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The city breathed below him, all neon veins and distant sirens, but up here forty-three floors above the concrete the world felt like it belonged to someone else entirely. Gavin Reed stood at the floor to ceiling window of his apartment, bare feet on cold hardwood, one hand wrapped around a glass of cheap whiskey he hadn’t touched in twenty minutes. The ice had long since melted.
Behind him, on the couch, Nines was motionless.
Not sleeping. Android didn’t sleep, not like humans did at least. Standby mode, they called it. A state of reduced processing power, conservation of energy, a mimicry of rest that looked enough like the real thing that it could pass for human if you weren’t paying attention.
Gavin was paying attention.
He had been paying attention for hours now, ever since they’d stumbled through his door at 2 am, since he’d watched Nines lower himself onto the couch with that strange, too careful movement that meant his self repair system was working overtime. The android’s jacket was draped over the arm of the couch, and even from here, Gavin could see the torn fabric, the streaks of thirium that coated the usual pristine white colour.
The whiskey glass trembled slightly in his hand.
It had been close. Too fucking close.
The call had come in at 11pm, suspected of a red ice lab in an abandoned automotive plant in the industrial district. Routine, or as routine as anything got in Detroit these days. Gavin had bitched about it the whole drive over, complaining about the cold, about having to work late, about Fowler’s tendency to assign them the shit details. Nines had listened with that particular quality of attention he gave everything, LED spinning yellow occasionally, making those dry observations that weren’t quite jokes but made Gavin’s mouth twitch into a near smile anyway.
It hadn’t been routine.
They walked straight into an ambush, six guys, all armed, all twitchy with the kind of desperation that came from having nothing left to lose. Gavin remembered the muzzle flash, the way time seemed to slow and stretch like taffy, the sound of his own voice shouting Nine’s name as the android moves with that liquid speed that still caught him off guard sometimes.
Nines had taken three sounds to the chest putting himself between Gavin and the gunfire.
Three rounds.
Gavin had watched the android stagger, thirium blooming across his white shirt like watercolor, and something in his chest had cracked open, something he’d been keeping carefully locked and buried for months now. He’d fired without thinking, without aiming, barely aware of his own actions until the warehouse went quiet and there was nothing but the ringing in his ears and the sight of Nines on one knee, hand pressed to his torso, LED cycling between yellow and red.
“I’m functional,” Nines had said, which was possibly the stupidest fucking thing Gavin had ever heard, considering the android’s shirt was more blue than white at that point.
They’d fought about it, of course. Gavin had wanted to call it in, get Nines to a technician, but the android had refused with that particular brand of stubbornness that Gavin was starting to realize he’d helped cultivate. Self repair protocols were handling it, Nines had insisted. The bullets had missed anything critical. He just needed time to process the repairs, to let his systems stabilize.
So here they were. Gavin’s apartment at 4am, the android in standby on his couch, and Gavin himself unable to do anything but stand at his window and feel the city’s distant heartbeat against the glass.
Detroit looked different at this house. Softer somehow, wrapped in that particular quality of darkness that made everything feel liminal, like the whole world was holding its breath between one moment and the next. The lights from nearby buildings cut geometric patterns through the night, amber rectangles of insomnia, the cold blue glow of television screens, the occasional flicked of someone else awake and adrift at this hour. Traffic lights changed for nobody, cycling through their colors for empty intersections. A plane blinked across the sky, too far away to hear.
That night feeling, his mother used to call it. That sense of being untethered from time, suspended in a moment that belonged only to you, where the rules of daylight didn’t quite apply.
Gavin had spent a lot of nights like this over the years. After bad cases, after nightmares, after the kind of days that left something raw and bleeding inside him. He’d stand at his window and drink and watch the city sleep and feel like he was the only person left in the world.
He wasn’t alone tonight.
The realization sat heavy in his chest, equal parts comfort and terror.
He turned slightly, just enough to see Nines in his peripheral vision. The android was still, absolutely still in that way that marked him as other, as something not quite human despite the perfect simulation of breath, the slight part of his lips, the way his dark hair fell across his forehead. His LED was dark, powered down to conserve energy. In the half light of the window, he looked almost peaceful.
