Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They were at a bar, they were having a good time, celebrating Hopkin’s retirement. Gavin didn’t much care for Hopkins but his partner would be quick in saying that he didn’t much care for anybody. That wasn’t true. He cared for Tina, who was already too drunk to keep quiet, and he cared about Nines, who was sitting next to him at the bar, watching the scene unfold. Truly, they were being far too loud for a normal party, but there had been so much stress and other than Anderson and the androids, everyone was drinking like the prohibition was going to start back up the next day.

There were a few other patrons there, all of them glaring or laughing along. This wasn’t really a party bar normally, but it was close to the station and one that Hopkins frequented apparently. Gavin laughed, or guffawed, as he saw Tina try to get a complete stranger to dance with her, leaning back, his back against the bar, his hand landing solidly on Nines’ thigh.

The android didn’t react. He looked at Gavin and then the rest of the room, but it’s LED didn’t even blip differently. It was nothing, there was nothing to respond to.

The stranger said yes and Tina dancing was even funnier than her asking a strange woman to join her. It did start a series of others to get up and dance as well though. Gavin wasn’t going to, he was fine where he was, making faces and fun of his coworkers making fools of themselves. He was fine where he was, really. But then Connor was there, a hand extended, asking him in that polite but almost human way to dance with him. He looked to Nines and Nines still didn’t respond. In fact, his eyes were now on the floor. He didn’t want to dance with Gavin, he was too much of a machine, even though he had been turned deviant almost immediately after activation. Gavin still didn’t know what all that meant.

He took Connor’s hand and allowed himself to be pulled towards the others. He was still trying to make up for how he’d treated Connor in the beginning, surely a dance couldn’t hurt their shitty relationship.

It felt good to dance, to be a part of things. He felt like a pretty decent dancer, either because he was less drunk or because Anderson was absolutely atrocious and the androids were copying drunk humans with absolutely no experience. He wondered if he’d get teased in the morning, if anyone would remember tonight enough to get him crap for having fun for once instead of swearing and flipping them off. That would be his response, at least.

A flicker of yellow while he spun. A blinding flash of red between blinks while he sang along with some song that was so old that he knew all the words from osmosis.

Another turn and he caught on, looking over at whatever must have been the problem. Nines was still sitting at the bar but now he was sitting next to some stranger. The man had a smirk on his lips, similar to the one that Gavin tended to wear. He was handsome in a way that Gavin wasn’t though, and dressed a little bit better, and he had his hand on Nines’ while they spoke. It made a knot in Gavin’s stomach twist. He had felt jealousy before, when Anderson got a promotion and he didn’t, at friends genuinely enjoying one anothers company, at the way that words and kindness came so easily to some people. It felt a lot like this, though this was far sharper.

He had no need to feel jealousy though. Sure the guy was flirting up a storm and Nines was drinking something blue, probably straight up thirium, without moving away from the stranger’s touch, but the LED was bright red and spinning. Gavin wasn’t so good at telling Nines’ emotions, but that was a pretty good tell that he wasn’t interested, that he was uncomfortable, that he didn’t want this man’s attention.

Gavin swam against the crowd of coworkers, stumbling a bit as the alcohol hit him harder because of the exercise, but making his way to the bar. When he got there he half draped himself against Nines’ chest, arm wrapped around his shoulders. Nines didn’t like physical attention very much, but the LED blinked instead of spun and that had to be better, right?

“Are you alright, Detective Reed?” Nines asked. He had gotten it into his head to not scan Gavin at all times but he hadn’t figured out to call Gavin by name, even though Gavin told him too all the time.

“Nah,” Gavin smiled, the charming smile of someone who wanted to get into a fist fight with a stranger. “Some asshole is spending time with my party pooper of a partner.”

“We were just talking,” the stranger growled, “Surely you cant have a problem with that.”

Gavin looked him over. His hair was shorter, his jaw stronger, his everything stronger, than Gavin’s and he knew that if he were to throw the first punch he wouldn’t be throwing the last. But Nines’ LED was now cycling between yellow and red so he must have been doing something right.

“You weren’t and I don’t have to be a detective to see that,” Gavin argued. “If there was a disco ball in here the whole bar would be bathed in red so don’t give me shit.”

The stranger blinked. Nines LED spun in a way that he knew meant that he was processing something. Then it froze solid finally, but stuck half yellow and half red. He’d never seen it stop like that before.

“That doesn’t make any sense Detective.” Nines stated.

Gavin just waved it off, “Doesn’t matter. I want you to get away from my partner.”

The guy put up his hands and got up away from the counter. “Fine, fine. Not my fault it didn’t mention it was in a relationship.”

It? For someone who had seemed so interested in Nines, he didn’t seem to respect pronouns much.

