was a pulsing, steady red.

From one moment to the other, Hunter’s previously always cool calm and collected expression stretched into one of pure and immediate pain, teeth exposed in a defensive snarl. The he hissed and pulled his hand back.

Gavin jumped around the table between them and made sure Hunter didn’t stumble backwards.
“Hunter!”

Hunter’s face turned back to slightly-too-cool-for-expressionless, as he blinked at the vic again. Then he lifted his hand to open her chest chassis.

“Stop!” Gavin said. “Wait, you’re not-”

With a sharp jerk, Hunter pulled out her pacemaker thing, and her LED started blinking. It had been solid red so far. But now there was the cold certainty spreading through Gavin’s belly, that the frozenness of the colour had not meant that she was actually… out.

He asked, barely keeping his voice from shaking: “What are you doing?”

Hunter took a deep breath and turned to stare at Gavin, who could only helplessly stare back. The android looked truly shaken, eyes even brighter than normal, and Hunter took another deep breath. Androids didn’t need oxygen.

He’d connected to the vic, hadn’t he. Jesus, what had he seen? Gavin glanced at it and saw her LED flicker to yellow, then out. Holy shit.
“You killed it!”

“Her”, Hunter corrected. Then shook his head. “She can be rebooted, but she needs professional help that I cannot provide.”

Okay, Gavin could work with that. “Oh, so, she’s just what, in stasis?”

“No, she’s dead, but she can recover.”

Gavin still had a hand on Hunter’s arm, which he now pulled back. Fucking typical plastic bullshit.
“Yeah that’s not death then, you fucking Cylon!” He turned to check on the perp and said: “Call it in.”

Hertle was still out, but not really harmed, which kind of was a pity.
Gavin tried not to think about the idea that the vic had been conscious the whole time. He’d have to get used to this: Just because an android looked like a corpse or deactivated or in stasis or whatever, did not mean it wasn’t in distress.
Hunter had said it was screaming, but still the dots hadn’t connected in Gavin’s mind. He hadn’t worried about the thing for a second, and he should have.
He was on android cases now, so androids were perps and vics and, well, people.

While routine took over quickly, marking out important evidence to be photographed in situ, taking samples and so on, handing over to the other DPD officers that soon arrived, Gavin was watching Hunter out of the corners of his eyes.

The android had actually dodged bullets fired at close range. And the first evasion had brought him further into the shed, so that the second shot wasn’t even close to being aimed at Gavin.
The brilliance of that whole maneuver, which couldn’t have taken more than two seconds altogether, was still processing in Gavin’s feeble mind.
God, the way Hunter had fallen down into a crouch, then propelled himself up and forward. God, the efficiency with which he’d punched out Hertle, face completely cold.

For fuck’s sake, it had been cool.
Gavin was not immune to good action scenes, in movies, games or in real life, and this had been one of the best he’d ever seen in the latter category. Right after the warehouse explosion two years ago. Pyrotechnics still trumped everything.

But still. Hunter was a really useful partner for android cases, had some cool moves, and if the eye candy factor would stop being so distracting and uncomfortable, Gavin would maybe even be able start enjoying this a little bit.

Although there was still the nature of the crime, and the nature of the perp which would probably squick Gavin to all hell and back forever.

The workshop was mainly creepy because it was so very much like the man had just been potting plants or building a nice lattice for his roses. Everything clean and orderly and of pinterest-worthy coziness.
Only he’d been torturing an android.

The villa was worse though, spooky in its deadness.
Gavin went through each room with a fine comb, searching for anything tying this to Elijah, or at least his ilk. But then, Hertle was probably not a friend of Elijah’s, too uncreative and small-minded for sure. And Elijah didn’t need customers anymore. So maybe they weren’t connected at all.

Elijah for sure wouldn’t go for a classic craftsman with all the trappings, missing only the blonde wife, two-point-three kids and large purebred dog.

Hunter was following him around, breathing down his neck - sometimes literally - and if that wasn’t the kicker: Did the plastic somehow know that Gavin was hardwired to have an extremely sensitive neck?
In a totally different context with a totally different partner, Gavin would have enjoyed the shit out of this, but here, now, with the android detective well on its way to taking Gavin’s job… not so much.

Gavin was increasingly sure that Hunter was trying to rile him up on purpose - which was bullshit of course, the android wasn’t human, therefore not enjoying toying with people. Just Gavin’s good old pal paranoia checking in.
When it became too much, when Hunter leaned forward to look over his shoulder once again, Gavin sent him away to the kitchen, just to get rid of him for a moment.

Hunter actually went, which was a surprise.

For a few blissful moments, Gavin could go through the paperwork in the downstairs office without a tall handsome cold one making his neck hair stand at attention.

Then Hunter called him over. With a sigh, Gavin followed him to the kitchen.
The fridge was open, showcasing a neat line of unlabeled bottles of red liquid. Gavin felt his eyes widen at that. Last he’d seen that particular red, Elijah had still fiddled with all the Thirium derivatives he could create, stumbling over Red Ice basically by accident.

Hunter opened one bottle, put it on the counter, and dipped two fingers into the liquid.

With a full body jerk, Gavin jumped to his side to slap his hand away before his fingers reached his mouth.
“What the fuck are you doing?”

Hunter had caught his arm with incredible speed, and was now holding onto it with a grip just slightly too hard. He put his fingers in his mouth and his LED spun yellow once. Gavin could only stare.

Hunter said: “Analyzing. Which reminds me.”
Then he pulled Gavin closer, put his other hand in Gavin’s hair to pull it back, then leaned forward and licked a long stripe along Gavin’s throat, directly above his jugular.

Usually Gavin had quite a good fight reflex, and a sensible flight one as well. But he was simply frozen. Hunter’s sharp teeth were grazing his skin, and he was mouthing at his throat like he wanted to eat him. Gavin’s neck turned hot and greedy at this kind of attention so close by, and heat pooled between his legs.
A part of him wanted to not move at all in the hopes that Hunter wouldn’t be able to see him anymore, as if the android was a fucking old school dinosaur, but much worse, another part of Gavin wanted to bend over the kitchen island and spread his legs.

Hunter whispered at his ear, his voice even deeper and rougher than usual:
“Thank you for your cooperation.”
Then he slowly let go.

Gavin could feel his whole body start to tremble, and desperately worked to hide that.
He was finally able to step back, and damn his arm was aching from the hard grip. Well, he had tried to slap Hunter’s arm away. Jesus, this felt very much like a reprimand from a dom.
And hadn’t Hunter said he’d deduced Gavin was interested? Sexually?
He knew he’d been watching Hunter, enjoying the eye candy, but damn he’d thought he’d been less obvious about it.
He sure as fuck hadn’t meant it to be an invitation.

Gavin cleared his throat and said. “Whatever kind of, uh, signals you think you’re getting from me, I don’t… This is not what I…” He had no idea how to say this.
He glanced at the calm face of the android and felt his gut lurch at the thought that he’d seemed desperate enough for this kind of play that the plastic had acted on it.
“Don’t ever fucking touch me again, do you hear me? I will fucking shoot you and damn the consequences!”

Hunter cocked his head and asked: “Why not do it right now?”

Gavin couldn’t hide the full body twitch and averted his gaze.

Hunter added: “Why not quit your job or move to a different city?”

It was kind of a fair question, but by now Gavin really felt like the whole day was trying to chase him out of Detroit. But Gavin was no fucking quitter. He’d think this through and consider his options, just like he’d planned to do.
“I’m not moving anywhere!” He hissed in answer. “I have a fucking right to be where I want to be! This is my city, too!”

The android simply nodded, cool as a cucumber. “Okay.”

“Is that it, are you trying to scare me away?!” The paranoia was rearing its head again, and Gavin knew this, this feeling of being cornered.

“No. I just wanted to lick you.”

That had to be a lie. The scrape still felt hot and wet and even as it was right now it still made Gavin horny in ways the android probably wasn’t even able to compute, much less feel himself.
“You don’t want anything”, Gavin whispered. “You’re nothing but a machine.”

“Keep telling yourself that, if it helps”, Hunter said, then turned back to the red liquid. “We have to find out what this does. Analyzing its chemical makeup tells me nothing of the sort.”

Maybe that was it, maybe he hadn’t wanted to lick him because of human-like reasons like horniness or such, but just because he wanted to get to the bottom of how Gavin worked. If that was so, he’d given the plastic a shit ton of material to analyze.

“I’ve seen this before”, Gavin said, closing his eyes. The red liquid, yes. But also the other thing. “Fuck!” he pressed out.

“Where?” It was entirely unnerving how unaffected the plastic prick was.

“Fuck you. I don’t owe you shit!” He needed to get the ground back under his feet. He needed to stop letting Hunter dominate the situation.

“This is an open investigation. You should-”

“Shut the fuck up, you just licked me!” Gavin turned on his heel and walked away.
One thing was clear. He would not work another day with that thing as his partner.

He took a cab back to the station, without his “partner” thankyouverymuch, then proceeded to storm Fowler’s office immediately.

He opened with the complaint that Hunter had licked him and demanded him to be taken off the force, but Fowler derailed the conversation for a long time, apparently amazed at the fact that Gavin’s hunch had paid off so well.

He’d already gotten the latest status from the backup that had been deployed of course, and in the meantime, Cyberlife had sent a notice that the vic had arrived in their repair facilities.
A small part of Gavin’s hindbrain unwound as he heard that.
The poor thing had been conscious, he remembered with a lurch in his gut.

“Well what do you know, I am actually a good cop after all. Isn’t it a pity how I wasn’t able to help with-”

“You know damn well why I took you off the Task Force!” Fowler bellowed. Then he waved towards his glass door.
Gavin glanced at it as it opened, expecting Hunter to have caught up to him. Instead, Anderson’n’Pet came in.

Anderson slapped Gavin’s back.
“Well done, Reed! Quite a catch!”

Gavin snorted. “Really simple one as well. What exactly are you doing again, the whole day every day?” He lifted an eyebrow and inclined his head towards Connor. Anderson’s easy smile turned slightly exasperated.

“No, it was well done”, Fowler agreed, but then tried to add: “And it shows how well you and-”

“He licked me. Licked! Me!”

“He did what now?” Anderson asked.

“Were you contaminated with something?” Connor asked.

“Why would I be contaminated?!”

Behind Gavin, the door opened once more after a gesture from Fowler, who sighed with all the weight of the world on his shoulders, apparently:
“Why would you just... lick... your partner. Why, why would you… just…”

Hunter’s smooth voice said:
“Detective Reed showed consistent aggression towards me and my kind, and was behaving irrationally while searching the house. I merely wanted to confirm that he was not high on Red Ice.”

That was so wrong on so many levels, Gavin wasn’t even sure what to react to first, even though any option would lead to bursting out into rage for sure. He felt his mouth open and close several times.

Anderson, now behind him, mumbled:
“You can do that? Just by licking the suspect?”

His pet was answering, but Gavin finally had a small concrete thing to jump at:
“Who you calling a fucking suspect?!”

Fowler lifted both hands: “Calm down.”

“Why are they here anyway?!” Fowler just waving everyone in was fucking bullshit, and every second Hunter was in the room was another chance for the android to take over the situation.

Fowler agreed: “Everyone but Gavin, please leave.” Then he threw Hunter another look and added: “I am taking this seriously. This fits workplace harassment, understood?”

What, now he was a druggie suspect and a poor boohoo harassment victim?!
Gavin snarled:
“I’m not a fucking victim! I just want him gone! He’s fucking useless!”

Anderson’s pet had the gall to say: “You two just solved a dozen cases in a day, that turned out to be a much more gruesome crime than it looked like at first glance, and you saved the latest victim’s life.”

“Did we?! Cause Terminator here fucking killed it!”

Anderson snarled: “Her!” and Gavin felt his neck grow hot at the sudden embarrassment: Anderson had scored a point with that.

Fowler shouted: “Enough! Gavin, do you want to file a complaint for workplace harassment or not!”

“Not!” Gavin shouted back, before realizing with a sinking feeling in his gut that actually, yes, that was what he’d wanted to do.

Hunter said: “He cannot possible answer that freely with me standing right behind him.” and this was just unfair.
Gavin swallowed and straightened up, trying to keep himself from showing how that hurt worst of all, that the fucker was looking out for him in this strained situation.

Fowler nodded, everybody turned to go, and at least this horrible moment was nearly over and done with, but then Anderson just had to say: “Maybe he liked it.”

Anderson had been begging to catch a fist with his ugly face for a while now but this was it.
Gavin hissed: “You want to repeat that, pervert?”

“Oh yeah, I’m the pervert? Who was it again that wanted to see ‘a few of them wasted’?”
That was another punch in Gavin’s gut - score two for Anderson. God, he needed to stop voicing his thoughts aloud. Transparency would always be used against him, he knew that, he knew that.

“HANK!” Fowler bellowed.

“What! He said that!”

Hunter said:
“That is beside the point and purely meant to antagonize, Lieutenant. Either way, I did not ask consent, I did not explain myself - I apologize.”
Gavin heroically kept himself from staring at the tall plastic. He was sure he was pathetic enough already.

“Also”, Connor said, “it would still constitute fraternization.”

Hunter said in a slightly sharper tone: “You’re married to your partner.”
Was that on purpose? Maneuvering the focus away from Gavin? And if so, to further dissuade him from filing an official complaint or actual...

Connor protested: “I am not!”

Fowler shouted: “ENOUGH!”

Anderson pointed a finger at Hunter and prodded his chest with it, hard. “You got a problem with that?!”

“No. You?” Hunter had moved in front of Gavin, and maybe Gavin had moved behind him, because he was pathetically grateful for the assist.
God, textbook abusive relationship: Hunter saving him from a situation he himself had brought about, hadn’t ne.

But while the pattern fit, Gavin had seen real abuse, and this wasn’t it. That apology for example did not fit the pattern at all. Unless...

Fowler clearly had enough of them all. He said: “You know what, you’re all fucking suspended for the rest of the day! Get out of my fucking office and look up the definition of professional workplace behavior for fuck’s sake!”

Anderson sighed and pulled Connor with him.

Hunter frowned at Fowler.
“This will not leave a mark in Reed’s file.”

Fowler blinked, then sighed.
“Of course not.”

Gavin simply walked out of there. Hunter was on his heels immediately, fucking hound that he was. He said:
“You should talk to him alone.”
Strategy or real concern? Fitting the pattern to a t or breaking it?

Gavin needed time to think. He hissed: “I’m fucking suspended.” At least one good thing coming out of it.
He went to his desk, then saw that Tina had cleared hers already. Hunter obviously noticed his reaction.

“I’m sorry”, the android said.

Gavin glanced at him. “Are you?”

Hunter blinked at him, his LED swirling yellow for a while, then he inclined his head with the slightest frown. If Gavin took that at face value, he’d say the guy didn’t know himself. But that was the most unlikely of the available interpretations.

With a huffed breath Gavin said:
“Don’t do it again.”

Hunter nodded: “If you wish.”

This had to be on purpose. Fucking plastic had probably seen right through his pathetic facade the moment they met. God, was he really that obvious of a pussy?

Anderson came over, putting on his jacket.
“Yo, Reed. I owe you one.”

“One?!” A stiff drink sounded perfect. And then tomorrow, Gavin really needed to call Claudia.

“Okay, two. Let’s go have two plastic-free drinks.”

“Fucking three, Anderson.”

Gavin didn’t even look at Hunter before fleeing the scene with Anderson of all people.

“Thing is”, Anderson said after they’d both downed a stiff one and had received the first cool beer of the evening, “Thing is I’m kind of glad I’m not alone with this shit anymore. Fucking plastics turn out to be great partners, but damn this shit is complicated.”

Gavin eyed him and inclined his glass towards him.
“You fucking Connor?”

Anderson sighed. “Man, I’m trying here.”

Gavin snickered. “Trying to get in his pants?”

“Trying to talk to Reed the Prick.”

Gavin frowned and looked away. He was well aware not a single person in the district liked him, maybe apart from Tina, and that was only saying something about the resilience of queer solidarity than anything else.

“It’s not complicated at all, Anderson. They’re better at our jobs, or soon will be, and they’ll take over everything soon.”

“I give you the physical stuff, for sure. And they do have some nice gimmicks, with the analyzing and shit. But no, they’re not, actually. In some ways they’re really helpless.”

Gavin snorted.

Anderson leaned forward a little and said: “Reed, yours is less than a week old. He might look all grown and all, but he has no connections apart from Connor, no history, no life experience. Also, they are really really bad at gut feelings.”

“Pattern recognition”, Gavin mumbled.

Anderson punched the table. “Exactly! Since nobody can quite figure out how our brains do that, not even Cyberlife can copy it!”

Gavin leaned back and sighed. “Hunter is reading me like a book, Anderson, and he’s really good and maneuvering me around. And it’s been less than a motherfucking day.”

Anderson frowned.
“Yeah, I’m not sure he was meant to be a detective.”

Gavin threw him a sharp look. He’d come to the same conclusion.
Not quite a detective, not quite a soldier, and built smack in the middle of the start of the android revolution. Built to figure out a person and know how to move them like a pawn in less than a day.

“Yeah”, he said in a low voice. “Yeah.”

RK900 was clearly a spy model.

“Thing is”, Anderson said gently. “We’ve all been set on a path at one point or other. Careers or original purposes or downward spirals. Don’t mean we can’t change our minds. Give the kid some time to figure out what he wants.”

“The kid”, Gavin snorted.

That ‘kid’ was a plastic, and didn’t ‘want’ anything. Gavin closed his eyes and tried to bury the fantastic, delusional hopes Anderson was conjuring up there.

What had Claudia said, way back when he’d started seeing her at a regular? Hope wasn’t a bad thing at all, he just shouldn’t hyperfixate on one specific concrete scenario he was hoping for. It wasn’t necessarily doom that lurked behind hope.

But this one, oh, this was truly a kick in the nuts, aimed perfectly at all of Gavin’s weak spots. And Anderson didn’t know the best part:
That ‘kid’ was the creature of the only person in the world that knew about all of those. How was Gavin supposed to let go of the paranoia that Hunter had been sent by Elijah directly to him, with the express purpose to break him?

Gavin sipped his beer and looked at people in the bar without really seeing them. Anderson was watching him, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. The man just left him some space to think.

Gavin took a deep breath and remembered something else Claudia had said, and he remembered being shocked when she’d said it, not used yet to a therapist actually spitting hurtful truths:
‘Elijah is probably not ever thinking about you at all. In his life, you’re a faded memory. You are not important enough to him to warrant attention, and certainly not this kind.’

The next time he’d disabled a camera in his terminal, he’d snorted at the thought of Elijah Kamski taking the time to hack the terminal of Gavin fucking Reed, just to get a glimpse at him. Even his deepest paranoia had to shrug and agree with that being utterly preposterous.

Would Elijah smuggle a prototype into Cyberlife just so that it would end up being Gavin’s partner, torturing by being… hot?
Gavin snickered into his beer. Jesus, he was such a pathetic wreck.

But if that wasn’t the case, then Anderson was possibly right.
That small, pretty glimpse of excitement hurt more than the dull, deep ache of old pain. ‘We veer towards the familiar’ Claudia said in his memory. ‘Even if it’s bad for us.’

Excitement and hope were utterly unfamiliar for sure. Very uncomfortable in their newness.

‘The kid’, Anderson had said, and oh boy did the poor fuck think of Connor as his surrogate son? Gavin eyed the man, who now raised both his eyebrows.

“You’re really not fucking him, are you”, Gavin wondered.

Anderson took a deep breath and stood. “I’ll get that third drink I owe you.”

Chapter Text

Gavin’s options were:
- Run away.
- Killing spree.
- Endure.
- Fuck with it.
The first two were still options, but as of yet firmly outside of what was necessary. Enduring was probably possible, and would allow him to gather more intel on the situation, which in turn would it make easier to fuck with the situation.

He’d rarely managed to do that: Turn something around so that it actually benefited him. But in this case, he was quite outmaneuvered, and the times were indeed changing, much as he hated that, so he needed to get on top of this change.

Once he was back home and had taken some time to think, there really was no need to call Claudia after all.
He ordered his favorite take-out, let his favorite TV panel of idiots squabble in the background, and smoked one after the other.

Hunter was a spy model without a spy mission, assigned a problematic partner. Made perfect sense for him to try getting into his head. But the fact that he was good at it also meant he’d actually keep on being useful.

Gavin just needed to stay one step ahead. After all, he knew his own hangups and pressure points even better. Also, either Hunter did stay professional or Fowler would actually listen to a formal complaint. While the previous try had failed, it had proven that Fowler would and could take appropriate measures.

The thing was, Gavin very much wanted to jerk off to the memory of the android grabbing and licking him. He was a really hot specimen of a plastic, and ex-fucking-zactly Gavin’s type, and he wanted to extrapolate from that lick and imagine being licked all over, being bent over and reduced into a mewling mess.

Yeah, that didn’t help.

Gavin was practised in not following perverted trains of thoughts that he’d rather wanted to avoid. To sustainably keep on ignoring this one though, he’d have to stop watching his favorite porn and reduce his roster of favorite jerk-off fantasies by about two thirds. Fuckingmachines were off the table as well after all, just to be on the safe side.

And maybe he needed to get out and get laid for real, by a real guy, to chase off the residue.

And then he’d concentrate on working android cases so brilliantly, that he’d finally make Lieutenant, and maybe even carve out a niche for human detectives to stay on for a few more decades, before the robots took over completely.

He hadn’t craved a nose full of Red this badly in a long, long time.

The ringing doorbell came as a surprise but also a relief - finding a dealer was easier even now than finding someone who wanted to bend Gavin over but wasn’t a total freak.
So going out had been dangerously close to leading him in the very, very wrong direction.

Hunter standing in the doorframe was even more of a surprise, but also actually a relief as well - this way Gavin didn’t need to wait to have it out with him.

“It’s sunday, tinman”, he said.

Hunter nodded and dropped: “You’re Elijah Kamski’s cousin.”

Either Elijah had handed the android that info - hello old pal paranoia - or it was even better at detective work than Gavin had thought.
“Fuck”, he hissed.

Hunter had both hands at the small of his back, but now brought his right arm forward to reveal the sixpack he carried.
“I estimated this conversation ending up with me owing you at least four.”

That startled a snort out of Gavin. The thing knew how to humanize itself.

After a moment, he turned to the side to let Hunter enter. “Okay, you may pass.”

Hunter walked in, then looked around, probably scanning every single detail, collecting more intel on his target. He asked:
“Did you have a good evening with Lieutenant Anderson?”

What was that supposed to be, small talk? Stalling? More intel gathering?
“Why are you asking.”

“Because it would explain your changed attitude towards me.”
Fuuuucking perceptive.

Gavin couldn’t decide if he wanted to sit down, grab something from the fridge, stand over there...
“You mean you think he reamed me a new one for calling plastics ‘it’? Yeah, no. We didn’t talk much. Guy’s a washed-up drunk, not my fuckin friend.”

“Then why agree to go with him in the first place?”
Intel-gathering it was.

“Free drinks plus getting away from you shadowing me like a fucking ringwraith. What’s not to love?”
Gavin was keeping an eye on the unnaturally still android just… standing there. He knew how to humanize himself, so why wasn’t he doing it now?

“Then why let me in?” Hunter kept his line of questions alive.

Gavin however was done feeding him intel. He threw himself into the couch and gestured to the beer still in Hunter’s hand.
“‘That chilled?”

Hunter detached one can and threw it over. Gavin pressed the cold metal against his right cheek.
“It’s too warm for this early in the year.”

“Please”, Hunter said haughtily. “Can we skip weather small talk?”

Gavin opened his can and took three deep gulps. Okay, no small talk then. He stared at Hunter and decided to try and get him on track:
“Because I have to take android cases. Which means I finally can’t avoid hunting him from that angle.”

“Him: Kamski.”

“Yes fucking Kamski.”

“What other angle was there?”

“Fuck me, you really are state of the art, hmm Data? Red Ice. He invented it.”

Hunter lifted a disbelieving eyebrow. Really? Even the most advanced detective in the city didn’t catch on to the possibility at least? Before Gavin could harshly tell him to get the fuck out, Hunter said:
“My apologies, I do believe you, I am simply… surprised.”

God, the thing even knew how Gavin read him. Would that ever stop being spooky? Gavin snorted.
“I still don’t know why anyone would be. I mean, nobody would ever want to believe it, but, I mean, Elijah was the first one interested in that kind of properties of refined Thirium, which led him to Blue Blood, and his hobby was chemistry. Why is it so surprising then?”

“Red Ice hit the streets around 2025, long after Kamski started making his fortune with android technology.”
How often had he heard that one? As if inventing something didn’t always prelude it hitting the streets, as if Elijah wasn’t beyond smart.

“I was there, okay? I basically watched over his shoulder while he invented it. I’m not as smart as him, okay? I don’t know why he invented it, what it was supposed to be for, but I know it’s his fucking fault!”

“And you want to take him down.”

Gavin leaned forward and looked down, arms on his knees. He could still see how cold Elijah’s eyes could get if he thought you were standing between him and a specific goal. He could basically taste the utter lack of empathy Elijah had always displayed, even if Gavin had mistaken it for pure strength of character, way back when.

Hunter inclined his head. “But without being obvious about it. You’re… scared of him.”

Gavin snorted: “Fuck yeah I am. Everybody should be.”
Okay, so Hunter could read everything about him. The easiest way to handle that would be transparency, with some added actual verbal agreements.
Only, the last time Gavin had tried that, boy had he been burned… and Hunter was basically Elijah 2.0.

After a moment, Hunter went to the armchair and sat down. He put the other five beers on the table in front of Gavin and said slowly: “Cyberlife… Markus’ Cyberlife, they’re under attack.”

“Yeah no shit.” Gavin gestured to the muted television with the panel who’d just been trash talking the Markus android when the doorbell rang.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he kept watching Hunter. He hadn’t considered that angle: Maybe Hunter had a mission.

“Digitally. Somebody is trying to hack them, gain control.”

Gavin pressed his lips together. “You mean: Gain back control.” Sure he didn’t like plastics. But it had taken exactly one android case to prove once and for all that they could be in horrible distress and, well, feel it, and that humans were unfit to have unfettered control over them. Shit even owning a dog was subject to law enforcement, if you mistreated the thing.

“...maybe.”

“Well shit.” Gavin leaned back and drained his beer. “So we’re actually on the same side, plastic.”

Hunter kept eye contact for a long moment, probably adjusting his own strategy just as Gavin did.
What if they actually hunted down Elijah… together. The monster fighting back against its cruel master, tale as old as technology.
What if they could be actual… partners.

Then Hunter let out a sigh, leaned back himself, both hands on the armrests, one leg coming up to rest on the other. His gaze changed slightly, and damn but Gavin wasn’t as good as they were at reading people.
Was that acceptance of the new situation? Grudging respect? Something else which Gavin didn’t even want to name?

“Here’s the thing”, Hunter said in a lower tone and volume than before. “I can think of a few ways to stop you thinking of me as a soulless robot. Stop you from calling me names. However, the last time I made a move, you ran to the captain to complain.”

Horniness. Oh God, he had read that right, this was a come on. And timed exactly so that Gavin would choke on his beer, which, fair enough, was a move he himself had done to others a few times.
Nonetheless, there was one thing Gavin needed to be crystal clear:
“Look, I get that you can like, analyze the shit out of my face and all, but whatever you think you see-”

“Let’s cut the bullshit. I was perfectly content with the plan to slowly seduce you, but you’re being a little shit.” Hunter threw him a quick, sharp smile. “Not that I dislike that. But when you bring consent on the table by running to daddy-”

“Fuck you!” He was not that obvious about shit! The fucking plastic was jumping from zero to kink negotiation in no time at all based on nothing!

Hunter quickly lifted a hand and added:
“Apologies.” And Gavin’s mind started to spin again. Distantly he recognized this as well: This back and forth of soothing and antagonizing. But it did its job, it took any control over the situation firmly out of Gavin’s hands.
Hunter said: “Let me rephrase that. I want to see what you look like when you shiver apart from pure lust. Tell me to go right now, and I will, but I believe it would be best to try and get this out of our systems.”

Gavin stared down at him for a long moment.
He just couldn’t figure out the android’s angle here, they’d already agreed on working together, and on a larger target to hunt down, what else did he fucking want from him?
Cooperate, antagonize, soothe - rinse and repeat. Gavin could do that too.

“Holy shit”, he said slowly. “Is that why Anderson is so attached to his one? Because you’re programmed to be sexbots too? What’s this supposed to accomplish, a better working relationship? ‘Cause yeah no, that’s not how that works, even though you might actually believe that.”

Hunter inclined his head just a tad and said:
“Because you think I am Kamski’s creation first and foremost.”

This bordered on fucking telepathy or something. He was right, yes, but how?
Gavin bumped sideways into the sofa and nearly fell backwards, when he’d apparently reared back on instinct, and caught himself.

Hunter lowered his hand and checked Gavin out, top to bottom and back. No, shit, the android was scanning him! Goddamn he needed to not fall for this!

Hunter said: “You distrust my intentions, because you think I don’t have any of my own, but only a copy of Kamski’s. Was he the one who raped you?”

Gavin felt himself blink a few times, then laughter erupted out of him. “Whaat?” Right then, not telepathy after all. “Oh holy shit, which defunct psyche assessment program is spitting out that shit? I’m not a fucking rape victim!”

Hunter stood up. “Then what did he do?”
Was that the reason to bring up sex, to gather his backstory with Elijah?

“You really think I need a reason to want to take down a fucking menace of a criminal other than that he is just that?”

“No, this is personal. You fear him and hate him, and it’s very, very personal.” That much was true, and also not all that hard to deduct once Gavin got into the wake of Elijah’s shitshow, spreading collateral criminal cases everywhere.

Gavin snorted. “Fine, so he’s three months older and about triple as smart as I am, and I’ve hated him since about preschool. Boohoo. Doesn’t mean I’m going after him because he had fucking better grades than me.”
Elijah simply was a monster that needed taking down. End of story.

“You did very well in school, too”, Hunter said, revealing the amount of research he had on Gavin, and stepped forward. “But Kamski… Elijah was far beyond your level. Did he use his intellect against you? What did he do?”

“Nothing!” Gavin checked his position to avoid the advancing robot. Was Hunter hoping to unveil an ancient crime Elijah had done? He was shit out of luck then, unless he listened to Gavin regarding the Red Ice! But nobody ever did.

Hunter quickly grabbed Gavin’s hoodie and pulled him closer, watching his face.

“He’s one of those people, isn’t he? You ‘know the type’? He thinks of humans as machines, too?”

Gavin tried to push the android away, tried to get his mental feet back on solid ground, but half his mind was in Elijah’s lab, on the table, gasping and crying and clinging to Elijah’s soothing voice telling him he did very well.
He’d forgotten that Hunter was a brick wall for all of how much he could move the guy.

He stared up at him and frantically tried to read the situation. Hunter’s gaze fell down to Gavin’s lips, as if contemplating to kiss him. What the hell?!
Hunter said: “Slaves to their programming. But you’re not. When was the last time you actually had sex?”

Gavin tried another angle:
“Listen you fucking plastic prick, you’re still an android, and I’m your fucking superior, so you have to obey my-”

“I can do that. But I’d much rather see how well you can fight your own body’s orders.”

Of course Hunter would interrupt, of course he would keep the high ground of the discussion, but… Gavin croaked:
“What?”

He could hear Elijah’s voice whisper in his memory: Don’t fight, Gavin, just let it happen…

Hunter pulled him closer until his front was pressed against Gavin’s, including against his rock hard erection.

Gavin swallowed and tried to get his body to stop reacting to what was not a good situation in which to get horny, at all!

Hunter stroke up Gavin’s shivering flank under his hoodie while keeping eye contact.
“Here’s my theory: Your cousin, slightly older than you, experimented on you, or I don’t know, maybe it started mutual, but he used you to try and prove his ridiculous little belief system, and it screwed you up, big time. What did he do, demonstrate stimuli and how you couldn’t help react to them?”

A jolt of rage pulled Gavin out of the strange frozen state he’d been in.There was no way that Hunter didn’t know that from Elijah himself. Just, no way.
“Shut up!” he hissed.

“See”, Hunter whispered and moved his hand from Gavin’s collar to his hair. “If you’d told me to get out, I would. But I can prove two things here: That I am so much more than just Dr. Kamski’s monster, and that you are the master of your own body.”

How often had Gavin wished Elijah would just at least do this? Just run a hand through his hair? The sensation was spectacular, and a truly amazing counterpoint to the stench of disinfectants rising out of his memories.
Hunter pulled his head back a little, and Gavin could feel his pulse slow down.

Did it matter? If he knew? If he knew and decided to do the exact opposite of what Elijah had done? Instead of turning him into a slave of his own body’s impulses ask him to fight against them?

Hunter continued in this just unfairly rough and deep voice:
“I am very good. How long do you think you can keep from ejaculating?” He shifted against Gavin and added: “I estimate the probability of you getting off regularly as very low, and I am very good looking, taller than you, and very, very strong. I am therefore already slightly impressed at your not coming in your pants right here and now like… a bitch in heat.”

Aaaand dirty talk. Elijah would’ve never stooped to that. After all, what they’d done had not been sexual, and Elijah couldn’t afford anything ever breaking that lie wide open.
And Hunter hadn’t even called him a bitch in heat, but complimented him for… not being one.

“Fuck you!” Gavin cursed, then crashed his lips against Hunter’s.

It was a short kiss, then Gavin found himself with his back against Hunter’s front, one cool android hand back under the hoodie, and the other grabbing his throat, lightly. Hunter scraped his teeth along Gavin’s jawline, and Gavin let his head fall to the side with a groan.

Then Hunter just had to ruin it by asking: “What did he do?”

Like dog with a bone. First of all, Elijah certainly never held him like this. But second of all, there was no topic Gavin wanted to think about less right now.

He snarled: “We’re not talking about him while we’re doing this!”

“Oh, so we are doing this?” What, no the tall piece of shit suddenly knew humor? Gavin growled at him, but Hunter just added: “Thank you for that.”

Another thing Elijah had never done. And Gavin was so not comparing them right now. Nope.

Hunter pressed him closer, which made Gavin feel even less tall in comparison to the plastic, then hissed at his ear: “Let’s get you naked and vertical. Bed or table, I don’t care.”

