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“You really didn’t need to come along,” Gavin sighed. “I didn’t need help moving in here. I sure as hell don’t need help moving out.”
The truth of the matter was that he probably didn’t. The safehouse was small in accordance with Gavin’s cover. A simple one bedroom apartment with a small living area, a tiny kitchen, and a bathroom that looked about as lackluster as Gavin had made him think during their drive over here. The operation and bust had only just concluded at the nightclub. Gavin hadn’t wanted to stay another night now that the need to maintain a cover was no longer present. He wanted to sleep in his own bed tonight, he’d say.
And Nines… Nines just wanted to be wherever Gavin was, too afraid to admit to the man that he wanted the same.
Getting in that direction though was proving more difficult than it had been when they were in the club with Gavin perched on his lap like a particularly ardent housecat. Gavin grumbled under his breath as he roughly shoved things into a battered looking suitcase. He hadn’t brought much with him to this safehouse. The operation hadn’t been meant to last long, perhaps just a couple of months, but Gavin had packed as if it were a weekend trip regardless. He upended a dresser drawer directly into his bag, then tamped it down with his hand until the messy pile laid as flat as it could while looking a certified mess. The drawer went back into the dresser, and then it was onto the next.
Nines stood motionless in the center of the room, too rigid to offer the help he’d been so willing to give as Cody, the club owner, was marched into a waiting police car in shackles. Of course, Gavin had been in his club attire then. He wasn’t now. It made it harder, that. Harder to speak up, to touch him, when he looked so much like the Gavin he’d see at work. The Gavin who before this mission had never showed any sign of wanting Nines to look at him let alone touch him.
It made things… unwelcomingly difficult. Nines wasn’t sure how to proceed. Clearly something was between them. He hadn’t stopped replaying their last parting since it had happened; Gavin’s soft mouth, those teasing eyes, the near taunt of “I’ll make sure the next ones are free.” Nines shifted his weight in accordance with his core programming; if he stood too still for too long it would only draw attention to him.
“Hand me that,” Gavin ordered suddenly. Nines snapped back to awareness. In the midst of scooping all of his toiletries into a bag, a small jar had escaped the pile to roll near Nines’s foot. Gavin held his hand outstretched. Nines knelt down quickly, unwilling to keep him waiting.
He picked up the jar and couldn’t keep himself from reading the label. His processors stuttered. “Is this—?”
“Yeah, yeah, give me that,” Gavin muttered, snatching the jar of edible body glitter from Nines’s hand. The tips of his ears were tinged pink. “I needed it for work, so don’t fucking judge me.”
“I’m not,” he answered, completely truthful. “I’m merely confused. Why are you keeping it? The operation is done.”
Gavin snorted and tossed the jar into the suitcase next. He settled onto his haunches and gave Nines a wry look. “‘Cause that shit is expensive. Doesn’t matter if I’m not gonna be stripping for the public again. I paid twelve bucks plus shipping for that shit and I’m not pitching it any time soon.” At the mention of the cost, Gavin’s eyes widened suddenly. “Fuck, that reminds me,” he muttered, hoisting himself onto his feet.
Gavin unzipped his jeans and began to tug them down his thighs. Nines’s LED flashed an alarming red, bright enough to cast a glow on the far wall. “What are you doing, Detective Reed?” he tried to ask, but Gavin just held up a hand while the other scrambled at something on his thigh. It was then that Nines realized that Gavin hadn’t truly changed out of his club clothing following the bust. He’d simply thrown on his t-shirt and jeans overtop and left with them still on.
The sound of velcro ripping free tore through the room. Gavin dipped his hand into his thigh pouch and pulled out a thick wad of cash. Nines stared as he counted it, then put three large hundred dollar bills into the mess of his suitcase. The rest he held out to Nines. “Here,” he said impatiently. “Have it back.”
It only took a quick analysis to count out the exact number of bills he’d spent on Gavin over the course of the operation. Roughly three thousand dollars.
“You aren’t going to keep it?” he asked blankly, making no move to take the cash from him.
Gavin snorted. He jerked his head towards the three hundred he’d put in his case. “It’s your fucking money. I’m keeping the shit Anderson gave you though. I fuckin’ worked for that and I doubt he’d want it back anyway after where it’s been.”
There were several leaps in logic present in that statement that Nines felt tempted to point out. The money belonged to the DPD firstly, and Gavin had already received a salary from them. He may have been working at the strip club for the case, but that didn’t necessarily mean the money he’d received while stripping and dancing belonged to him. And even if it did, then why wouldn’t he keep Nines’s money? He’d paid him for a service.
