Disclaimer: I do not own Detroit: Become Human

Rating: T

Words: 2811

Warnings: language, violence, hospitalization, (near) breakdowns.

Get ready for lots of feels, guys. In term of emotional importance, this one is a pretty important for Nines and Connor's relationship, as well as Nines and Gavin's as friends and working partners.

Part II: Frustration/Anger/Sadness

Tonight had been the shittiest night a guy could ask for.

As he sat on the couch with a beer in hand, careful of his bound ribs, Gavin watched Nines pace their apartment with an agitated gait. Long strides, almost silent footsteps despite his weight—it was like watching a restless predator doing laps in their cage. Arms gripping themselves in a vice behind his back, eyes blazing forward with an intent burn, and hunched over like he was going to pounce on someone and something—a dangerous man.

Gavin took a long sip of his beer.

As much as the urge to make a wisecrack to break the tension burned in him, for once, he didn't let his mouth run. He remained silent, at least for now.

His cats had run off deeper into the apartment—into the bathroom, probably—as soon as Nines and Gavin had come home as opposed to twining between Nines's long ass legs. Count Chocula in particular had hissed at the two stretches of clawed haze that had pushed the door open and turned on the light. Captain Fluff had just hid herself away, asap. Animals were pretty keen in sensing all the shit people couldn't. As he watched the shadow that mirrored Nines's head—its action of throwing its head around with a snarl mirroring Nines shaking his head with gritted teeth—he could see how. This was a polar opposite of how Nine's shadow normally was, the puppy-like glutton that always wanted to snack. Oh no, these fangs looked ready to rend and shred someone apart.

(His partner had bitten off a thug's pinky when the asshole had tried to tie down the android earlier, so Gavin guessed it was a little late for that.)

It felt like a long time before he heard Nines finally say something, and when he did, he winced at the choppy static. "I wanted to kill them, Gavin," the whisper didn't even attempt to sound human. Formality was also thrown out the window.

"I know," he let himself say.

"I did not even care if it would have landed me with repercussions," he raised his hands towards his face, clenching the fingers like claws, and Gavin watched as his two shadow arms swelled and expanded against the kitchen wall and the wall behind the T.V. They also clenched their hazy claws to match him. His LED was a bright, swirling crimson. "I did not care if I was arrested. I wanted them dead at my feet."

Gavin next sip of beer was particularly bitter. "I know."

Not gonna lie, I wouldn't even have stopped you.

What had turned Nines into this angry, vindictive mess was a riot that had broken out earlier that night in the park. There had been a group of peaceful 'droids doing some kind of night-time hippie art thing in order to raise awareness of their rights and that stuff. A couple of drunks had gotten aggressive, and one thing led to another, and before anyone knew it, a group of a few drunk bastards had turned into a mob of like fifty or so belligerent protestors.

How it exactly had happened, no one was sure, but when they got the call, Gavin had known it was going to be ugly.

And fuck, it was.

Three humans injured, four beaten-up androids, and two androids dead on arrival—a mess, indeed. Gavin and Nines along with Anderson and Connor had been just two groups of the many that had rushed to the scene. Much of the violent mob had scattered as soon as they heard the sirens and saw the flashing red and blue lights, but of course, a couple of assholes just decided to try their luck.

Even the best riot gear and training couldn't defend against bad luck.

Gavin hadn't known how, hadn't known when, but somehow all of them had gotten split up in the screaming, loud, frantic chaos. He had arrested five perps and had been shoving the most recent one in the back of a squad car before he heard gunshots and two familiar screams. What had felt like two seconds later, he found himself sliding over loose mulch behind the kids' slide to get to the source of the noise.

As soon as he got there, he was witness to some guy getting the jump on Nines and trying to pull him down and tie him up with chains. Where had he gotten chains from? Anderson had been rendered unconscious from what appeared to be a blow to the head, and he had a nasty gunshot wound in one of his shoulders. Connor had attempted to help Nines by leveling his weapon to nonlethally incapacitate the guy, but before he could, a woman had made her presence known. Gavin hadn't even noticed her, hadn't even seen where she had come from, but when he did catch the flash of her movement, it was too late. Before he could stop her or even before he could have cried out a warning to Connor, the loud crack of her gun firing pierced the cold night air.

A piercing shot right through the side of Connor's head.

The spray of blue shouldn't have been that prominent against the dark mulch, shouldn't have been that visible.

But it had been.

The rest kind of blurred after that in Gavin's mind, but he did remember that Nines had let out the most ungodly sound—maybe Gavin had as well—before biting off the dude's finger and flipping him over a bench. He remembered the woman screaming, vaguely recalled cuffing her and shoving her in the back of Tina's squad car, and had some foggy recollection of driving to the hospital both to get himself treated—okay, Nines had forced him to get treated, whatever—and to see what was gonna happen with Anderson and Connor.