He put his hand on Nines’ shoulder. “You okay?”

Nines picked up his drink, swirling it a moment before he brought it to his lips and drained it. His LED swirled for a moment and then went back to blue. “I’m fine. Now. You noticed that I was uncomfortable.”

“You know you can say no, right?” Gavin ruffled his hair. It didn’t work, the strands falling back into their perfect places. “He buy you a drink?”

Nines nodded. “I know that I do not have to accept a drink or a conversation from a man, Detective. I still have a hard time saying no to people though. I feel it’s something deficient with my programming.”

Gavin looked him over. “You’re not a machine though, you’re a deviant. You don’t have to follow anyone’s orders. Phck, you never follow mine.”

Nines eyes were on the floor again. “It’s not just my mechanical nature. It is caused by my personality algorithm, as small as it is, the desire to be seen as useful, proficient, and appeasing are high on my list.”

“Again, you never follow mine.”

Nines slid elegantly off of his stool, landing on his feet gracefully. “That is because you are an asshole.”

Gavin rolled his eyes at that, trying not to snort with laughter. It was rare when Nines swore and when he did it was hilarious, even if that one was barely a swear at all.

“You want to dance with us?” Gavin offered. “No pressure, y’know. You just looked like a sad puppy left out in the shitter over here by yourself.”

“I-”

There was no gradient. There was no blue, yellow, red. There was just blue and then bright red flashing, and Nines was putting his hand to his mouth, blue pouring out of his mouth, in between his fingers.

Gavin would have laughed at that, mostly because he was drunk and had been there, throwing up from one drink too many, but he wasn’t so drunk as to ignore the way that the LED was flashing, faster than he’d ever seen. And there was panic in Nines’ usually emotionless eyes. And he was grabbing for Gavin. And he was catching something in the thick stream of thirium. He’d never seen thirium be thick before.

“Woah woah woah!” The bartender was shouting at them, but Gavin didn’t care, he was grabbing Nines by the shoulders and dragging him to the bathroom, ignoring the way that the dancers went silent, all staring at him helping his almost prim and proper partner get to the restroom. There was a spattering of blue in their wake, leading a trail to them. It wasnt’ like they were hiding at all though.

Gavin got Nines to his knees in front of one of the toilets. Nines released his mouth and let the thirium run. It was definitely too thick.

And chunky.

Nines opened up his hand, fingers died blue. There were shards in his fingers, not glass but something sharp and clear. Gavin fell to his knees next to him, running a hand in circled on his back. He knew what to do if someone was throwing up, he’d been there enough times to be used to it, but he didn’t know what this was. Nines wasn’t throwing up, there was no pause in it, and there was no relenting. This was more thirium than one glass. This was enough to have been going into his actual systems.

The door flew open and Connor was rushing into the room, sliding to his knees on Nines other side.

“What happened?” Connor asked, pulling Nines’ sleeve up. Nines was averse to touch, Gavin probably wasn’t as soothing as he thought he was being, but he was much more averse to interfacing. Gavin had only seen him do it once and the android who had initiated it had to go in for repairs after. Gavin had asked, but Nines just shrugged and said that he’d pushed the android out a bit too hard.

“Someone gave him a drink. I’m guessing it was laced with something, but I have no idea what. Shouldn’t he have recognized it with his sensors or something?”

Connor wrapped his fingers around Nines’ wrist and closed his eyes. The skin peeled away from both of them, revealing bone white chassis, and Connor’s LED started to flash in the same painful strobe as Nines did. His face scrunched up, he was so much easier to read than Nines was, and he looked like he was in pain. After a few moments, after what felt like it was far too long, Gavin wanted to shove Connor away, but he didn’t know if that would make things worse.

Connor pulled back on his own, his LED calming and switching to a yellow and slow pulse.

“He’s been poisoned. Those shards are a compound that has crystalized in his systems, from a chemical reaction from different forms of thirium.”

“So like, a blood transplant that’s gone wrong?” Gavin asked. He’d seen pictures of what happened when that happened, a bit of morbid curiosity brought on by a bout of insomnia and too much thinking.

“Similar, yes. But since androids ingest the chemical that is intended to be their blood its happening far faster.”

Gavin brushed Nines hair back. He couldn’t hold it back for him, but there had to be some way that he could comfort his partner.

“How did he not notice?”

Nines closed his eyes, looking disappointed on top of everything else, as if he knew that he should have noticed it.

“The difference in the substances is extremely minor, it would be easy to miss if he was distracted. That man, Steven Matthews, was doing a good job of distracting him with that conversation. Guessing by how he objectified Nines and bought him the drink, I would assume that he knew that this would be the reaction.”

Gavin moved his hand from Nines’ back to his jaw, running his fingers along the strong angles. He was expecting Nines to pull away from him, not lean into the touch as much as he could as he continued to bleed out into the toilet.