Gavin’s throat felt tight.
When did this happen? When had Nines stopped being an annoying piece of plastic Fowler had saddled him with and become… this? This thing he couldn’t name, this weight in his chest that felt suspiciously like fear, like the moment before falling, like standing at the edge of something vast and irreversible.
He’d spent months being an asshole to the android. Months of snide comments and deliberate distance, treating Nines like a particularly sophisticated piece of equipment rather than a partner. It had been easier that way. Safer. If Nines was just a machine, just a tool, then Gavin didn’t have to examine the way his pulse kicked up when the android walked into a room, or the way he’d started timing his coffee breaks to coincide with Nine’s reports, or the way he’d catch himself watching the android’s hands during briefings, mesmerized by their precise, elegant movements.
If Nines was just a machine, then tonight wouldn’t have felt like dying.
Gavin had seen the android take damage before. He had seen him walk away from fights that would have hospitalized a human, watched him brush off injuries with clinical detachment and perfectly calculated repair estimates. It had never bothered him before, not beyond the practical concern of a partner’s functionality.
Tonight, watching Nines go down, seeing that blue blood spread across his chest-
Gavin took a drink, finally, letting the whiskey burn down his throat. It didn’t help.
He’d carried Nines to the car. Actually carried him, the android’s weight solid and real against his chest, and he’d broken at least a dozen traffic laws getting them back here because the thought of taking Nines to the station, of letting anyone else see him like this, had been unbearable. He’d helped Nines to the couch, watched him settle with that careful precision, and when the android had looked up at him with those ice blue eyes and said “Thank you, Detective,” Gavin had needed to leave the room before he did something stupid.
Like confess. Like grab Nines by the front of his ruined shirt and kiss him. Like admit that at some point in the last six months, his partner had stopped being an it and become a him, had stopped being a machine and become a person, had stopped being just another face in the precinct and become the first thing Gavin thought about in the morning and the last thing on his mind at night.
The city lights blurred slightly. Gavin blinked hard, then finished the whiskey in one swallow.
This was insane. He was a forty year old cop with commitment issues and a temper problem, standing in his apartment at 4 AM having a crisis over an android. And android who could calculate probabilities and access criminal databases and took everything Gavin said with that perfect, patient attention that somehow never felt condescending, never felt like pity.
An android who’d taken three bullets for him without hesitation.
“Gavin.”
He spun, heart hammering, and found Nines sitting up on the couch. The android’s LED was cycling yellow, his eyes tracking Gavin with that particular intensity that always made him feel seen in a way that was both thrilling and terrifying. Even dishevelled, shirt torn and stained, hair mussed from hours of stillness, Nines was-
Gavin shut that thought down hard.
“You should be on standby,” he said, his voice rougher than intended.
“My self repair protocols were completed seventeen minutes ago.” Nines tilted his head slightly, a gesture that Gavin had learned meant he was analyzing something, processing data that didn’t quite fit his parameters. “You’ve been standing at that window for three hours and forty two minutes.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“You haven’t attempted to sleep. You haven’t moved from that position except to refill your glass once.” A pause, LED flickered. “Your heart rate is elevated. You’re experiencing symptoms consistent with acute stress.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been a shit night.”
“Indeed.” Nines stood slowly, and Gavin watched with forced casualness as the android crossed the room to stand beside him at the window. They were close enough that Gavin could see the faint seams in Nine’s synthetic skin, the nearly invisible repairs his systems had completed. “I apologize for causing you concern.”
“You didn’t-” Gavin stopped, jaw clenched. “You took three bullets, Nines.”
“I’m designed to withstand-”
“I don’t give a fuck what you’re designed to do.” The words came out sharper than he meant them to, edged with something dangerously close to panic. “You could’ve been destroyed. You could’ve-” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
Nines was quiet for a long moment, LED spinning yellow. When he spoke, his voice was softer than Gavin had ever heard it. “Would that have mattered to you?”
Gavin laughed, the sound bitter and broken. “Christ, Nines.”
“I’m asking genuinely. I’m trying to understand.” The android turned to face him fully now, and Gavin couldn’t look away from those eyes, blue as ice and somehow burning. “Your physiological responses tonight have been… anomalous. Your behaviour suggests emotional investment beyond normal partnership parameters.”