Anderson—Hank—had been fine. Had woken up a few hours after being admitted. Bitched from the moment his eyes had opened, but he was fine. Nothing critical was hit and no concussion, but he had to keep his arm in a sling for a while and was going to be put on desk duty for two weeks. The desk duty was going to kill him more than the injury, but to be fair, Gavin could relate. Hank was going to be fine.

Connor on the other hand…

From what the doctors—technicians, whatever—had told them, the bullet had entered the front of his temple and exited just above his ear. Thankfully, it hadn't destroyed the entire section of his head and processor, so there was a good chance he would pull through. Probably, hopefully. "One and a haf centimeters of his processor on the right side of his cranial shell—his skull," the technician had explained, "was shattered by the bullet, so we're repairing that now. Another five degrees inward and it would have forced a permanent shutdown, killing him." There had been a bunch of other techno-jargon that had confused Gavin to no end, but from what he could glean, Connor wouldn't become a permanent brain-dead toaster.

Or at least, that's what everyone was hoping.

Hank hadn't called them with an update and neither had the hospital, so they were still in the dark for now.

Fuck.

You would have though that ten months after the revolution, people would quit being so hateful. Pessimism ran rampant in his head, What am I thinking? Humans are bigoted, violent assholes who ruin everything. Fuck, women, people of color, and queer people are still get shitted on and it's 2039. How the fucking hell would androids get it an easier after only ten months? (1)

"He's gonna be okay," he said. He winced because it sounded pathetic even to his ears.

"You do not know that," Nines frowned, his pacing picking up speed. He was going to wear a hole in his floor at this rate.

Gavin stood up, one hand curling around his ribs and the other setting down the beer on the coffee table next to Nines's neglected mug of thirium, and stepped towards him. His partner didn't acknowledge him, dead set on keeping himself moving. Now, Gavin knew he himself was an asshole and he was pretty terrible at comforting people, but even he realized how fucked up tonight had been. How it was eating at the usually calm android with a ravenous sort of hunger. He reached out to put a hand on the other's shoulder. "Nines, c'mon man, you gotta calm down."

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.

"'Calm down?'" Nines whirled around to snarl at Gavin, teeth bared and eyes wide. His arms were thrown down on either side and the shadow arms scraped down the walls as they paralleled the action—they were going to have to repaint the after that. Two plates were drug off the counter and a framed poster was swiped off the wall. "Connor could be gone forever, and you want me to calm down?! He could be dead!" This was the first time since the park that his partner had spoken something louder than a whisper, but it wasn't pretty. There was a deep intonation that wasn't human, but wasn't android either, Otherworldly more like. That, coupled with the crackly static that overlaid his shout, produced an ugly, jarring voice.

Gavin's chest ached, and it wasn't his ribs.

Even though Nines yelling at him would hike up his own temper, he couldn't be mad at him. Not now. Not when Gavin's done the same with his own nasty temper and nastier insults.

"…I cannot imagine him gone, I'm sorry. I can't…I won't. I can't lose him." Oh shit, contractions were not a good sign.

The beast-like clawed shadows peeled themselves from the wall to slowly encircle Nines as he tried to comfort himself. Underneath his shadows, his own arms were wrapped around himself, and to Gavin, it was like he was trying to hold himself together. Trying to keep himself from crumbling apart. Deviancy, from what the human could understand, was not an easy thing.

"Oh, fuck, Nines…" Before his toxic machismo (that he was trying to work on, but hey, it was still there) could scream at him that he shouldn't be touchy-feely, he reached out to gently grab Nines by his elbow. It was a mark of how distraught he was that he didn't predict—preconstruct?—Gavin pulling him close to him. His LED was a violent whirling mess of blazing scarlet, shining painfully bright in Gavin's eyes as Nines's head dropped to the shorter man's shoulder. Only his dark, wavy hair and that beacon of an LED were visible; his face was hidden.

Nines didn't cry, but the almost-barely-there shivering was disconcerting.

Hank's fine, a little banged up but fine. Even though those technicians were sounding pretty hopeful…If Connor doesn't make it… Gavin maneuvered them to take a seat on the couch, the one arm grasping at Nines's elbow moving to drape across his shivering shoulders. It wasn't quite a hug, but it seemed to be working for Nines.

Gavin didn't say anything as he waited for Nines to collect himself. To be honest, he didn't think he'd even be sure what to say if he did have to open his mouth. Words weren't his thing, not like Nines or Connor, but even his hind lizard brain could understand that Nines needed him right now. He even held in his jolt of surprise when the next thing happened: a foreign touch to his hand made him look down only to see a slender, quivering shadow arm—one much skinnier and more delicate looking than before—nudge his fingers. Had never been touched by the shadows before, so he was surprised to feel that it wasn't cold like he had expected. It was almost warm, just shy of being a human temperature. He kept quiet as he watched the arm slowly coil up his own like a snaking ribbon, coming to a stop just before his elbow. The little hand at the end of the shadow gripped at the fabric of his longsleeve, and its clutch was so tight that it shook.