Before Nines could air any of this, Gavin made another bid to shove the handful of bills at Nines. “Here, come on. I don’t have all night.”
Nines looked at the money, then back at Gavin. For perhaps a quarter of a second he also looked at the teasing line of flesh visible now that Gavin’s jeans were jerked down around his thighs. He was wearing the same pair of panties he’d been in when the order had come to bust into the club. Frilled black cut through with bands of red like crushed velvet.
“I don’t want it back.” He blinked and leaned away from Gavin’s hand. “You keep it.”
Gavin stared at him, the words taking a minute to register. When they did, he scoffed and took a step closer to Nines, nearly boxing him in with the bed at his back. “I’m not keeping it,” he said evenly. “It’s your money. Take it. Now.”
Nines shook his head. He wanted Gavin to have it. His services were worth that much, easily.
“Just take the fucking money, Nines.” Gavin gripped Nines’s hand and wrapped his fingers around the wad of bills. “So I can make good on my promise from earlier already.”
The world had a tendency to go still when Nines—or any android for that matter—encountered situations that deserved further analysis before an action could be chosen in response. Gavin’s words echoed in his ears. His smile was unambiguous, and the elevated heart rate, increased sweat production, and the dilation of Gavin’s pupils merely cemented the fact that yes. Yes, this really was happening. Perhaps half a second had passed before the realization hit Nines between the eyes. This was happening. It was happening now.
Time resumed movement. Nines wrapped his fingers around the bills and pulled them free from Gavin’s hand. Gavin’s grin widened. He brought his hands to Nines’s chest and pushed.
Nines fell backwards onto the unmade bed. He could have caught himself. Probably. He didn’t though. He let Gavin push him down and he certainly didn’t fight it went Gavin crawled up after him, straddling his legs in a now familiar position.
Nines struggled to keep up with the discrepancy of doing something like this here and not in the loud, low-lit club. He could see Gavin perfectly here. Hear him perfectly. Gavin’s hands settled on his chest. They slid down, down, down until they rested on Nines’s waist. “Did you think I forgot?” Gavin whispered, voice loud and intimate in the quiet of the room.
Nines wasn’t sure what he thought. He’d probably been too frazzled and uncertain to dare think too hard on any of it. He managed a shrug because Gavin wanted an answer. He dropped the money onto the floor—the money could wait until after for further discussion on the logic of returning it—and then put his hands on Gavin’s thighs. He missed the feeling of his bare skin. The denim jeans he wore were loose and tugged down but it didn’t make up for the miles of leg Nines was used to having available to touch.
“I hadn’t wanted to presume,” he said after a too-long pause. “You’ve only just finished your mission. It’d be irresponsible and assumptive of me to expect—”
Gavin tossed his shirt behind him and raised a brow. Vestiges of the glitter sprinkled his tanned skin like constellations strewn haphazardly along a sky that didn’t need adornments to be entrancing on its own.
“Shut up and let me,” Gavin murmured, rocking his hips in a familiar rhythm. “And this time? Nines?”
“Yes?”
Gavin grinned against his ear. “Feel free to touch wherever you want.”
There was no music to fill the rushing silence rolling past Nines’s ears. There was no pervasive beat to guide Gavin’s hips, hands, and gyrations. Nines had thought those dances in the club had been intimate, erotic. They had nothing on this now, on receiving one in the silence of a quiet room, on a bed that wasn’t his but still smelled like Gavin through and through. He tightened his fingers around fistfuls of loose denim. Gavin let out a sigh. He rose onto his knees, and without saying a word, helped Nines strip him of the jeans completely.
They fell to the floor in a quiet heap. Gavin sat astride Nines’s hips, breathing hard in a way that didn’t correlate with his exertions so far. His eyes were dark, his lips flushed preemptively. He tipped forward and wrapped his arms around Nines’s neck. “Can’t believe you like this so much,” he muttered, dragging the firm length of his body up, up, up against Nines’s chest until they were touching from pelvis to collar bone. “Fuckin’ pervert bot. Can you even get hard?”
Nines nodded. It was a protocol he’d never tested before, but he was aware of the capability latent to his programming. He turned it on without needing to be asked, and Gavin reacted quickly, hissing as Nines’s firming length filled out beneath his own to provide another source of stimulation. Gavin shivered and pulled away. Nines protested it, gripped him harder at the hips, but Gavin just snorted and slapped at his shoulder a bit, freeing up enough space between them so he could look down at Nines’s crotch.