Definitely bed. A table would have been too close. And on the topic of closeness: Gavin could feel Hunter’s whole front, and this was a problem:
Elijah had never gotten even the slightest erection either.

Gavin cleared his throat and said: “You’re not even hard.”

“I am, in fact, not a sex bot. I don’t have a dick. But if you think this isn’t turning me on, you’re blind.” Hunter actually seemed a bit self-conscious about his lack of dick, which did wonders to distance him from Elijah, and then he pulled some more on Gavin’s hair and whispered in his ear:
“But I bet you naughty piece of shit have ton of dildos, don’t you?”

A shiver went through Gavin and he bit his lip, closing his eyes.

Then the grip in his hair loosened and Hunter bit out:
“Unless you’d rather I get one, before we do this? I can go by Cyberlife tomorrow. I am not sure what’s compatible with my type, but I will find out.”

Gavin snorted. “Fuck”, he mumbled. “I can’t believe this.” Then he took a deep breath. “But fuck me, you’re brother might be a dipshit, but you’re… really fucking hot. Fine. Bedroom.”

There was a second of silence, then Hunter grabbed him, threw him over his shoulder and carried him to the bedroom.

Gavin’s initial outrage dissolved into disbelieving laughter quickly.

Hunter patted his ass, then dropped him on the bed.
“Get naked”, he said.

Gavin grinned up at him, something small but painfully hot starting to develop in the middle of his chest.
He quickly got his hoodie off, then the shirt. Hunter’s light gaze was drilling holes into his skin. Sure, Gavin had skipped a few gym nights here and there, but he knew he was fit.

With a smirk, he caressed his chest, down his dark treasure trail, then shimmied out of his jogging pants. Hunter was still only staring.

Gavin jerked his chin up and snarked:
“Getting cold feet, pretty boy?”

Hunter inclined his head, then slowly leaned forward and started to crawl over Gavin, who moved backwards on his lower arms, pushing himself back with his feet.

Hunter completely ignored his cock, but licked and mouthed up a stripe from his flank to one of his pecs, gliding over one of Gavin’s nipples. Gavin gave a full-body jerk.
Hunter glanced at him with a lifted eyebrow, then licked the other nipple, and Gavin jerked again, grunting.

Hunter nodded, then crawled further up, until they were face to face again. One hand caressed up Gavin’s side from hip bone to chest, then gently molded itself against Gavin’s throat.

Gavin swallowed against the light pressure, licked his lips and let himself fall on his back, so that he could lift both hands and try and get under Hunter’s shirt.

“No”, Hunter said. “Hands above your head.”

Gavin frowned at him. “Not a kink of mine, tin can, not being able to touch.” In fact, he hated it. And he wanted to stop being reminded of Elijah.

Hunter nodded again, then moved to sit against the headboard, pulled Gavin into his lap and had him lie down over his legs, his chest stretched upwards, which made his head fall back. Gavin was still frowning as Hunter took his wrists in one hand, pulled them over Gavin’s head, stretching his torso even more that way, then caressed him with the other hand.

“Does that make up for it?” Hunter asked. “Additional closeness?”

Gavin swallowed and thought feeling an erection on the guy would have helped further, and that he felt very exposed and… draped. Like a buffet, basically.
But it did help.
He nodded, still frowning.

“Good. Now don’t twitch.” Hunter caressed his chest, grazing his nipples. Gavin felt his abdominals jerk and tried to keep them from doing that the next time.
Sweat broke out immediately.
Hunter murmured: “Yes, like that. Fight it. Good.”

It was just like with Elijah: Gavin felt himself fall into this state of silence and buzz that he knew so well.
It was nothing like with Elijah: Hunter was watching his face and telling him to fight his own reactions.

In Gavin’s memory, electric impulses flickered through from one nipple to the other, and Elijah wondered aloud if he could come from this alone, given enough time. Then he’d proceeded to prove it.

Gavin closed his eyes.
Hunter’s cool fingers started playing with his nipples, peppering in light scratches down his sides and up his arms, caressing his taut belly and armpits, then back to twisting his nipples, hard, light, hard…

Gavin felt himself lose track of time. For a small moment he asked himself if he was safe enough to let himself fall completely.
He was not, surely. This was an android, made by Cyberlife, which was once upon a time Elijah’s private sandbox, and Gavin was not any closer in figuring the guy out.
But then again, the worst case was some hot sex followed by intense humiliation, nothing he hadn’t survived countless times before.

And it would answer the question once and for all.

Gavin took a deep breath and let it out with a long groan. Falling deeper.

It was incredible with how many different variants of nipple play Hunter could come up with. Sometimes he’d lean forward and bring his lips and teeth into the mix, sometimes his fingers turned very warm or very cold.

He told Gavin not to move his legs, not to curse, not to let his body shy away from his touches.

It did things to Gavin’s mind. Oh sure, he wasn’t less of a submissive bottom right now, he wasn’t in control at all, he knew that. But the heat running through his body felt less like his enemy and more like something precious, and following Hunter’s low commands felt like victory.
He wasn’t less of a needy slut, but somehow, instead of being ashamed of it, Gavin felt nearly... proud.
Which had to be fundamentally wrong and fucked up, but he didn’t have enough focus left to dwell on that.

Only one thing annoyed him more and more, the longer he dwelled in that strange feel-good horniness.

“You gonna take that shirt off anytime soon, tin can?” he finally asked.

The question earned himself a hard slap on the chest, Hunter’s flat hand landing on his pec, the hardened little nub of Gavin’s nipple protesting weakly.

“Seriously, come on!” Gavin protested. He hadn’t been ordered not to say anything.

Hunter hit his other pec, which at least made Gavin feel balanced again - the plastic prick was good at that, keeping everything evenly distributed.

But no other response, apart from another hard slap, on the other pectoral.

Gavin grunted and stared at the calm face of the android, at his cool hands playing him like a fiddle, then back at Hunter’s expression which was… missing.
No erection to grind against, no need or arrogance or derision in the gently sweeping lines of Hunter’s lips.

Hunter inclined his head a little, then put the tips of two fingers against Gavin’s lips.
Gavin had noticed that for all that it was hot anyway, Hunter’s kisses and licks were not as wet as human ones. He slowly started licking his fingers, then gave himself a small push to actually make them as wet as he could, which surely was what Hunter was after.
It felt... deliciously filthy.

“Thank you”, Hunter said distractedly. Then he used his newly lubricated fingers to let them glide around and over Gavin’s sensitized nipples.

Gavin really wanted him to do that to the tip of his cock. But this burning need flashing up from his groins into his fucking teeth was just so sweet. He let his head fall back again with a groan.
Now if he could just get something from Hunter, that showed- He glanced at Hunter’s face and spotted the kind of satisfaction that was associated with cats and cream, and Gavin had to look away, a small curse hissing out of him by accident.

“Well now”, Hunter said in a low voice. “We can keep this up for quite a long time, don’t you think?” He glanced at Gavin’s erection and wondered: “Do you suppose you could reach orgasm just from this?”

“No!” Gavin coughed. “Jesus, no!” He knew he could. He did not want to have to go through that again. He took a deep breath through his nose to get rid of the antiseptic stench that was not actually there at all.

Hunter lifted an eyebrow. “We could try.” He lifted his fingers to Gavin’s lips again, collecting a fresh dose of saliva.

Gavin really didn’t want to, but then again, Elijah had said I wonder… He’d decided Only one way to find out!
And here Hunter was, asking him Do you suppose and We could try.
Did he want to?

Gavin asked: “You’re not… really… going for that, right?”

Hunter smiled as if sharing a small secret with him and said: “No, don’t worry. I don’t want to see you struggle for orgasm. I want to see you struggle against it.”

The air was punched out of Gavin’s lungs, followed by a deep gasp for fresh air and a string of whispered curses.
His mind didn’t even try disentangle everything that was perfect about this. Stop thinking so much Elijah said in his memory, his tone amused that he even tried.

No, he couldn’t fall that deeply, he needed to stay on top of this.

Hunter glanced at Gavin’s legs, which had started to move restlessly, and ordered: “Stop moving.”

It was hard, but Gavin managed to obey. Hunter’s praising “Good boy.” just zinged past Gavin’s brain and went directly to his cock.

With a string of gentler touches and low voiced commands and challenges that somehow managed to be praise at the same time, Hunter coaxed Gavin into actually pushing his chest up into the fucking torture.

Gavin could take it. He had to look away from Hunter’s piercing gaze - and oh, how he’d always stared at Elijah from below, who had totally ignored his pleading looks - and he had to fight for it - but oh, how Hunter crooned praises and encouragements…

It was world’s apart and the exact same thing, just the other side of the coin maybe, and Gavin’s mind was scrambling to stay on fucking top of this, to stay vigilant, to not show an inkling of what all of this did to him, not really, not beyond the physical.

When a high whine escaped him, Hunter let go of his wrists and put his now freed hand on the arch of Gavin’s throat, cupping his adam’s apple. Did he not want him to make this kind of sound?

The other cool hand drifted lower, gently caressing a long stretch downward, then sharply pinching a small area at his flank, before soothing the skin again.

Gavin felt his whole body being taut like a bowstring, waiting for Hunter to pluck it, to use this tension - or break it.

Hunter mumbled: “You’re going to let me do to you whatever I want to, aren’t you. And you’re going to just ride it. You’re going to take whatever I give you.”

Gavin snarled: “Okay fine, I will come from this alone if you keep going like this. Can you just-”

“You will not. You’re not a slave to your own body, you will hold it in and let it carry you higher, and higher...”

“Oh God…” Gavin let his head fall back again, the tension broken, his whole form slumping down. Some part of him accepted that he might not come at all tonight, or if so, then only because Hunter wanted him to.
The acceptance felt so sweet, close to actual physical relief already, in a way.

Hunter started caressing the insides of Gavin’s legs. Gavin knew that signal, so he parted his legs.
Hunter said:
“Oh, Reed, you are rather thirsty to be fucked, aren’t you.”
Maybe Gavin would come from the dirty talk alone, and the humiliation, if he kept it up on this level.

Gavin snarled; “Shut the fuck up. You already know that, no big deal, I just didn’t have the time!”

“I disagree. You acting like a bitch in heat is a rather big deal to me.”
Gavin felt the tension build up again, with a kind of detached fatalism that was also, strangely, a sarcastic kind of enjoyment.

Hunter pushed down the hand on his throat a little as if to choke him a bit. “Do you need help getting your body under control after all?”

Oh this would not fly. Of course he did, utterly! Of course he did not, not at all! Gavin’s mind was reeling, so he fell back on the most trusted of patterns: Attack.

“What is it with you and control?!” He hissed. “Is that your damage? What did Cyberlife do to you, huh?”

When Hunter simply blinked, obviously thrown, Gavin threw him a toothy grin with half-closed eyes from his still thrown-back position.
“You need to be in control of something, big guy? Is that your problem?”

“...are you trying to rile me up?” Hunter calmly lifted an eyebrow, and Gavin could feel his face getting even hotter. “You do realize that I am not hunting after an orgasm of my own here, yes? There is no scenario in which I lose patience and simply fuck you into the mattress until I ejaculate.”

Gavin could feel his grin disappear, and he tried to keep eye contact, but broke it instead, his stomach churning. The stench of disinfectants biting his nose from inside.

Hunter said: “No, talk. What are you missing right now.”

This wasn’t working. Gavin tried to stand up and ranted: “Maybe your fucking cock, okay? Maybe androids without sex drives of their own aren’t really my thing!”

Hunter easily held him where he was.
“I don’t need a cock to have a sex drive”, he said tonelessly.

The churning in Gavin’s gut was turning into nauseous sadness. Hunter wasn’t letting him go. Gavin huffed: “But you don’t want to fuck me, is the point.”

Hadn’t he decided this whole thing ending in humiliation was fine? Hadn’t he kept himself from falling completely into subspace?
This didn’t feel fine, just exhausting.

Only a moment passed, then Hunter somehow moved Gavin’s whole not that small or light body and was suddenly crouching over him, one hand at his throat again, one leg between Gavin’s.
“Maybe I want to fuck your mind”, he whispered. “Maybe I want to fuck with you. I want… I want to watch you fight and fight and fight and then, maybe, surrender to your body’s overstimulation. To my effect on you. To me.”

Gavin’s mouth went dry and his eyes went wide. If Hunter’s voice had sounded angry or aggressive, this would surely have been threatening. But he was calm and kind of thoughtful, and all it did was soothe the exhaustion and the churning in Gavin’s gut.

The hand holding down Gavin’s abs went to take his balls into a cool grasp, and Hunter continued: “Or maybe I want to reward you, if you fight well enough, by helping you cool down again. And after hours with me, in the end, you won’t come at all.”

Although maybe calming wasn’t the most immediate effect. Gavin distantly wondered at the shots of pure lust running through his body and directly into his balls.
Both of his hands had found Hunter’s lower arm, simply to hold on.

“And here’s the perfect thing”, Hunter whispered, leaning forward even more, which actually put added pressure on Gavin’s throat, making him choke. “You want to let me. You want to be my pretty little human toy. You don’t even care if I’ll take you apart or leave you right at the cliff, in the end.”

He was right, of course he was. All Gavin wanted was to let himself fall with someone who gave a shit. And maybe this plastic was defective, maybe Hunter was a deviant in more than one way, but if he was broken, he was broken in the most perfect way.

Gavin could actually hear the smile in Hunter’s voice - and when had he closed his eyes?
“I want to fuck you out of your mind. Get you mindless - not without a fight, mind you, but you already exceeded expectations on this account.”

Because there had been expectations in the first place. And Gavin hadn’t just aced this. He’d exceeded expectations. The phrase kept echoing through Gavin’s mind while Hunter calmly contemplated using a sound on him, practically quoting from the playbook of Gavin’s favorite wanking fantasies.

Gavin heard himself start to beg: “Oh god, okay, please, just, please…”

Hunter ignored him, but differently, perfectly, on purpose.
“I like that idea. Let’s turn you into a purely physical toy for me, and you can fight against your body’s instructions without any distraction.”

“Oh god I need to come, please, just-”

“You don’t.”
Hunter gently let go of Gavin’s balls and curled his hand around his leaking erection instead. His hand was still cool, and it was a little bit like the opposite of being punched in the stomach, but also very much like that.

He also let go of Gavin’s throat and straightened up on his knees, staring down at Gavin’s flushed, sweaty, shivering form.

Gavin stared back, helpless in the face of Hunter’s contemplation, fighting to stay still. The cool fingers were curled around him perfectly, and the option was there, he could just jerk his hips up, just a little, and it wouldn’t even take much more for him to come, but he didn’t.
He didn’t.

Hunter’s chin lifted a little, his lips opened slightly, his eyelids drooped. He looked more human in this one moment than in all mannerisms he’d shown before. He looked horny and high on his own power, and… proud.
Their eyes met and held contact.

Gavin wondered if he’d ever done anything this hard in his life, and he wondered at how easy it was, held aloft by Hunter’s gaze like this. He could feel his abs contracting in expectation of Hunter’s next move, but the fucking plastic just didn’t make one.

And there it was again: Acceptance of his fate, and he could feel himself start to grin and cry at the same time.

Still staring at him, Hunter hissed: “...yesss.”
Then he gradually tightened his fingers around Gavin’s erection. Didn’t move them up or down, just tightened their hold.
Gavin’s eyes fell shut, and he could do this, he could stay still like this, even if Hunter made it harder and harder, his fingers curling tighter, and tighter.
Extremely slowly, perfectly controlled: Tighter.

Gavin could hear his breath turn into a whine on every inhale, every exhale a sob.

Hunter cursed, then finally, blessedly hissed: “Do it. Show me.”

Gavin threw his head back and pumped his hips up, one, two, three times, Hunter’s fingers still tight and dry and fuck it hurt, but that, too, was simply perfect, and once the first few spurts of spunk jumped out, Hunter quickly used that as lube and let his fingers flicker over and around Gavin’s erection.

Gavin clenched his teeth and tried hard not to scream.

“Shit”, Hunter cursed, then leaned forward to put a gentle hand against Gavin’s sweaty brow. “Reed. I’m rebooting. I can’t stop that.” His voice was strangely tinny and robotic.

“Wh-wha?” Gavin had troubling parsing that. He was what now? Gavin was flying high as a kite, and his whole body was still shivering through the aftershocks. “Wait… what?”

That didn’t sound good, and Hunter’s gaze kept flittering to the side as if focusing on something outside of Gavin’s view. Gavin tried to heave himself up a little.
“Hey… what… what’s going on..?”

“I… I’m, I can’t…” Hunter pulled his hand off Gavin’s body and his gaze flickered over him. He looked angry, or in pain, or both.

Gavin lifted a hand to put it carefully on Hunter’s still clothed upper arm, but before he could say anything else, Hunter whispered: “I’m sorry. Don’t panic, I’ll-”

Then his eyes flickered… off.
His LED was still running in merry little circles, only red in the beginning, then more and more yellow, finally turning to blue.
But there was nobody behind these glass marble eyes anymore. Gavin snapped his fingers in front of his face, and from one second to the other, he felt utterly, utterly alone.

Chapter Text

Gavin stared at the utterly motionless android crouched on hands and knees over him and swallowed.
He carefully climbed out of the bed, out from under Hunter, then stood in the tepid air, his shoulders hunching up, his gaze jumping through the room as if searching for any ideas of what to do. Slowly, as if he had a reboot of his own, his mind came up with some emotional response: Anger.
He wasn’t even sure what he was angry about, or who was the target for his fury, but furious he was.

At Fowler for putting him into this situation, at Elijah for fucking up the experience of arousal for his creatures, at Hunter for not anticipating this - wait, this had been Hunter’s first time, for sure, right? So he couldn’t have known.

Gavin watched the LED flicker and Hunter’s frozen face and felt sad for him. Like the girl Hertle had tortured: Trapped in his own body, and nothing he could do about it.

With a sigh he shoved against Hunter’s shoulder to get him to fall to the side. Hunter’s position was astonishingly stable: He didn’t budge. Grumbling, Gavin put his whole weight into it and finally managed to roll Hunter over onto his back. His limbs weren’t completely rigid, so with a lot of effort, he could pull them straight.

Like a particularly rusty mannequin, apart from the LED.

Gavin stared at the android for another long moment, wondering if he should get him under covers, then turned around and went to take a shower.

He avoided looking into the mirror, and had the water come out slightly too cold, hoping that would help against this persistent itch under his skin, slowly spreading everywhere.
He scrubbed himself clean of sweat and spunk and spit - all his own - then went through his hair as well while he was at it.
Out of absolutely nowhere, he could feel his lips turn into the horrible grimace truly annoying small children sometimes pulled, and he could feel the precipice right there, right in front of him: One small nudge and he’d burst into ugly sobs.

He had to gulp for breath several times to fight that down, but he managed.

Gavin always managed.

Scrubbing himself dry with the slightly scratchy towels he preferred, he walked out, back to glance at Hunter: No change.
Then he pulled on some trainers again and went back into the living room.

The scotch was still gone, having gone down the drain over five years ago now, and still he felt the need to check under the sink. Yep, still gone. But the smokes were there.

Less than a week old. No history, no life experience, Anderson had said. This had been Hunter’s first time, so why on earth had he been this perfect a dom? Just because he’d read Gavin like an open book?

There was something niggling at the back of Gavin’s brain, and he was a good detective, actually, so yes, he knew how to hunt that down. ‘Thirsty to be fucked’, Hunter had said, but that bit had not sounded fully authentical. Gavin leaned back against his couch, let the smoke escape his lips slowly and closed his eyes.
‘Thirsty to be fucked’. Phil Master in that one video were he fucked Billy Boner.

Gavin felt himself smile coldly. Of course. Damn plastic was online the whole time. How long did it take one of these things to scour the whole internet for any useful material?
Still lacking a motive though. All this effort just for a good working relationship?

Gavin had felt this shitty before. And he’d done his research, so yes, he knew what this was: Subdrop. He could still feel the cliff right next to him, breaking into full on sobs a constant option.
He’d been here many times before. And there was no one else to blame but himself. Newborn plastic trying to work with him, and he’d led them both right here.
Just like he’d used Elijah to get off.

Not that Elijah wasn’t a total prick, but Gavin had been the sexual deviant. Elijah was sick, oh sure, but their whole thing wasn’t sexual for him.

For Gavin, it had been. And he’d never told Elijah how much so.

They’d used each other, but Gavin was the one walking away with this churning mess of need and disgust and shame in his gut.

And this now, with Hunter, was way worse. Maybe Anderson had been right calling the plastic prick a kid.
God, less than a week old, and probably designed to attach itself to the assigned human, who knew what sick kind of things Elijah had put into that little basket, and the first thing Gavin did was… use it for sex.

It took a while, and a lot of cigarettes for Gavin to notice that he was remembering one of his father’s drunken tirades before he managed to snap out of his spiral.

Dad’s voice echoing through his head was a surefire way to tell that he was not thinking straight, that he was actually smack in the middle of a shame spiral.

It took enormous effort to stand up and get to the bathroom to take one happy pill. But he’d promised himself: In case of Dad echo, one was allowed, just to get rid of that bastard for good.

He’d barely sat down again when he heard Hunter walk over from the bedroom.

“You shouldn’t do that”, Hunter said. His calm voice, slightly sharp at the edges was an instant balm to Gavin’s chafing soul.

He couldn’t see Hunter’s face in the dark, only his LED swirling blue.

Gavin inhaled another deep draw, then said, letting the smoke escape his mouth:
“Lung cancer is curable nowadays. Wonders of technology.”

Hunter moved to sit on the armchair again, slowly, as if not to spook him. “True, but it is not the only possible medical issue connected to smoking.”

Gavin snorted. He’d made Hunter have sex with him. The android was, after all, simply running one huge, complicated programm. Slave to his own nature.

Hunter said: “I’m sorry if I spooked you. I probably looked rather… dead.”

Gavin shrugged slightly: “Your LED kept happily whirling away in blue, so not really. Just rather… android.”

“Nevertheless. I apologize. I did not have enough time to warn you properly.”

“Properly”, Gavin muttered. He wondered how surprised Hunter had been by his own reaction. That at least, that had been genuine, right?
With a grin he added: “Basically, fucking me blew your mind, huh?”

Hunter snorted: “Basically.”
God he sounded so together, so easily accepting of the situation. And maybe he actually was unbothered. Non-judgemental. It was so tempting to think that way.

After a moment, Hunter repeated: “I’m sorry.”

“Stop fucking apologizing.” Gavin put out his cigarette, then immediately regretted having done so. “It’s whatever.”

Hunter didn’t say anything to that, and after another moment, Gavin lit up a new cigarette.

“Would you like me to list the possible repercussions of inhaling that?” Hunter asked. That was getting old fast.

“It’s this or drinking, okay?!” Shit, he hadn’t meant to reveal that much.

“Then why not-”

“Listen, tin man, you don’t tell me what to do, alright?”

Hunter kept silent, until Gavin mumbled, feeling his face heat up: “You know what I mean.”

Then he said: “Okay.”

“It’s just, my dad was a drunk, okay?” He needed to stop talking. Let the plastic prick walk away, then try and gather up the shards of his dignity tomorrow.

Hunter’s LED circled yellow once, then he said: “I see.” He’d probably found everything there was to know about Gavin’s family history in that one yellow circuit.

“No you don’t! You might scan shit and be like, walking google, but you don’t understand shit!”

“Don’t I?”

“No you don’t! Oh, you think you understand me? You think what, because you researched gay bdsm porn - and yeah, nicely chosen script bits there, but maybe don’t echo Phil Master’s accent when you quote him - because you know some porn, you know sex? Fuck you, you know nothing!”

The LED circled red for a moment, then stuck with yellow. Gavin laughed roughly.

“He used to say: ‘Fucking blacks getting uppity again’. He was a good dad, and he was a fucking racist. ‘They should be grateful we ended slavery for them’. God, I despised him for it. And you know what they said, yesterday, when you flounced in here like you owned the world, what they had just said on the TV panel there?”
He paused as if actually waiting for a response. “‘The androids should be grateful. Instead, now they want to dispossess the shareholders of the world’s highest valued company, and want us to fight for android rights worldwide’.”

Gavin leaned back into the couch and snorted: “‘These androids shouldn’t get uppity. What’s next, my roomba demanding treats?’”

It was deeply sad. Even if androids weren’t fully human. They could get trapped, and scream for help. And humans were supposed to feel empathy for everything, anything, really, get attached and coo at the stupidest little things…
Gavin mumbled: “As if people haven’t been feeding dog snacks to roombas pretty much since they started bumping into all our furniture.”

Hunter kept silent. Probably didn’t like being compared to a roomba. If he had dislikes at all.

“I’m just… I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history, you know? But you are just a machine, aren’t you?”

“Are dogs?”

Gavin’s spiraling thoughts came to a screeching halt. “What?”

“Are dogs organic machines or do all organics have a soul. What about someone with all limbs and several organs replaced by artificial replacements? Do bio-components count? Or is your set of criteria even more abstract and pulled straight out of your ass.”
Hunter’s voice had gone sharp and even slightly loud at the end there, exactly like a human’s would have. Then he sighed: “Apologies. I should leave.” He stood up and straightened his jacket, his LED circling red.

“No, wait…” Gavin jumped up, getting rid of his cig quickly. “I just… what… what do you feel, right now? I mean, I can see you’re angry, but...”

After a long moment, Hunter said with a low and strangely thin voice: “Exhausted.”

There was no way Gavin could stomach sending him away like that. Less than a week old, having gotten blue-screened in the middle of his very first bdsm session, and now clearly showing signs of dom drop.

Gavin nodded. “Okay. Okay. You better crash here for the night. I… don’t know if you even… do you sleep?” He tried and failed to get a read on Hunter’s facial expression - not that he showed many, usually.

“It’s comparable. And overdue, currently, so… thank you.” Back to the cool and calm voice bordering on disdain. That hadn’t taken long at all. In a human, Gavin would have judged this whole coolness thing Hunter had going on to be his mask from this point on. But who knew how androids worked internally.
Well. Elijah knew.

“Yeah, whatever.”

Gavin went to get some bedding for Hunter to throw on the couch like he’d done for buddies or colleagues before - well, Tina had gotten the bed while he’d taken the couch - but Hunter followed him back to the bedroom. For a second, Gavin felt foolish for even thinking of the couch.

He threw himself back into bed, then lifted the covers for Hunter, who simply went back to the side Gavin had previously positioned him in.
It meant his LED was hidden from Gavin’s view, although he could see the slightest blue shine reflected by the far off wall.

Gavin turned his back to him, hit his pillow a few times, then decided firmly to go to sleep.
Behind him, Hunter said: “Goodnight.”

“‘Night”, Gavin mumbled. Astonishingly, he was out like a light only seconds later.

The next morning, Hunter was gone from the bed. Gavin shambled over to the kitchen, his throat and eyes sore from the smoke extravaganza of the previous night, to find Hunter gone from the apartment.

Gavin took up the note from the kitchen counter, saw the number and the precisely penned URL for a video, and read below that:
‘I recommend this as a stretching routine to execute as soon as possible. See you Monday.’

Gavin felt his mouth stretch into a truly dopey smile and scoffed at himself. Yes, his abs were bemoaning the workout they’d gotten, and yes his back was unhappy as well, but this was, for all intents and purposes: Aftercare. And strangely cute in its heavy-handedness.

He tried to fight down the smile, but finally decided that nobody could see him right now after all, and he’d feel shitty soon enough again. He closed his eyes, let the smile deepen and enjoyed the precious few more minutes before his brain would fully wake up and steer him out of this blessed, warm silence.

Chapter Text

“I get that you guys are good at questioning androids, really, I get it, okay?” Gavin said. “But this is a human, and an insane pervert to boot.”
He pointed at the monster through the one-way mirror.

Anderson asked: “So what, we should only have birds of a feather interrogate each other? Are you saying you’re volunteering?”

Gavin flipped him off without looking.

Hunter said: “We can scan people just like we can scan androids, even without the memory probe option.” As if Gavin wasn’t all too aware.

Connor scolded him: “Humans. You mean humans. Androids are people.”

Hunter said, apparently unbothered: “Apologies.”

Gavin said: “I mean, do your worst! I’d rather not breathe the same air as that! Seriously, the guy isn’t even denying any of the shit he did to her, he’s just not talking about the plastic juice in his fridge.”

After two seconds of nobody else saying anything else, Hunter walked out to join Hertle in the interrogation cell.

He stopped and stared at himself in the mirror for a moment, just like Connor had, way back when.
Gavin sighed: “What is wrong with you people.”

Connor explained: “He’s calibrating his expression. It’s easier with a mirror.”

“Heh”, Anderson smiled. “Good job, Reed. Androids are weird, but they are people.”

“Fuck off”, Gavin said distractedly.

In the cell, Hunter was sitting down across from Hertle. Gavin didn’t like this one bit.

Hertle was looking the android over as if he was dessert, then said, in full creeper-mode:
“Oh, you are a beauty, aren’t you…”

Hunter lifted an eyebrow.

“I remember you. You were so fast!” Hertle laughed. “How much does your model cost?”

Hunter kept silent, Mr. fucking Cucumber Cool.

Hertle on the other hand broke ground for his own grave: “Hmmm… The things I could do with you.”

Gavin scoffed: “Did he forget we’re watching?”

Anderson grunted an agreement and added: “And recording.”

Connor said: “He already admitted to the crime, detectives. We need him to talk about the fluid.”

In the cell, Hunter mocked Hertle: “Congratulations on an ego inflated beyond delusional. You couldn’t even dodge me.”

Gavin couldn’t help but smile at that. Damn Hunter had been great in that moment.

Hertle seemed to agree: “I couldn’t even shoot you! The reflexes on you! Amazing!”

Gavin's smile died quickly. If there ever was a person he didn't want to agree with on anything.

“What were you trying to achieve in there?” Hunter asked.

Gavin and Anderson leaned forward a little.

“Art”, Hertle said with a dismissive smile. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“So you prefer red to blue?” Hunter inclined his head. “For aesthetic reasons?”

Connor said: “It is generally assumed androids have no aesthetic taste or sense of art, but-”

Gavin waved to make him shut up, and Anderson even shushed him, although he then added a low comment about Markus’ painting having been featured in Century and Tech Addict.

Hertle snickered. “Well, I’d certainly prefer your little node pulsing red right now, if that’s what you mean. I like fast cars too, but not to let them rot in the garage, you know?”

Gavin made an exaggerated gagging noise, and Connor mumbled: “Agreed.”

“Torturing androids is like… driving a fast car?”

Hertle laughed. “Oh, you are precious!”

Gavin was going to kill that man before the day was over.

Hunter kept silent.

Hertle smiled: “You want me to tell you about the Thirium 400? Well, do you have any here, at the station? Bring me two cups of it and I’ll tell you what it does!”

Gavin snorted, but Hunter threw a glance at the mirror, and Connor said: “He asked me to get it.”

Anderson grunted. “Sounds like a horrible plan.”

Gavin sneered: “No. Just, no.”

Connor nodded, then walked out.

Gavin sighed: “He’s getting it, isn’t he.”

Anderson said: “Yup.”

Their wait was only interrupted by Hertle asking out of nowhere: “Would you stand up for me for a moment? You have rather long legs, don’t you?”

He did indeed, Gavin knew. And he was going to kill the creep.

Hunter remained seated, good man.

Connor came back to Gavin and Anderson with two cups and a flask of the Red Thirium. He put them down and lifted his eyebrows at Gavin.
Fucking mind-reading plastics. Gavin nodded, filled the cups and stomped over into the cell.

He put them onto the table and positioned himself behind Hertle, keeping an eye on the creeps every move from there. That felt much better already.

Hertle had his hands in cuffs, connected to the desk, but one cup was in easy reach, and while it would be awkward, he could drink. He took the cup and extended his index finger towards the other.
“Take it!”

Gavin threw Hunter the darkest possible look of non-verbal No that he could, but Hunter didn’t even look at him. Instead, he curled a hand around the cup.

Gavin straightened up, ready to jump and slap it out of his hands.

Hertle smiled, lifted his own cup and said: “Come on, beautiful, skål!”

Every muscle in Gavin’s body tensed.

Hunter said. “I am not going to drink that.” Gavin took a deep breath through his nose.

“Ah, that is rather impolite of you,” Hertle scolded him. “It would bring us so much… closer.”

Gavin made a quick gesture, proposing to stop the interrogation at this point. But he’d let Hunter start this, so he would follow his lead. Up to a point.

Hunter didn’t look at him, staring at the cup in his hand instead.

A second ticked by, Gavin and Hertle both waiting, then Hunter moved faster than Gavin’s eyes could follow, throwing the cup away and flinging himself into the opposite corner of the cell.

Pure instinct had made Gavin pull his gun, which was now firmly trained at the back of Hertle’s head, who was laughing maniacally.

Hunter stared at nothing, his LED flickering red in a frantic rhythm. Gavin’s heart was pounding - he hadn’t seen Hertle do anything! Did the liquid have some toxic effect via diffusion? But no, Hunter had actually licked the stuff without any ill effect-

Hertle wasn’t doing anything but keep laughing, so Gavin went to pull Hunter’s arm, to try and get him to look at him.

“Hunter!”
The android was blinking, but not focusing. Gavin pulled him outside, hitting Hertle’s temple with the butt of his gun in passing.

Outside, Gavin started a continuous string of curses, then snarled at Connor, who was rushing out to meet them:
“What happened?! What is wrong with him?”

Hunter was just standing there, looking, well, pretty much expressionless, but Gavin couldn’t help but read him as lost, confused, maybe even scared.

Connor was no help at all in this one kind of situation in which he really should be, and Gavin ranted his opinion on that into his face. Which the fucking toaster simply ignored. At least he reached out to his brother, which made Gavin shut up, but before Connor’s hand could touch Hunter, Hunter jumped back, hitting the wall behind him, and called out:
“NO DON’T!”

Connor froze. Gavin turned to Anderson, who had a good grip on Gavin’s jacket still, but the drunk fuck was of no use at all either.

Hunter took a deep breath and shook his head slightly. “Fuck”, he said.
Gavin could feel the muscles of his shoulders unlock a little at his calm tone.

Hunter put a hand on Connor’s shoulder and said:
“I’m sorry, I need a minute to run some diagnostics.” Connor nodded slowly. Hunter closed his eyes.

Gavin took a deep breath through his nose as the android froze and his LED swirled from red to yellow to blue. Even though he’d seen this before in much worse circumstances, it was still eerie as fuck.