“Does it hurt?”

Nines opened his eyes and stared Gavin in the eyes. He didn’t need Connor to tell him how it felt.

“It’s like having shards of ice grow in your veins, tearing you apart from the inside. It’s agony.”

Gavin’s eyes were burning. It was suddenly very hard for him to see, so much fluid in them that any blink would make him start to cry. He didn’t want to cry. He didn’t want to admit that he was afraid, or that he cared.

“What can we do?” Gavin asked, tearing his attention away from Nines and over to Connor.

“Wait, unfortunately,” Connor didn’t touch Nines, but he did put his hand on Gavin’s shoulder, as if it was the human that needed to be taken care of. “I contacted the closest tech team the moment I noticed that there was a situation, they should be here any minute now. Hank is on the floor, keeping the others from coming in and causing a scene and will direct them here.”

“Phck. Worst case scenario?”

“It wasn’t a metaphor that his blood is tearing him apart,” Connor said, voice suddenly quiet. “It’s going to be extensive repairs for an android that doesn’t have spare parts. They’re going to have to rebuild a lot of his external pieces. Worst case is death, of course but ignoring that is a long long recovery time and possibly not a complete rebuild.”

Gavin heard a few enthusiastic shouts from the bar. That must have been the techs arriving. It wouldn’t be much longer.

“You’re going to be okay,” Gavin lied because he knew that Nines had heard what Connor said. “You’ll see, they’re going to make you all shiny and new inside.” He pressed a small kiss to the LED and pretended that he didn’t see Connor staring. He’d never kissed Nines before. He didn’t want to kiss Nines like that. Hell, until that moment he didn’t realize that he even wanted to kiss Nines.

The techs finally got to the them, door opening and orders being given. Nines was pulled away from the toilet and laid down on his back. The techs immediately got to work, right there in front of them. They cut Nines’ shirt off of him and pulled out his thirium pump, the entire thing looking like a solid crystal.

Gavin tried to leave, to get out of the way, just a few steps, but Nines was reaching out, head falling to the side as they attached an external pump, one that was full of thirium. He was staring at Gavin, the thirium coming from his mouth finally a slow trickle. He could see inside of his mouth, see more crystals in there, as the silence wasn’t from pain or an unwillingness, but from his mouth being completely plugged with the chemical reaction.

When Gavin didn’t understand what Nines needed, he started to clench his fist, a sound like a whimper gurgling out of him. The techs were shouting to one another, and Nines skin was fading away from his arms and chest so they could open him up. He could see what looked like spooks being pressed to Nines’ insides, as they scraped what they could clean.

The whine grew worse. Nines was having a hard time moving his hand, everything inside of it freezing up. It must have been torturous just to try to move.

A hand grabbed him by the wrist and Connor dragged him closer, placing Gavin’s hand against Nines’. The broken gurgling sound softened slightly, the knot of his brows relaxing. Gavin was a detective, not an idiot, he knew what to do in that moment, finally. He wrapped his fingers around Nines and he held on for dear life. Nines didn’t hold his hand back, his fingers too frozen to clasp him, but he didn’t break eye contact, and Gavin only shifted out of the way when the techs needed him to get out of the way.

Chapter Text

It had been two weeks and three days since that night at the bar and Gavin didn’t know what to do with himself. He’d been given temporary partners at works but they didn’t really help, he ended up insulting them until they left him alone. He never thought he’d be so slow without Nines but he was, the easiest of cases stumping him with evidence that he was used to being scanned and analyzed within moments. Now he just felt useless and he was taking that out on everyone around him.

Connor was needling him too. He had visited Nines a few times and every time he saw Gavin he would either remark on how Gavin was letting Nines down or how there was nothing to worry about. It was as if Connor felt two very different things on the subject and just didn’t know which emotion he wanted to go with.

It wasn’t even Gavin’s fault. He was told, in the very beginning, that it would be two weeks before he could see Nines. He wanted to but then, at the end, when he finally could, there was a knot in his chest like guilt that he couldn’t swallow down. He had drunk himself to sleep more than a few times in the waiting, hating on himself for not catching on sooner. He felt a bit better about the fact that he’d caught the guy responsible, but he was too late on that as well. It wasn’t an isolated incident. It was happening all over Detroit now and to androids a lot less advanced than Nines. Low quality thirium had been distributed to sellers and there was no way of telling the good from the bad. It wasn’t exactly something that could be recalled either.

Now he was standing in the waiting room of what looked like a hospital, even though it really wasn’t. There were tools and beds and equipment that looked more like it was for torture than for healing, but they weren’t designed for human bodies. Large drills and thick saws were needed more for android parts than they’d ever be used in human medicine.