The fabric of his trousers were tented. Gavin’s eyes grew wide at the sight.
“How fucking big did they make you?”
Nines shifted, suddenly nervous. Gavin lowered a hand to his crotch to palm him through his pants, and then unzipped the front to pull him out into the open. “I was designed with—”
“Oh, Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Gavin wheezed, wrapping his hand around Nines’s cock. It sent a jarring jolt of stimulation through Nines, sharp enough to stop him from speaking. Gavin let out a weak laugh, pumping his hand while his other went for the waistband of his panties. He tugged them down, freeing his own cock. He pressed it against Nines’s without pause. Gavin was thicker but only just. Nines’s was much, much longer.
Gavin kept moving his hand. He pitched forward and yanked at Nines’s hair, rocking against him as if still dancing when it was clear they’d moved far past the veneer of control. His skin glistened with sweat, and Nines trembled with the urge to… to do something. To touch, to move. His eyes scanned Gavin’s increased respiration, taking notes on his arousal and everything that came with it. Beautiful. It was so beautiful.
Nines let himself give in to an urge he’d been holding in for weeks now. He dipped his head forward, encouraged by the hand quickly tangling itself in the back of his hair. Soft, burning skin met his tongue. A burst of sensory information flooded his processors. Salt, soap, residual glitter, residual oil. Beneath it all sat the chemical makeup of Gavin himself, all bundled together in an enticing mesh of visual and textural markers that Nines neatly labeled inside his memory units as Gavin Reed’s neck.
“Your tongue feels weird,” Gavin murmured, wiggling a little in Nines’s lap. “Textured.”
Nines bobbed his head. He couldn’t bring himself to pull away enough to give him the technical explanation why he had a textured tongue. He didn’t think Gavin was all that interested in hearing it anyway. He licked at him again, sucking with his lips and nibbling with his teeth to pull the full range of reactions and sensations from Gavin before he moved lower. The flesh at his lips heated up with every nip he gave. He was so curious. Would it react the same way if he took his mouth elsewhere? If he centered his attention on Gavin’s nipple next or perhaps his navel, what would he do?
The urge to know for certain was too strong to resist, so Nines didn’t try to resist it at all. He tightened his hands on Gavin’s hips and in an easily executable move, rolled them over to lay Gavin out on the sheets. Gavin lost his grip on their cocks, too startled by the sudden shift, and barely managed to swear before Nines gave in to every single urge that had been haunting him from the moment he realized he had this sort of physical directive guiding him forward.
Gavin groaned when Nines closed his lips around his nipple. His heart stuttered and leapt when he bit gently down his chest, licking the sweat from his skin, sucking faint marks to show what path he had taken so he’d always find his way back up to Gavin’s parted lips. Nines shifted and panted, processors whirling like angry dervishes as he ignored warnings and imperatives to run his tongue along the shaft of Gavin’s burning length.
“Oh, oh fuck.” Gavin tossed his head back and grabbed handfuls of Nines’s hair, his thighs coming up to squeeze his head tight. “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, babe, please.”
Nines wasn’t sure what he was doing. His vision was overlaid with dozens of readings, monitoring the environment, Gavin’s biometrics, the own alarming heat coming off his own internal sensors. Nines rolled his hips into the bed beneath him. It felt good. It felt good to rut, to suck, to wrap his lips around Gavin’s cock and taste him from the tip to the base. Analysis fluid flooded his oral cavity. It ran down Gavin’s cock in thick strands, matting the hair of his legs and groin. More, more, he needed to taste him more—
“Stop, stop, stop,” Gavin hissed in one steady, rushed stream of breath. He pushed and shoved, knotting his fingers in Nines’s hair to yank him away from his cock. His breathing was labored, his face positively flushed. Nines pulled off quickly, a bit worried he had done something wrong. He hadn’t used too much force, had he?
“Are you alright?” he asked quickly, letting Gavin keep hold of his head. He was growing to like the feeling of Gavin’s strong fingers knotted in his hair, yanking him here, pulling him there. It didn’t hurt the way it might a human. It was a constant sort of pressure. Grounding in a way when surrounded by so much foreign stimulus.
Gavin nodded his head and bared his teeth, flopping back down onto the bed. “Fucking alright,” he muttered, his thighs spreading wider as his flushed cock twitched as if in search of Nines’s wayward mouth. “You try to suck the soul out of me through my dick and you ask me if I’m alright?”