Gavin drew Nines closer to him, arm holding him just a little tighter.

After an unknown amount of time, all the tension and fight that had been in Nines seemed to disappear, leaving him—no matter how much he fought it—wilting against the couch cushions and Gavin. The human wished he had some kind of monitor, because he was pretty sure that his android partner's stress levels had been peaking pretty high and all over the place tonight. The memory of that self-destructing android, with its—his—stress levels resting in the high nineties, popped into his mind. His brain did the awful job of placing Nines in that room instead of Ortiz's android, and it felt all sorts of wrong.

"If you mention this to anyone…" And of course, his brain couldn't help but attempt to make the situation normal again. Some semblance of order.

The small laugh that Nines let out against his shoulder was hoarse and had a staticky overlay to it, but it sounded much more like himself than earlier. "I will not let your reputation as the deplorable hard-ass of the team become tarnished."

Gavin snorted, still with his arm around Nines and Nines's shadow coiled around his arm. It should have been weird to hold his partner for this long, but he obligated to make an exception this once. He didn't…hate it, per se, but this was something incredibly new, fragile. "And I'll make sure no one knows our resident bad ass has a softer side to him." I won't tell anyone you almost fell apart.

"I suppose that agreement is acceptable."

"Just drink you blue blood, already, smartass."

They sat pressed against one another on the couch for a while longer, eventually making room for Count Chocula and Captain Fluff who had returned from their hiding spots. Nines finally began to sip on his thirium, no doubt needing it after all the shit that went down tonight, and Gavin taking up his now flat beer. They decided on a show that they could zone out to, How It's Made season 76, and not stress them out. Gavin knew that Nines particularly enjoyed learning about the processes of creations. Even though he could easily look then up in his head, it was 'pleasing to experience and learn about it the way humans did' was what the android said. Looking at the other's face, the slight uptick to the corner of his mouth and scant widening of his eyes, Gavin could tell this episode about stuffed animals was one his partner was getting pretty into.

With the cats curled around them, How It's Made playing in front of them, and each other by their sides, Gavin was pretty sure that neither he nor Nines wanted to move.

But, damn, when they got that call from the hospital, they sure did hightail it the hell out of there. One wide-eyed look was exchanged, and they moved so fast that they had barely remembered to shut the door behind them so that cats wouldn't get out.

"Connor," they watched as Nines ran, yes ran, into the room and gathered the leaner android to hug to his chest, "Eights, I am so relieved that you are alright." The breathless quality of his voice pulled something uncomfortable in Gavin's chest. It was as if all the stress of the night combined with the relief of seeing the tinman puppy had stolen the energy from the military-grade RK.

After tapping Nines on the arm repeatedly to get him to let go—could androids be smothered to death by hugs?—Connor gave a grateful smile. "I apologize for scaring all of you, it was not my intention. Thank you for—"

"—But if you ever make me worry like that again, I am going to shoot you myself. Do not tempt me to fall into my original programming."

One murder 'droid, one injured puppy bot, one busted up old man, and one exhausted detective who wanted to cuddle up with his cats and go the fuck to sleep.

God, Gavin wasn't paid enough for this shit, but he was glad everyone was okay.

The next day, when Nines and Connor were grabbing thirium from the breakroom, Gavin and Hank watched them from their desks.

"He's like a monster dog, I swear to God. Ready to vacuum up snacks when he's peckish, and ready to devour a person when he's mad. The fuck?"

"Connor's worse. Have you seen those shadows of his? He's like an emotional octopus with extra eyes."

Published: 4/28/19

(1) Gavin may be (less of) an asshole, but he's an asshole with priorities. He's been working on his hatred and racism over androids since canon, but even before, he drank his Respect Women Juice, ate those People of Color Deserve Respect Cookies, and sipped on that Queer Rights Tea.

A/N: OOF! What a chapter, huh! I just finished my spring semester, so I was very excited to work on this and get this chapter published today! I did have to rewrite a few different parts because I didn't Nines and Gavin's friendship to appear too rushed. Additionally, I also am leaving the bigger developments between Nines and Connor to future fics in this series so that I can focus on them specifically.

A/N 2: popcornpowergoddess made me a wonderful fanart of Nines and Connor! Because FF is dumb and doesn't allow for linking stuff, just go on their tumblr (popcornpowergoddess) and look up the #otherworldly au tag. It's so adorable and it made me scream of happiness when I saw it! :D

A/N 3: Thank you to queen-of-hell666 who left a review for the last chapter!