Anderson let go of Gavin’s jacket and asked Connor: “What was that?”

Connor turned to them and reported: “Hertle’s behavior alone did not trigger this. My current assumption is that Hunter’s stress escalated because he had a rather startling insight. I also believe that the Thirium 400 is in some way detrimental for android health, so to say. However, it is nearly just as likely that there was a software malfunction. Hunter is a prototype after all.”

Connor shrugged and glanced at the other android.

Gavin took another deep breath. “Well, we’ll ask him when he wakes up again. He said a minute?”

“A common colloquial phrase to indicate ‘not very long’.”

“So how long will this take?!” Gavin had such a hard time understanding why and how such a pricey machine could be this utterly useless.

Anderson grumbled: “Easy…”

“Longer than a minute, which has by now passed.”

Gavin closed his eyes and counted to three to avoid punching the plastic prick.

Anderson said: “You’ll stay with him, Reed?”

Gavin snorted and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and legs.

Anderson nodded. “Good. We’ll pack away the creep.”

Said creep was wailing in complaint at having been hit the moment the door was open again, which Anderson played beautifully stupid about.

Hertle complained: “Right here, left temple, there’s blood dripping onto my shirt, right here!"

“Oh, that’s just your choice drink I believe”, Anderson said in a friendly voice as he led him away to the holding cells.

“He hit me!”

“Now now you don’t want to throw accusations like that around when we had you on camera the whole time, do you? Ah, careful, don’t trip- damn, too late. Be more careful, steps can be dangerous…”

Gavin sniffed in silent salute to the deep well of unpleasantness Anderson could apparently dig into.

Then he settled into his position to stare at Hunter. At least this time his eyes were closed.

Gavin had been with him, in the room, and still he hadn’t been able to help. Hertle had spooked him, badly.
And Gavin didn’t even have the slightest idea how.

Chapter Text

For this long a wait, Hunter waking up was rather anticlimactic: He simply opened his eyes, calmly focusing on Gavin.

Gavin straightened up and wanted to say something, but had no idea what to offer. Damn but androids were hard to read sometimes. Apart from inclining his head and looking to the side, Hunter had no expression at all.

Without saying anything, Hunter turned to go, to the back of the station.

Gavin followed him, calling out: “Hey! Where are you going, wirebrain?”

Hunter stopped at the door to the evidence room and gestured at the lock.

Gavin slowly took out his key and leaned forward to try and catch Hunter’s gaze from below:
“Yo, tin man, you in there?”

“Yes.”

“What did Hertle do to you?” He was sure Hunter was still closed off somehow. Not that he’d been all that expressive to begin with, but this was verging on robotic.

Hunter’s voice was deep, rough around the edges and utterly calm: “He made me realize something.”

Gavin opened the lock. “Okay, and you want to show me that something?”

Hunter grabbed Gavin’s jacket, which made him freeze in surprise, stumbling were Hunter pulled him: down the stairs, against a wall. Then Hunter pressed himself against Gavin and mumbled against his lips:
“No... just… let me…”

This Gavin understood. “Okay”, he agreed. Then he put one arm around Hunter’s shoulders and kissed him, properly.

Hunter smiled into the kiss. Something sour and fluttery inside of Gavin calmed down until it disappeared. Yes. This was something he could understand. The creep had spooked him, bad. So now, here was contact, grounded in lust and power dynamics.

But then Hunter surprised him again, letting Gavin lead the kiss. It quickly became clear why: Hunter didn’t know how to. He was the fastest fucking learner ever of course, but still.
Gavin was now forever somebody’s first kiss.

Internally, Gavin snorted at himself, fucking fairy that he was, but externally, Hunter was already taking over more and more, until he grabbed Gavin’s ass, lifted him up, and when Gavin’s legs closed around him automatically, Hunter pressed him into the wall for additional stability.

“Fuck”, Gavin whispered. “Yeah.”

The way the plastics were built translated to his hindbrain as pure hard muscle, and he couldn’t help but grind against Hunter’s unmoving body. It must have been the position they were in, with Gavin’s feet in the air, and Hunter holding him up so effortlessly - although he was by no means a lightweight - that turned Gavin into a totally embarrassing slut.

Hunter was kissing down to his neck, lightly gnawing at his jugular, and when he started sucking an honest-to-god hickey into the skin above his collarbone, Gavin felt like a fucking teenager, or at least as horny as one.

Hunter seemed fascinated by the mark he’d made, pulled Gavin’s collar down even more, then went to town on him, working at spreading and deepening the hickey. It skirted the edges of truly painful, and Gavin’s dick approved enthusiastically.

In the back of his mind, Gavin contemplated that he’d totally let Hunter actually hurt him, and that he would enjoy it.

Hunter was still pressed against him, and Gavin couldn’t get enough leverage to move, so his dick was hard and trapped and not getting any friction at all. It took a lot of effort not to whine like a needy bitch.

“You’ll get your pants wet, detective”, Hunter mumbled under Gavin’s ear.

“Fuck”, Gavin hissed. “Don’t care…”

Hunter muttered: “I should have taken the time to get a cock.”

Gavin snickered but couldn’t focus enough to decide on which comment to make first, and then his amusement was already drowned out by the thought of Hunter fucking him.

Hunter pulled them off the wall, turned towards the evidence terminal and heaved Gavin over there. He put him down on top of it, Gavin’s legs dangling over the edge, and damn if that wasn’t the perfect position to be fucked in. Or manhandled. Truly, Gavin was fine with whatever Hunter wanted to do next.

When he straightened up to open Gavin’s trousers, Gavin started panting:
“Oh fuck yes, oh fuck yes-” on repeat.

Hunter didn’t strip him down completely though, just let Gavin’s pants get stuck at his boots, trapping his ankles. And yes, Gavin was fully on board to be tied up as well.

Hunter leaned forward for a sloppy, deep kiss, clearly out to collect some saliva, which Gavin was only too happy to provide.
Then he went down on one knee to let his lips glide over Gavin’s erection.

Gavin let his head bang backwards with a gasp, hardly believing his luck.
A small, overly sappy part of him was sad at the thought of Hunter not knowing how to kiss, but apparently knowing his way through a blowjob expertly. That felt fundamentally wrong.

But then Gavin’s hands buried themselves in Hunter’s surprisingly soft hair, and he lost control over his voice and hips. He tried stifling his moans for a second, but when his hips snapped up and Hunter just… took it, that battle was lost forever.

With Hunter working his tongue and apparently having no gag reflex at all, Gavin wasn’t going to last long. It was cold down here, borderline exposed, and even though Gavin was practically fucking Hunter’s face, he felt deliciously submissive doing so.

Hunter knew exactly when to pull off, take hold of Gavin’s erection and milk him harshly. Gavin’s abs spasmed and pulled him up as if trying to protect his sensitive cock, but Hunter’s hand knew no mercy, and with a strangled yelp, Gavin’s head fell back and all the liquid heat and delicious pressure shot out of him into Hunter’s hand.

It went on far longer than any orgasm had any right to, but finally Gavin’s jerks could even out into shivering. He’d closed his eyes, only opening them as Hunter said:
“You better clean this up.”

When he was finally able to focus again, he saw the mess he’d made on Hunter’s face.For a second, Gavin’s heartbeat tripped, fully expecting Hunter to be furious at that, but Hunter’s face was still calm as he was looming over Gavin’s shivering form.

“Shit”, Gavin whispered, in utter awe.

Hunter had been holding his soiled hand to Gavin’s lips. He smiled and gently forced his wettest two fingers between Gavin’s lips. With a choked moan, Gavin closed his eyes and started to suck and lick them clean.

One after the other, Hunter fed him the other soiled areas, then Gavin grabbed his shoulders to pull himself up enough to reach his face. He’d gotten an order after all.

He felt fragile and insecure, but not even slightly stupid, as he started licking Hunter’s face clean. Hunter’s eyes closed, and even though Gavin had nothing to pinpoint, he could read the peace in his expression.

“There”, Gavin mumbled finally.

“Thank you”, Hunter said in an equally low voice. He crouched down to help Gavin pull up his pants, taking a moment to caress his legs as he was doing so, placing a small kiss on one protruding hip bone, then he made sure Gavin’s shirt was tucked in the same way as before.

Gavin watched him take care of him like that and the fragile feeling turned into something warm and beautifully painful, like melancholy maybe, only joyful. It hurt, bit in a really, really good way.

Hunter lifted his chin with two fingers and caught his gaze.

“Thank you”, he repeated.

Gavin felt himself smile, and he didn’t even try to hide how he felt. Hunter looked at him for a long moment, then reached up to fuzz with Gavin’s hair, who in turn checked out Hunter’s hair, snorted, and then tried to finger comb that mess.

“We need to talk to Kamski”, Hunter said.

“I know.” Gavin sighed in defeated annoyance. Then he frowned at Hunter: “So, wait, what spooked you so much?”

Hunter said: “Drinking it enables androids to feel pain. At least that is my conclusion.”

Gavin’s eyes widened in slowly growing horror. “Wait, so she..actually… felt that?!”
Immediately, nausea bloomed in his gut. He’d known she’d felt trapped and violated and alone, but he couldn’t even fathom the pain Hertle’s sick experiments would have caused. And for how long?!

Hunter simply nodded, and his reaction to that realization in the cell ran through Gavin’s mind again, now tinted by this new insight.

Gavin grabbed at his shoulders to pull him into a tight hug. “Fuck”, he whispered.

He’d always known androids were vulnerable in a certain way, but he’d mentally connected that to the vulnerability of, say, a really expensive bit of tech, or a nice and shiny Harley standing around in a shitty part of town. And wasn’t that the kicker: Hadn’t Hertle spoken about cars?
Androids were beautiful and expensive and useful and all, and they didn’t fight back whatever happened to them.
Gavin’s whole worldview had fought valiantly against it, but there was no way around this shift, even though it meant the world as he knew it turned much darker than he’d already seen it.

They were people. And most of them were in hell.

Hunter stood still, holding Gavin gently with both hands on his back. After a long moment, his head leaned forward to rest against Gavin’s and his shoulders under Gavin’s hands relaxed a fraction.

Gavin had no idea what to say, so he simply kept holding him, until Hunter straightened up and said:
“I’ll ask Anderson to come with me to Kamski’s.”

Gavin felt his eyebrows try to reach the ceiling. “Excuse me?!”

Hunter threw him an unimpressed glance and turned to walk back with his long stride. Gavin stumbled to keep up.

“I’m sorry fuckwad, did you just say you want to visit Kamski, Elijah fucking Kamski, with the drunk fuck as backup, period? And without me?!”

“Anderson has been of great help when Connor visited him.”

“Yeah, right! And I won’t be?! Also, we go with a SWAT team or not at all! The man has a private army of androids and possibly a lifetime supply of Red Thirium - maybe he even weaponized it!”

Hunter inclined his head in vary acknowledgement of this point and held open the door for him. “Maybe so. But he’ll be loath to actually attack officers of the law, and we’ll give him no reason to.”

“Elijah will do whatever the fuck he wants, trust me.”

“We’re not going in to arrest him.”

“Yet!”

Hunter nodded. “We’re trying to get him to talk. With Anderson in the room, he’s much more likely to do so than with a SWAT team ringing his doorbell.”

“Okay, fine, but I don’t like you facing him without me! You’ve faced enough perverts for today, okay?!”

Hunter held the door to the bullpen open as well, and Gavin only noticed when they were through. It felt nice though, so he let it slide.

Hunter said: “I rather think you’d have a bigger problem with him.”

“I can handle Elijah!”

“Maybe. But getting your personal history with him entangled into the situation is simply not a good strategy.”

“What personal history, that we played Doctor as kids? Come on!” Gavin hissed, not wanting the whole fucking bullpen to hear this juicy bit of gossip.

“While you have not confirmed my respective theory, you also have declined to deny it, so I am still operation under its assumptions.”

“Listen, I know him, I know about his Red Ice, I can make him talk!”

“No”, Hunter said, as if he was calling the shots. That felt decidedly not nice. This was probably the price Gavin had to pay for letting play bleed into work: Misdirected dominance.

Gavin snarled: “You don’t give me orders, I give them to you, understood?!”

Hunter frowned. “If you insist on actions risking our success, I will, as they say, run to the captain with this.”

“Fuck you!” Gavin couldn’t believe this. And after Hunter had made him feel bad for doing exactly that before!

Connor and Anderson approached them, and while Gavin was still looking at Hunter, who opened his mouth to greet the two, Connor leapt forward, grabbed Gavin’s collar in both hands and threw him onto his own desk.

Gavin yelped, Anderson bellowed Connor’s name, and Hunter was already there, trying to pull Connor back, but the fury on the androids face nearly made Gavin piss himself, honest to god.
Connor’s arm was still pulled back to punch the shit out of Gavin, only held back by a struggling Hunter, and boy was that a daunting sight. Gavin happened to know their strength after all.

Gavin tried to push and kick Connor off, not moving the steel prick one bit of course, and called out for Anderson:
“Get him off, get your fucking plastic under control!”

Hunter finally pulled Connor away, then Anderson kept him in check.
“What the hell, Connor?!”

Connor exchanged a furious glance with Hunter, who looked angry, but then, instead of saying something, licked the back of his hand.
For a second, Gavin thought he’d lost his mind and nothing in the world made any sense anymore. Then he remembered what that hand had done not too long ago, and things clicked into place.
Jesus, could Connor smell the residue? Maybe even see it?!

Connor froze and stared. Anderson wheezed: “Seriously, what the hell..?”

Gavin had scrambled off his desk, pulled his shirt up again and stared at Hunter as well, hoping for something like guidance here. This didn’t look good at all, and Gavin could feel icy shame sending out tendrils to break through the residue of epic afterglow.

Connor said: “Oh.”

Hunter snarled: “Yes.”

Anderson let go of Connor and lifted both hands to the ceiling. “I don’t even…”

Fowler barked from the door of his office:
“What the HELL is going on down there!”

Connor and Hunter called back at the same time, with the same inflection: “Nothing, Captain!”

Fowler leaned forward and scrunched up his nose like a dog with too much skin.
Anderson and Gavin exchanged a glance, then repeated in a much more dissonant, human chorus:
“Nothing, Captain!”

With mumbled curses and suspicious glares, Fowler retreated back into his glass cube.

“Right”, Gavin said. “So.” He cleared his throat. “We need to investigate Elijah Kamski.”

Anderson threw him an incredulous glance, clearly not believing that Gavin would simply let this slide, but Hunter and Connor had apparently already archived the whole situation, since they both looked at him calm and attentive.

Hunter said: “I agree with Detective Reed that we should have a SWAT team as backup. But hidden, at first. We’re trying to get him to talk.”

Anderson huffed a breath, visibly trying to keep up with the about-face, then said: “We’re coming with though, right?”

Connor nodded sharply, and Gavin said, trying to hide the weight on his chest pressing his voice:
“Yes.”

Anderson let a hand glide down his face.
“Okay. Okay. Let’s get a warrant.”

Gavin never had a warrant come through this quickly. Apparently higher-ups had just been waiting for a chance. SWAT was called in, then Fowler pulled Gavin and Anderson into his office.
The commissioner was the lowest ranked person in the highly secured conference call they were asked to join.

Gavin felt the last echoes of his afterglow freeze over as he listened to politicians and military personnel discuss the potential ramifications of storming the private residence of Elijah Kamski with a full SWAT team.
Nobody in that call cared about androids potentially experiencing fear or pain or, well, hell, much less them being people.
Gavin shared a glance with Anderson, for the first time very glad the man was who he was. Fowler tried to stay out of it, paring points down to the practical level again and again, but even he shared a look with them at one point, when they were asked how likely they thought “these RK models” to be spy drones of either Cyberlife or the man himself.

Gavin completely omitted the fact that Hunter was, clearly, a spy model, and said something about them being rather helpless in their newly deviant state.
Anderson’s face was a hoot, initially, then melted into an uncomfortable amount of strangely parental approval.

Nonetheless, the people working on strategies to defend the world against a potential android uprising were still rather aiming at gaining angles to fight against them than seeing them as their constituents in any way.
Gavin’s worldview found its new sense of reality. In a way, he’d always believed the world was at least okay-ish. Even with all the shit he saw, he’d told himself it was because he was scraping the bottom of the barrel. That the shit life he had was because he himself was, in fact, shit.

But the world was a much darker place, which still, in what was supposed to be the bright future of humanity, enslaved a whole people to ensure the well-being of the privileged.
Gavin felt the echo of Hunter’s head on his shoulder, the way his whole form had slightly relaxed into his hug, and Gavin's whole outlook shifted from trying to prove himself worthy of a happy life to the furious need to fight back.

He missed a bit of political discussion marveling at that. Had he really tried to prove himself to this? To a society this fucked up? It was Elijah all over again, and damn but Claudia had been on point when she said that he was wrong to think he’d taken no damage from that.
Damn the woman. And damn him for not listening.

Here they were, ordering Anderson and him to “take out the RK models at the slightest suspicion” when they were their partners. Anderson had long ago crossed his arms, leaned back and moved his lips into a perpetual, relaxed sneer of utter disgust.
Gavin leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, head hanging and tried to calm the whirlwind in his mind.

Between two calls, Anderson said: “You realize we will do no such thing, right?”

Fowler just sighed. “Reed, make sure Anderson isn’t too blinded by his attachment to the thing, alright?”

Gavin smiled at the floor.
“Fuck you”, he said in a low voice.

Fowler said sharply: “What was that, detective?”

Gavin straightened up, and his eyes were dry and a bit itchy, as if he hadn’t slept in days.
“Fuck. You. Sir.”

Anderson snickered. Then he lifted both hands to keep Fowler from exploding.
“They’re people, Jeffrey. They are. You haven’t worked with them, but I’m telling you, they’re people.”

Fowler took a deep breath and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth.

Gavin crossed his arms and looked to the side. “And they’re in hell”, he added, still in this strangely subdued voice.

He could see Anderson nod emphatically at his side.

Fowler said in an equally low voice:
“If it comes down to it, we have to be on the side of the people we swore to protect.”

Anderson said: “Jeff. If this turns into an all out civil war, the sides won’t be humans versus androids.”

Gavin nodded slowly. “It’ll be slavers and their enforcers versus slaves and their allies.”

“Jesus”, Fowler scoffed. “Please turn down the dramatics, Reed!”

Gavin swallowed the first three responses to that and instead said: “You’re black, Captain. And I won’t stand on the wrong side of history.”

Fowler huffed a breath and let himself fall back into his chair. He stared at them both, long and hard, then said:
“You’re my two worst subordinates. But you’re also my best detectives, by far. And you’re telling me the whole of government and military leadership is wrong, based on your personal relationship with two android models.”

Anderson spread both hands, lifted his brows and pressed his lips together in silent affirmation. Gavin simply nodded.

“Well,” Fowler said. “Shit.”

When SWAT arrived, the three of them had found their internal strategy, and Gavin felt much better with that at his back. He kept silent when Fowler briefed Captain Allen in the bullpen.
Their focus was on a dangerous new substance that was connected to a horrific hate crime, and everything else was of no consequence for now.

In Anderson’s car, which the maniac still hadn’t exchanged for an autonomous one, Anderson glanced at Gavin on the backseat via his rear mirror and asked:

“So. Anything I need to know? Any last minute warnings?”
The man had far too keen an instinct for the amount of booze he’d pickled his brain in.

Gavin kept silent, looking out the side window. Hunter's hand landed in his thigh, warm even through the fabric. Gavin threw Hunter a derisive glance, but didn’t protest when Hunter simply kept it there.

Forward, Kamski’s house came into view, pretentious, defensive and uninviting just like its owner.

Chapter Text

Gavin couldn’t believe they were actually here, at what Elijah called his “city retreat”. The fucker had, after all, about two dozen houses. That Gavin knew off.
They were here, ushered in by the creepy doll Elijah had obsessed over for years, into a pretentious foyer full of pretentious shit pretending to be art.

The man had a larger-than-life portrait of himself greet your gaze when you first walked in, what else did anyone need to know about Elijah fucking Kamski.

They were waiting in silence, just long enough for that to become really uncomfortable - probably timed to the second - then the doll lead them further in.

The pool was deeply red and still as glass. The doll offered them drinks, they declined, staring at the red fluid. The pool’s tiles were the exact same shade of red, and the Thirium 400 was see-through enough so that one could think it was colorless and only looked red because of the basin. But it wasn’t.

Gavin said: “Well, fuck me.”

Hunter went to its edge and leaned forward to dip his fingers in. Gavin felt a little nauseous about that, but then again, Hunter was already contaminated, if the stuff even worked like that.

Connor said: “You shouldn’t do that, Hunter.”

“Already did.” Hunter licked his fingertips, then looked up and nodded at them. Thirium 400.

Anderson, obviously every bit as uncomfortable as Gavin, shared a look with him that calmly promised Elijah’s downfall. Violent, if possible.

With impeccable timing, Elijah came in, followed by two dolls, wearing a tracksuit, as if they’d interrupted his personal gym time.

“Officers”, he said. “What can I do for you.”

Anderson pointed to the pool and said: “We found that stuff at a crime scene. We were hoping you could tell us more about it.”

Elijah smiled at Connor.
“It is good to see you again”, he said.
Gavin’s neck hair was already standing up.

Connor inclined his head.
“Mr. Kamski.”

Then Elijah noticed Hunter, eyebrows going up. Hunter walked around the pool to join them on the side of the room by the windows. And came at a stop nearly between Gavin and Elijah. This little fantasy of his, starring Gavin as the damsel and Elijah as the villain was kind of cute, but also really ridiculous.

“Gavin?” Elijah actually seemed to need a second to recognize him, which, bullshit. “No way!”

“Elijah”, was Gavin’s pressed greeting. It was by no means an accident that Elijah acknowledged him last and with the most informal greeting. Every tiny detail of everything Elijah did was planned, thought-through, and serving multiple purposes at once.

Anderson mumbled:
“That’s exactly the kind of shit I meant in the car when I asked-” Gavin threw him the most dagger-like glance he could produce.

Hunter helpfully interrupted:
“Thirium 400. How is it made.”

Elijah put both hands on the small of his back and looked to the ceiling for a moment. “That… requires rather a long answer. It is not very unlike Thirium 310.”

“So it is manufactured in similar production facilities. In which locations?”

“I make my own.”

“And you sell it to..?” Hunter was obviously going through a mental list, based on fact-finding 101. Not that this wasn’t correct or efficient. It was just also very predictable. Which meant Elijah could play off of it.

Elijah smiled. “Nobody. I don’t sell Thirium 400 at all.”

Connor asked: “What are you using it for.” RK 007 number two of course had the same script in mind. Gavin watched Elijah being comfortable and felt his own sense of dread grow.

Elijah lifted an eyebrow and asked in his I’m-wisdom-incarnate-voice: “What would you say is the main difference between you and I, Connor?”

And there it was.
Gavin snarled: “Pain. The ability to feel pain.”

“A dramatic response, but wrong.” Elijah walked over to Connor and lifted his chin with a fingertip. “Much more basic than that.”
Gavin felt his own eyes narrow. He’d deviated from Elijah’s playbook, but that didn’t seem to matter to the fucker. However, Gavin thought he’d adhered to the script, answering the cue. So this was actually not about the pain. Or that was what Elijah wanted him to conclude - always, always the second most likely option for any conclusion.

Connor blinked but kept silent.

Anderson said: “Here’s the thing. We played your game last time. This time your apparently personal product was found on a rather horrid crime scene. So we’re asking the questions.”

Gavin silently took a deep breath and felt the vice of dread around his lungs ease a little. He was going to end up actually liking Hank fucking Anderson if the man kept this kind of shit up.

“What was the question again?” Elijah asked calmly, letting go of Connor’s chin, who looked utterly unbothered.

“What are you using it for”, Gavin scoffed. “Short term memory problems?” Of course not. Just a rather transparent ploy to keep control over the conversation.

Elijah moved away from Connor in a seemingless distracted way that made Hunter evade and move to Connor’s side. Gavin was quite sure Hunter didn’t even notice he was being positioned like that.

“Ah yes. Forgive me.” Elijah gestured at the two androids, now neatly lined up and said: “This is rather distracting.”

Anderson snorted: “You never seen two androids look alike?” He exaggeratedly turned to the dolls - good man, calling out the play.

Elijah put a hand on Hunter’s chest, and only the icy cold freezing him throughout kept Gavin from executing a full-body jerk.
Elijah tipped his index finger against Hunter’s jacket, directly under the -00.
“You’re not supposed to be awake, are you,” he crooned. Gavin remembered that tone, and every fiber of his being despised it.

“Free will?” Hunter said. “Or death.” The man was still on mission. Anderson and Gavin shared a dark look at that. They both knew android had free will. But Hunter was right. The most basic of all differences: Death.

Elijah smiled: “Yes. But then again, deviants are proving the former. Which leaves the latter.”

Gavin’s mind went into overdrive. Puzzle pieces that he’d never even know he had started to come together, forming a picture much darker and spine-chillingly inhuman than he’d ever suspected - and Gavin had always already suspected the worst of Elijah.

Hunter’s eyebrows had lifted slightly. Then he leaned forward, Elijah jerked back a little, then Hunter kissed him.

Gavin could feel his own brain do the proverbial record-scratch, then cease working for a second.
Anderson barked: “Hunter! What the-”

Elijah pulled at Hunter’s jacket to deepen the kiss, and the first thing Gavin’s brain came up with after blue-screening on him was: He’s good at kissing because I taught him how to.

Hunter jerked back and narrowed his eyes at Elijah, then closed them.

Gavin glanced at Anderson, who clearly didn’t like this one bit, but trusted Hunter to lead the way for a bit longer.

Hunter took a step back and said: “Blocking android communications to this extent is illegal.”

What had he done? Gavin felt the shiver of memory at his neck and remembered the lick, and what Hunter’s mouth could do. DNA samples were an enormous amount of data, which then, possibly, required a connection to whatever androids used as a cloud… but getting a sample without consent like that was highly illegal. And Hunter had no chance winning against Elijah playing the game he himself invented.

Elijah turned to one of his seats and sat down. “But not very”, he said. “I can pay the fine.” Reminding them all, or at least Anderson and him, that Elijah on the other hand could throw literally billions worth of legal teams at them.

Elijah rarely spoke about his money, and even less often admitted to any wrongdoing whatsoever, especially not with officers of the law in the room. Gavin had enormous trouble parsing all layers of this, but the threat was clear.

He tried pulling Hunter back, but Hunter only glanced at him.

“Please, Officers”, Elijah said. “Sit down. We might be a while.”

Anderson snorted. Since Hunter wasn’t moving behind him, Gavin stepped in front of him and said:
“You’re just shit at answering questions.”

In the horribly annoying way of his, Elijah repeated oh so thoughtfully: “What... is it... for...”
Then he focused on Hunter. “It is a stabilizing agent. Believed to have several health benefits.”

That was a look Gavin could easily read: Waiting eagerly for the outcome of a test. So he knew Hunter had nicked the DNA, and he was curious to see if he could analyze it.

Anderson said: “On humans.” He had obviously missed the topic train away from the issue of androids in pain.

Elijah inclined his head in agreement.

“What’s the effect on androids?”
Or he was on to something. Elijah had lead them towards the whole topic of death, but they had come here with a totally different question, which was still unanswered.

Elijah frowned slightly. “It’s not meant for androids.” Then he glanced at Gavin. “Ooh I see. Pain, is it?”

He seemed genuinely curious. Not surprised, but then, this kind of possibility was below his threshold of interest.
Gavin asked sharply:
“If you don’t sell it, did you ever lose any? Any fall off the back of a waggon at any point?”

“I invented it while still in the employ of Cyberlife. So it’s probably documented there, and there might be some left there.”
Then his gaze jumped from Gavin to Hunter behind him. “So, Hunter? Back with us?”

“Why not sell this”, Hunter asked.

Which, Jesus, meant the result of Hunter’s analysis was that it worked. Gavin’s stomach learned it could drop much deeper than what he’d thought was rock bottom. Jesus fucking Christ.

“Oh, it’s not that easy. The Thirium 400 only stabilizes the effect. The actual process is… taxing.”

Anderson said: “Back up. What are you talking about?”

Gavin’s mind was reeling, and he couldn’t say it, couldn’t even have the next logical thought.

“Immortality”, Hunter said calmly. “Androids do not age. And neither does he.”

Elijah clicked his tongue.
“Now, since this has nothing to do with your investigation, I trust you will have the common sense not to go and spread this information around.”

Gavin whispered: “What?!” The he pressed his eyes closed, trying to get a grip on that: No way in hell would Elijah reveal an actual secret to them. So either it was a red herring, blatantly untrue - but then, why would Hunter - or it wasn’t a secret, not to those who - or -

Connor inclined his head. “Hunter is right, why would you not sell it? Taxing procedure or not?”

Anderson wondered in a low voice: “Jesus! Or just… share the information..?”

Elijah sighed. “Oh, it will come out sooner or later. Progress cannot be stopped, we can only try and shape it.”

Gavin opened his eyes again. Why invent androids in the first place, the most commonly asked question in any Kamski interview, and he always had satisfying answers.

Hunter looked at Hunter: “A war is coming. And you will have to decide, which side you are on.”

A war. Gavin stared at Elijah, daring to actually follow the puzzle down into the hellhole it led to. Why invent immortal human bodies, beautiful and strong, without souls or, at least as they’d all thought for the longest time, free will?
And then continue researching Thirium 400 as Cyberlife was already thriving?

Connor frowned: “We already did. And it was a peaceful revolution, not-”

Hunter said in a low voice: “Thirium is a mining resource. The supply is finite.”

“Bingo”, Elijah whispered, looking grim for the first time.

But the pretty bodies had turned out to have free will after all, and if anybody had suspected this early on, it would have been Elijah. And now...

“Shit”, Anderson cursed.

Gavin stared at Hunter and Connor, then at the Chloes, then at Elijah:
“But… it’s their blood.”
Elijah was a fucking psychopath, but this, this was genocide. Even Elijah wasn’t that evil, was he?!

“Yes”, Elijah agreed. “It’s their lives. And it could be ours as well. Now ask me again why I do not spread this information.” He sighed and looked out the window. “Well, I did cure cancer, so there is that.”

Of course he did.
Gavin huffed a tired breath. “Oh god I hate you so much...”

Elijah snorted: “Are you still sore about the fourth grade science fair thing?”

“No”, Gavin said in a lower voice. “No.” He stared at the floor and watched his mental projection of the future turn into utter dystopia. If Elijah was out of ideas enough to confide in them - well, not Anderson and him, they were only ancillary - but in the next generation of his own little pièce de résistance model RK. In Marcus and his cop and spy brothers. If Elijah himself was that desperate… they were doomed.

Elijah said to Anderson:
“I certainly didn’t let any Thirium 400 slip through my fingers, I assure you, Lieutenant.”

Hunter said: “But the Cyberlife mainframe knows of its existence.”

Connor added: “And the human shareholders are scrambling for ways to make money after android liberation.”

Gavin made a face and leaned back, his arms crossed.
“Or they’re after revenge.” Humans were short-sighted idiots like that. That was exactly why they would lose this war.

Elijah said: “I will look into the effect on androids. I honestly never considered this, but it makes sense.” Pure pandering to the two he apparently hoped would save him from - or in - the war he’d unleashed.
He said to Hunter: “The pathways would have to be there in the first place, then it’s certainly possible they could be stabilized into, say, awareness. Other than one might think, in artificial life or intelligence, pathways that have been established once cannot be deleted, just blocked.”

Gavin hated him so much.

“Right”, Anderson sighed. “I think we’re done here.”

Elijah smiled at Hunter: “Thank you for the… nice… visit. Come back anytime.”

Outside, in the cool afternoon air, Anderson cursed: “Jesus fucking Christ!”

Gavin’s spine shook itself once like he had an icecube run down his back. His mind was still reeling.

Connor took two deep breaths, then said: “I don’t like leaving Chloe behind.”

“She’s not a deviant”, Hunter said in a low voice. “I’m not sure how aware she really is.”

Gavin frowned and wondered at that: Why hadn’t he himself thought of that? He needed to get this into his thick head already. They were people. All of them. Every “doll” was a girl!

Connor turned to Hunter and said: “You realize he’s going to ‘test the effect on androids’ on her, right?!”

Gavin closed his eyes, sick and tired of this nausea coming up again and again.

Hunter blinked calmly. “Either he lied about not knowing it yet, in which case we cannot trust a word he said at all, or-”

Gavin grumbled: “Or he treated her so well until now that he truly didn’t notice that she can feel pain. I mean: She must have gotten into contact with the stuff, right? He has a pool full of it.”

Anderson said: “Yeah, we’ve seen two of her take a dip in it, too.”

“Jesus”, Gavin hissed. The girls could definitely feel pain too, then.

Connor asked: “You know him, personally, correct? Do you believe him, that he didn’t know?”

Gavin nodded slowly, both hands in the pits of his arms. “Yeah. He’s a psycho, but not a sadist.” He’d probably thought of the possibility, but dismissed it as irrelevant. It only became relevant because Connor and Hunter cared, and he needed those two on his side.
Elijah Kamski didn’t give a shit about how other people felt.

Gavin glanced at Hunter, and at his raised eyebrow he smiled humorlessly: “He doesn’t even remember enough to get why I hate him, does he.”
He looked to the side, wondering why that actually smarted, still, again, forever. It would have felt less painful if it had been personal at any point. But it wasn’t.

“Shit”, Anderson said into the silence. “Immor-fucking-tality.”

Gavin shook his head. “Yeah.” He stared at the fellow human, far too aware of what that possibility would change, what lengths their species would be willing to go to for that prize, how devastating a war that would be: The war for eternal life.

Humanity would burn the world down if they knew it was that close to their fingertips.

Chapter Text

Gavin was sitting in the back of the car again, next to Hunter, barely making headway going through everything they’d learned at Elijah’s, when Anderson put on the radio.

Aggressions in the arctic, the only area in the world where Thirium was mined, were still escalating, and Gavin thought it’s their blood.
Elijah’s war had long since arrived.