“Anomalous,” Gavin repeated flatly. “That’s what you call this?”
“I don’t know what to call it.” For the first time since Gavin had known him, Nines sounded uncertain. “I don’t have a framework for understanding why your distress would affect my operating efficiency. Why the thought of you being harmed would cause me to prioritize your safety over my own preservation.” His LED flickered red for just a moment. “Why do I find myself… unwilling to leave your apartment, even though my repairs are complete and there’s no logical reason for me to stay.”
The city hummed below them. A car horn echoed from somewhere distant. Gavin’s heart was doing something complicated and painful in his chest.
“You stayed,” he said quietly.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Nine’s LED cycles through yellow, to blue, to yellow again. “I believe,” he said slowly, carefully, like he was testing the words, “it’s because I wanted to.”
The space between them felt charged, electric. Gavin could count the inches, fourteen, maybe fifteen, close enough to reach out, to touch, to close the gap entirely. Close enough to take that step off the edge he;d been standing on.
“I thought you were gonna die tonight,” Gavin said, the confession tearing out of him. “I saw you go down and I thought- fuck, Nines, I thought I lost you, and I realised I don’t-” He swallowed hard. “I don’t know how to do this without you anymore. The job, yeah, but also just… this. Everything.”
Nine’s expression did something complicated, something that might have been wonder if androids could feel such things. “Gavin-”
“I know it’s fucked up.” Gavin ran a hand through his hair, agitated. “I know you’re my partner and you’re an android and I’ve got no right to feel like this, but I can’t- I can’t keep pretending I don’t care if something happens to you. I can’t keep acting like you’re just some machine when you’re the best goddamn thing in my life.”
The silence that followed felt enormous, stretching between them like something physical. Gavin kept his eyes on the window, on the city below, on anything but Nines’s face, because he couldn’t bear to see rejection there, couldn’t stand to watch the android process this and find it illogical, inefficient, inappropriate.
Then Nines’s hand was on his jaw, gentle and impossibly warm, turning his face until they were looking at each other, and Gavin’s breath caught at the expression in his blue eyes, something soft and fierce and entirely unreadable.
“I would take a thousand bullets for you,” Nines said quietly. “I would dismantle my self preservation protocols if it meant keeping you safe. I would.” His LED spun yellow, then blue, then yellow again. “I believe this is what humans call caring. I believe I care for you, Gavin Reed, in a way that supersedes my programming.”
Gavin’s hand came up almost unconsciously, covering Nines’s where it rested against his face. The android’s skin was warm, synthetic but real, solid and present and here.
“Yeah?” His voice came out rough, barely above a whisper.
“Yes.” Nines stepped closer, and now there were only inches between them, close enough that Gavin could see the faint scatter of freckles some designer had programmed across the android’s nose, the precise shade of blue in his eyes. “Is that… acceptable to you?”
Gavin laughed, the sound shaky but genuine. “Acceptable. Jesus, Nines.”
“I’m uncertain of the proper terminology for-”
Gavin kissed him.
It was clumsy and desperate and probably a terrible idea, but Nines made a soft sound of surprise and then his hand was sliding into Gavin’s hair and he was kissing back with an intensity that made Gavin’s knees weak. He tasted like nothing and everything, cool and electric, and his mouth moved against Gavin’s with learning precision, analyzing and adapting until Gavin was making embarrassing noises against those perfect lips.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, or well Gavin breathing hard while Nines simulated it, the city was starting to lighten at the edges. Dawn creeping in, stealing that night feeling, bringing the world back into focus.
Gavin didn’t care. He kept his forehead pressed to Nines’s, kept his hands fisted in the android’s ruined shirt, and kept himself anchored to this moment.
“Stay,” he said. Not a question this time. “Not because you have to, not because it’s logical, or because of the job. Stay because you want to.”
Nines’s LED cycled to blue and stayed there, steady and calm. “Yes,” he said simply. “I’ll stay.”
And outside the window, Detroit woke up around them, but inside the apartment, time stood still a little longer.
Just the two of them, and the weight of silence, and something new and fragile and impossibly real taking shape between them as the night finally let go.