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Promise me today and I'll promise you tomorrow
Gavin’s skin is stretched over bony knuckles, near translucent in their places, but his grip is still strong decades after his brown tresses have faded to white. Nines strokes a finger over the discolorations born from age, trails over the laugh-lines etched into his skin and tries to commit every single detail to memory.
Time is a cruel and fickle thing but right now- right now Gavin remembers him and in this moment of clarity he makes Nines promise to be happy. The ring flickers red over Gavin’s left hand. It’s synced to the LED Nines never found reason to pry from his hull. His own ring, black and silver with wisps of green the colour of Gavin’s eyes, pulses in a steady rhythm.
He gives his word and holds fast to it even after feeling the last shivering pulse through their connection.
On Gavin’s request the ring synced to Nines is embedded in the stone marking his grave. It serves as a substitute ‘o’ in the carefully chiseled letters spelling out beloved. His body is spread to the wind in fine flecks of ash, untethered and free like the man’s spirit. Still… Nines wanted someplace to go, to mourn and remember; a place to fall apart.
The ring cycles red, red, red, for longer than Nines cares to think about.
He lives and moves forward and experiences the world with the majority of his heart laid to rest with the last fragments of his first love.
Time trickles steadily forward and Nines notes the passage of it in the wear and tear of his biocomponents. Nowadays he never replaces broken ones though he dutifully repairs them when necessary. Nines finds other people to care for even if none of them could hope to replace Gavin (not that he’d want them to). They come and go with Connor being the only constant in his life – their stories and grief too similar not to lean on one another. Anniversaries are the hardest though eventually the chasm of hurt narrows into a stinging, wistful pain.
And then, one day, half a century after Gavin’s death, a familiar pulsing thrum at the base of his finger makes itself known. Nines thinks it’s a figment of his imagination but it grows steadily stronger as the years progress. Detroit beckons him back to its harsh embrace, its modernised high-rises familiar and new all at once, although he still drags his feet.
Another quarter of a century and Nines comes across a figure crouched in the lip of an alley. He’s on his way home from work when he first hears the quiet murmuring voice. It’s raining heavily and yet something draws him closer to the man instead of continuing on his way. Nines comes to stand at his back, shielding the already thoroughly soaked man from weather by sharing his umbrella. Apparently he’s attempting to cajole a young stray cat to seek shelter with him. When he does stand up and turn around Nines’ breath catches in his throat.
So young, younger than when Nines had met him the first time, is [his] Gavin. The same freckles dusting his cheeks. The same eyes. The same crooked grin.
The ring’s pulsating beat ticks up a notch.
“Hey tin-can. Miss me?”
Nines weeps for the first time in years clutching at the lapels of Gavin’s coat. Their protection from the rain lies forgotten by their feet though he cares little for the way the rain slowly soaks him to the bone. To hear that voice again after a lifetime without it picks open half-healed wounds and leaves them gushing once more. And oh, his kisses are identical when Nines takes Gavin’s bottom lip between his own and he heaves the same needy sigh when dipping into Nines’ mouth and it feels like coming home.
Their time together is brief. A short few weeks after Gavin’s thirty-fifth birthday a freak accident tears them apart. He’s not there to comfort Gavin in his last moments though he knows by the erratic pulsing growing soft, softer, fading entirely that he-
He just knows.
Nines curls in on himself on the kitchen floor, amongst shards of crystalline glass and the tattered remains of his broken heart.
Time passes. He hasn’t fully recovered from the shock of a life lost when the ring thrums to life for a third time.
Nines spends the next week getting blackout drunk, an option now available to androids, until Connor quite literally slaps some sense into him. Like Nines, Connor isn’t the same as he was a century ago. Technically, he’s in worse disrepair than Nines. It shows in the cracked lines of his chassis, the strained hum of his cooling fans and, above all, in the unfathomable depths of compassion found in his tired eyes.
When they meet again he still isn’t ready. Whatever fragmented hope left in his abused heart shatters when there’s not so much as a flicker of recognition in Gavin’s green eyes.
Even so, their paths continue to cross. Nines gets to watch his love fall for him again, all the small moments; the stolen glances, the quickening of a heartbeat Nines knows better than his own. How he wishes to take Gavin up on his subtle steps towards becoming more. But for every step forward from Gavin, Nines takes one back. The distance between them grows because he can’t do this. Can’t lose him again. He wouldn’t be able to scrape all the pieces of himself back together.
Nines watches the hope die in Gavin’s eyes and it cuts him deeper than any knife.
Isn’t this worse?
Nines catches Gavin’s hand after his stumbling confession and makes peace with knowing this, them together, it will hurt. However, his time together with Gavin is precious, if fleeting, and why should he deprive himself of the joy Gavin’s unconditional affection brings? When Gavin smiles at him, when he licks into his mouth to taste the sobbing laughter ripping its way out of Nines’ chest, he knows the grief will be worth it for moments like these.
Gavin draws his last breath in the spring and the thrumming pulse stills for only a short hour this time.
Time passes. They meet again, fall in love, grow old and weary.
There’s an ache in his joints, one he imagines is similar to the one Gavin often complains about. There are dents and scratches and gnarled marks over his once pristine chassis. His hair is white of his own volition and it fascinates his love to no end. He feels every bit his age and he’s made peace with the inevitability of death even if tendrils of fear seep into his thoughts when thinking about it. Gavin’s hand squeezes his own which brings him out of his musings. Nines offers him a faint squeeze back in gratitude.
His lover looks dashing as always, especially with the small smile lighting up his face. “It’s not so bad. Like falling asleep,” he says and strokes over the bare chassis of Nines’ hand.
“Thank you, for choosing me again,” Nines says, knowing it will make little sense to his beloved. The timer fastened to the side of his HUD steadily counts down.
“How could I not?” Gavin murmurs, dragging in another struggling breath. “You’ve always been the centre of my universe, Nines.”
Nines moves to curl closer into Gavin’s side after hearing the name he’d left behind ages ago; too intertwined with bittersweet pain to keep for his own, and knows Gavin remembers everything.
They pass on together this time, hand in hand, and Nines’ name is added to the well-kept, grey memorial laid into the earth; the one carrying more dates than should be possible for a single person.
The two rings, now dull and grey, replace letters.
A memory to a love unbound by time.