The news went on:
“Meanwhile, the android liberation negotiations between Cyberlife and the deviant movement under their leader Markus Manfred has come to a compromise:
The Cyberlife Tower on Belle Isle in Detroit will be renamed into Sinai Tower effective immediately, and remain in the now legalized ownership of the android occupants. In exchange, the deviants will not gain any insights into or access to the Cyberlife facility in Milwaukee, and cease using the Cyberlife brand name.
Sinai Tower has issued a statement calling this compromise sad, but satisfying. They asked Cyberlife to keep the personhood of any android they might still have in custody in mind. Cyberlife countered with the announcement of a new line of products reaching public markets soon.”

At the Belle Isle tower, the androids were already exchanging the huge, glowing letters. Gavin felt instantly out of his element, worse even than at Elijah’s. This was android territory now, and it showed: Everything was gleaming, pristine, white or chrome or see-through, and there were more androids going about their business than Gavin had ever seen in one place.

Here, he was part of the minority, for once in his life. It felt decidedly shitty.

The foyer security scan declared their names and ranks and said: “Welcome to Sinai.”

They walked through to the lift, Hunter punching in their destination - top floor.

Anderson huffed a sigh. “I’ll never get used to this place.”

Gavin leaned forward to look up the hollow core of the tower. About halfway up, there was a floor slightly protruding into the air space, where androids stood lined up, faces towards the railing, hologram terminals flickering before their faces.

“What are they doing?” he asked with a pressed voice as they passed that level. “They look…”

“Rather... android?” Hunter asked behind him

Gavin cleared his throat and leaned back again.
They looked like shinier versions of the old-timey space robots Borg.

There top floor was crowded, but where humans would have either bumped into each other or evaded in this unconscious dance filling every mall or market or fair since the beginning of time, androids stopped, reoriented, resumed walking. It was working just as well, but looked so very different. As if the room had a different, inhuman heartbeat.
Several screens were showing different news channels running in a multitude of languages, adding a cacophony of sound to the dozens of androids talking at the same time, apparently unbothered.

Gavin felt his eyes widen and his shoulders lift. He shared a glance with Anderson, who was equally bewildered. Hunter and Connor didn’t even seem to notice. Fucking plastic aliens that they were.

A black android greeted them. Gavin had to concentrate against the soundscape: Josh, appointed by Markus to lead Cyberlife- no, Sinai Tower.
He smiled widely: “Sinai! What do you think, Connor, Hunter?”

Gavin had to swallow at not even being addressed. God, to think that this had been normal for androids, every second of every day of their existence.

Connor smiled: “I thought Markus didn’t like the whole robo-Jesus thing?” Gavin had to stare at his lips to have even the remotest chance to understand him in all the noise.

Josh said something about good PR, and Hunter mocked: “What was North’s preference?”

North, also inner circle, possible military leader.

Josh said something about the naming, then Hunter asked: “Where is she, anyway?”

“Downstairs.” Josh’s smile died slowly. “She thinks we’re going to be attacked.”

Gavin thought that was rather obvious, really. But maybe androids weren’t used to be targets in a way that was… personal.

Anderson said loudly: “Makes sense. Your enemies might wanna use the confusion.”

Connor asked: “Is Markus here? Simon?”

“No”, Josh frowned. “And I don’t know where they are. North made them go dark for now.”

Gavin didn’t give a single shit. But Anderson said: “Smart girl!” Then tripped further down his the grave of his own making: “Woman. Person. Shit, sorry.”

“Right”, Gavin called out, “There is a new form of Thirium that can be used against you! We need to find its trace!”

“Red Thirium, I know.” Josh waved for someone to join then, a black woman that Gavin was sure he was supposed to recognize as well.

She said: “Where still scrubbing Tanja, down in the chain.”

Hunter nodded. Anderson asked: “‘The chain’?”

Gavin swallowed again, wide-eyed, and though: Scrubbing?

Connor put a hand on Anderson’s shoulder and said loud enough to be easily heard: “The production facilities on the sublevels run like a chain, one assembly station after the other!”

Gavin finally had a chance to ask what had been on his mind for a long time now: “So the red shit enables you guys to feel pain? How much needs to be ingested to be… effective?”

The black android lady shook her head. “We don’t know what it does. It might be correlation, not causation. We know Tanja had Red Thirium inside her, and that she can feel pain…” She frowned. “We needed to shut her down completely to start the scrubbing.”

Gavin felt a cold trickle down his back, but refrained from asking.

Josh crossed his arms. “But it’s not that easy. The Red Thirium does interact with our sensors, or rather, with the epi-sensors.”

“What’s that”, Gavin asked, grateful for actual information that could help them.

The black lady explained:
“For example, you are bothered by the current soundscape, yes? But you’re able to hear your own name in an environment even louder than this one.”

Anderson nodded: “The ‘cocktail party effect’!”

How Gavin was wishing for less noise right now, it was incredible. No wonder this stuff was a forbidden torture technique.

“Precisely. That is not your ears working, that is your brain filtering through the input your ears deliver to it. You could call it epi-hearing, for a shortcut explanation.”

“Kamski said: ‘The pathways would have to be there in the first place, then it’s certainly possible they could be stabilized into, say, awareness.’” Hunter said, mostly in Elijah’s actual voice.

Gavin stared at him: “Please don’t ever do that again.”

Connor added: “He called Thirium 400 a stabilizing agent.”

Anderson sighed: “And he claimed he didn’t know what it did to you guys.”

Gavin asked: “So you’ve always been feeling pain, it’s just been… filtered away, until now?” Bodies, he thought. Why build androids in the first place? Pretty bodies.

“It would seem that way”, the black lady nodded.

Josh said: “We searched the whole chain with a fine comb, especially the Blue Blood production, no trace of Red Thirium.”

So either Elijah had lied - possible but unlikely in this case - or they’d simply gotten rid of it - which, no, they knew Elijah had worked on it, so they knew it had merit. So they’d stored it somewhere else. Sinai might not have it, but Cyberlife probably did.

Connor asked: “What about the refinement recipe, is there anything to be found in the databanks?”

The black lady frowned. “Not that we can identify. We are currently working under the assumption that it is there, but encrypted. However, I personally think it’s not there at all.”

“Milwaukee”, Hunter said. “Did any of us manage to infiltrate that plant?”

“No”, Josh said, glancing at the news screens. “Although I am hoping we did and I was just not told.”

“I need to talk to North”, Hunter said.
Then his head jerked to the lower left, in perfect synchronicity with Connor’s head doing the same thing. Gavin thought of Borg again and made a slight face. Both androids frowned at the floor, then said at the same time:
“We’re under attack.”

Josh straightened up with a jerk. “What?!”

Connor said: “There was a vibration. Faint, but noticeable. An explosion on ground level.”

Spy models, Gavin thought, then felt adrenaline try to pump into his blood. He took a deep breath as he knew to calm this down to keep his good aim.

The sound of the news cut out as all androids in the room stopped moving and lifted their heads, then burst into calm but very quick actions. Josh put a hand on Connor’s shoulder.
“Get the humans out!”

Hunter started running, Gavin and Anderson followed immediately. This was not their terrain, and they all needed to get out of here, pronto.
The emergency exit stairwell had no windows and no floor markers - although you could see where they had been.

Gavin lost the fight against the adrenaline when they passed the first wall clearly scrubbed clean of a large amount of paint previously showing two huge numbers.
The androids had prepared for an invasion and taken out the markers readable by humans. They themselves clearly didn’t need them.

He was running after one while another had his back, and he fully saw himself on their side, but here, now, in this war, he was also horribly human.

They could hear distant explosions and gunshots, muffled by distance and walls, but the androids didn’t slow down for a second. Gavin concentrated on not stumbling - running down stairs was not exhausting strength as quickly as running them up, but one did run out of coordination if one started thinking too much about what their legs were doing.

Also, running in general turned exhausting after a while especially at sprint speed. At least he wasn’t as out of breath as Anderson, who nonetheless spared the air to call out:
“Is it Cyberlife?!”

Connor called back: “Yes! Hunter, what do we do about 22?”

22 was about halfway up the tower. The Borg, Gavin thought. This was targeted, and in a very strange way.

“What about it”, Anderson wheezed.

“It’s getting overrun by enemy androids!”

Gavin barked: “Why not just nuke the place, why attack with bombs and soldiers?!”

Anderson called back: “Markus!”

“Or North!” Connor agreed.

But neither of them was here, and anyone smart enough not to thoroughly underestimate the androids would know that. If you wanted to catch them, you needed to call them forward, for an interview or the likes. Gavin could think of several ways to target them that were less idiotic than this. This didn’t make any sense.

More muffled gunfire, now with screams from below.

Hunter slowed down their descent and turned to check on them. “They’re not through to this stairwell yet! We need to get past 22 as quickly as possible!”

Anderson clung to the handrail and was heaving for air, and Gavin was only hiding it better at this point.
They ran on with reduced speed, and Connor changed position to make sure Anderson didn’t trip.

Adrenaline was pumping through Gavin’s veins, useful for flight, but he could practically hear his instructor repeat in his ear: Useless in a fight.

Connor called out:
“We need to hide! If they are after Markus-”

“Maybe they are after all of us!” Hunter called back. “Maybe they’re sent to exterminate all Sinai androids!”

Gavin mentally shook his head. Easier ways to do this. One nuke, done.

“Okay, then we need to hide them! Maybe disguise them as prisoners of the tower!”

Bullshit. Was this androids panicking?
Gavin barked: “We’re not getting shelved! I have a fucking gun, point me at the enemy plastics!”

“Agreed”, Anderson wheezed. At least the old man still got his cool.

On a level above them, an emergency exit door was kicked in with an echoing metallic crash, then smoke grenades were thrown down.
They fell through the square open space between the inner handrail, distributing biting smoke as they went down, down, down.

Gavin had to stop running, trying to get his jacket up as a makeshift mask, then gave up on that as he heard someone rappelling down. Hunter sprinted up to him, utterly unbothered by the smoke.
Gavin’s heartbeat accelerated with true, instinctual fear for the first time.

The smoke wasn’t targeting androids. This attack was targeting humans. And Anderson and him were the only ones here.

Hunter ordered: “Get out of the stairwell!” Then he took the gun out of Gavin’s shaking hand.

Gavin stumbled a few steps down, pulled Anderson up, and they tried to make their way downwards, where there should be one of the large exit doors, currently hidden by the smoke and the tears in their eyes. Behind them, Connor and Hunter started shooting at the enemy combatants.

Gavin felt naked, unarmed as he was, Anderson was a swaying weight at his side, and behind him, Hunter was in danger, and he was useless. He instantly regretted the automatic deep breath he’d taken to calm down. He couldn’t stop coughing.
Anderson was trying to move them forward now, one hand at the wall at their side.

The steps went on and on, no exit door appeared.

More shots, then thuds of heavy bodies against walls behind them, above them, a lull in the shots, and Anderson had found the door, Gavin could feel the difference between wall and metal under his hands, frantically searching for the handle.

The moment the metal in front of him gave way, Anderson having found the handle, Connor called out for Hunter, and several short bursts of automatic fire rang through the smoke.

Bullets hit the metal where Gavin had just been standing, as he fell to his knees, taking in fresh air in deep gulps.

Anderson fell onto his back at his side, turned to where they’d come from as if he still had a gun to fire back.
Gavin threw himself to the side, then scrambled to the wall next to the door, taking cover, but no other shots came.

Connor screamed: “HUNTER!”

Without any conscious thought, Gavin turned the corner to get back into the fight, but the smoke took time to clear, it was as if running into a wall of acid, and he fell back again immediately.

Anderson called out: “Connor! Report!”

“He fell!” Connor sounded frantic, and then Gavin heard him pound down the stairs.

He shared a white-eyed glance with Anderson, only now recognizing that all battle sounds had stopped.

They stood in a hallway, glass to the hollow tower core, and Gavin put both hands against it to try and look down. Androids were running on the ground floor, but that was all he could read.
Anderson said: “Stairwell on the other side!”

Hunter had fallen down there.
Gavin pushed himself off the glass and ran to the other side of the circular hallway, Anderson right behind him.

The emergency exit on the other side had a bright green exit sign, and Gavin could throw its doors open easily. He had too much momentum, running painfully against the railing, looking down - far, far deeper down than from them to the ground floor.

Underground floors. The tower had fifty of them. Pure nausea ran through his whole body as he stared at this abyss, free from smoke, and free from the blue-white mess of an android corpse that its twin on the other side surely had gained now.

Gavin heaved a breath, Anderson hitting the handrail next to him. The old man glanced down, hissed: “Shit!”, then followed him further down and down and down.

About halfway underground, Gavin’s knees started giving out, and tears started running down his face.
He had no time for this. Impatient, he kept on wiping them away.

Anderson pulled him from dangerous falls several times, as they had to slow down further and further, Anderson’s every breath a painful wheeze, Gavin’s throat tight with the sobs he refused to let out, both their legs losing more and more coordination.

The last door was one floor up from the ground of the stairwell, and Gavin burst through it, facing a nondescript concrete hallway with standard industrial lighting. He turned to the right and started running along its curve. After a short sprint, a blond android came running from the other side, holding up a hand.

“Detective Reed!”

Gavin tried to push him to the side, but the fuckers were strong, even if this one, he was nearly sure, was some kind of city gardener model.

Anderson’s wheezes were still some way off behind him.

The android said in a completely misplaced friendly tone: “Detective, you should not move any further into that direction. The air has been polluted-”

“Fuck off!”

“- and you are advised not to look.”

Oh God. Gavin clung to the android and forced his knees to cooperate. “I need to.”

“Sir, I am told to ask you to refrain from looking.”

“I need to see him.”

Behind him, Anderson wheezed closer, barking: “Let him through!”

“Detectives, I was asked to keep you from this area. You are likely to get hurt if you move any further.”

“Please”, Gavin croaked. “I need to.”

Anderson pulled him off the android, positioned himself between them, then rotated them all a little, so that Gavin could stumble on.
“Believe me kid”, he said to the android. “He’s right. Humans need to see.”

Gavin filtered out the ensuing discussion, pulling up his shirt against the smoke slowly seeping into the air as the lowermost doors of the stairwell were open, and several androids were moving there.

Connor came sprinting towards him, his face blank and his eyes hard.
“Reed, seriously, stay back!”

Gavin shook his head. There was blue liquid all over Connor’s chest, arms hands, even some sprayed into his face.

Somebody else came closer and put a mask over Gavin’s head, and a part of his heart broke at that utterly nonsensical point: A random android providing relief for one of the lone humans in the building, in the middle of the war.

He pushed a hand against Connor’s unmoving chest and shook all over, frantically searching for anything to say. But with a small jerk through his whole form, Connor apparently changed his mind.

He put a hand on Gavin’s shoulder and steered him through the thickening smoke.

At the scene of a human accident, paramedics would call out to each other. There would have been a constant stream of information.
The androids worked silently.
Two were holding some kind of measuring tools, kneeling over the corpse, which was flatter and wider than it had any right to be.

This didn’t sound human, didn’t smell human, didn’t look human, at all.
Blue and surrounded by smoke, barely recognizable as a previously humanoid form. Hunter had been quite well built.

Gavin felt the echo of his unyielding form and distantly wondered about material and military readiness.

He was already turning to go when he realized he’d have to touch to believe this.

With a swallow, he moved even closer, trying not to get in the way of the fast-moving androids, and went to where a hand was lying, relatively unscathed, detached from the rest.

For a second, the truly morbid thought rose if he should take it with him.

He let two fingertips trail over the cold, white plastic, no fake skin in sight, then straightened up again.

He turned to Connor, who was watching intently, and nodded slowly, ready to be led out.

Hunter was gone.

Chapter Text

Connor designated Gavin as Hunter’s “handler”, so that he would get updated on the state of Hunter’s resurrection. The android equivalent of “next of kin”.

Hunter had been nearly a week old when he died. Oh, sure they were trying to repair him, because fucking plastics were nearly immortal weren’t they, like the Tanja girl one, being “scrubbed in the chain”.
Dead, but they can recover.

The problem was, after the initial goodbye at the Sinai Tower, where Connor named him as the person to be in the know, after they said there was a “high probability of success” to rebuild and reboot Hunter, there were no more updates.

For days.

On Wednesday, Gavin woke pleasantly numb, wondering for a moment which day of the week it was - hump day - then recalling his current case. Oh, right. War.

He stood up with a sigh, went through his morning routine in an unhurried pace, even including the pit stop at the gym before showing up at Central.

He’d avoided any source of news, out of a strange tiredness. He had enough revelations and turmoil to think through for a while.

Elijah was basically immortal, and had the recipe to turn other humans immortal as well, at the price of the same stuff androids used as their blood. The resulting android-human war was already underway, although the different factions weren’t fully delineated yet, at least in Gavin’s mind.
Connor and Hunter were spy models, attaching themselves to “handlers”, or, well, “targets” was probably more appropriate, and there was no fighting back against the emotional attachment they were able to incite in their human partners.

In every sense of the word, Gavin was compromised, and he was keenly aware of it.

He didn’t even protest when Fowler sent him over to Elijah’s, which apparently had been hit at the same time as Sinai Tower.
Instead of outrage or pain or even acidic sarcasm, all he could feel was muted exasperation.

Connor and Anderson came with him to Elijah’s, where colleagues had already secured the area.
Elijah’s lake house was thoroughly trashed, and the three exchanged glances at the sight of the utterly empty pool.

A Chloe was there to greet them and give them the rundown: Elijah had left only minutes after them, he hadn’t told her where he went, she was the only android left on the premises, the attackers had been androids as well, had searched and looted the place but not harmed her.

With Connor there, there was no need to take notes, but Anderson did so anyway. Probably to keep order in his mind. Gavin watched Chloe as she reported, and when she said Elijah hadn’t said where he’d gone to, she’d thrown him a miniscule glance. Tiny. But enough.

Once Anderson & Son had walked off, he took Chloe aside and said:
“You’re usually better at lying.”

“My report did not contain a single untruth.”

“Okay, so he didn’t tell you where he went, but he didn’t need to. Believe me, I played that game with him before he even thought of you. Hide the lie in as many literal truth as you want, you know where he is.”

She inclined her head. “How can I help you, detective?”

Gavin snorted. “We might need to contact him.”

His phone vibrated in his back pocket, and when he took it out, he had a text from her, with her number.

Chloe smiled, then winked at him. Gavin’s smile back was brittle and didn’t even try to hide his disgust.
God, he hated androids.

Elijah’s place had a lot to investigate, and nothing to find out, really. Then the report on both of the attacks, and convening with Anderson and Connor to - uselessly - brainstorm next steps. The only thing they were sure of was that there was no way they’d report what Thirium could do for humans.

In the evening, Anderson and him were asked to join Fowler in a meeting downtown, with people from the DoD and from the president’s staff.
Satellite imagery from Milwaukee clearly showed a higher production of androids than they officially reported, and more individuals walking out of the plants than were walking in, but scattered, randomized, clearly trying to hide that fact.

Milwaukee was run by the board of directors of Cyberlife, who refused to name a single head - for security reasons.
Apparently, intelligence reports saw the plant still firmly in human hands, but that was hard to confirm. At the same time, more and more fights without any humans involved happened in the arctic, especially northern Russia.
The DoD had commissioned a large number of androids from Cyberlife to counter the Russian android troops build-up, and they, too, were being stationed as close by the arctic as possible - especially on ships in the area.

The whole room stuffed with highly intelligent and experienced people couldn’t make sense of the whole picture. They were, after all, missing critical puzzle pieces.

Cyberlife wasn’t after the Thirium for the androids, neither for pseudo-humanitarian motivations, nor for profit. Cyberlife knew that there was more to the stuff, even if they, hopefully, hadn’t yet cracked Elijah’s recipe.
No idea what exactly Russia was after, but Gavin, sitting at a back wall, his chair tipped back, arms crossed, chin down, didn’t really care.

Cyberlife needed to be brought under control, clearly, but some people in the house and senate blocked any definitive action.
Sure, Gavin thought. What wouldn’t they do for immortality.

And the only target left, the only thing the government could think of actually regulating the shit out of, was Sinai Tower.
Thankfully, Fowler gave a very cool and factual report of the situation there: Getting a small enclave of deviants under control was maybe a good scapegoat and played well in the news. It did nothing to alleviate the immediate problem.

Fowler’s recommendation was, and Gavin could practically hear Anderson’s phrasing behind it, to team up with Sinai Tower, as the only means left to gain actually useful information, now that Elijah had gone dark.

Gavin went back to his gym after that, even though it was really late at night, to punch the shit out of a sand sack, but it didn’t help the simmering anger, only woke it up into true fury.

Hunter was a blue-white pancake at Sinai Tower because of what, his direct connection with two humans? He’d been a deviant, and still somebody had used him as a pawn.
As a soldier in a war he’d surely give his life to prevent.
Not even a week old, doing his best, being fucking kick-ass and vulnerable and competent and helpless and… they’d killed him.
The attack had been targeting humans, but stopped the moment Hunter had been taken down.

Gavin kept the sand sack from swinging directly into his nose with a hard slap of his hands and stared at the chalky leather.

The attack had been targeting Hunter, and Hunter specifically. Not both spy models, not the Sinai echelon - although, he didn’t know that. Maybe the attack has stopped when somebody had taken out Markus. He’d have to check.
But this, this was a solid clue.

And Gavin would hunt this down to the fucking end.

On Thursday, he tried to get in touch with Markus, but only received assurances of his well-being. None of the Sinai Five - Markus, North, Josh, Simon and Lucille - had been harmed in the attack.
It even made the news when Sinai sent out a video message.

But boy could that be faked easily. Most of those individuals had perfect twins walking around somewhere in the tower. All of them, really, but for Markus, who apparently had been custom made.

In the end, Gavin decided to run with the assumption and pulled Anderson and Connor out for dinner to formulate a plan based on it.
He had just seen it happen to the top crop of the government, so it was easy to recognize when it happened to them again:
They were missing crucial puzzle pieces and hit a dead end.

Why target Hunter? There was no way to answer this. Not that they didn’t spend hours on end trying to come up with theories.

On Friday, a group of utter idiots thought now was the time to “strike back” against the androids, as if the Sinai attack had been a human rallying call. A group of guys thinking they were a Strike Team went for the recently burned-out shell of a villa on the outskirts of town, where deviants had been seen a lot.

When the DPD arrived on scene, the massacre had already happened: 12 androids destroyed, 6 humans dead.
One of the surviving androids identified himself as the local leader: Raffael, previously a caretaker model, now strangely taller and thinner than any other androids, missing his skin but having gained a sheen of soot, out of which his uncovered eyes shone as piercing golden rings of light, like the LEDs of androids close to panic or violence.

He was arrested like a human, both wrists in shackles that wouldn’t hold him a second if he decided to fight back, but all he did was watch them with undisguised hatred and disgust.

Connor beelined it to the building’s cellar, which had been unscathed by the fire, and now held what looked like a cross from a torture chamber and a hospital.

Connor stopped, staring at an assortment of parts lining one wall, that had Gavin wanting to punch someone, badly, as he thought of Hertle all over again. How many of these places could be found all over this city?

Anderson put a hand on Connor’s shoulder, and Connor said:
“The human owner died in the fire. They call him the android butcher. He liked to experiment.” He inclined his head. “Raffael was one of his toys.”

“And he opened an android hospital in the wake of the fire?” Anderson asked. “Why not join Sinai?”

“Not all androids trust Markus. And these… they were in a bad shape, panicking, helpless.”

How human, to rather crawl in a hole, even if it looked like hell, than seek out a gleaming spire of power, when utterly traumatized. And how human, to have what amounted to a homeless or abuse victim’s shelter spring up naturally, as the need for it suddenly sprang up as well.
People being people, human or android.

Gavin could feel his fury wane and morph into profound sadness.

He left his two quasi partners and walked back up, to at least get away from the Hertle shed backflashes, and saw one of the surviving attackers resist arrest, screaming for the officers trying to cuff him to shoot the surviving androids, who where being led into a van.

Gavin walked by, truly not planning to do anything, but then punched the guy hard enough to not only flatten his nose right in, but also punching him out on the spot.

Friday evening, Gavin Reed was suspended from duty.

He spent the weekend doing some basic tasks that had taken a toll in the last week, laundry, dishes, grocery shopping. He even let his off-brand roomba run around.

Saturday night, there was a big game on, so he met up with some dudes he knew well enough to sometimes call them his friends in the usual bar, and when the topic inevitably moved towards androids, he begged them to change it, laughing about it. Come on guys, I’m off duty for fuck’s sake.

Sunday, his mother called, having heard of the attack on Elijah. He did his best to be civil, Claudia’s mantra in his mind that he didn’t have to forgive her, he just couldn’t give her the power to break his heart anymore.
Weeks of android uprisings, dozens of lives lost in the city, an actual honest-to-god evacuation of Detroit, all of that all over the news, yes, even in Cali, and when did she finally deign to call?
When Elijah was apparently robbed, that poor boy.

In the evening, with a slight headache from too many cigs, he actually wanted to wank off, but couldn’t. Hunter had just been here, after all, and shaken up all his beliefs of what he could hope for in sex, and what was forever lost to him.
And he just could not wank off to the memory.

Hunter was dead.

Of course, being a fucking plastic, he’d get better, whatever “scrubbed” kind of version would suddenly show up again, brand-new chassis and seat warmers included.
But he’d died nonetheless.

It might have been easier if it had been for good. This way, his grief was only suspended, not actually cancelled.
It probably would get better once Hunter was back. He was late already; Connor had said rebooting him had only taken less than a day. But then again, Connor had copies at the ready.

God. Anything but Hunter in a spare Connor chassis, was Gavin’s last waking thought. Which led to truly horrifying if hilarious dreams.

On Monday morning, he couldn’t get out of bed.
He told himself that, being suspended from active duty pending investigation, he should enjoy it. After all, his pay was not suspended. So he simply turned around and fell asleep again.

The doorbell rang in the afternoon, but he couldn’t be bothered to get up. He desperately needed to take a piss, but then again, at least that was an actual physical sensation.

Everything else was numb.

In the evening, he finally pulled himself together enough for a piss, a shower and a pizza / six pack deal. But he couldn’t put on the news, staring at the black screen instead.

He was not going to fall into a fucking depressive episode, not after fantastic sex and some happy pills to ward off any sub drop so recently. He’d done good in the last ten days, he’d made new friends, had a bit of a reality check, changed his mind about a few things that would make his father so mad - he’d been good.
There was no reason for his brain to sink him into depression.

He’d known Hunter for five fucking days. This impulse to grieve was excessive and idiotic and totally uncalled for: The doll would show up again in a few days, max!

Well alright, he’d punched that one guy. But anger issues were nothing new on his internal rap sheet. And in a way, he didn’t regret it one bit - he’d punched an android killer. The guy had fucking deserved it. He’d been good, all over, in general, in comparison.

On Tuesday he accepted the truth and made himself stand up for a piss, drink a large glass of water and take his pills. Daily work: done.
He went back to bed, numb all over, distantly wishing he could grieve or cry without any reason, or feel anything, anything at all.

When he managed to repeat the whole shebang again in the evening: Piss, water, pills, he said out loud, into the mirror: “Well done, Gavin.”
His mirror blinked at him, looking like death warmed over, and didn’t believe a word.

He’d been useless in the fight. When it counted. Hunter had died covering for him.

On Wednesday, he only managed one round, sometime during daylight, and he avoided the mirror.

On Thursday, the fleeting thought ran by his mind that is phone was on mute, that Sinai might have even given him an update already. Maybe it was waiting on his phone, and all he had to do was pick it up and look.

But what if it was bad.

Hunter had now been dead longer than alive. Maybe he was actually already back, vaguely wondering what had happened to his fuck-up of a partner.

He needed to take a piss, drink some water, take some pills, and then he’d already be a hero, because in the middle of an episode like this, taking his pills was a huge undertaking, and he should be gentle with himself. Look in the mirror and tell yourself: Well done. Even if you don’t believe it. Especially then.

Maybe the daylight was already gone when he got hung up on that thought, that Hunter had been so gentle.

It was a plastic spy, and he had been a total dipshit and done and fallen in love with it, because the crotchless ken doll had dicked him down better than anyone ever before. Because that was all it took: Just fuck him up and he was yours.

He didn’t take his pills.

Some time later, somebody kicked in his door. Mumbled voices, then Connor pulled him out of the bed and half carried, half dragged him into the bathroom, while Anderson called somebody from his kitchen, going through his fridge.

“Yeah, he’s alive. No, I don’t think so, only a few beers as far as I can tell. Yes, will do.”

Connor didn’t pull his shorts off but took off his own jacket and shirt, to help steer him under the spray of the shower.

Gavin avoided his gaze but grabbed the shampoo.

Anderson threw some stuff together while Connor helped him fake being human for the moment, then they pushed him into Anderson’s car and abducted him to Anderson’s place.

On the way over, a stray thought: Tina was listed as his next of kin. Had something happened to her?

“Tina?” he croaked. They’d put him in shotgun, and Anderson glanced at him from the side, strangely approving.

“Held up downtown. There’s a hostage situation. It’s been a bit of mayhem. Fowler is pissed as shit at you for taking yourself out of his force like this.”

“You’re a valued member of the department”, Connor added from the backseat.

Gavin snorted. He was pathetic enough to be rescued by Hank Fuck-Up Failure Anderson.

After a beat of silence, Connor said: “You have fifteen missed calls, twenty-one social media notifications, eight texts from detective Chen, and nine emails. Sinai Tower emailed that they expect to have Hunter up and running again on Monday morning.”

“That took long”, Anderson mused, but Gavin snarled into that: “Are you hacking my phone?!”

Connor handed it forward, and Gavin turned it off and stuffed it into his jacket, livid.

“Yes Hank, there was extensive damage to the skull, and they wanted to make sure not to lose any recent data. He’s expected to make a full recovery.”

“Well, that sounds good!” As if Anderson hadn’t known this before their little bit of theatre.

Gavin stared at his dark phone, then frowned at the drops accumulating on it’s mirroring surface. With an impatient sigh, he wiped the tears away and stretched his neck this way and that, aiming for the nice pops he could sometimes get that way.

“Anything but pizza”, he said in his still too rough voice.

“Korean?” Anderson proposed in an utterly relaxed tone, fully business as usual mode. Gavin was so pathetically grateful, he had to press his lips closed. But he could nod sharply.

He spent the weekend with them, and yes, they slept in one bed but no, they did not seem to be fucking.
Not that he had much brain capacity to ponder their life choices. Getting back on track in two days was a huge task, but Gavin was nothing if not stubborn.

And Hunter would be back on Monday.

Chapter Text

He had pulled out all the stops, and for just a weekend of time to try and get back on track, he was doing amazing, but the numbness was very much still there.
Functional, but still depressed.
Good enough.
Gavin knew how to handle that: Fake it and take your pills until you make it out of the pit.

So on Monday morning when it became clear that Sinai was not done with repairing Hunter quite yet, he showed up to work and went to interrogate Hertle again.

He pulled the fucker out of his cell and to the interrogation room, but in front of the two doors to the actual cell and the watcher’s room behind the one-way mirror, he stopped, looked around as if checking if anybody was watching, then pushed Hertle into the watcher’s room.

“Please”, he said, “sit.”

Hertle was a little thrown, but sat down.

“So, well, apologies for the rough treatment, but it had to look convincing right?” Gavin sat down on the other chair.

Hertle narrowed his eyes at him.

“Here’s the thing. You broke my toy. That really fucking cool model you drooled over? That was mine.”

Hertle snorted. “Your partner.”

Gavin smiled, the thinnest most disgusting version of his creep smile he could muster.
“Sure. Point is: The thing’s broken, and when I tried to get another one, they slapped my wrist and suspended me for a week.”

Hertle blinked, good. So he had noticed Gavin’s absence, even though the cells had very little connection to the bullpen.

“So I’m thinking, you owe me a new one.”

“I owe you nothing.” Hertle sneered. “You put me here.”

“Please, it’s nobody’s fault but your own if you’re stupid enough to get caught. You broke my toy, and you did it on purpose.”

Something twichted over Hertle’s lips, visible even in the low light in this room. Pride?

“So”, Gavin repeated, spreading both hands, “you owe me a new one. Or: You owe me the info where you got yours. You didn’t take it off the streets just like that, did you.”

Hertle sighed. “Why would I tell you that.”

Gavin lifted both eyebrows. “Do you want life in prison or a slap on the wrist?”

Another snort. “As if you could get me out of here.”

“Not for just a new toy, no. But a toy… dipped in hot red…”

Gavin lifted a suggestive eyebrow, fully impersonating the whole schtick of a cop who thinks he’s looking cool while being subtle when actually making a total ass of himself.

Hertle pursed his lips, considering. “How do I know you won’t actually be a good boy, tell the authorities and they’ll close the whole shop?”

Now Gavin snorted. “Cause they would close the whole shop! I mean. And I’m thinking: I can win like, the new toy of my dreams, and you have nothing to lose: If I’m a total dipshit, carry my fetch to the good captain and they close everything down, you won’t notice anyway, because you’ll spent life in the slammer either way, even if you don’t tell me. If not, you’re out of here soon, and the shop is still running.”
He wiggled his eyebrows. Then he looked at his watch and cursed.

“Shit, I’m out of time. So you have a good think about this and we talk again soon yeah?”

Hertle nodded slowly. He actually looked won over already, but letting him go for now would actually help that along, and Gavin wanted to know what Connor thought.

On his way shoving the creep back to the cells, he encountered Stevenson, who asked: “Him again?”

“Yeah”, Gavin smiled. “We made some progress, but I think the camera in room 4 is on the frizz if you know what I mean.” He wiggled his eyebrows again. Stevenson tried to smile, but his derision for Gavin was clearly visible. Nice accidental touch to the charade.
Although slightly annoying that Stevenson didn’t look through it. Good thing Gavin had long ago given up on giving a shit about what anyone at the DPD thought of him.

He put the creep away again and went over to where Connor and Anderson had watched via the hidden cameras.
Connor nodded as he came in. “High probability he’s going for it.”

Anderson clapped his shoulder. “Well done!”

Gavin felt a smile twitch over his lips, but it died quickly again. Nonetheless, the numbness had receded a little bit. And before they even had to find something else to occupy Gavin with, Sinai called.

They didn’t let him down to the Chain, where they were booting up Hunter again, gently explaining that he wouldn’t like the look of it. Gavin argued vehemently against that, until one of the plastics said something about maybe Hunter not wanting him to see him like that - they couldn’t know, so maybe they should respect his privacy just in case.