He didn’t know if he wanted to bolt or not. He could leave, go back home, finish off the bottle of rum and start on a new one, beat himself up over the next few days over being such a coward.

“Gavin,” A tinny voice, not one that Gavin recognized, like a jazz singer talking through an old radio, came from behind him. “You actually came.”

Nines, having heard his own voice, put a hand over his mouth, turning away. Gavin hadn’t even heard him coming down the hall and now, here he was. Gavin didn’t have a choice but to be there, completely.

Hiding his face didn’t do much, Gavin could see around the white hand easily. The upper half of his face was his, but the jaw was white and disjointed. He was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, a bit too large, and that was odd to see but odder still were the patches of white all down his body. All of his limbs were completely white, showing off the seams and joints that made him. His LED was spinning red and his eyes were cast down and Gavin noticed that the white of one of those eyes was completely thirium blue.

“Yeah well, Connor was giving me a hard time about it, plastic prick, so I came to shut him up.” Gavin retorted, shoving his hands into his pockets. He looked down. He didn’t want Nines to know that he’d been so worried.

“Do you always feel the need to lie about your feelings?” Nines asked. This voice was better for his emotions, let Gavin know what he felt easier. He sounded so despondent.

“You know it.” Gavin shrugged and scratched at the back of his neck. He felt wrong here, out of place. “How long until they’re done with you?”

The LED flashed and then went steady. Still red.

“I don’t know. These parts aren’t mine. They aren’t compatible with my systems.” Gavin was pretty sure that he could see Nines shaking. He didn’t mention it though and neither did Nines. “My skin won’t activate on the loaned parts but, if I were viewable without revulsion I would be able to at least work desk duty until those parts arrive.”

Gavin looked at him then, seeing how he clung to the nearest wall, almost hiding behind it, how he was hiding his face behind his hand. He looked so very uncomfortable and, now that Gavin was studying him he could see that Nines was shorter than usual, the legs coming from a smaller model.

“I’ve seen worse,” Gavin forced out a laugh. “It’s up to you. I caught the guy that pulled this shit on you though so no worries about that. Gave him just enough of a beat down that I won’t get in too much trouble for it.”

Nines stared at him. It was getting hard to ignore how much he was shaking. “I would like to come back. I feel – I am too listless here. I need some kind of distraction.”

Gavin came to him and, as he drew close, Nines actually shrank back from him. It made him stop, his anxiety suddenly spiking. Something he’d done was wrong, was hurting Nines. His hands went into fists at his sides and he put them in his pockets to hide them. He didn’t want to scare Nines, not ever.

“You take your time,” he ended up saying.

It was the wrong thing to say. He could just tell. The LED flashed a few times before settling back down. He’d really fucked up. He didn’t know how though, or why. He just wanted Nines to be alright but he was no good at this stuff. He didn’t know how to be a good friend or a good man or whatever. Nines was usually so good at seeing that he was trying. Just, this once, he wished that Nines could see how hard he was trying.

“The specialist they found is a former Cyberlife engineer.” Nines stated in that odd voice. Gavin already hated it.

He also hated that. He knew how Nines felt about Cyberlife, that he had deviated as soon as Cyberlife had disbanded and he was set free. He didn’t know the exact reasons for it, just remembered Connor coming into the bullpen with a wild android with terror and murder in his eyes, covered in thirium. Nines hadn’t spoken to anyone for a few days, humans even longer, and he had clung to Connor like a lifeline.

This was like then. Nines wasn’t shrinking away from him, he was afraid. Cyberlife was involved and he was shaking and he didn’t show his emotions much but he did have them. He didn’t want to be around humans because Cyberlife was humans. Gavin didn’t know how to fix that.

“They’re not coming in here, are they? They’re just going to make you some parts and they’ll be shipped here, right?”

Nines nodded.

“The techs, they do full scans of the parts they use, right? Like, they’re not just going to hope that the arm your wearing isn’t full of porn viruses or something.”

Nines nodded again.

“So if Cyberlife decides to pull some bullshit, you’re going to be okay, okay? They’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

Finally, the red was interlaced with yellow. “You’re right, Gavin. I should not have allowed my worries to take control of me like that.” The yellow took over.

Gavin reached out, nice and slow, and this time Nines didn’t back away. He did stiffen though, when Gavin took a hold of his hand and the LED started to flash as he lowered it from the new pieces of face. He curled his fingers around Nines’ hand but Nines did not hold his hand in response.

“You know,” Gavin chuckled, “you don’t look much worse than normal.”

Nines fixed him with a pointed glare. “And you look the same as always. Perhaps you should also check into a hospital so they could fix that.”

At that Gavin cackled. It wasn’t often that Nines made a joke but when he did, it was usually at Gavin’s expense, and he always broke up about them.