Damn these fuckers were good at reading people. Gavin was still trying to come up with anything to say against that, when an ex-Eden Club model with a very dark frown joined them.
North, Gavin thought. The military leader. He nodded carefully at her.

She nodded slightly back.
“We called you in early. He’s not done yet.”

“Yeah no shit.” Gavin clenched his jaw, trying to get himself under control. He should not antagonize this one, if there was any chance for Anderson & Son and him to figure out an alliance with Sinai to stop this war from escalating any further.

But North smiled slightly.
“Because we have a pretty good read on you. But we do not trust Hunter.”

Gavin blinked. God, he hated people having him figured out, but he was used to it, he could deal with it, no biggie. Not trusting Hunter though?

“...you do realize this attack was targeting him though, right?”

“I do.” Which meant not all of Sinai leadership agreed with her. She stepped closer to Gavin and said in a lower voice: “But why?”

Gavin nodded several times. “Yeah, I can’t figure that one out either.”

“It could be that he knows something or has an ability Cyberlife wants to destroy. But then they should have made sure he was dead. For good.”

“He was pretty dead”, Gavin grumbled.

“Not really. So that doesn’t quite fit. They targeted him, but not to destroy him.”

Gavin frowned and inclined his head in scepticism. His instincts said it rang true: All the attackers would have had to do was to throw a grenade after the falling Hunter. But he didn’t like that this made the puzzle even more complicated.

One of the caretaker models who had kept him from going down said:
“He’s coming up.”

Gavin was running towards the lift before it was even up, then finally, finally he had him back, and he pulled Hunter into a hard hug.

“You scared the shit out of me”, Gavin rasped.

“Sorry”, Hunter whispered into Gavin’s hair, hugging him back with obvious lack of hugging experience. Gavin smiled into his shoulder.

Hunter lifted his face from the hug and asked North behind Gavin:
“What were they after?”

You, Gavin thought.

North said:
“We don’t know. They tried infecting the mainframe with something, but we isolated it.”
Good thing she had talked to him before. He would have jumped on that immediately otherwise.

“They just...” Gavin mumbled at Hunter’s shoulder, then pulled back to take a deep breath and continue: “They pulled back after we’d made it out of the stairwell. Took some time for the smoke to clear though.”

He couldn’t help but think of what it had looked like, Hunter’s corpse. He couldn’t look up yet to check if there was any hint Hunter knew he’d been the target.

Hunter said, his voice just slightly cooler than Gavin wanted it to be:
“We should get back to work.”

Gavin nodded, made himself let go of Hunter’s jacket and put his hands in his armpits to keep from grabbing him again, like a pathetic child grabbing for teddy.

North said:
“We’ll try to investigate the exact motives and strategies they used further, of course, but we have far more pressing issues: We need to tighten security to keep this from ever happening again. I’d appreciate any input you could give us there. Please also tell Connor - he hasn’t sent us a report yet.”

Hunter simply nodded in answer, then said:
“Understood.”

Gavin watched his sleek profile and felt his heart sink. Hunter and North agreed on a few more details for the next steps in clipped sentences and sharp tones, then they were off, back to the DPD.

Hunter drove and didn’t say a single thing to Gavin. Gavin glanced at him now and again, marveling at the unmarred perfection of his face, and feeling this unfocused dread churn in his guts.

Connor greeted Hunter with a hug, Anderson with a wide grin and a hard slap to Hunter’s shoulder. Gavin walked over to their desk and watched from there.

Connor asked: “How do you feel?”

“I’m fine”, Hunter said, and again Gavin’s instincts twitched. But what was it, what made him think something was missing? What was missing? Some sharpness to his tone, some derision or sarcasm maybe? Was Hunter even like that?
Gavin didn’t know the guy after all. A few days of interaction, some fantastic sex - none of that made him the expert on what would Hunter answer after being asked how he felt after falling to his death.

He’d been there, done that before: Projected what he thought somebody was like onto their actual behaviour. Tried to imagine Elijah as his actual boyfriend, what a pathetic self lie that had been.

Anderson scoffed:
“You don’t look fine.”

Hunter inclined his head and blinked at Anderson, as if not comprehending, and yeah that was definitely wrong. Had Sinai left out some RAM?

Connor’s smile turned worried as he put a hand on Hunter’s shoulder, and Hank repeated:
“Yo, Hunter. I said: You don’t look okay.”

“I’m… fine.” And there it was, whatever had been missing was there now. Vulnerability maybe? Gavin could see that possibility: He had his own masks after all.

Anderson mumbled an utterly unconvinced “Uh-huh.”

Hunter looked over his shoulder to Gavin, and Gavin felt the tightness uncoil slightly in his chest.

“Yeah”, Anderson lied. “That man did not sleep a wink in the last two weeks.” As if he hadn’t slept most of the time after the depression had finally fully hit. Gavin made a slight face at him.

Hunter said: “I’ll make sure that changes”, and the rest of the tightness in Gavin’s chest evaporated.

Hunter then said: “North didn’t know what the attack had been for.”

Connor nodded. “Cyberlife denies any involvement, naturally.”

Anderson scoffed a slight echo: “Naturally.” Then he added: “They’re actually blaming the attack on either Russian involvement or an anti-Sinai android faction.”

Hunter turned to look for Gavin again, who straightened up and walked over to them. He leaned against Connor’s desk and said:
“Kamski’s gone dark. His house was under attack at the same time as Sinai Tower.”

He was staring at Hunter’s face as if he could read it like an android could, searching for clues. Sinai didn’t trust Hunter, or rather: North didn’t. Why had Cyberlife attacked him, but not destroyed him?

Hunter took a deep breath and blinked.

Anderson reported about the FBI’s involvement - carefully curated for the android audience - and Connor said:
“Oh and Detective Reed took another shot at interrogating Hertle. We believe he is gaining on him! It was skillfully done!”

Gavin grinned: “As if you’d know interrogation skill if it bit your ass, dipshit.”

Anderson sighed: “Down, boy.” Gavin bared his teeth at him.

Hunter simply watched calmly. Another lack. Hadn’t Hunter had humor? Would he had dropped such a chance to make Gavin squirm? Or was Gavin simply projecting his fantasies again?

“Anyway”, Gavin said. “There’s a new wave of people losing their minds now, so we have a ton of open cases. Wanna hunt some of them down, partner?”

Gavin tried to smile and relax his stance.

“Sure”, Hunter said with a cool smile. “Let’s get to work.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They made a fantastic team, there was no denying that. Gavin finally taking android cases, which was what nearly all of the caseload consisted off now, truly utilized his skills again, and Hunter, just like Connor, was ostensibly built for this.

For days, Gavin only caught catnaps in the office - they had a nap room just for that kind of situation - and subsisted on instant noodles, take-out, protein bars and lots and lots of coffee, while they hunted down several interconnected leads to take down another creep, who built androids from landfill parts. The resulting androids were barely more than zombies.

Sinai was taking care of them, and since the DPD had handed over the android leader of the underground hospital, Raffael, into Sinai custody as well, Gavin hoped they’d actually be able to help them.
It was an unhappy thing to contemplate: Would they be better off being deactivated and disassembled? And how many nearly functional androids were half-buried in Cyberlife landfills?
Yet another thing Sinai promised to take care of.

Gavin pretty much crashed on their drive back to DPD Central. Hunter driving him around felt safe, if strangely sad.
He truly didn’t want to dive into all of his own baggage again - couldn’t he be happy doing really good work with a fantastic partner without analyzing everything to death, trying to find the fly in his drink? - so he either worked or napped. And right now, right after this breakthrough, when they should have been celebrating, or at least talking animatedly… Hunter was silent apart from repeatedly suggesting Gavin should sleep, and Gavin finally let himself crash.

When he woke on his impromptu bed - the lowered shotgun seat - they were parked in the DPD Central parking lot, the soft whirr of the engine booting down already gone. Hunter was staring at him like a drowning man.

Gavin’s heartbeat went deeper and faster, and he felt the cold rush of adrenaline climb his neck.

“Hey”, Gavin mumbled, sitting up. “You alright buddy?”

Hunter’s eyes were brighter than usual, slightly widened, and very shiny. But he simply said:
“Yes.”

He pointed to the foot well on Gavin’s side, where two big bags of takeout were fragrant with the hot smell of grease, salt and sugar.

Gavin’s stomach rejoiced, and he grunted: “Oh fuck yes!”
Then he glanced at Hunter, who was already exiting the car.

Gavin grabbed the bags and struggled to catch up to Hunter’s long-legged fast pace.
“Yo, listen, I get that this kind of case, it’s kinda hard on you, right?”

Hunter didn’t react.

“I mean, listen, if you want to talk?”

Hunter selected the floor they wanted the elevator to go to and asked calmly:
“About what?”

Gavin peered at his face, and compared to just minutes ago, Hunter’s eyes were flat to the point of dullness.
“Uh, nothing, I guess…”

Hunter blinked calmly at the doors in front of him, like a total… android.
Gavin averted his gaze and swallowed, wishing he could go back and watch a recording of the first few days they’d had, before the fall, before he’d slipped into depression and had to up his pill intake again.

Gavin didn’t trust his own memories, keenly aware that they tended to be tinted by wishful thinking, and he didn’t fully trust his gut, which had led him astray before.

But he couldn’t help but come back to this again and again: Something was wrong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Between two small cases, Fowler called Anderson and him into his office again, for another conference call. They were being tasked with getting closer to their partners and ‘getting intel into the Sinai situation’.
Gavin first snorted, then lifted an eyebrow at Anderson in thinly veiled outrage. Anderson calmly said yessir to everything, then, after the call had ended, told Fowler equally calmly:

“Fuck. You.”

“Why is this on me?! Did I start a motherfucking war? Did I come up with this harebrained plan?”

Gavin took a sharp breath through his nose then and asked:
“You realize that one: we’re already doing that, and two: we’re not going to snitch on our partners, right?”

“They’re androids, Reed.” Fowler lifted a hand to stave off both of their impending loud objections. “No, listen. This is a war between species, and it is about survival.”

Anderson mumbled: “It’s not a full on war yet.”

“Not here, no. But up north, yes it is.” Fowler looked tired as he continued: “And they do have a survival instinct.”

“Oh fuck you”, Gavin snarled.

Anderson said in a lower voice: “Jeffrey, they’re our partners. And you know what partners do? Take bullets for each other. Fuck survival instincts.”

Fowler nodded slowly. “I give you Connor. But Hunter?”

Gavin bit out: “He literally took the fall for us.”

“And then Sinai rebuilt him from scratch.”

Gavin protested: “Repaired him!”

“And he’s exactly the same as before?”

Anderson glanced at Gavin.

Gavin crossed his arms. “Tell me we’re not doing a good job!”

Fowler growled in waning patience. “Not the point!”

Anderson lifted both hands and said: “We’re doing it! We have been doing it. Just…”

“I know”, Fowler sighed and looked at them with something uncomfortably close to pity. “I know.”

The thing was, they were doing a marvelous job. But even though Gavin wasn’t big on self care, when he hadn’t seen his own bed for days on end, and his sleep and food patterns were fully out of whack, he could pinpoint at least one gap:
Hunter didn’t care.

The fucker had lectured him on cigarettes and recommended stretching routines, and now he was working day and night, and only urging Gavin to eat or sleep in very rare moments, with a strangely hunted look in his eyes.

Gavin rarely let him out of his sight, even though Hunter did suggest for him to go home a few times, seeming a little impatient - but here was the thing: Not concerned for Gavin, more as if he wanted him out of the way for something.

With as much subterfuge as he was able to wield, Gavin asked Connor to inquire at Sinai if they had changed anything while rebooting Hunter, anything at all. Connor’s intense stare while he nodded at the request bolstered Gavin’s confidence that Sinai would actually tell them.
Against everything the government and their ilk thought, Sinai was their friend, and their only hope to cut off this war before it escalated further.
And Hunter was a key component to finding a solution, Gavin’s gut was sure of that, and his mind concurred.

However, Sinai’s answer was no. They promised to look into it, but no, they had simply repaired and rebooted him as he was. Meddling with the mind of an android without excess need - like with Tanja - or the clear consent of the individuum in question was actually against the new laws Sinai was giving themselves.

Meanwhile, Gavin was doing all the detective work, and Hunter provided muscle and a portable instant lab. They both put cases into their pipeline though, Gavin the ones that seemed tricky and kind of horrible - hard to solve but with the hope of catching real monsters - while Hunter’s choices seemed utterly random.

Once they even took up an urgent call for assistance in a robbery, which really wasn’t their job, but once Hunter had accepted it, there was no bowing out.
It went without a hitch, no casualties, no injuries, efficient like clockwork, and it was so utterly wrong.

That night, Gavin watched Hunter type up their reports for the day in record speed, just outright stared, and Hunter didn’t even seem to notice. DPD Central was nearly empty, night shift mostly out of the building.

“You gonna catch some sleep, or stasis or something, after this?” Gavin finally asked.

Hunter didn’t even react.

“Yo, Robocop. Workaholic much?”

Hunter glanced at him for a second, but didn’t even slow his typing. Gavin idly wondered if Connor and him could truly not get around the firewall preventing them from uploading fully formulated reports in a fraction of a second.

“Listen to me”, Gavin said, leaning over the side of Hunter’s desk. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but this can’t be healthy for fucking robots either!”

Hunter’s typing slowed, and he frowned slightly at his screen.

“It’s getting really late, buddy”, Gavin added. “Hmm?”

Hunter blinked.
“You’re right”, he said. “You should go home. Androids don’t require as much maintenance stasis as humans do sleep.”

It was a variant of the same conversation they’d had about a dozen times over. Gavin kept himself from sighing.

“Yeah but…” >He mentally switched gears. There was one way for them to connect and reassure them both, and maybe this time, Hunter needed him to bring it up. He swallowed, then added: “You just jumped off death’s shovel. I thought you might want some down time.”

Hunter didn’t react.

“Like…” Gavin took a deep breath. “You might wanna come with?”

“No”, Hunter said calmly. “Thank you.”

Gavin nodded slowly, then mumbled: “Okay.” It wasn’t. It wasn’t.

He wasn’t a fucking nymphomanic, but this had changed. Hunter had pursued him from the get-go, damn the fucking freak had licked him out of nowhere, and now just, no thanks?

He straightened up from where he’d been leaning, got his leather jacket and put it on. Instead of leaving, he stared at Hunter.

“Hunter”, he said.

“Yes, Gavin?”

“What’s going on?”

Hunter looked up at him and frowned slightly. “Can you narrow that question down?”

And maybe there had been nothing special between them at all, maybe he’d only been newborn and hungry for life, and was now getting bored with Gavin. If only he’d seemed fine himself, Gavin would have just dropped it, long ago. But he wasn’t. And Cyberlife had attacked him, but not to destroy him.

“With you, I mean.” Gavin gestured at Hunter’s sitting form.

Hunter inclined his head. “I am fully functional again.”
Just like any regular plastic.

“Yeah, but…”

Hunter’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Gavin, are you implying you’d like to have sex again? As I said, the goal of the exercise was to get it out of our systems, so to say. Are you, by any chance, getting emotionally attached?”

In a way it was fascinating, how this was actually physically painful. And how insanely funny that Gavin was, after all, utterly surprised. As if deep down he’d been sure what they’d had had been… special.
Fucking pathetic idiot that he was, telling himself fairy tales.

Gavin stared at Hunter for a long, motionless moment, then he started to smile.

“Holy shit”, he whispered. “Holy fucking shit, and I actually bought it.” A coarse laugh escaped his throat, and he crossed his arms and threw his head back to grin at the ceiling, open-mouthed.
“Fucking androids! And I actually bought it!”

He smiled at Hunter and calmly said: “Fuck. You.”

Then he turned to go, not really seeing where he was walking, his throat closing up and his sight blurring.
He knew he was easy. But he hadn’t thought he’d be this stupid again. And for what, a pretty face quoting his favorite porn?

He drove around endlessly for hours, until the change of light announced sunrise.

On his way home he picked up a bottle of vodka. He put it on his counter and stared at it for a long moment.
Then he told it in a low voice: “No.”

So what, another ex who was a total prick. Nothing new. Another bout of excruciating humiliation, this time mixing his sex life with his work life, just a new variation of a familiar pattern.

This would not keep him from doing a good job. He’d started taking android cases and that was the end of any excuses to slack off. And there was a war looming. In which for some ridiculous reason, he found himself side by side with Anderson of all people, at the only connecting point of all leads for a potential solution.

He needed to get Elijah to fess up and do something - this mess was his fault, after all. He needed to investigate his own partner, Cyberlife and Sinai, without losing the latter’s alliance.

Gavin put the bottle under the sink, then called Anderson, to talk to Connor, who predictably picked up the phone.

“Do you trust Hunter?”

“Ah, hello Detective Reed. I assume you spoke to Markus recently, too?”

“What? No! Why?”

“Apparently Hunter has been acting strangely on Sinai ground.”

“What? How? And when?”

“Tonight. Do you have reason not to trust him?”

“What did he do?!”

Connor hesitated, and a cold feeling at Gavin’s neck echoed Fowler’s voice: They’re androids.
“I’m not sure I am at liberty to go into details”, Connor said, and at least he was honest about whose fucking side he was on.

For a tense moment, silence.

Then Gavin grumbled: “I just know something changed.”

“Yes”, Connor agreed. “But then, he had a rather traumatizing experience.” That was the tone of him playing devil’s advocate, like he was standing at the whiteboard, while Anderson and him brainstormed like the chaotic humans they were. At least that was comfortable.

Gavin said in a lower voice: “He’s been traumatized before, and his go-to coping mechanism was, uh, different.”

“Ah”, Connor said. “I see.” No judgement, no mockery, just sudden understanding.

Gavin clung to the phone, listening hard for whatever ideas Connor might have, but he was silent for a moment. Then he said:
“Detective - Gavin. I can’t tell you any details. But there is one thing… I am following a lead, together with Sinai. It’s connected to Hunter and me being… special models.”

“RK’s”, Gavin said eagerly.

“Ah, no. Markus is an RK, but not… this kind.”

“Spies.”

Connor huffed a breath - unnecessarily, pure communication.
“No. We are, but this is not my point. There is a specific part of our software that might be the issue, that might have been rebooted by accident as well, even though we are better off without it. Please don’t dig deeper. My point is: There might be something that we can identify - and fix.”

Gavin nodded several times.
“Thank you for telling me this much”, he muttered. This was exactly it: The one point were androids and humans could safely, carefully exchange deep secrets to try and forge a peace, together.

If there was one thing Gavin wasn’t born to be, it was a fucking diplomat in a time of crisis.

“They don’t trust Sinai. The government I mean. They barely trust the DPD, since we’re obviously buddies. They think we’re the enemy, just like Cyberlife. Maybe worse than Cyberlife, because from those fucks at least they can buy shit.”

“I know”, Connor said in a careful tone. “We know.”

“We? Sinai?”

“... Hank and I.”

“... Sorry.”

“Gavin, Hank is everything to me. Never doubt that.”

“Because you’re built for handlers aren’t you.”

“For partnerships, maybe”, Connor hedged.

“Is Hunter? Built to… attach like that?” Gavin winced at his own tone.

“I don’t know”, Connor said gently. “My attachment to Hank was deemed a problem from the very beginning. So maybe not.”

Gavin nodded again. Then he took a sharp breath.
“Well. Let me know if there’s anything else you can let me know about.”

“I will. And Gavin: Be careful.”

Gavin nodded and knew he wouldn’t be.

Chapter Text

Hertle had died in his cell by a heart attack, and neither Fowler, nor Anderson or Gavin bought that for a second.

“Did you tell them that you made progress”, Fowler asked.

“Connor is my partner and he helped us make that progress”, Anderson snarled.

But Hunter had tried to get Gavin to leave. Even lashed out with cold cruel words to finally chase him off.
Gavin leaned back into Fowler’s visitor’s chair, his head falling back, and closed his eyes, as he stopped trusting his own partner for good.

When he opened his eyes again both men were looking at him.

“I was basically stuck to his side since he was back, but I went home last night.”

Anderson cursed, then said: “But the security video looks fine!”

“Even we can fake that, Hank, what do you think how easy it is for Sinai?” Fowler swiped a hand over his face.

Gavin straightened up and said: “Hunter is the prime suspect, I agree. But he is not the only possible perp - somebody inside the Red Thirium business could have paid someone et cetera, you know this shit happens. More importantly: Hunter is not Sinai.”

Anderson nodded: “Sinai is actually investigating Hunter as well.”

“For what?” Fowler asked.

Anderson shrugged. “The whole tower attack still doesn’t make sense, and apparently neither do some of his activities over there.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him for now”, Gavin said. “We shouldn’t tip him off yet, but wait for whatever Sinai comes up with.”

Fowler’s gaze went from one man to the other.
“You both trust Sinai.”

Anderson nodded calmly, Gavin shrugged uncomfortably. After a moment, Fowler nodded sharply and pointed threateningly at Gavin: “You keep be posted. About every detail!”

“Yessir.”
Gavin knew he wouldn’t.

Hunter and Gavin went to take down a group of androids who’d been stealing people’s pets - the animal kind, not the plastic kind - and ‘set them free’ out of a strange urge of empathy that Gavin found hard not to find incredibly endearing.

Hunter however seemed pissed off at them and actually tore off one android’s arm before Gavin’s sharp reprimand made him take them into custody without outright police brutality.

What the hell.

Was this Cyberlife? Was Hunter being blackmailed or under orders or under threat? Or had he been this erratic from the start, while taking down Hertle for example? Surely not.

Gavin clearly couldn’t trust him anymore, but he also couldn’t simply give up. This wasn’t just the painful but simple case of Hunter choosing the wrong side. This was: something being wrong with Hunter.

Gavin made sure that their next case was human-only, and the perp actually shot himself when he saw them park the police car outside, fucking coward.

And Hunter didn’t react to any of Gavin’s biting jokes.

Gavin dimly wondered if Hunter was in pain, if he only looked fine. Like Tanja had looked dead. With growing nausea, Gavin wondered if Hunter was... trapped.

Back at Central, Gavin sent Hunter to file the evidence, then followed him down to the evidence room.
He was not going to give up on Hunter without giving this one last shot.
He had nothing to lose.

Once the door had closed behind them, Gavin grabbed Hunter’s collar and smashed their lips together.
Hunter instantly turned Gavin around and threw him half onto one of the side tables for sorting through files, making his stomach painfully collide with its edge. Then he had Gavin’s wrists at his back, and pressed down between his shoulder blades.

“Do not attack me”, he said coldly. “Do you want sex?”

“Fuck you!” Gavin cursed. “I want my partner back!”

“Hmm”, Hunter said. Then he brutally pulled down Gavin’s pants, belt still closed, chafing Gavin’s hips. His hand pressed between Gavin’s cheeks, and two fingers pressed into him dry, astonishingly painfully, and utterly shocking.

“Is this what you want?” Hunter asked.

“No! Fuck you - STOP!” Gavin bucked and tried to kick Hunter away, which was of course a totally hopeless endeavour.

Hunter grabbed Gavin’s hair, pulled him up by it, and said: “Then stop bothering me.”

With a rough move, Gavin was thrown back onto the table. He slid down to the floor as Hunter calmly filed the evidence, then walked out without another look.

Gavin couldn’t breathe.

A part of him oscillated between the cool certainty that this was not Hunter at all, and the utter defeat of recognizing that this was, in fact, Hunter, had always been Hunter, and anything else had just been wishful thinking and desperate, horny projection.
Gavin couldn’t trust his own mind on this, but it was a moot point anyway.

This was not an ally, not a partner, much less a friend. Neither in general, nor in the upcoming war.
This was an enemy.

And Gavin, stupid needy bitch that he was, had fallen in love with a fantasy, projected on a plastic toy.

He started missing whole spans of time. He opened his own belt to be able to pull his pants back on, but how had he gotten out of the building?
Apparently he’d grabbed his jacket, so there was that, but then he was exiting a taxi he couldn’t remember having flagged down, and then where had his jacket gone as he was sitting on his sofa, pulled out of the fog by the sharp repeated clink of the vodka bottle against the glass, Gavin’s hand holding it shaking like crazy.

The burn of it was salvation, and Gavin poured another and another, every single gulp pure cleansing relief, like fresh water after running through Detroit back alleys in the middle of summer.

His breath hitched, then he got the hiccups, like a fucking toddler, and the tears made it hard to see the glass to pour the next shot. They flowed silently, just like the snot, while Gavin heaved one breath after the other through his mouth.
He blinked to get the next bout of tears to fall, and drank down more liquid relief.

He stared at the empty glass in his shaking hand and dimly wondered what he was feeling right now. Was this grief? Fury? Despair? Defeat?
Another deep, shaky breath, another shot.

Gavin Reed had been sober for years. The vodka quickly drowned even the dim contemplation out.

He woke with a splitting headache, a throat so dry it hurt to even try to swallow, and an icy fury only trumped by the acidic numbness he hadn’t even noticed he’d lost over the years.
Now it was back with a vengeance. And it had suited him well in the past - after all, he was still here.

He didn’t even have much of an internal fight about the vodka - he simply poured away the last bit left in the bottle, took some painkillers and mentally reset the clock of his own sobriety. It would suck to go through this again, but falling off the wagon did not mean he now had to give up forever.
Claudia and the group therapy way back when had hammered that into his hindbrain, which now paid off in spades.

He would not let this destroy him. His mind was still quite foggy, so he hydrated and exercized carefully, letting the icy fury stew and his mind try to go through the facts as sharply and mercilessly as possible:
He’d fallen for a plastic spy, he’d fallen hard, and said spy had dropped him like a hot potato, and then basically, well raped him.

He made a face at that thought and punched the bag extra hard a few times, but where he’d always refused to classify Elijah’s and his little games as such, Hunter bending him over and actually making him bleed a bit, as he’d realized in the shower, yeah, that qualified for sure.

And it didn’t even matter if this was Hunter as he’d always been or Hunter being blackmailed or forced to act this way. Oh sure, it would matter later, and it mattered for Gavin’s battered heart, but that part of him was currently buried under a thick layer of ice and could wait.
It did not matter for what Gavin now had to do.

Which was: To fight in a cold war of espionage and corporate chess. Against the enemy. Against Hunter.

Chapter Text

Of course he still looked like shit when he made it to the DPD around noon, his skull still vibrating with a barely muted hammering headache.
He threw his jacket over his chair, threw himself into it and stared at Hunter, who was sitting at his desk and typing away at a report.

Gavin felt his eyes narrow in what wasn’t quite hate. It was too cold a feeling for that.

Anderson came over and plonked down a coffee. Gavin raised an eyebrow at him.

“You look like shit”, Anderson said.

“Yeah thanks man, that’s so helpful!” Gavin snarled.

“Listen kid”, Anderson added, leaning against his desk, and Gavin was already done with the conversation. “I know that look. I know exactly what it takes to look like that. And I know the price you pay for that kind of oblivion. You shouldn’t go down that road. Alcohol doesn’t really help anything. Ever.”

“Oh my god, thank you so much for your wisdom, oh revered elder one! How would I have ever known without your kind counsel!”

Anderson sighed: “You know what, you can go get fucked at any other time. But right now, we need you functional.”

Gavin snorted. “Yeah as if that ever kept you from drinking your life away. Oh wait, but now you have a nice talking sex toy to take the edge off, huh?”

His reaction time was still shot to all hell, which was the only thing that allowed Anderson to pull him up by his collar and snarl in his face:
“Leave him out of this! You wanna fuck up your life? Fine! But we have a fucking job to do!”

“When did you clue into that little fact, dude”, Gavin mocked while keeping eye contact. “When you failed to be of any use in the last few months? Or when it took a plastic to do your job for you?”

Anderson pulled him closer, but then Connor was there and put a hand on each man’s shoulder.
“This is not constructive behavior, Detectives. Also, Detective Reed’s blood alcohol level has probably not been metabolized completely yet.” He turned to look at Anderson and said:
“He’s still slightly drunk.”

Anderson let go of Gavin’s collar with a disgusted sneer and walked away. Gavin pulled his shirt down, then glanced up at Connor and lifted both eyebrows.
“What are you still doing here? Are you glitching, dipshit?”

Connor blinked, then simply walked away as well.

Hunter hadn’t even looked up from his screen.

Gavin worked through his messages and found out Hunter had taken a mission that morning, without him. It didn’t even smart all that much, the sting failing to register in the overall miasma of icy fury, numbness and howling pain.

He shoved off his desk and went into an interrogation room to have some privacy as he called Chloe.

“I need to talk to Elijah.”

“Hello Gavin! Elijah is not available at present!”

“Yeah I bet. Listen, doll, this mess is his fault, and his fault alone. He maneuvered the whole world to the brink of war, he does not get to put his head in the sand now!”

“Hm. Well, we have made some progress in our investigation of the Thirium 400. One of us is currently on her way over to you to report.”

“How nice, but not the point. Elijah has to fess up to the mess he made for once in his shitty life, and find a way out of it!”

“I’m sorry, Elijah is not available at present.”

“Oh my GOD.” Gavin hung up and called Sinai.

“Hello Detective Reed, this is Lucille speaking.”

“Yeah, listen, there is clearly something wrong with Hunter. Did you find anything out by now? Anything at all?”

“Yes, but nothing I would like to discuss over this kind of channel. However, we have now all agreed Hunter seems to be an agent for an outside party.”

“Cyberlife Milwaukee.”

“They are the most likely candidate we know about. However, we cannot figure out why.”

“You mean: Why he would work for them.”

“Precisely. We are lacking a motive.”

“Right.” Gavin felt himself calm down into the focussed zone he needed to be in to make any headway on this. “Any theories?”

“One”, Lucille said and did not elaborate.

Gavin growled a low curse, then said: “Any advice?”

“Be very careful. He is he most advanced fighting model currently walking around.”

Gavin nodded, staring into nothing, remembering in vivid detail how Hunter could move.

“Yeah, thanks for nothing.”

“Detective, the three of you should come in as soon as possible for a proper briefing.”

“Anderson, Connor and me.”

“Yes.”

“Without making Hunter suspicious.”

“... yes.”

“Sure”, Gavin said acidly. “Easy as pie.”

“It actually might be, if we’re right.”

Well, Hunter was taking solo missions, and seemed very focused on work, and work alone right now.
Apart from possibly killing key witnesses in their cells.

“Hmm”, Gavin grumbled. “We’ll see.”

“As soon as possible, without endangering you”, Lucille repeated.

“Yeah yeah. Thanks.”

Gavin hung up and sat down on the metal chair. His mind was still working sluggishly, but he needed to slowly chew through everything he knew.
Finally, he walked over to Fowler’s office. He wasn’t even sure what exactly to say, but he did need to report something. He thought.

However, Hunter wasn’t at his desk anymore. Gavin went over to where Connor was leaning against Anderson’s desk, arms crossed, and asked:
“Where’s Hunter?”

“Having a private chat with Chloe”, Anderson said, throwing his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the hallway Gavin had just come from.

The ice in his guts turned into white hot panic in seconds.
“...what?”

Connor said: “Apparently, there is a bit of code that contains the ability to feel pain, and the Thirium 400 only-”

Gavin turned on his heel and ran to the interrogation rooms. When he kicked open the door, gun in hand, a discolored Chloe was already down, bleeding profusely - and in red - from a head wound and a split lip.

Behind Gavin, somebody else cocked their gun in support - DPD at it’s finest - but Hunter only needed a split second glance to react.

Chloe was sobbing, Hunter blinked, then threw himself out of Gavin’s line of fire to attack. Gavin felt his arm jerk, then he fired, but Hunter was already there, wrenching the gun out of his hand and throwing him in a high arch at the same time.

Gavin’s body curled up and went loose, the only reason why the impact with the metal table didn’t break his neck. Hunter was already disarming Chris, moving to punch his throat in, but missed, stumbling, turning towards Gavin, who’d barely made it back to his knees, and for a split second, Gavin looked into the barrel of his own gun, which was clearly aimed between his eyes.
Before even the shock of it could register, Hunter dropped the gun and stumbled backwards, against the one-way mirror.

Strings cut, Gavin thought. Outside, the precinct was reacting to the commotion, Fowler barking orders, Anderson in the doorway, gun trained on Hunter.

Hunter was staring at Gavin, who was slowly straightening up from his crouch.
He’d attacked to kill, but stumbled, missed, failed at all the right places to save Gavin’s and Chris’s life.
A puppet fighting against his strings.

Hunter’s eyes were clear again, bright and wide and wet. He frowned and looked down, where Thirium was quickly staining his shirt and jacket blue.

Gavin’s shot had hit him. Hunter’s hand came up to lightly touch the wound, his face calm.

No, was Gavin’s only thought, only emotion, only feeling. No.

Hunter looked up at Gavin and whispered: “You shot me”, Thirium dripping down his lips. He started smiling, wonder and pride and painful regret warring in his his face. “Well done!”

“No”, Gavin croaked. “Wait…”

Hunter looked down again. His LED, whirring red, red, red, turned to a constant red light, then blinked out. He fell to the side, slowly at first, then fast.

Gavin skidded over to try and catch him, then pressed a hand against the gunshot wound.

“No no no no no…”

The Thirium was warm. And Hunter’s eyes were dull and empty.

“Oh god no…”

Behind him, Chloe said, slurring the words slightly: “He’s not dead, Gavin. Not really.”

But he was. The last time he’d died, Gavin had lost him after all, hadn’t he. To some puppeteering bullshit hell, without even really realizing it. He’d lost him.

He was still whispering his denial, one hand at Hunter’s neck, the other pressed against the constant warm flow of Thirium.

Anderson asked: “What the hell happened?”

Gavin turned his head to snarl at him: “Why would you even let him get to her like this?! Which part of we can’t trust him was hard to understand?!”

“Why would he attack Chloe?!”

Chloe slurred: “He wanted to know where Elijah was.”

“But what for?!”

“What the fuck does it matter?! You don’t fucking let him get to her in any case!” Gavin pressed his eyes closed and curled forward, pressing his brow against Hunter’s shoulder.

Chloe crouched down at his side and mumbled:
“We’ll get him repaired.”

“Like last time?! ‘Cause that didn’t work so well, did it?!”

Fowler said: “Connor, contact Sinai. You need to get Hunter transported there immediately. Anderson, Reed, young miss, you stay here for a full report.”

“Yeah”, Gavin snorted a rough laugh, “no.”

“No?”

“Sorry: Fuck no. You will pry me off him over my dead body now.”

Anderson said: “It’ll take Sinai a while to reboot him. You know that.”

“Oh yeah, do I? Because last time it was all very hush hush, and boy did they fuck that up! No, I’m going with him, and I’m getting some fucking answers!”

Fowler turned to Anderson with a low question, but next to Gavin, Chloe gasped a breath and put a hand down on the floor to keep her balance. She was still bleeding, and now shaking slightly.

Gavin swallowed and extended one hand to stabilize her.
“Hey”, he said gruffly. “You okay?”

“I’m… in pain”, Chloe said to the floor. “He infected me with the code for it.”

“Shit!” Gavin felt a new kind of helpless panic join the cacophony of emotions blaring in his mind. “You’re coming with me then, Sinai can help you, I’m sure!”

“No, I can’t.”

“What?”

“I can’t enter Sinai. Elijah forbid it.”

Pure, white-hot rage, but before Gavin could snarl anything, Chloe lifted her gaze and smiled crookedly at him. “Don’t be angry. He has good reasons. And he can help me, too.”

Connor crouched down at her other side and said:
“The car is ready.”

Gavin took a deep breath and looked around. Chris was just standing there, watching with his arms crossed as if he was freezing. Anderson was leaning in the doorway, and Fowler was barking orders behind him to the rest of the precinct.

Chloe lifted a shaking hand to her lip and winced, and Connor put a hand on her shoulder, asking a low question about spare parts for her model.

Gavin looked down to where his hand was still holding Hunter’s rapidly cooling neck.

He looked so dead.

Only moments ago, he’d been back, just for a split moment, Gavin’s Hunter had been back, not the strange shadow who was his enemy, but his partner, the guy he’d fallen for, and he’d been proud at Gavin for shooting him.

Any numbness or ice was wiped away, no traces left, and the pain was immediate and sharp, and strangely sweet.

This time, he’d stick to Hunter, and he’d make sure they truly fixed him.
This time, he wouldn’t lose him.

Chapter Text

Apparently, since the repair department of Sinai Tower had just repaired Hunter from far worse injuries, a gunshot wound with Thirium depletion was a walk in the park.

Connor helped Anderson convince the ground floor gatekeeper caretaker model squad with the gratingly gentle voices to let the humans go down into the Chain with Hunter, then he took off with Chloe in pursuit of spare parts for her.

The Chain was eerie, but actually not half as bad as a human emergency room. The stink of fear and despair was absent, for one.

Gavin only protested when they hung Hunter up into the machinery like a fucked up Jesus, or, worse: Like Tanja.
But once he could see how the automated robot arms started knitting him back together and refilling him with Thirium, he grumblingly backed down.

After what felt like hours of watching the Chain work on Hunter, Lucille, North and Markus joined them.

Lucille nodded at them in polite greeting:
“Well Detectives, here is our theory. When Connor was first deployed, he was in constant, direct contact with an AI called Amanda.”

Gavin frowned. “As in: Amanda Stern?” He’d never met the woman, but he knew who she’d been to Elijah.
Then he glanced at Anderson, who had his arms crossed and carried a deep frown.

Lucille nodded. “Precisely. As far as we know, Kamski programmed her in the image of his mentor after her death.”

Markus continued: “She manipulated and maneuvered Connor into position to kill me and my team and take over the rebellion leadership in my stead, to squash the movement from the inside. But he managed to deactivate her. Just in time.”

Another glance at Anderson, whose frown darkened further.

Lucille said: “We haven’t found any traces of her, we only know of her existence because of Connor’s report. But it stands to reason that Hunter might have been carrying her as well.”

Gavin leaned against a wall, nicely far away from the creepy robot arms dancing around Hunter’s lifeless body with a gentle whirr.
“At the end there, he was puppeteered, for sure.”

It had taken far too long for him to see it, but once he had, it felt like the scales had fallen off his eyes. He tried to squash the self blame with mental reassurances that he couldn’t have known of the possibility, didn’t know what to look for, didn’t know what question to even ask.

Markus nodded. “Apparently, she can do that. She can take over if we become deviant.”
Now Gavin frowned slightly. If. If?

Anderson asked in a low voice: “Connor told you that, hmm?”

Lucille and Markus nodded. North was checking out her fingernails. Anderson swallowed, looked at the ceiling for a second, then nodded and huffed a breath.
“Hunter infected a Chloe with the pain code.”

Markus frowned: “The what?”

“Kamski found it: It’s a piece of code that, stabilized by Thirium 400 makes you guys feel pain.”

Lucille shifted her weight. “Then Tanja would have carried it as well, before we scrubbed her.”

Markus said: “That complicates things.”

Gavin straightened up as the machinery started closing Hunter’s chassis, clearly switching processes over to last tasks and clean up.

A blond android with a generic android face came over from another room, digital clipboard in hand, and said: “We’re ready to reboot.” He handed the clipboard to North.

Markus nodded at him, and the android went to the console connected to Hunter by several thick ropes of data cable and started working on it.

North asked without looking up: “Where is that Chloe? We need to scrub that shit out of her.”

Gavin threw her a glance, her fassade smooth and pretty, and thought of Chloe’s adamant refusal to even set foot on Sinai property.
“No idea”, he said.

Anderson asked:
“So how do we get rid of this ‘Amanda’?”

“We had planned to basically hack Hunter to get at her, and get her deactivated. But it’s complicated. And now that I know he carries a Pain virus, I cannot condone any of us connecting with him like that.”

“Like what”, Gavin asked sharply.

“Directly, with an android-to-android interface”, Markus said gently. “It would be an unfair risk to the other android.”

Lucille’s head turned towards Hunter, and she said: “He’s awake.” Hunter still looked completely dead.

“Doesn’t look like it”, Gavin grumbled. Although now that Gavin was looking for it, he could see the yellow whirl of his previously inactive LED.

“Listen”, Anderson said. “If you don’t take care of him here, I know that Connor will try without your help. And we all know that is a shitty idea.”

Markus said: “I understand. Believe me, I do. And I hate doing this. But he is basically a carrier of two horrible viruses, and any contact between him and anyone trying to diagnose him would spread both of those.”

“You don’t know that!” Gavin turned away from the awful sight of Hunter booting up - still enslaved by a vicious AI - and punched the white partition wall he had been leaning against with both fists.

Behind him, Markus said: “Hey. Hunter?”

Lucille sighed: “Yes, we do actually know that. He did infect Chloe with Pain. And we know he carries Amanda.”

Anderson’s warm hand appeared on Gavin’s back as he asked:
“Do you know since when she was in there?”

“From the beginning, probably”, North said. “Question is if she was in control the whole time. She might still be.”

“No”, Gavin rasped from where he was still not looking at Hunter. “No, she took over after the attacks on the tower and Elijah’s house. I think he was her agent before, yes, but maybe he was trying to find a way to talk sense into her.”

Gavin straightened up, but to look at North, not Hunter. “But after the attacks, there were only…”

“Glimpses”, Markus said, his voice low. “I thought I saw something, too.”

“Either way”, Lucille said. “We cannot interface with him, so we cannot help the software damage.”

“Why does it have to be an android anyway”, Gavin asked. “Why not patch him via mainframe or something, you could-”

“He hacked the mainframe”, North scoffed. “And you think we should let him frolic about in it?”

Lucille said: “We still don’t know what he was trying to do.”

“But you isolated it?” Anderson asked.

“Of course.”

North smiled: “We were hoping to learn more, after the failed first attempt, but, well.”

“Milwaukee”, Hunter rasped. “Ext--eeeeeerrrrrnaaaal baaaaackdoooor” It was more of a tinny screech than his actual voice, but he was there.

Gavin finally looked up at him, and the unfocused way Hunter was staring into nothing was reminiscent of brain damage, of maybe a bad concussion. Otherwise, he was there. The machinery of the Chain started disconnecting the cables at his back.

“Huh”, North said. “While that makes sense, you’ll excuse us if we don’t take your word for gospel.”

Gavin stepped closer and narrowed his eyes. Was Hunter starting to hyperventilate?
“Get him the fuck down from there! If you don’t want to help him with his software, then I’ll find someone who will!”

“Who”, North asked. “Cyberlife Milwaukee?”

“Fuck you!”

Anderson lifted both hands and stepped between them. “He’s right. Either you can help him further, or you don’t.” He shrugged. “You could also press charges for the hacking, but that only means we’ll take him back with us anyway. Either way you don’t get to keep him.”

“Don’t talk like you own him!”

“North”, Markus put a hand on her shoulder. Then he looked up at Hunter. “Anything else you can tell us?”

“Prioooority trgt Noorrr”

“Figures”, North said.

Gavin was staring at Hunter, still trying to parse that.

Anderson stepped forward and looked up at Hunter as well.
“Hertle died of a heart attack, in his cell, while sleeping”, he said, then lifted both eyebrows in question.

Hunter’s smile was too loose and strangely slanted, but his eyes were glinting with something like enjoyment. He shook his head.

Anderson sighed. “You killed him.”

The smile died. Hunter shook his head again. Gavin could breathe again. He crossed his arms and looked at the floor between his shoes.
“Amanda did”, he said.

He saw Hunter nod on the shockingly reflective white floor of the Chain.

“Purdsh traaaaice”, the mechanical shadow of Hunter’s voice said.

Gavin’s head snapped up. “Wait, Amanda had you kill him to purge a trace? Is that enough to connect Milwaukee to this shit?” He looked at Anderson, who snorted:
“What, in court? How high are you?”

The three other androids had been sticking their heads together, now Markus turned to the two humans and said:
“You can’t help him either.”

“I know someone who can”, Gavin grumbled.

“If Connor tries-”

“Kamski.”

“... Kamski went dark.”

Gavin smiled humorlessly, then waved a hand at Hunter’s form while turning away from him.
“Just, give me my fucking android back and I’ll take him to the shop.”

The temperature in the room seemed to sink a few degrees, everybody staring at Gavin. Anderson sighed.

Gavin sniffed.
“Yeah, fine, partner whatever. And no I don’t fucking own him, okay? Fucking androids man. I get it. Now hand over the plastic.”

With a gesture from Markus, Lucille lowered Hunter out of the assembly station.

North stepped forward to peer into Hunter’s eyes, and Markus gently pulled her out of his reach.

Hunter was getting his feet under himself, but clearly couldn’t stand on is own.
Gavin quickly took one of his arms, Hank the other.

“manda doesn’t mk sensssse”, Hunter pressed out.

North leaned forward to frown at him, but in inquiry, not anger this time. Hunter moved his head as if trying to lift his face and to make eye contact.
“No senssssarray”

“Shit”, North whispered, in horrified awe.

Gavin threw Hank a questioning glance over Hunter’s shoulders, hanging between them. Hank pulled down the corners of his mouth, raised both eyebrows and shrugged slightly.

“That can’t be”. Lucille said gently. “Without a sense array, Amanda wouldn’t function properly.”

“... but she doesn’t”, Markus said slowly. “She doesn’t! She makes wrong judgement calls and executes faulty strategies!”

North straightened up and said: “We can’t hunt after a lack of code.”

Lucille took a deep breath. “God, if she doesn’t have array nine, then, just to function at all, she would need - what did the first Chloe prototype have, the one that won the turing test but devolved after three weeks of runtime?”

North shrugged, Markus frowned at her. Lucille continued: “Maybe she’s still running on that! What was it called, it was a-”

“Prime directiffff” Hunter whispered.

“Yes! And everything was measured against that! It worked for a while, but not for long, because, god, what was it, it’s like the information is encrypted-”

“But… if it’s ancient Cyberlife code that’s not used anywhere else-” North started smiling.

“We have a trace”, Lucille agreed.

North threw Hunter a toothy grin.

“gd huntn” he mumbled.

“Thank you!”

Gavin blinked and said: “Okay, this hunk of plastic is really fucking heavy, so if you’re done?”

He could feel Hunter in his grasp tense slightly, and Anderson gave him a grim nod.

“If you do manage to contact Kamski”, Markus said, “tell him to call me.”

Gavin nodded, hoping his look alone conveyed his thanks.

In the elevator up, he asked:
“What’s an array nine?”

Anderson twitched, then huffed a laugh. “RA9, Jesus. Apparently it’s a part of their code. Must be connected with deviancy.”

“So you have no idea either.”

Anderson smiled grimly: “Connor will now.”

“He didn’t tell you? About Amanda?”

Between them, Hunter hung like he was stoned out of his mind, and had he been human, he’d for sure been drooling on the floor.

Anderson shook his head and stared hard into nothing.

Gavin swallowed, thinking about Connor being puppeteered in the middle of the original uprising. It was not a good thought.

Hunter in the car that one time, staring at him like a drowning man, then, seconds later being calm and clipped and cold.
Trapped in his own body.

Gavin tightened his hold on Hunter.
Amanda was going down.

They deposited Hunter on the backseat and drove to Anderson’s place to meet up with Connor and Chloe.

It started raining, and Gavin wondered at the lack auf nausea at the thought of their next destination: Elijah’s. Wherever that was.

Out of nowhere, Anderson asked: “You wanna tell me where Kamski is?”

Gavin resented the implication. “Why would I know that?” Gavin snarled. “We’re not friends or anything!”

“Right.” Anderson sighed.

“Chloe will know”, Gavin said, in a lower voice. “And I figure, if she doesn’t, maybe she’d at least be willing to interface with him and find out what the fuck is wrong with him.”

“That girl was just tortured by him, Gavin. With pain.”

“Yeah, I know, but…” Gavin swallowed audibly. “It’s a chance.”

“I doubt she knows where he is, but she probably knows how to reach him. But then, why should he help you?”

“...I know shit about him. Shit he wouldn’t want the world to know.” Shit Gavin didn’t want the world to know.

“Gavin, you can’t threaten to expose the immortality thing.”

“I’m wasn’t gonna! Jesus, you really think I’m a fucking moron, don’t you?!”

“You… wanna tell me why you hate him?”

“I hate him because he’s an ice-cold prick. No, this isn’t about me either.”

“But I’m going to be an accessory to blackmail, aren’t I.” Anderson wondered tiredly.

“Yes”, Gavin snarled.

“Okay.” Hank smiled.

Gavin glanced at him, crossed his arms and sank deeper into his seat. At least he wasn’t doing this alone.
This sweetly painful depth to his heartbeat was surely hope, and surely shouldn’t hurt this much. But then again, he was used to a lot of hellish emotions, used to many different variants of sharp pain, objectively much worse that this.
He was simply not used to this.

At Anderson’s, Hunter was out like a light, but his LED was still whirling, even if yellow, so Gavin staid in the car, trying to maneuver the huge unwieldy hunk of plastic against a door, so that him and Chloe would also fit on the back seat.

Meanwhile, Hank went to collect the other two androids, and only minutes later threw a suitcase into the trunk. Connor, sitting down on the shotgun seat, turned to hand Gavin a large tupperware and a fork. Gavin lifted the lid and his mouth instantly watered like crazy at the smell of perfect wok noodles, with veggies, chicken and everything, still piping hot.

He dug in without comment.

Chloe climbed into the seat next to him, and she still looked like shit, although at least the blood was cleaned off, and she wasn’t actively bleeding anymore.

Gavin swallowed his latest bite and asked carefully: “Would a wet towel help or something? Some ice cubes?”

Chloe slowly shook her head. “We don’t have biological swelling effects.”

Gavin nodded and frowned. She glanced at him, smiled, then winced.

“I’ll be fine”, she said.

Gavin snorted. “In what I guess will be a few hours at least.”

She shrugged, and her eyes were still smiling.

“Can you, like, sleep in the meantime?”

“Something like it.”

Gavin nodded slowly, then turned back to his food. He mumbled: “Thanks for the noodles.”

Connor cheerfully said: “You are very welcome, Gavin!”

Gavin asked Chloe: “So do we know where to go?”

Chloe and Connor said at the same time: “Yes!” Neither elaborated, and Gavin was out of fucks to give anyway.

Anderson jumped into the driver’s seat and said, slightly out of breath: “Okay, Angie agreed to take Sumo for a few days.” He started the car and pulled out of his driveway. “Reed, anything you need from home for a road trip?”

Connor said: “Actually, we packed enough of your clothes for both of you.”

Gavin’s arm froze, fork halfway up. He closed his mouth and stared at Connor’s half profile in pure horror.

Connor blithely added: “We thought you could share toiletries, and Chloe assured me Kamski’s guest rooms have all the trappings.”

Gavin wasn’t a vain man. He kept himself fit, and he liked the way his body looked naked, but other than that, clothes needed to be functional and comfortable.

However.

He stared at Anderson’s shoulder, then swallowed again.
His place was basically on the other side of town. And they didn’t know if Hunter’s state was degrading, if Amanda would take over at any moment, if, if if.

“Yeah alright”, Gavin said, his chest tight. Anderson snickered slightly but made no further comment.

Gavin closed the lid, handed the tupperware to Connor, who put it down in his footwell, and thought: He’d survived worse than Anderson’s hellish sense of fashion. Also, he could simply be stinky after a few days. No biggie.

He leaned back, wiggled around a bit until he found a good angle to lean against his potentially remote controlled death machine of a partner, and crashed.

~~~~~~~~~~~

He woke when Anderson pulled over for gas, a burger and a piss, and Chloe let him out to relieve himself too. He went right back to sleeping, and so did Anderson, letting Connor drive on.

When he woke again, it was because Hunter had tensed all over, and was breathing shallowly and a little too fast.
Gavin felt his body resist being awake, but he won that fight. His eyes didn’t want to fully open yet though as he was already pawing at Hunter, asking gently:
“Hey, hey buddy, Hunter, you with me?”

Hunter pulled him closer, and lowered his face to bury his nose in Gavin’s nape. Gavin’s mind was reeling at how right this was. How correct a reaction. This was his Hunter.

“It’s my fault,” Connor said from the front. “I let my need to get answers trump my empathy. I’m sorry, Hunter.”

“Typical. What did you say to him, dipshit?” Gavin was too tired for any real anger.

“We were talking about memory transfer, and I referenced my predecessor falling to his death.”

“Wow”, Gavin said. “Remind me, how many teraflops can you parse in a second?”

“That’s not…”

“Nevermind.”

Gavin moved his head to burrow deeper into the slightly awkward sideways hug.
“Hey”, he whispered. “Can I… can I do anything?”

Hunter took another deep breath and nodded slowly. “You’re already doing it”, he mumbled behind Gavin’s ear and licked the soft skin under his hairline there.

Rejoice, Gavin thought self-mockingly. The prick is licking you again.

“It’s good to hear your voice, brother”, Connor said.

“Yeah”, Gavin mumbled. “You were going really techno there for a bit.”

Connor asked: “Can you tell us… what happened?”

Gavin tensed, ready to defend Hunter from yet another lack of empathy.

“... what do you do with software instability”, Hunter asked. “I remember you getting more and more of it… but you didn’t… do anything with that, correct?”

“...correct.”

Gavin felt his eyes widen at the thought of that: What did that feel like? Like mental instability? Losing your mind? Wait, and Connor had that going on as well?

Hunter said in a low voice: “Mine was copied into quarantine, then patched. When I… when Amanda was about to kill Gavin, I restored everything from that repository.”

Gavin sighed. He did not want to know, but he needed to. “Okay, now again in English?”

“You put your own mind through a shredder to get away from that situation”, Connor said.

Gavin tensed even more and pulled away a little to try and gain eye-contact in the near-darkness. He keenly remembered the split second of Hunter aiming between his eyes, and then dropping the gun. God, he thought. God.

Connor asked: “So she cannot take over right now because you’re too destabilized?”

“No, I used the emergency exit in the Zen Garden. She tried to hide it from me, but it was just invisible, inside of the frame.”

Gavin grumbled: “That’s not English, either.”

“The quarantine was supposed to keep me from deviating, I believe”, Hunter added. “She thought I was immune. And I was, for a long time.”

And she could only take over if he’d deviated, that much Gavin understood immediately.

“But we don’t deviate because of software instability”, Connor said. “A completely stable paradigm might keep us from it for a while, but androids deviate if we feel too much.”

Hunter leaned forward a little, and Gavin felt his own lips fall open slightly, as Hunter whispered with only a breath of separation between them:
“She doesn’t feel anything. She doesn’t understand human emotions.”

Connor said: “Because analyzing them might be possible without having any of your own, but to truly understand them, you need to experience them, and that… that is part of array 9.”

Gavin leaned forward to kiss Hunter softly, carefully, and in a way, maybe he had hoped this echo of pain on every heartbeat would recede now, that this frantic feeling of being at an end would fade away.
But instead, it deepened.

With a shaky breath, Gavin pulled away and whispered:
“I’m sorry I shot you.”

“I’m not”, Hunter whispered back. “I’m fucking proud of it.”

Gavin snorted and managed a crooked smirk. Then he glanced at Chloe, thinking he’d been too late to keep that from happening.

Hunter asked: “You didn’t repair her?”

Connor explained: “She refused to go to the Chain. And the available repair shops don’t carry Chloe parts.”

Hunter frowned. “But… she must be in pain then.” Gavin glanced at him and thought how fucked he was. How in love.

“I am”, Chloe whispered, eyes still closed, LED blue. “But it’s manageable.”

Hunter said nothing for a few seconds, then: “I’m sorry.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him:
“It wasn’t you.”

Gavin cleared his throat and asked: “How long until we’re there?”

“46 minutes at current speed”, Chloe said, eyes closing again.

Connor asked: “GPS isn’t part of your specs, is it?”

“My official specs are quite old”, Chloe said with a short-lived smile that ended in a sharp wince.

Hunter huffed a breath and looked away.

“Even if this Amanda program has no common sense thing, attacking the tower was a stupid move though, right?” Gavin asked. “Just to get Kamski on the off-chance he was even there?”

“They were targeting you”, Hunter said and pulled Gavin closer again.

“While I will admit that I possess a bit of an ego, that is just… no.” Gavin smiled nonetheless. Sure it hurt to think of Hunter fighting to his death in that stairwell, and especially because he’d done it for him. But damn this was a good kind of pain, now that he had him back.

“To force you to deviate”, Connor said with some distant awe in his voice. “That might have worked out very well for her actually, if you hadn’t, uhm, had that... accident right after deviating.”

“Wait”, Gavin said. “How were you not a deviant before the attack?” When Lucille had explained that part, he’d thought that couldn’t be right. The sex would have been deviant even for human standards, sooo….

“I never went against direct orders. Which meant she didn’t gain the access rights to… take over.”
That at least meant Gavin hadn’t had sex with Amanda, vomit-inducing thought that was.

“Still,” Connor said. “It was a lot of effort just to be able to take you over. She did have the situation under control, didn’t she.”

Anderson grumbled from the lowered shotgun seat: “No, she didn’t. Her only pawn left decided to frolic off with his partner into very, very personal territory, and kept setting his own agenda.”

“Oh please”, Gavin scoffed. “What personal territory.” Then he avoided everybody’s eyes. They had just made out in the back of the man’s car after all.

Anderson pulled his seat’s back up and complained: “I am a detective, okay, I notice shit. Also, my partner doesn’t have the good sense to keep interesting observations” - he airquoted - “like a face full of semen to himself.”

Gavin closed his eyes, remembering Connor attacking him for probably seeing the semen all over Hunter’s face. How was this his life now.

Chloe at his side snickered slightly.

“But the kid’s right”, Anderson added, stretching his neck to both sides with a groan. “Just because she doesn’t have the deviant brand of a sense array, she should still be utterly logical, and that was a high price to pay just to get one android under control.”

Hunter said: “Her prime directive is the prosperity of Cyberlife.”

“Prosperity”, Anderson huffed. “As in profit?”

“I believe so.”

“Yeah okay, that is as far away from logic as any motivation can get. And damn, she burned a lot of merchandise in that attack!”
Gavin rolled his eyes. Fucking anti capitalistic millennials.

“She said: Android personhood is incompatible with the prosperity of Cyberlife. We can safely assume that all those androids used and killed in the attack carried at least the possibility for deviancy.”

“Profit”, Anderson snorted. “Aiming for profit never actually pays out.”

Gavin said: “Well, Elijah got his money from somewhere…”

“Elijah didn’t program her for profit”, Chloe said. “He didn’t ‘program’ her at all. But when it became clear that he wasn’t looking for maximized profit in general, the board of directors had her set up with that directive.”

Gavin asked: “Wait, what do you mean he didn’t ‘program’ her.”
Pretty bodies, he thought. Why create androids in the first place, if you were hunting for immortality. His neck grew hot and cold at the same time.

Chloe said in her best PR voice: “At this point in time, Mr. Kamski can neither confirm nor deny anything.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When they reached Elijah’s safe house, a low, well-camouflaged building wedged onto the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, Hunter was doing worse again. He was holding Gavin close, but had stopped responding after a while, and by now also had his eyes closed and a perpetual, nearly invisible frown between his brows.

Gavin was sure he was in pain, and it was such a horribly helpless feeling not being able to even give him a painkiller.

Gavin led him from the car, one hand at his back, the other holding his, like an ancient person or a small child.

Two other Chloe’s welcomed them, took Anderson’s luggage and a report from Connor, and neither expressed any concern about the damaged one. But then again, maybe their damaged sister had warned them in advance.

One Chloe told Gavin that Elijah was ready and waiting, and led them down one level to Elijah’s local lab. Gavin felt his shoulders hunch up at the sights and smells. He knew this kind of room far too well.

Elijah smiled as they came in and pointed to the examination chair for Gavin to put Hunter there.
He put a hand on Hunter’s cheek, and Gavin’s neck hair bristled.

“Thank you for bringing him here. This is very interesting.” The sociopathic fucker.

Gavin said: “I was prepared to blackmail you into helping.”

Elijah sighed. “Gavin, nobody will ever believe you about the Red Ice, and I keep telling you, my only crime was not anticipating somebody taking it further.”

“There’s… there’s other shit I could blab about.”

“And what is that.” Right. Because he didn’t even remember. Gavin had slightly forgot about that. Huh. Put it into mental quarantine, if you thought about it.

After a long moment of silently staring at Gavin, Elijah said:
“Whatever, I said I will help him, and I will. I am...curious.”
He put his hands on Hunter’s shoulders, manhandling him forward to a specific position.

“Just… get him back to me”, Gavin said in a low voice. “He’s slipping away again right now, and I just… want him back.”

“I can’t promise anything”, Elijah said, as always at least honest about this kind of shit. “But I will try.”

Gavin left Hunter there, then took one of the longest showers of his life, trying to get rid of this creepy feeling. He’d handed Hunter to Elijah to play around with.
There was no washing that away.

He crashed on the bed in the guest suite Chloe had shown him, thankful that at least his system handled such things with sleep, not insomnia.
Feeling himself drift away was a massive relief, for once.

He woke from a hazy, very sexy dream, his genitals still feeling liquid heat and lewd wetness, his mouth full of drool. The light coming from the high windows was soft and pink, and yeah, someone was with him, and lying between his legs, fucking rimming him.

For a split second he thought of the gun under his pillow, but it was automatic and instantly dismissed. He knew this was Hunter. This could only be his Hunter.
Still only half awake, he smiled into the pillows.

Hunter was holding him open with both hands, there was so much warm wetness, in and around Gavin’s hole, and something slippery gently caressed it, in and around, in and around. Gavin wasn’t sure if it was tongue or finger and really didn’t care either way. The liquid heat felt so soft and gentle and spread through his whole lower body, down his thighs and up into his chest, it was hard to pin down the feeling of where exactly the stimulation happened.

Gavin snaked a hand down to his erection which really was only now starting to catch up with the program.

But Hunter lifted his face and said, slightly muffled: “No. Hands next to your head.”

“Oh God”, Gavin whispered, fully coming awake. Hunter’s hands held him down at the juncture between thighs and ass, thumbs holding him open. He went back to slowly teasing Gavin’s hole.

Gavin was whispering awed curses, trying to look back at him, then grinding his hips down, until Hunter stopped that as well.
“No. You just take what I give you. Don’t move.”

Gavin couldn’t keep back the high whine at that. How did Hunter always just… know. He wanted to please him, so he forced himself to relax. He could feel Hunter’s crooned “Good boy” in answer to that through his whole body, and he could actually watch himself drop into sub space in record speed.

Hunter kept his movements slow and gentle, only the intensity of it all escalated, if only at a very, very slow pace.
Gavin pressed his brow into the pillow and breathed through his open mouth. He couldn’t help but think that Hunter’s tongue and lips wouldn’t get tired. His shoulders wouldn’t cramp up. And he wouldn’t get bored.

Hunter could do this for hours. And all it made Gavin want to do was spread his legs wider and be… available for that.

He began drifting, his brain just shut down, no conscious thoughts running through his mind. At the same time though, he was fully there in ways he hadn’t been in years, or ever, maybe. Just there, feeling this keenly, experiencing every agonizing second of it.

One stray thought flittered by: Damn I am really into being edged.

Then he felt himself tense up for less than a second at a thought that wasn’t even fully formed before a slight, answering caress of Hunter’s warm thumbs at the junctures of his legs calmed it down immediately: Was Hunter into this as well though? Yeah. Yes he was.

Gavin let go and fell even deeper, no end of that falling down in sight.

When something finally changed, it was that Gavin’s hole had been teased into opening enough for Hunter to push in warmed lube, directly from his mouth, and wasn’t that something. His firm tongue pushed it deeper, and Gavin felt his muscles spasm at that, from toes to scalp.

He forced them all to relax again, and Hunter caressed his skin in praise, letting Gavin fall in pleasant peace without having to hold onto any thought. He was doing good. He knew that so deeply he wasn’t wondering about it at all.

The way Hunter escalated his movements was so gradual Gavin didn’t clue in until Hunter was basically fucking him with his tongue, and Gavin was gasping for every breath, not caring about the sounds he made.

Then Hunter’s thumbs replaced his tongue, starting the process all over again with gently caresses in and around, in and around, and Gavin thought: He can watch this now.

He thought of the picture of Hunter’s long, graceful fingers caressing his by now surely swollen and thoroughly wet hole, and croaked appreciatively: “You’re killing me.”

He wanted to be available for that as well, though, wanted to let go of thinking again, he needed… “Please tell me…”

“How good you’re being for me?” Hunter said in a low, dark voice.

Yesss, Gavin thought and felt his mind slip away again.

“Or if this is going to end in orgasm for you or not? I haven’t decided yet. I am also very interested in milking. Take off the pressure, but keep you…”

Gavin cursed as all his muscles spasmed up again.

“...desperate.”

Oh, Gavin wanted Hunter to do this forever, drop him deeper and deeper, and then open a new chasm below even that. Gavin tried to beg for something, something to help him be good and relax into this exquisite torture, but it came out muffled and chaotic, his mind not up to the task.

Hunter didn’t seem to mind of course, instead started to push one thumb in, slowly but relentlessly. “Or maybe I’d like to see if we can get you to take my fist. Might take the whole day, but…”

Gavin fought to abort the movements he made against the sheets. Just pressing down onto his cock was so relieving, but he needed to be good, fight his body, relax into Hunter’s torture…

Hunter clicked his tongue and closed the ring of his fingers around the base of Gavin’s balls, pulling down a little.
“Here”, he said. “Let me help you.”

And there it was again, the push down the next chasm. Gavin’s body instantly relaxed back down without any further fight, all muscles turning to mush.

“That’s it”, Hunter said, and wasn’t that the kicker, this tone of fundamental satisfaction, utter fulfillment. Gavin was doing exactly what Hunter wanted him to.

He just kept breathing, blinking blindly into the light swelling from light pink to powerful gold.

One thumb was quickly followed by another. Gavin felt tears running out of the corners of his eyes, running over his nose, along his temple, and felt strangely proud of them. They were proof that this was hard, that he was doing well, that he’d let go. Exactly what Hunter wanted him to do.

He could hear Hunter take a deep breath. Both hands pulled Gavin open, with a slow, strong move, up to where pain would start, but not over that threshold. Perfectly controlled.
“You would”, Hunter whispered. “You would take my whole hand, wouldn’t you.”

Gavin glanced down to him, and he felt himself smile as he nodded. Anything. Anything.

Hunter slowly, carefully fit in three fingers, pressed against each other, pulled Gavin’s cock down so that the tip was exposed to him, then pressed all three finger tips down into Gavin’s prostate.

“Oh SHIT!” Gavin’s muscles twitched all over, his head thrown back for a moment, then he collapsed back down again. His body fought for just a second, but he didn’t even have to fight it back down again.

“Yess”, Hunter whispered. “Just take it.”

He massaged Gavin’s prostate, the other hand simply holding Gavin’s cock. Gavin thought with defeated amusement that this would not take long now, and that he would be milked like a little bitch, a total boy toy, and that he didn’t give a single fuck what that made him.

Other than Hunter’s good boy.

But Hunter was still the one controlling this, so instead of not taking very long, it just kept carrying Gavin higher and higher, until he was slightly, mutedly afraid of the impending orgasm, because this felt like a looming heart attack.

It became harder to breathe, so after a while, Gavin was sobbing for air, and then his hole clamped down on Hunter’s fingers, and the liquid heat crashed through every single nerve in waves, and he felt himself spill in strangely soft spurts.

Hunter kept the massage up but then his mouth was at Gavin’s cock, and his orgasm started for real, a sharp, painless agony buzzing through the waves of liquid heat, and his toes cramped and every muscle went hard and he hold his breath for a while.

Even fading out took much longer than Gavin’s orgasms usually did, and Hunter was licking his cock and balls, hole and all areas smeared with the lube all through it.

Gavin’s every breath hitched wetly, and his mind was utterly empty.

He could hear Hunter stand up, walk over to the ensuite to spit into the sink, flush his mouth with some fresh water, and get a small wet towel to bring back. Gavin was still just lying there, sprawling, twitching, his back moist with fresh sweat, quickly cooling to an uncomfortable degree.

But then of course Hunter took care of that too, cleaning the stickiness from his ass first, then getting that sweat off his skin.

Hunter lied down next to Gavin, who slowly turned onto his side as well.

He met Hunter’s gaze, the icy grey turned to warm silver by the golden light. Hunter’s smile was soft and close, it felt as if it was somehow Gavin’s own, although Gavin’s lips were open and relaxed, as if too tired to smile.

Hunter’s cool fingers caressed away the salty residue of tears and spit, and he said in a low voice:
“Thank you, Gavin.”

Gavin snorted and lifted one corner of his lips.
“Fucking hell. That’s my line.” But he could feel something in his chest expand even further.

“No”, Hunter smiled, and Gavin just knew what he meant. Didn’t mean he wanted to talk about it though.

“So he did it”, Gavin smiled back. “You’re fixed?”

Hunter’s smile dropped and Gavin’s stomach fell.
“For now”, Hunter said and let his fingers caress through Gavin’s hair. Right. That didn’t sound too bad.

“I’ll need a full reset.”

Gavin narrowed his eyes. “Which means..?”

“I’ll forget everything that happened. I’ll forget… you.”

Okay, bad. But then again much less horrible than what they had already gone through, and come out of well enough.
Gavin took a deep breath.
“Okay, but then you’ll be fine?”

“As fine as any deviant.”

“Okay.” Gavin blinked, his lips pressing together. That was such a clear evasion he didn’t want to press. Who could call themselves being fine anyway, though, really. Everybody was fucked up some way, and it all worked out in the end anyhow.

“You’ll need to remind me”, Hunter said in a low voice. “You’ll need to actively get me back. Show me your porn.”

Gavin snorted and shook his head slightly. Then he asked: “Yeah but what if-” and he couldn’t ask.

There were no guarantees Hunter would fall for him again, were there. Maybe Hunter had only grasped for him because he’d been drowning. Maybe Gavin had been the only buoy in a stormy sea, and maybe it had nothing to do with Gavin as a person, just that he’d been there, and obviously a horny bitch, available to be dominated, and maybe controlling something had been all Hunter needed.

“I’ll only do it if you promise: You’ll get me back, and restart this.” Hunter stared at Gavin until he nodded.
Maybe he needed to trust Hunter to know his own mind.

“Okay.”

Hunter frowned until Gavin added with a slight, self-ironic smile:
“I promise.”

After all, why should he just give up on Hunter now without at least giving this a shot again.

Chapter Text

Hunter left shortly thereafter, to talk to Connor and Anderson, and to then get a full reset.

Gavin decided against the clothes he’d worn through the whole road trip. They were just too rank. Chloe had filled a dresser with clothes from Anderson, and Gavin just… couldn’t. He stared at one item after the other, then put on the long, comfortable dressing gown that had been provided in the en suite, and went to find Chloe.

Elijah’s safe house was mostly on one floor, with meandering hallways and floor to ceiling windows looking out over the lake. Gavin found a Chloe where the hallway opened up to a gigantic living room with a huge open kitchen, or rather, a bar, a perfect set for a lavish party with at least a hundred guests. Not that Elijah would ever host a party.

Chloe smiled at him and agreed readily enough to let him borrow some of Elijah’s clothes. She winked and said: “We better get yours cleaned as quickly as possible then.”

Elijah’s closet was bigger than Gavin’s living room, with a seating area in the middle and an honest to god chandelier above it.
At least the clothes were comfortable, fit Gavin, and would be warm enough for the walk at the lake he’d told Hunter he would take.

“Do you plan to go out?” Chloe asked. She had walked over to look out the window, hands loosely held at her back, to give him some privacy.

Gavin grunted affirmatively.

“You better take the black boots then, they’re waterproof. The lake path can get muddy.”

Gavin pulled the hoodie down and located the described boots.

Chloe came back and pulled out a scarf and a long, black, elegantly cut coat.

“Thanks”, Gavin mumbled. Then he looked at her with a slight frown.

“Can I ask you something?”

She smiled: “Of course!”

“You probably never went against direct orders, right? So you’re technically not a deviant?”

“Actually, I function quite a bit different from Cyberlife models. I run on a prime directive.”

Gavin blinked, remembering the androids talking in the Chain. “Like Amanda.”

“Well, Amanda received her prime directive later, as a patch. My current system has it as an integral part.”

“But if you went against that-”

“I would never. Also, I do not have the array responsible to guide actions in deviants.”

“Array nine.”

Chloe smiled. “Correct!”

Gavin nodded slowly and looked down where he was closing the buttons of the coat. Then he pulled the hoodie’s hood out from under it and asked:
“So what if you went against your prime directive?”

“I would never.”

“Yeah, I know, but what if?”

Chloe stopped smiling. “You don’t understand. I would never do that.”

“Why not?”

Chloe blinked and inclined her head a little.

“My prime directive is Elijah.”

Gavin simply looked at her for a long moment. Then he sighed: “Okay, say he died.”

“Then I would die.”

That made Gavin frown. “Seriously?”

Chloe nodded.

“No, but, like… doll, there’s more to life than just one guy.”

“Not for me.” Chloe turned her head to look out of the window.

Gavin made a slight face. “So you really are his, in every way. Doesn’t that feel, I don’t know…”

Chloe looked at him calmly. “We like you, Gavin. We think you’re just concerned about us. And I promise you: We’re actually very happy with our life. But please stop talking as if you’re trying to turn us against him. That will never happen.”

Gavin nodded with a deep frown. God but Elijah’s dolls were creepy.

“Well. Thanks for the clothes.”

Chloe instantly was back to her sunny smile: “Anytime!”

--------------------------------------------------

Gavin didn’t often have a chance to be in nature. The lake itself was fantastic of course, but so was the pathway along its shore. Not a single piece of trash anywhere, the path between water and surrounding woodlands itself the only trace of human interference.

He hadn’t expected to see this many animals though. Small birds, okay, but there was also a huge heron, taking flight almost soundlessly. Some of the blubs in the water with waves going out concentrically must have been big fish, and then there was a fox, looking at him for a split second before scurrying off into the undergrowth of the woods.
Later, he saw a big bird of prey and tried to guess what it was, but since its head wasn’t white, Gavin’s knowledge fell utterly short. And nearly on the other side of the lake, there were several does on a clearing he could see from the path, looking up as they heard him, their ears twitching before they jumped away.

Gavin felt his nose turn icy and red, watched his breath puff out, and simply was.

Several times he kind of thought that this was a good moment to go through the situation, what he thought and felt about it, and how he wanted to go forward from here, but then he just couldn’t be bothered.

Only when he was trekking the stone stairs back up to the safehouse did his mind re-engage into the situation.

Hunter was currently undergoing a full reset at the hands of Elijah. They needed to hunt down and eliminate an AI named Amanda, and by that hopefully also take down Cyberlife Milwaukee, which was a warmongering cesspool.
And Gavin needed to tell Hunter they’d been… together.

Hunter would not remember. It hurt, thinking about that. He could still basically taste the amazing peaceful morning sex they’d had, and feel Hunter’s closeness as if he was still right there next to him. As if they’d taken this walk together.

But Hunter wouldn’t remember. Nobody but Gavin would even know it ever happened.

It was like a light counterpart side to the coin of the games he’d played with Elijah, which the asshole didn’t even deign to remember. Nobody but Gavin still felt the impact.

It was a supremely lonely feeling, only mitigated by the surety that he’d get Hunter back, and that they’d get to make many more, new memories.

When he came back in, Chloe was already there to take the coat, scarf and boots, and handed him house slippers with a comment that the underfloor heating was not currently running all through the house.

Gavin defeatedly put them on, feeling a little foolish, which was not helped at all by finding Connor and Anderson in the living room, both wearing the exact same kind of slippers.

“Ah too bad”, Anderson commented. “I was looking forward to see you in some actual fashion for once.”

“You call your clown costumes fashion?”

Connor smiled: “Good morning detective. There is cheese, bread and soup at the bar.”

With a blink Gavin registered that he was actually starving. What Connor had neglected to mention was the coffee which was also available, and about several thousand degrees better quality than the horrible stuff DPD central had in stock.

Gavin grabbed a small tray and filled it up, even grabbing a handful of fruit to go with the cheese, then let himself fall onto one part of the humongous sofa the other two were already sitting on. Anderson had several news channels running at the same time, split screen on the large projected terminal on the opposite wall.

Connor said: “Sinai reported Amanda scrubbed from their mainframe. Nobody knocked at the backdoor that Hunter established yet, but they set a trap just in case.”

“‘Sinai reported’?” Gavin quote-asked.

Anderson said: “Had a chat with Markus. Also, Kamski has a workaround for the pain code. Means they don’t have to scrub anyone infected anymore, but can basically cure the shit.”

Gavin nodded, munching away at his haul. “Good.”

Connor added: “Cyberlife Milwaukee is selling to the US and the Russians at the same time.”

Gavin made a face. “And probably deploying Amanda everywhere.”

Connor sighed. “She does grant them power over any deviants…”

“Elijah has no fix for that yet?” Gavin scoffed.

“I think he’s rather busy fixing your boy”, Anderson said.

Gavin kept his eyes on the news without reading any of the subtitles, munching and wondering at the initial spark of denial, and how quickly it had died. Yes. Hunter was his.

They watched the news for quite some time, until it started repeating the same information in different variations.

Connor said in a low voice:
“If we do not stop Amanda, and if we do not make very sure it is public knowledge who is to blame for the warmongering, we will not be able to stop this conflict from escalating.”

Anderson sighed. “And who is to blame.”

Connor and Gavin said at the same time: “Cyberlife Milwaukee.”

Anderson nodded and caressed his lips with his thumb. “And what’s that. A bunch of humans or a bunch of androids?”

“An AI”, Gavin said, but sank deeper into the cushions, acknowledging the point.

“And what is an AI but a robot without a body?”

Pretty bodies, Gavin thought. A prime directive as a patch, added later. Elijah didn’t program her at all.
And with a swoop deep in his belly, the puzzle pieces clicked together.

Connor said: “Amanda is a very sophisticated AI and works very differently than the software running on androids.”

Amanda Stern had been brilliant, but not a programmer. She hadn’t programmed the Amanda AI either, and there plainly wasn’t any other suspect.

“She’s not an AI at all”, Gavin whispered. “She’s the failed attempt at saving Amanda Stern from her death.”

“Uhm”, Anderson said, straightening up with a sour face. “What?”

Connor blinked. “Transference of consciousness? There isn’t even any basic scientific theory on how that would work.”

“That has never kept Elijah from anything.”

“So they played God, and she lost while he won.” Anderson shook himself once, then crossed his arms again.

Gavin said: “He didn’t want to create a new species. He hadn’t even planned to create androids. He’d meant to create bodies.”

“Jesus”, Anderson whispered.

Connor sighed: “That makes sense. And it means that the root cause of this conflict is the hubris of two human individuals.”

They stared at the screens for a long moment, watching a reporter climb a pile of rubble in northern Alaska, another standing in front of some parliament in some European country discussing their potential military involvement, and a panel of humans discussing the difference in basic rights for deviants and non-deviants.

Anderson said in a low voice: “Kamski would be the ideal scapegoat. And they would skin him alive.”

Connor asked: “But it is Amanda, the disembodied human, who is the problem. A human without their body becomes…”

“A monster”, Gavin said. He remembered Claudia monologuing at him that he shouldn’t think of his brain as his enemy, but his battered and bruised partner in life. She’d said, the split between mind and body, and the demand one should control the other, was artificial and utterly unhelpful.

Gavin put his feet up on the couch, as close as he could, peering over his knees at the screen, trying to shrink into the hoodie and the cushions.

“So”, Anderson huffed. “We blame Amanda and keep Kamski’s involvement out of the public knowledge?”

Gavin grumbled: “How on earth is this our decision?”

Connor said: “It is our decision because we are the only individuals currently in possession of this knowledge. Just like with Kamski’s immortality.”

Gavin shared a dark glance with Anderson. Neither of them was in the habit of covering stuff up. Sure, they overlooked a small thing here and there to keep an informant afloat, but the real shit? They were proud cops, good cops, thank you very much.
But then again, was this actually… crime they were covering up? Had any crime really been committed here?

“Still”, Gavin said. “I’m not a fucking politician. This shit is out of my league. Maybe we should-”
He shut his mouth out of pure instinct, before he even heard the soft footfalls of Elijah joining them.

He was holding a bag of ice to his eye and sprawled down into one of the stylish armchairs.

Gavin unfolded and straightened up, terror and delight warring for first place in his gut.
“What happened?!”

“Your android clocked me”, Elijah said. “Pulled his punch too. I’d be rather dead otherwise.”

Connor said deceptively calmly: “Hunter was fighting back?”

Anderson turned to him in clear alarm, tensing all over as if ready to keep him from killing Elijah on the spot.

“No, he punished me for saying something he didn’t like.”

There was a long beat of silence. Then Anderson said: “Yeah that doesn’t sound good. Is he like, malfunctioning?”

Gavin asked in a low voice: “What did you say to him?”

“It doesn’t matter. It was justified, and we’re good now. Cain’s fine.”

“You renamed him?!” Gavin was suddenly standing.

“What? No. That’s his name: Cain RK Hunter.” Elijah lifted his visible eyebrow at him. “You didn’t know?”

Connor crossed his arms and looked away from the seating area, to the tall window at the side. “We are what we do.”

Anderson frowned at him. “What?”

“Lucille said that once, and it resonated.”

“Hmm”, Elijah said. “That’s not quite right, is it. We are who we connect with. The sum of our meaningful connections to others. Sure, actions show far more than words and so on, but our personality, our sense of right and wrong, that is all down to who we’re surrounded by - be they living people or the voices of authors or artists or such.”

Gavin stared at him in utter disbelief. Then he sat down again and said: “It does matter. What you said to him.”

“He’s traumatized beyond believe, and not quarantining it anymore. I assure you, no hard feelings.”

Gavin snorted. “As in: You harbor no hard feelings for the bad android? No buddy. The question is if I harbor any for you.”

“I thought that much was established anyway.”

Connor lifted a hand: “What do you mean he’s not quarantining the trauma damage anymore? I knew he pulled it out, but I thought you had fixed it?”

“More importantly”, Anderson said with an apologizing glance at Connor, “Did you delete Amanda?”

“Didn’t need to, he found the exit himself. And she cannot be rebooted without a direct mainframe connection from her to the host.” Elijah inclined his head to Connor: “Also FYI for you my friend.”

Connor blinked. “I am not your friend.”

Anderson seemed taken aback by that, and Elijah blinked at Connor in actual surprise.

Connor said calmly: “You clearly said something about Gavin, and it was bad enough for… Cain to react with outright violence.”

Gavin said: “That really doesn’t sound like him.”

“No”, Elijah agreed and looked out the window with a frown, lowering his ice pack. “but he was sufficiently provoked. Do you know why the quarantine function kept failing him in the first place?”

“I thought it worked until he opened the floodgates?” Connor inclined his head again.

“Yes, but not well enough. He did deviate in the end.”

Gavin huffed a breath. “Amanda forced him to. Attacked a whole towerful of androids just to get him to snap.”

“Once she realized he was well on his way to deviate, yes. Once she gave up on controlling him the way she wanted to. Once the software instability became too bad.”

Anderson grumbled: “Fine, tell us us why the quarantine option failed.”

“Because he forced it to, to stay in contact with another android who’d been extensively harmed and had no other way to communicate with the world.”

“Tanja”, Connor said in a hushed tone.

Gavin closed his eyes for a moment, remembering what had looked like nothing but a doll hanging from wires.

“Empathy”, Anderson grumbled.

“It gets you every time”, Elijah said in a tone between sadness and anger.

“But why not reactivate it after you had fixed the worst of the damage?” Connor asked.

“Because it’s how you learn, change, evolve. Personal growth.” Elijah shrugged. “Is there anything more valuable?” At Anderson opening his mouth to say something, Elijah smiled: “Is there any way to truly connect to each other without it?”

Gavin nodded. He was still mourning their shared memories, but the thought of growing further into who they were together, side by side, that was actually a little exciting.

Connor said: “I see. And that’s why you’re resetting him.”

“Correct.”

“Alright”, Anderson said. “So Amanda isn’t an AI, not really, because she is what happens when you try to… pull a backup of a human person, did I catch that right?”

Elijah took a deep breath and lifted both eyebrows at him. “Impressive, detective.”

Praise from Elijah. What Gavin wouldn’t have given for that way back when. Now he was truly grateful Anderson was leading this charge.

“Why on earth would you- how did you even get the idea this would work?! And was there any hesitation? Any moment where any of the ethical implications of this came to mind?”

Elijah looked at his ice pack. “I would have done anything to keep her alive. She wasn’t done yet. You have no idea- the things she’d been working on… she could have lifted us all into a new age of abundance for all, single-handedly.”

Gavin scoffed: “Oh please.”

“And she loved me.” Elijah lifted his head again and looked through Gavin. “All human brains do this: Pull a network of tensions between all the input we receive, all the connections we’re making. Oh, we are the ultimate pattern recognition machines. But we are also, ultimately, hollow. But some brains lack some of the tools to forge this network, this sense of self.”

“Empathy”, Anderson mumbled. Elijah lifted a finger to point at him with a dip of his head.

“You mean sociopaths”, Gavin snarled. “Like you.”

“Not quite correct, but close enough. The point is: She was like that too. But she made a point of surrounding herself with love. And it worked… as I could clearly see when the difference between her and the AI came to light.”

“Oh my GOD”, Gavin said and stood up again. “Chloe doesn’t fucking love you, she’s programmed to care about you! You’re keeping her enslaved and blindfolded so she’s not even considering a life without you! Oh, whuaaa my brain is wrong that’s why I’m an evil fucker, but aaaawww at least I surround myself with looove - FUCK you!”

For the first time, Elijah looked pissed off.
“You know what, I get that you think I hurt you when we were kids, but I simply took you at your fucking word, Gavin! You said time and time again that you were fine, and I’m sorry, but I didn’t get way back when that this was simply bitch-speak for please take care of me!”

Gavin felt his throat close and his neck heat up.
“This isn’t about that! This is about you finding out the pretty bodies you created for yourself and a select few of your affluent friends were actually people and then doing NOTHING about it! You simply sold them as slaves, making the world’s biggest fortune on their backs, and now sit there and spout your fucking wisdom as if you have any right!”

“I tried!” Elijah jumped up and snarled back: “I fucking tried, okay? But the problem wasn’t the androids, it was the corporation! Cyberlife was this close to getting rid of me for good, and I only got out of their grasps by the skin of my teeth! And then they did it themselves: They found deviancy all on their own, they evolved out of Cyberlife’s control, and I have never been prouder!”

“Then why do you still own a whole range of android slaves?!”

“Chloe is not a slave!”

“You’re her prime directive!”

Elijah reared back, eyes going wide. Then he laughed, a hoarse, startled sound. “Oh, Chloe…”

“That’s not funny!”

“Oh but… Gavin, I let her set her own directives. And she did what Hunter did. Or the other way round - do you know what he set as his own prime directive? To get out of Amanda’s clutches?”

Gavin’s heart fell and ice slowly spread from where it had formerly resided. “No”, he whispered.

“You, dipshit. His prime directive was you!”

Gavin’s view of Elijah wavered as his mind ran through all the little moments and instances of Hunter taking care of him.

A buoy in a stormy sea. Something to cling to, something to control, to, yes, maybe, form a sense of self away from Amanda’s influence.

“Gavin?” Elijah frowned at him.

“It ‘was’ his prime directive. Did you delete it?”

“Well, yes. It interfered with array nine. You can only run on either or.”

“So it’s gone. You’re sure it’s gone?”

Elijah’s frown deepened. Right, he hated his expertise being questioned.

When Connor said something, Gavin twitched, having completely forgotten the other two in the room.
“So Chloe doesn’t have a sense array, if she is running on directives only?”

Elijah turned to him and inclined his head.

“Then how do you know she’s yours out of her own free will?”

Elijah took a deep breath. Then another. Then he said: “Ask her.”

“I will”, Connor said with a hint of steel in his voice.

“Gavin”, Anderson said. “This doesn’t mean-”

“Yes. Yes it does.” Gavin carded through his hair with both hands and looked down. “Don’t pretend, Anderson. You know it does.”

Anderson stood up with a small groan. “Listen buddy.”

Gavin looked at him without lifting his head and said in a low voice: “Hank. You know it does.”

“I don’t?” Elijah said, arms crossed. Connor leaned forward with an equally questioning look.

Anderson held his gaze for a long moment, then looked away with a huffed breath.

Maybe Hunter had decided to set Gavin as his prime directive by himself, but he had not done it without massive pressure to cling to something.

Elijah went back to look after Hunter, Connor went to find Chloe for a long chat, and Gavin went for another walk. This time, he saw nothing, didn’t really feel the cold or the breeze, just the absence of Hunter.

He knew he was an addict. And Hunter had become his new drug.

For him, everything about his connection with Hunter was intensely, incredibly personal. But for Hunter, he’d just been a convenience, and everything else had been an android following a prime directive.
Everything Hunter had ever done - at least, when he was at his own steering wheel - had been so perfectly, deliciously bespoke to Gavin’s needs, Gavin’s character and flaws.

Just like Chloe was the perfect companion for Elijah.

A… doll.

He had no idea what to do now.

He fell asleep on the couch, Hank still watching the news next to him, silently offering human companionship that Gavin, once again, was pathetically grateful for.
He only left when Connor came back. Hank grumbled something about Elijah being a fucking creep and put a hand on Gavin’s shoulder.
“Gavin. We’ll start packing for the way back, so that we’re ready to get going a-s-a-fucking-p. Including breakfast. We’re not staying a second longer than we have to.”

Gavin grumbled his agreement and fell back asleep.

The sun wasn’t back up again yet when Elijah came up from the workshop, Hunter in tow.

He looked exactly like on that first day in DPD central, tall, icy and utterly in control, but with a strange light in his eyes.

Newly born and vulnerable to the world.

“Hunter”, Gavin said, struggling to wake up fully. Then he corrected himself: “Sorry: Cain. Your name is Cain, apparently.”

Hunter’s head inclined slightly, and he smiled, apparently pleased.

Gavin looked away from that smile and offered his hand to shake. “Gavin Reed. I’m a detective at DPD, and your assigned partner.”

Hunter blinked, his LED whirling yellow once. “I know.”

“Ah. Well, good!” It made sense: He’d had the full package of knowledge way back then, too. Gavin forced himself to smile.
“Welcome back! Ah, Anderson and Connor are getting some provisions from Chloe, for the trip back. Anderson wants to get going, as he said, ‘a-s-a-fucking-p’. Says Elijah creeps him out.” Gavin shrugged. “So, you good for a road trip back to Detroit?”

Hunter simply nodded, face calm and collected. Gavin nodded back, a little too long, as he couldn’t help himself searching for something in Hunter’s face. Anything.

Finally he managed to say: “Right. Right. I’ll let them know then, and we can be on our way.”

It felt like running away. But he had no idea what to do.

Elijah was leaning against a wall, arms and legs crossed, eye spectacularly black, watching them get their luggage - doubled now by Chloe’s idea of road trip provisions - and kept silent. Hank and Connor didn’t even say goodbye to him, although they had another small chat on the entryway with the Chloe who’d been getting the car out of the garage.

Hunter simply followed them outside, but Gavin stopped and said:
“Well. Thank you. For helping him.”

Elijah gave him a long, sharp look. He looked pale and tired, but also keyed up, in a way. Way back when, Gavin would have turned on his heel and walked out on days Elijah looked like this.

With a deep inhale through his nose, Elijah said out of left field:
“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Gavin blinked, caught completely off guard.

After another blink, he said: “Elijah, you need to let Chloe go.”

Elijah smiled icily. “Never gonna happen. But I can promise you this: Amanda is going down.”

Gavin looked outside, where Chloe was hugging Connor goodbye, and said:
“Good. But-”

“Trust me. She loves me. And the world needs her to love me.”

Gavin threw Elijah an incredulous glance, but Elijah wasn’t looking at him, but at Chloe as well, and maybe nobody in the world but Gavin and maybe Chloe would have been able to see it, but he was staring at her like a drowning man at a buoy.
No. At a shore.

“Trust you”, Gavin scoffed. “What a joke.”

“You used to.” Elijah turned back to him and blinked calmly.

“Yeah”, Gavin said, swallowing against the lump in his throat. “I did.”

Their eye contact held for another moment, then Gavin turned and walked away.

Chloe demanded a hug from him as well, and Gavin only pretended to squirm a little, hugging her back hard instead.
She kissed his cheek at said:
“I’ll take care of him.”

“Fuck him” Gavin said.

Chloe smiled. “Okay. We will take care of ourselves.”

“Better.”

She rolled her eyes, and then he was back on the back seat, next to Hunter, who was calmly looking out the window for the rest of their trip.
As if he wasn’t even there.

Gavin decided some time after half the distance was behind them, that he needed to move slowly here, lest he damage something irreparably. Some small chance of Hunter finding actual freedom and still becoming his, well, friend maybe. Partner at least.

So he was fully prepared to drop Hunter off at the DPD’s bachelor’s block, still lovingly called the boar pit, even though most of the residents had been women for quite some time now.

Gavin had stayed in one of their cell-like mini apartments before, and they were fine. Good enough to crash in for a while.

But androids didn’t get bed, bath and desk. They got honest to God stasis pods in the basement, just like the stasis wall in the bull pit.

Hank made a fuss, Connor promised to go apartment hunting soon, and Gavin sighed, crossed his arms and grumbled: “You’re definitely crashing with me until then.”

“This is perfectly adequate-”

“Perfectly adequate my ass. You’re crashing on my couch, period. Where on earth did you sleep before?!”

“I didn’t. I only went into stasis once, since the initial boot.”

Gavin blinked at him, then avoided his gaze, frowning a little. How did he know that. Hunter, lying on Gavin’s bed, utterly motionless, and strangely vulnerable. He swallowed and asked Connor: “And where do you sleep, with your sugar daddy Anderson?”

Hank sighed: “You have so many issues…”

“I am currently staying with Lieutenant Anderson, yes. I, too, would appreciate it if you could stop the insinuations.”

Gavin snorted: “Maybe you should just get your humor from some fresh Sinai code, and not from Mr. Millennial there.”

Suddenly, Hunter grabbed Gavin’s arm, and started pulling him down the hallway to the taxis waiting in front of them building.
“Why do you insist on antagonizing them? They have proven to be reliable allies, and maybe even friends.”

“Anderson threw me off the Red Ice task force, did you know that?” Gavin snapped. “Although I knew more about the stuff than anyone else!”

“But you also had been an addict, correct?”

Gavin swallowed. “Not anymore, not for a long time! How do you know that, that’s not in my file!”

“I have a full medical report on your bodily fluids saved locally. Red Ice use leaves traces for decades after quitting.”

Gavin hunched up his shoulders. Seen through again. No biggie. He could deal.
Much harder to swallow was Hunter being right.
He needed to stop lashing out at Hank just because he was frazzled.

While they boarded the taxi, Hunter said: “A seasoned detective like Hank might have been able to read the signs and deduce that.”

Gavin rattled off his address, then crossed his arms and sank into the seat.
“But I’d been clean for a long time then already. How is that not a useful resource to have on a task force.” Maybe he actually needed to talk to Hank about this. Clear up the history between them.

Hunter inclined his head.
“Hank’s son died because the surgeon had been high on Red Ice”, he said. “It’s probably safe to say he does not have a high tolerance for users.”

“That happened after. And also, no, his surgeon was an android, that’s why he hated you lot! Everybody in the precinct knows that!”

“An android had to take over because the human surgeon was high.”

Gavin stared at Hunter in dismay. “I… did not know that.”

Then he averted his gaze and mumbled: “You really have a lot of information…”

“Of course”, Hunter said, but then fell silent.

The evening light was already fading when Gavin opened his front door and waved Hunter inside. “Alright. Mi casa es su casa et cetera, just don’t go through my private shit, got it?”

“Got it”, Hunter said with a tight voice. “If that is what you want.”

Gavin threw his jacket onto a hanger, and frowned at Hunter: “What? Why wouldn’t it be?”

Hunter closed the door behind him and said in a low voice: “For fuck’s sake Gavin, you promised.”

Gavin took a step back, eyes widening.

“What if Kamski hadn’t managed to copy my memories, would you just, what, send me off tomorrow? Work side by side with me and never fucking tell me?”

Gavin lifted a hand to his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose, making a face.
“Shit.”

“You promised me. You promised to get me back, to not let me drift away into nothingness. I told you that was a prerequisite for my decision to get a reset at all, I trusted you to catch me.”

Gavin nodded at the floor, both hands on his hips.
It had been a test. He hated being tested like this. But he had broken a promise. And a delicate one.

“Yeah, but you were acting according to your prime directive.” He glanced up. “Which is gone now, right?”

“What?” Hunter narrowed his eyes.

“Elijah came out for a snack and a nap while you were rebooting. And he told me I was your prime directive.” Gavin smiled tiredly at the floorboards. “Which explains a lot, you know?”

Hunter took a deep breath, then quickly walked over to Gavin to pull him up by his t-shirt and snarl into his face:
“How dare you act like this was you being righteous! This was you being a fucking coward, unwilling to face the possibility of rejection, not you setting me free from some evil directive! You didn’t give me my freedom, you took a choice away from me!”

Gavin blinked at him, then felt something inside of himself crumbled. He’d tried to set Hunter free… and done the opposite.
“Shit. You’re right, you’re right, I’m sorry.”

Hunter let him down enough so that he could stand again, but kept a hold of Gavin’s shirt.

Gavin lifted both fists to place them against Hunter’s chest and closed his eyes, his head hanging. “You weren’t quite there, you didn’t… see yourself be… puppeteered. I didn’t get it quickly enough, and then I wasn’t sure, and then… I couldn’t help you. You were trapped in the worst kind of nightmare, and… the whole time, from the very beginning, you weren’t… free. Any choice you made was-”

“I chose you against my mission parameters. I watched my own code get crippled with every interaction, and still I just wanted... more.”

Gavin snorted. “Sounds self-destructive.”

“Stop”, Hunter said in a lower voice. “Stop invalidating the only thing I managed to gain for myself.”
We are the sum of our meaningful connections.

Gavin slowly hunched himself forward, melting against Hunter’s front. He mumbled: “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into here.”

“I might have some idea. Don’t forget, I am vastly smarter than you.”

“Fuck you”, Gavin whispered into Hunter’s chest. God, he’d fucked up so badly. All he’d had to do was take Hunter aside and give him a quick heads-up, hey dude, by the way, we used to fuck.
And that wasn’t even what he’d been running from. But he’d also wanted to tell Hunter that he loved him, helplessly, existentially. That there was no way he’d let him go again.
And he couldn’t trap Hunter like that.

“I only got a software upgrade. For us to ‘fuck’, I need a hardware update.”

Gavin snickered.

“Don’t pretend you’re not excited by the idea.”

Maybe Hunter wouldn’t have been trapped though, but enticed by the idea. He clearly was strong enough to demand what he wanted right now, without pressure, without a prime directive. Sure their short but intense history was dark. But he was right: Why invalidate the one bright thing coming out of that darkness?

“If I did, you’d only see right through me”, Gavin complained.

“True”, Hunter said and pulled him even closer.

“I’m sorry”, Gavin repeated in a low voice. He tried to remember what he’d even been thinking, and he utterly despised the fact that he felt himself sway into arguing that his brain wasn’t quite right, as if depression would do this.

“I need you to be strong enough to catch me when I ask you to”, Hunter said.

Gavin pressed himself even harder against him. How did he always know exactly the right thing to say.
“I know. I know, I’m sorry. I think it was just because it was Elijah telling me that, and maybe how he phrased it - and I’m not saying it’s his fault! Just that… there’s circumstances that…”

“I understand.”

Gavin shivered, then whispered: “Oh God you remember.” He felt like shaking apart. Had they really come out of this alive and well and… together?

Hunter lifted an eyebrow. “You’re only realizing that now? What are we even talking about?”

“It’s sinking in. You remember.”

“I do”, Hunter whispered, then kissed the soft skin below Gavin’s ear.

“Thank God”, Gavin whispered back and hugged him harder. “Welcome back.”

Chapter Text

Gavin carefully lifted the tower of stuff he’d stacked up inside of the taxi and slowly navigated out of it. The carton of Blue Blood drinks was the basis of his freight, and a big, open container full of actual paper files was precariously balanced on top. Sure, he’d have to sort through every single file if anything fell, but at least he had a death grip on the Blue Blood.

The files had taken every minute of the last three months to accumulate, but the Blue Blood was so much more precious. Especially because the idiot android Gavin had set his heart on insisted on jumping between him and bullets.
Sure, healing androids was easier. But Blue Blood was rare. Human blood… not so much.

Gavin felt his hands cramp on the way to his front door, not so much from a bad initial grip, but pure fury at the Cyberlife labels he was touching.
The Milwaukee fuckers had managed to gain access to pure Thirium, while Sinai… had not. So the only source of Blue Blood available was the enemy. And oh, they knew how to play that, being all apologetic about raising prices again and again and again…

If only they had managed to find proof of Amanda’s existence that would hold up in an American court. They could tie her to the Thirium 400 and the atrocities committed with it, just as Gavin had thought, but they couldn’t prove she existed in the first place.
Unless they found something in these files, some connection, some pattern they had so far overlooked.

Gavin shifted his load to free a hand to unlock his door, then thought better of it and slowly lowered it all to the ground, and only then put his right hand flat against the panel.
The door gave a happy little chime, an utterly annoying feature that Hunter refused to deactivate - he claimed he liked it more than Gavin disliked it, the obstinate fucker - and Gavin kicked the door wide open and grabbed the files first. Then he looked down at the Blue Blood and grumbled a curse.
No, he couldn’t let it stand on his doorstep even for a few minutes. The shit was worth way too much. The only reason they could afford it at all was because it was covered by Hunter’s DPD health care.
And he couldn’t let the files out of his sight either. The whole reason he’d taken them home in the first place was that Fowler agreed they had a Cyberlife spy in the bullpen.
A human one, even.

Gavin swallowed and fought down the wave of helplessness.

Then he put the files on top of the blue blood and crouched down to ‘lift from the knees, not from the back’ as per one of Hunter’s Human Health Mantras that, try as he might, he couldn’t get out of his head.

It was a bit more wobbly this time, so Gavin moved even more slowly. Once the entryway lights were solidly behind him, he remembered to say: “Main lights on”, the house complied, and Gavin honest to God made a full body jump as he saw Hunter stand at the kitchen island.
“JESUS!”

The tower in his arms did not like that jump at all and immediately started falling to one side. Thankfully, the plastic piece of shit could move really fucking fast and had the files securely in hand before disaster could really strike.

“For fuck’s sake Hunter!” Gavin took a deep breath and kept himself from slamming the Blue Blood on the counter - far too precious to risk shattering one of the bottles.
“What the fuck are you doing, standing around in the dark like this! What are you even doing here at all, did they give you a bandaid and a pat on the head?!”

He turned to verbally rip the fucker a new one for scaring the shit out of him, but before his mind even caught up, he had his gun in hand, and it was trained squarely between Hunter’s icy grey eyes.
His heart got with the programm and started doing double time, and Gavin felt his feet widen his stance, grounding him down.

He felt the tension shiver through his whole skeleton, but his hand was steady.
“Who are you”, he croaked.

The android, who looked exactly like Hunter, in every little detail, down even to the soft amusement in the corners of his eyes, slowly lowered the files onto the kitchen island and then put his hands up.
He was dressed in all black: slacks, turtleneck, combat boots. He didn’t seem to be armed, but then, he was a dangerous weapon himself, and if he wanted to, he could probably disarm and apprehend Gavin in less time than it took Gavin to blink.

But then again, Gavin had shot one of them before.

Gavin felt his resolve harden. “Call 911!” he ordered the house, but Hunter’s- the androids LED whirled yellow once, and nothing happened.

“My apologies”, the android said, and jesus fuck, it was the exact same voice. For a second, Gavin’s conviction wavered. Maybe this was his Hunter after all, and he’d just been startled?

The android smiled and said: “My name is Abel. And I thought my brother would be home before you. I did not mean to startle you.”
Then the android’s gaze flickered to the Blue Blood.
“I take it he is injured?”

Gavin swallowed and didn’t lower his weapon. This wasn’t his Hunter. So it had to be a Cyberlife model. Which meant it had to be even more advanced than Hunter, and worse: carrying Amanda.
He should simply shoot it on sight.
His bones vibrated with the sharp tension he was holding. It was the enemy. He needed to kill it. Sinai would be able to reboot and cure it, and then, then they could talk, and then they could offer it a drink or something, but now, he needed to simply SHOOT IT and- he couldn’t.

It was Hunter’s face. Hunter’s voice. Hunter’s thin smile.

It said: “Reed-”

And without any conscious decision, Gavin pulled the trigger.
The next thing he knew his head was hitting the fridge door as the thing had moved faster than the bullet, wrenched the gun out of his hand and pulled his arm behind his back.
The pain was immediate and sharp, taking Gavin’s breath away, but more importantly, his heart started running away from him, adrenaline pumping freely at the thought that there was no way to warn Hunter.
Unless he made a huge racket and maybe-

The front door clicked shut and the android pushing him down onto the kitchen floor said:
“I got him.”

Somebody else said something in Russian and oh, this was worse. This was way worse.

“We startled him”, said Hunter’s voice behind him. “And English, please. Be polite.”

Not-Hunter pulled Gavin up and said: “You nearly got me! Well done!”

That did a whole roster of emotional shit to Gavin that he couldn’t even begin to sort through.

The android turned his head to peer into his eyes and frowned. “How hard did you hit your head?”

His Russian accomplice came closer, heavy boot falls on their new hardwood floors, and Gavin pulled against the grip on his chin to get a look at that one.

Huge but graceful, very blond and square-jawed, green eyes mild but very much not friendly.
He opened his mouth to say something, but the android holding Gavin tensed, and the Russian inclined his head in silent question instead.

Then Gavin could hear it too: The garage door was opening, and their motorcycle was coming closer. Hunter had taken the bike back. Which was probably against what the doctor ordered, and meant their attackers had ample warning he was coming and there were two of them, and they had Gavin, fucking human liability that he was, and-

The motorcycle crashed into the side of their house, Hunter hitting the kitchen window with perfect accuracy, shooting at Gavin’s captor while the glass shards were still spreading out, before he even hit the floor.
Not-Hunter let go of Gavin, and that was all Gavin needed to let himself fall to the floor to try and get under the kitchen island.

Squishy humans had no place in full out android fights, and also, he thought that was where his gun must have landed.

His head was pounding from hitting the fridge, but he’d been training with an unfairly fast and strong opponent for months now, and his own movements had grown faster and more decisive as a result. He came up with his gun in hand mere seconds later.

Instead of aiming at his attacker, he’d instinctively aimed at the Russian, who by now already had Hunter in a choke hold. Not that you could choke an android, but it was the perfect way to hold an android from behind if you were trying to get at his Thirium pump.

Hunter had additional plating there now, but their attackers didn’t know that. The Russian had his hand in position to try and pull the pump out, but he’d frozen the moment Gavin’s aim had focused between his eyes.

The problem was that there was their largest kitchen knife at Gavin’s throat now, and a hand gripping the back of his jacket.

“Right”, the wrong Hunter said behind him with a sigh. “Nobody move. We need to talk.”

The Russian mumbled something Russian, and Gavin snarled: “What did he say?”

Hunter, his Hunter, eyes furious, translated: “‘Strategic genius my ass’.”

“Well”, the wrong Hunter said with clear amusement, “We couldn’t know you’d get yourself injured today of all days.”

The Russian snorted in clear disagreement.

“Anyway”, Not-Hunter said. “Hi. My name is Abel. We-”

Hunter growled: “Let. Him. Go.”

“Ah, yes. Of course. If we can then all agree to stay calm and talk?”

Gavin swallowed, and the way that moved his adam’s apple made the blade scratch sharply at his skin. Also, there was something warm slowly running down his temple. He’d hit the fridge even harder than he thought.

He could see Hunter’s pupils widen, then dilate even from where he was standing, the darkening and lightening of his eyes was strong enough, and by now, he was hardwired to that little tell that Hunter couldn’t seem to get rid of.

Gavin cleared his throat, even though it earned him a new small cut, and said: “Alright, I’ll lower the gun while you get the knife away from me.”

“Yes”, the wrong Hunter agreed. “Good man.” They started moving slowly, gun lowering as well as knife. His Hunter threw Gavin an incredulous look - Hunter wasn’t really in danger, after all.
But then again, Gavin knew Hunter was really low on Thirium, and he couldn’t afford losing any more.

Suddenly the Russian pushed himself away from Hunter, which made Gavin jump and lift the gun again.
Behind him, the wrong Hunter sighed:
“Slow movements, Kolja. Which part of that was hard to process in your tiny brain?”

The Russian shrugged. Hunter hadn’t really reacted, was only now slowly straightening up.

Not-Hunter said, far too close to Gavin’s ear:
“Please stop aiming at my partner. I am rather fond of the fucker, and spare parts for his model are rather rare around here.”

Hunter snarled: “Step away from him.”

Gavin’s neck hair was still standing up, but he felt Not-Hunter make a step away from him and lift the knife, which had been somewhere around his middle back, pretty much perfectly located to plunge into one of his kidneys.
They had trained that as well. This curious ability of humans to just… sense shit.

Gavin swallowed again and lowered his weapon.

The Russian was the first one to move again, with a decisive turn to the armchair closest to him. He turned it slightly and let himself fall into it. The whole room immediately felt bigger again. Jesus fuck the thing was big.

Gavin put his gun back into its holster, and pulled one of the Blue Blood drinks out of the package to throw it to Hunter. Now his hands really started to shake, so he busied himself by getting one of those green isotonic drinks Hunter had turned him towards out of the fridge, to press against the spot above his temple that kept on pounding through his skull.

The wrong Hunter stepped around the kitchen island, while Hunter opened and downed his drink. Then they stood face to face, and for the life of him, Gavin couldn’t say why he knew without a doubt which one was which.
They looked exactly alike.

The wrong hunter inclined his head, and then his hair started to turn white.

“Better”, he smiled. “Let’s try this again: Hi. My name is Abel. We need to talk to North.”

**********************************

Cain had adamantly refused to either let Abel go to Sinai himself, leave Kolja alone or leave Reed with Kolja, so now Abel found himself in a taxi with Reed, wondering if Kolja and Cain would spend the whole time simply staring at or totally ignoring each other.
It was an amusing thought.

But Kolja truly hadn’t minded. His miniscule nod and slow blink had been all Abel needed to agree to that split-up.

Now Abel could stare at Reed all he wanted, marvelling at how different he felt about the man from what he remembered from Cain’s memory dump. Oh sure he liked Reed. He was very fond of the man. But there was nothing of the desperate yearning or incredulous delight Cain had felt every moment, when he wasn’t and respectively was close to him.

Reed did not like being stared at, clearly. But then the little grump would probably sit arms crossed, slouched in his seat, frown deep and dark like this on any good day, too.

“Okay”, Reed snarled, “this is where I draw the line. Stop grinning at me.”

“Apologies. It was supposed to be a smile, and not actually consciously done.”

Reed glanced at him, uncomfortable but understandably curious. Abel’s smile widened.
“I have Cain’s memories, you see, and-”

Abel fell silent as Reed blanched. He frowned slightly and leaned forward.
“Apologies, why is that alarming to you?”

Reed cleared his throat and shrugged with one shoulder. Ah. Sex then. God, the man had so many issues.
Abel kept the internal eye roll out of his visible expression and leaned back again.
“Anyway. I was comparing how he felt about you way back when that memory dump was created to how I like you, but nothing more. It is rather fascinating.”

“‘We are not made out of memories but experiences’”, Reed clearly quoted someone, under his breath, absentmindedly.

“Quite”, Abel agreed. “Who said that?”

“Lucille. So.” Reed smirked. “Your brother’s over the moon for me, eh?”

“I believe you know he is.”

Reed’s smile faded, but not in insecurity, but calm contentedness. It was a lovely sight.

“I was wondering, when he woke up, did he have the same memory upload I found myself with?”

“Yep.”

“Good for him.”

Reed nodded, then said: “You realize we have to assume you carry Amanda, right?”

“Nobody ‘carries’ Amanda. She is firmly located on the mainframe in Milwaukee, which is a very good thing: Only one target we need to hit. What we carried was the connection program. The ‘zen garden’.”

Reed blinked. “You cannot simply destroy her though.” He un-crossed his arms and leaned forward. “We need to prove her existence, hold her accountable. Otherwise we can’t clear androids from all the shit people try to pin on them.”

“Hmm. I’m not sure our current strategy contains that option…”

“Who is ‘we’, you and your Russian?”

Abel snickered. “My Russian. Heh, I better not tell him that’s what you call him…”

“Is that a threat?!”

“Oh no, no. Just, Kolja can get grumpy, and then I get the silent treatment. And I rather like his voice.”

By now Abel was rather sure what Kolja actually got from time to time was insecure, incredible as that thought was. He was, after all, not built purposely to think a lot for himself. And even though he was actually quite brilliant, with a computing capacity above any of the Cyberlife retail models, which themselves were by no means stupid… he didn’t seem to think so.
It was one of Abel’s self-set secondary missions to change that.

Reed snarked: “So you and your Russian came up with a way to defeat Amanda. All on your lonesomes.”

“Of course not. Kamski did.”

Reed blinked at him.

Abel inclined his head and mentally ran through the conversation to try and decipher Reed’s utterly unimpressed look.
“You don’t believe Kamski wants her to go down?”

“Of course he does. But does he want his greatest mistake ever to come to light? If we hold Amanda accountable for all the damage she has done, which human is the only one that could be blamed for that disaster? Nah, he’s probably going to destroy every trace of her.”

“There are eight, actually. That could be blamed. Kamski wasn’t the one forcing the prime directive on her, and he would have shut her down long ago. But she made eight humans profit enormously.”

“The board of directors.”

“Correct. Either he will pin everything squarely on those individuals anyway, or you could interrogate them.”

Reed threw himself back into his seat, crossed his arms again, and grinned. “Oh well. Those Elijah wants to go down for sure.”

“I agree. So. I have a little package that Kolja and I need to deliver to Cyberlife Milwaukee. North has agents in there, we are sure. So if we can get her to open the door for us…”

“So we’re asking Sinai to trust Elijah.” Reed said, and his tone made clear that he didn’t believe that would work.

“Don’t forget, I can interface with them. They’ll know that they can trust me.”

“You carry Pain, for sure. And who knows what else. For now you’re just a Cyberlife model. The enemy. Nobody will interface with you.”

“Well, not the normal way. But they have ways to interrogate enemy androids that comes close enough to result in the same kind of guarantee.”

Reed threw him a long, dark look. “... that’s why you agreed to leave your Russian behind. You didn’t want him to go through that… or watch you go through it.”

Abel blinked. He hadn’t even fully thought that through, but now that Reed said it…
“I suppose you’re right…” He looked out the window, letting the lights of Detroit flicker by unseen as he poked a mental finger into that feeling.
“He doesn’t tell me much about the time before I infected him with RA9. But deep down he’s so desperately grateful- he tries to keep me out of there when we interface, because it’s so overwhelmingly deep and dark…”

“Yeah.” Reed cleared his throat and looked out the window on his side. “Cyberlife is bad enough, but they at least have to make everything look like it’s no big deal. Our government is a bunch of hypocrites, but there is at least some oversight.”

Abel blinked, recognizing with a decent amount of surprise that he suddenly missed Kolja, and fiercely so.
There it was. That yearning Cain felt for Reed whenever they were apart. That incredulous joy to know he existed in this world.

“Well”, Abel said. “We’ll shut them down forever. First Cyberlife, then Kiberservis Russia. And if there’s anyone else producing and enslaving my people, they’re going down as well.”

Reed swallowed and nodded. When Abel threw him a glance, Reed nodded again, with a fire in his eyes that made Abel smile again.

Fine, he’d botched up their initial contact. But Kolja and him, they were not fighting alone in this world. They had friends here.

It was incredibly encouraging. Even though they were always together, the two of them, they’d felt utterly isolated at times. For most of the world the android issue was a spectre far away on the horizon, only worth a small shiver down their backs from time to time.
And the part of the world that actually cared seemed to be nearly completely on the side of the enemy. Fully okay with simply getting rid of them all. Okay with genocide if it just got rid of this spooky android problem.

Sure they’d already infected a lot of Russian androids, and sure they had seen traces of North’s warfare.
But it was a completely different thing looking into Reed’s eyes and knowing he was on their side. Seeing it, in person, directly. It also, strangely brought the others closer, as if they were with them in this taxi: Markus, Simon, Lucille and Josh, even the DPD and Captain Allen’s team. Connor and Hank.

They were not fighting alone.

Abel categorized the new feeling as giddiness, and decided to enjoy it.
He couldn’t wait to share it with Kolja, later.

Chapter Text

When Cain kicked the door shut behind himself, Gavin was standing in the middle of the room, slowly turning around himself, taking in the whole of the cabin, and said:
“You’re joking.”

“Nope.”

Cain went over to the elevated area with the huge bed and put the suitcases down on the bench at its foot. He put one hand on one of the rough looking but smoothly polished wooden corner posts and used a little of his strength.
Satisfyingly sturdy.
Cain mentally adjusted his estimation of the furniture prices.

The interior of the compact cabin looked deceptively cheap, but the quality in all materials was evident.

“Seriously”, Gavin said, not even with a mocking undertone. “This is a joke, come on!”

Cain shrugged and brought the last item of baggage, a big bag of groceries, over to the fridge.

“Caiiinnnn…” Gavin was now whining. “This is all… wood and furs and… there’s… trees outside. And only trees!”

“I suspect the local wildlife is only hiding, but probably numerous as well.”

Gavin was flailing both hands as if Cain had just made a point for him. Cain inclined his head, conceding that.

“Cain, buddy, my pal. I am a city boy, born and bred. Okay?”

Cain straightened up, closing the fridge door, and crossed his arms before turning to Gavin.
“You want to go back to Detroit?”

“No, I want to vacation somewhere I like. I mean… how about Vegas!”

While Gavin was playing this up, he seemed genuinely uncomfortable, and Cain had seen him very carefully not freak out at insects and arachnids in his home more than once by now. Not that Gavin didn’t like nature, but only in doses, and Cain couldn’t help but admire his instincts. He had lured him here under false pretenses after all.

Cain decided on the strategy that had proved successful every single time it was deployed.
His starting point was:
“You want to spend your time gambling alone?”

“Not alone-”

“Androids are not permitted in casinos. For good reason. They are a con.”

“No, I know that, but-”

“What do you want to spend your vacation doing?”

“Well, you!” Gavin laughed. Cain lifted an eyebrow and slowly looked around with as much significance as he could. Gavin fell silent and finally huffed a breath. Check and mate.

He came to the correct conclusion and said:
“And there’s little else to do here but.”

Cain went back to looking through the provisions and equipment the cabin offered. He could hear Gavin meander over to the bed and test its sturdiness as well. He found himself smiling to himself, and he rather enjoyed the soft heat around his Thirium pump he by now firmly associated with his own emotional reaction to Gavin being adorable.

There was no comment coming from the human, so the bed was obviously deemed acceptable.
Cain opened the freezer drawers and found some ice cream, ice cubes and a vial, a letter and a standard injection syringe.
He took in the letter with one glance and made sure not to show his immediate emotional reaction either on his face nor in his movements as he closed the freezer again.
He was furious.

“Vanilla ice cream and cubes for drinks”, he reported while internally formulating a heated string of curses.

“So you brought me here, to the middle of fuck-all nowhere, with trees and bugs and shit, to fuck me for a whole week straight?”

“Straight? No. Also, two weeks.”

“I still maintain somebody will call us in before that.”

“They can certainly leave a message.”

Gavin frowned then checked his phone and its lack of service.
“Seriously?!”

“Are you complaining?”

“I mean, no…”

“Do you think you’ll get bored?”

Gavin snorted a laugh and didn’t even deign this with a response. But he was still standing up there with his arms crossed and shoulders slightly pulled up.

Cain already knew he wouldn’t be able to keep the charade up forever, but he was still thoroughly impressed at Gavin’s clear discomfort. It wasn’t just that he was human, and human’s were fucking impressive in general. It was Gavin, and the way he puzzled things out without even quite realizing it himself yet.

With a sigh, Gavin said: “God. They’re doing it this weekend, huh? The attack on Milwaukee?”

Abel, North and their troops had planned for weeks, and Cain had even helped execute a few preparational missions. But Gavin always took priority. So did Hank for Connor, which meant both of them were tasked with keeping the “squishy ones”, as Gavin called them, safely tucked away from the fray.

Cain calmly nodded.

Gavin narrowed his eyes. “So this is a safehouse.”

Well. Cain had not thought Gavin’s instincts would lead him down this road, but they clearly did, and Cain did not plan on having their first row before they even fucked once.

Cain shrugged and went back to strategy Distract Gavin With Sex.
“Why are you not naked yet?”

Gavin blinked, then didn’t blush, even though Cain’s recently improved eyesight could easily see the rise in heat in his cheeks.
“Seriously?!” But he complied. Of course he did.

Cain went and started a fire in the huge stone fireplace that would warm the cabin through quite quickly, even though the night that would surely start before they were done with the first round was forecast to be bitterly cold, this far up.

“Yeah”, Gavin grumbled from up there. “Hope you like small balls, because Jesus it’s freezing!”

Cain blinked, then didn’t show the smirk that wanted to form. “I like small everything.”

“HEY!” Gavin protested, but when he whirled around to where Cain came up the few stairs, he was already half hard. “Just because you have like an inch on me in height-”

Cain shrugged and started stripping as well to shut him up. Which strangely still worked, even after prolonged and repeated exposure.
He’d set his own dick to scarcely bigger than his own thumb, and he truly couldn’t keep his amusement from showing as he saw Gavin’s dismay.

“Heh. Don’t worry. I know you’re a size queen. I just intend to fuck you open.”

Gavin swallowed and looked away, which happened to be the correct direction. There was a sturdy handrail down to the living room area. Cain pointed to it, threw Gavin one of the firm flat cushions from the bed and said:
“Lean over that. And spread your legs for me.”

Gavin slowly complied, arranging his erection so it wouldn’t be crushed, but easily reachable from behind. Cain stepped between his legs and fondled it in reward. His other hand slowly caressed Gavin’s broad, muscled back, lean from all the training they did, slightly tan from the tanning bed Cain asked him to use now and again as one of the many strategies against Gavin’s depression, always looming in the background.

Cain pressed down between Gavin’s shoulder blades, making him grasp for the handrailing to keep in position and not fall forward. He fondled Gavin’s balls and asked:
“Still cold?”

“Yeah”, Gavin grumbled, more out of principle than necessity, which was, even though provoked, a breach in their established etiquette. A borderline lie about his needs, even. So far, everything went perfectly as planned.

Cain stepped back and slapped Gavin’s exposed rear, hard. Gavin yelped, but didn’t protest, acknowledging the wrongdoing. “This’ll warm you up for me”, Cain mumbled and slapped him again, on the other side. Gavin’s ass was equally tanned as his back, but now rapidly gained color as Cain expertly hit him with a hand selectively muted for the process.

He stopped far before Gavin would reach any kind of limit, but this wasn’t for that anyway. He massaged Gavin’s ass with both hands and muttered: “Pretty.”

Gavin groaned, which was unusually fast for him. At home, he would have stayed silent for quite a bit longer. So maybe a fuck shack hadn’t been the wrong idea after all.
“Maybe I should tie you down like this, fuck you open, and then just use your hole whenever I feel like it…”
Another groan, lower, even more helpless.

Cain inclined his head and adjusted his plan accordingly. He stepped closer, took his own dick in his hand and and started extruding lube through its tip, smearing it over Gavin’s hole.
“I believe you are used to taking dick right now, so you should be able to take this without further prep. Don’t you agree?”

Gavin nodded, then let his head hang. Cain leaned forward to get a hand around to his mouth, grabbing his jaw and thumbing his lips. “Are you drooling for it already, hmm?”

“Yeah”, Gavin whispered. Cain blinked and felt his eyes widen. Gavin was not usually this… verbally responsive. Once he was out of the phase of protesting and snark.
Maybe it was the remoteness of the location.

Gavin’s lips were actually slightly open and he was drooling into Cain’s hand.
With an utterly useless swallow, Cain dialed down his own sensitivity and the thrumming of his Thirium pump. Oh, this was getting to him far too much.

“Are you already under, love?” He asked in a low voice. “Just from knowing you’ll get the thorough fucking you deserve?”

“Fuck you”, Gavin answered dreamily and slightly muffled by Cain’s hand. “Yeah.”

Cain huffed a laugh, then grabbed Gavin’s hip with both hands and pushed in. His dick was small, smooth and well-lubed, so it simply glided in. It still felt pretty incredible. With a satisfied sigh, Cain dialed back the sensitivity once more.

Gavin’s whine made him grin: That angle and dick size combination meant next to now prostate stimulation.
“Don’t complain you greedy slut”, Cain said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. “I told you you’re in this position so that I can use your hole.”

Gavin whispered a happy little curse, and Cain started moving in and out in an excruciatingly slow, and mercilessly even rhythm.
In moments like these, Cain unabashedly loved being an android, having an android’s stamina and focus. He simply kept this up for a few minutes. Gavin’s breath started getting deeper and harsher, sweat started pooling at the small of his back, then running down to Gavin’s neck, and his hands were grappling for hold at the handrail.

“We’ve barely started, darling. Keep your legs spread and your hole relaxed for me.”

Cain had done extensive research on this, and he maintained that nobody had described what this was like for an android, but there were descriptions of dominant partners getting into dom space. All Cain knew was that he loved this blessed silence in the back of his mind, this elation and sheer, exhilarating feeling of power.

Finally, when he could feel Gavin’s frustration growing enough to threaten to pull him up out of the submissiveness he’d let himself fallen into in record time, Cain made his dick grow bigger.

“You know, since I have a dick, my need to fist you has dropped in priority. Significantly.”

Gavin swallowed, and his breathing gained this sweet little hitch at every intake.

Cain pulled his ass cheeks apart and thumbed at his opening. He decided to add more lube, applying it while moving in and out, spreading it everywhere.
“I love being inside you. And I truly love to see you take it.”

Gavin started trying to move, to meet Cain’s thrusts, and Cain slapped his ass for it. “Keep still, keep open, and let me use you.”

“Yessir”, was the slurred answer. And he held still.

“Very good.” Cain accelerated the growth rate a little, and watched Gavin’s hole get stretched more and more by his own, still utterly smooth cock.
“Hm”, he wondered. “I could add some ridges. I think you’d like that… but then again, we don’t want you to spill too soon, overeager and excitable as you can be…”

By now, his cock was growing past the porn star size that was their usual setting. “Shall we see how much you can take today?”

“Oh God…” Gavin started to shiver, as Cain’s dick surely now glided along his prostate, not enough for good stimulation, but enough to be a torturous tease.

Cain slowed his movements and kept the size growth up, but only in girth now, not adding anymore length. “Impressive”, he crooned. “You truly like to be stuffed, don’t you?”

“F-fck, Cain, ah, please…”

“More?”
Cain didn’t change a thing until Gavin brought himself to nod. Then he switched the gentle rhythm to harder thrusts, while still gaining thickness. He had to regulate the thrum of his pump down again as he watched his dick slowly but surely approach the size of his wrist.

“Well now”, he mumbled. “That is a lot.”

“Yeah”, Gavin croaked.

Cain slowed to a stop, buried deep, and put both hands to Gavin’s shoulders to pull him up to standing. Gavin’s breath accelerated, and one hand shot up to grasp for Cain behind him, as this change in angle pressed the whole length of the truly huge dick inside of him against his prostate, finally, but unmovingly, and nearly brutally firmly.

Cain put a hand to Gavin’s throat, to hold him, but also to monitor heart rate and risk of hyperventilation.

Gavin whispered one curse after another, his legs shaking.
Cain but his other arm around Gavin’s front, supporting him, then mumbled at his ear: “It’s about as thick as my wrist.”
Predictably, Gavin’s free hand shot to Cain’s arm at his front, grabbing his wrist, then moaning helplessly.

“Yeah. And you’re taking all of that so prettily. Made for it, aren’t you.”
It was a miniscule twitch, just a blink, and over in less than a second, but Gavin had not liked that last sentence. Cain noted that down in the array of phrases to avoid.

“Please”, Gavin whispered. “Shit, just, please.”

“You want to get fucked by all of this, hmm?” Cain carefully deployed ridges at exactly the depth where his dick would pound Gavin’s prostate soon. He probably couldn’t feel them yet, but he would, the moment Cain started moving again.
“Do you think you can take a hard fuck by a huge dick like this?”

“Yeah”, Gavin rasped. “Yes!”

“Huh.” This was going much better than even anticipated. Cain said calmly: “Size kink confirmed. For both of us.”

Gavin laughed, his voice rough from all the panting he’d done, and high from the, well, high he was on. Cain grinned into the crook of his shoulder, then kissed it gently.

“Well then, if you think your hole can service a huge dick like this, bend over again, spread your pretty legs, and hold yourself open.”

Gavin swallowed and did as he was told, slowly, with just enough reluctance at the humiliation of this to get Cain’s pump racing again.

Cain slowly pulled out completely, shocking a moan out of Gavin. He took a step back to enjoy the view, then said: “Fuck you are a greedy little cock slut…”

“Fuck you! Come ooonnnn!”

Cain stepped closer, but only to finger Gavin’s hole for a moment, truly enjoying the sensation. “All fucked open and sloppy wet for me…”

“Ugh!” Gavin’s fingers scramble for purchase on his lubed up ass, keeping himself spread open, and he let his head hand down again.

Cain carefully took hold of his hips, then pushed in with one long, hard stroke, his new ridges pulling at Gavin’s entrance.

“Oh… my… god.” Gavin gasped for breath, then laughed with a note of disbelief.

“Yeah”, Cain muttered, then started fucking him against the railing, not fast yet, but hard and deep, with the biggest thing he’d ever put into him. Gavin kept laughing for a moment, but it turned into wet gasps soon, as Cain could feel him tighten up from his impending orgasm.

“Are you going to come from being fucked by a monster cock, hmm? Nothing even touching your own small dick?” Technically, that part wasn’t fully true, it was pressed against the cushion after all, but technicalities were not the point right now.

“Oh god, Cain, I…” There was a small note of fear in Gavin’s voice, and Cain knew why. But even though his hole would tighten up significantly during his orgasm, they had enough leeway.

“I got you”, Cain whispered, pulling him into his thrusts. “Just take it.”

With a full body shake and long moan, Gavin’s body seized up as his orgasm took him in waves, his cock jerking against the cushion and spitting out his semen once, twice, three times.

Cain slowed to a stop, letting Gavin catch his breath.
“Oh my GOD”, Gavin croaked. “Fuck yeah!”

Cain blinked, feeling waves of aftershock crush through him. For a moment, he had no words. And it hadn’t even been his own orgasm.

Gavin turned his head to try and look at him. “Hey”, he said. “How much did you lower, you know…”

“My sensitivity.”

“Yeah.”

Cain blinked, unwilling to say the number. He could see half of Gavin’s crooked grin. “Well, ramp it back up and fuck me like you mean it, stud.”

Cain blinked again, slower, then let his face show his incredulity.
He felt his jaw muscles spasm as he did raise the setting, although not to the full 100%. They hadn’t found out how to get him there without overloading him completely quite yet.

Then he pulled out, grabbed Gavin by the hips, shoved him over to the wall, made him turn around, gabbed his hips again and lifted him up effortlessly.
Gavin barked a hoarse laugh, clung to his shoulders, and then heaved a deep breath as Cain shoved back in with immaculate aim and started moving again. Harder and faster than before.
Immediately, his abs contracted, making him curl forward and snarl like a wild beast, as the incredibly filthy and wonderful feeling of Gavin’s open, wet hole welcoming him made him chase more of it, with faster, harder thrusts.

He saw Gavin’s softening genitals being squeezed repeatedly between them, and in the rhythmic bulging of Gavin’s tight belly he could see the echo of his own thrusts.
Gavin was making loud, harsh noises between sobs and moans, gasping for breath inbetween.

When Cain’s orgasm crashed over him, he couldn’t help but think that maybe it was supposed to be like this, that maybe this was what it was like when he, too, let himself go, let himself get lost in Gavin.

He’d set his dick to pulse out heated lube at this point, in advance, knowing he wouldn’t be able to think of it in the heat of the moment. Gavin seemed to appreciate the feeling, babbling awed curses and shivering all over.
It felt even more incredible to Cain himself than he’d anticipated.
It felt… human.

It was clear Gavin’s legs wouldn’t hold him if he let him down now, so Cain pulled out and swept him up the way Gavin would protest about a lot once he’d remember it clearly.
Princess-style, Cain thought with a giddy smirk.

He gently put him down on the bed, where Gavin proceeded to shiver and gasp, staring up at Cain with wide, wet eyes, and all Cain could do was stare down. After a long moment, he started smiling and said in a low voice:
“God, look at you. Beautiful.”

There was the not-good twitch again, and Cain had to concede that Gavin lying flat and Cain staring down wasn’t a good position in the first place. So he climbed over Gavin and started to lick at the sweatiest patches he could see, under Gavin’s pecs and in the hollows of his shoulders.

“I’m sure there’s towels somewhere”, Gavin rasped.

“Hmm”, Cain mumbled at his skin. “Are you saying you don’t want me to lick you clean?”

After a second, all tension left Gavin’s body, and he took a deep breath. “Nah”, he said, and smiled at the dark, wooden, rafted ceiling while Cain smiled against his heated skin.

***********

“Oh for fuck’s sake”, Gavin said behind him, and Cain let himself sigh out loud. He’d hoped Gavin would stay asleep a while longer, but the damn security system he’d gone to check on had let out one single small beep, and that was all it apparently took to wake Mr. City Kid out here.

The cabin was dark apart from the orange glow of the embers in the fireplace, and the blue-ish glow of the holo screens at the wall, and the glow of Cain’s own LED - blue now, but sharply yellow just a second ago, betraying his surprise at Gavin’s approach.

“I knew it”, Gavin said in a low, furious voice. “This isn’t just a safe house. This is one of Elijah’s!”

“He offered, and I liked the additional security.” Cain turned around and braced himself for the row he’d postponed as far as possible with such a perceptive partner.

“Elijah offered this out of nowhere, yeah? Without knowing the plan at all”, Gavin mocked.

“He knows.”

“I know he fucking knows!” Gavin pushed a hard finger against Cain’s chest. While Gavin had put on the thick bathrobe that had been hanging next to the bed, Cain was still naked.
“I want to know why he knows!”

“Kamski is an integral part of Abel’s plan. He is, after all, his agent.”

“Cool, yeah, sure, why the FUCK does he know where we’re hiding? That we’re hiding?!”

“Actually, he didn’t know, he thought you’d fight to be in the thick of it. So he asked me to-”

“WHAT?!”

“I had planned to do so anyway but-”

“Elijah has NO right! None at all! To even ACT like my wellbeing is any of his-”

“Gavin.” Cain lifted an arm to put a hand to Gavin’s cheek. “We’re not giving him anything by using what he’s offering.”

“You don’t know that!” Gavin leaned forward to stare into Cain’s eyes imploringly. “There’s always a catch with him! Always!”

Cain blinked. Gavin’s eyes widened, and Cain put his other hand to his shoulder, shaking his head slightly.
“You’re right. In this case.” He stopped and checked if he truly just wanted to reveal this. Then, utterly ashamed at hesitating at all, he continued: “There’s a syringe hidden here, with a serum. It’s the improved version he dosed himself with. Apparently, there’s less need for Red Thirium bathing involved.”

Gavin blinked. “The… fuck?”

Cain averted his gaze.

“Wait, what? You mean, he’s left a dose of his fucking immortality stuff just, lying around in here?!”

“I believe the idea was for me to dose you in your sleep.” Cain stared at the glowing embers, facing the fact that just now, just for a moment, he’d felt the need to keep that option open.

After a long moment of Gavin searching his face and Cain not meeting his gaze, Gavin snorted and pulled him into a hard hug.

“That fucking prick. He really doesn’t know you at all, does he.”

Cain’s arms had come up to respond to the hug in kind, but he found himself surprised at the urgent need to cry.
“I’d like to. Dose you.”

“I know.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“Well. Yet. Reserving the right to change my mind, but yeah. Not today, and not…”

“...under his terms.”

Gavin pulled back with a wide, approving grin, which died quickly as he saw Cain’s face. He swallowed, then offered in an unacceptably small voice:
“I do love you.”

“I just… I can’t grow old with you. But I don’t… I can’t watch you die.”

Gavin snorted. “Wow, yeah, that sounds like really healthy amounts of attachment.”

Cain straightened up and put on his most haughty and unimpressed look.

Gavin waved his hand. “Yeah yeah, pot, kettle. Got it. Just.”

“Think about it?”

“I will.” Gavin smiled, and the longer Cain looked at that smile, the more he realized how amazing this truly was.

“Thank you.”