Nines paused. “Are you?”
“Yes,” Gavin groaned, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. “Yes, I’m fucking alright. God, you’re a fucking nightmare.”
Confusion set in just as it always did when Gavin said something at odds with the body language he projected so loudly. Nines looked him up and down, cupping Gavin’s hard cock and tracing the vein on the underside of it with the pad of his thumb. Gavin was flushed a bright red, the color bleeding down his neck and splotching his shoulders in patches that didn’t seem to have much rhyme or reason to them. His chest heaved, his nipples hard and peaked. Nines could see the trace amounts of analysis fluid speckling his skin in regular intervals. He’d drawn an invisible line down Gavin’s body. He chased it with his lips, content to feel this proximity, this warmth, for as long as Gavin would allow him to have it.
“You’re like a dog, you know that?”
Nines glanced up. Gavin’s blush had centralized on his cheeks, riding the lines of his cheekbones and cresting over the bridge of his scarred nose. Nines whimpered at the sight and moved closer, sighing when he felt the heat of Gavin wash over his lips as he kissed his cheeks and lips. Gavin put up with it for a few minutes before turning away, breathing a bit heavier. “Fuckin’ licky dog.”
“Do you hate it?” Nines asked quietly, lost enough as it was. Instinct wasn’t something that came naturally to an android. He was trying. He was trying so hard to make this good.
Gavin sighed and shook his head. He placed a hand on Nines’s shoulder, pushing him back. For a moment Nines worried they were going to stop— but then Gavin kept pushing, sitting up and directing Nines to lay down where he was just resting. Nines went willingly, and then watched as Gavin stood up at the side of the bed to strip the panties from his legs. He dropped them into the suitcase, naked, and dug his hand through his bag of toiletries until he found a nondescript bottle that Nines quickly analyzed. His processors stuttered. It was lubrication.
The bed creaked loudly in the silence that followed Gavin crawling back onto the bed. Nines was still hard, almost frustratingly so. He waited patiently and sighed as Gavin straddled his thighs. His favorite perch, Nines’s mind supplied self-indulgently. It felt infinitely better with Gavin bare and naked, with Nines’s own trousers jerked down to mid-thigh and their skin flush against one another.
“You’re so fucking big,” Gavin muttered, flicking the cap off the bottle to begin coating his fingers. He was glaring mutinously at Nines’s cock. “Why did they make you so big? Did some designer have a kink?”
“I… picked this out myself,” Nines said quietly, feeling thirium rush to his cheeks in efforts to cool his overheated synapses. Gavin was gaping now. “I thought it was in proportion. I’ve never… used it before, so I was unaware it wasn’t the proper choice.”
The cold shock of room temperature lubrication on his heated cock had Nines jumping. Gavin poured a purely excessive amount down the length of him before recapping the bottle and tossing it to the floor. “You are unbelievable,” Gavin said cryptically. He rose up on his knees and began to prod at his entrance with one slicked hand while the other stroked Nines up and down, evenly coating his cock with the oil.
Nines felt largely useless at this given moment. Gavin seemed entirely comfortable doing the necessary preparation work on his own, his knees lifting and his hips working as his fingers disappeared inside himself. Excess lubrication ran down the trembling slope of his inner thighs. It flecked against Nines, warmed by Gavin’s overheated body.
Through it all, Gavin didn’t once look away from Nines’s face. His mouth hung open, his eyes dazed and dark with arousal. But still he looked, because Gavin wasn’t one to ever let his guard down, even like this. He leaned forward and rested the weight of an elbow on Nines’s sternum.
“You fuckin’ like watching me like this?” he asked, voice dragging across Nines’s auditory sensors like steel wool wrapped in satin. “Bet you do. Bet you fuckin’ love this.”
“Gavin,” Nines answered weakly, so lost already. He curled his fingers tighter around Gavin’s thighs. He wanted to touch, to taste. Gavin still sat so thickly along his tongue, the vestiges of his arousal painting sharp lines of code through every inch of him as he fought to keep the taste in his mouth.
Gavin let out a musical laugh that bit into a groan as his fingers finally managed to find whatever it was they were searching for. His body arched, tightened, and then sagged as he finally pulled them free. They glistened wetly. Nines grabbed him by the wrist, dragging them into his mouth, the temptation too strong to refuse.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Nines,” Gavin wheezed. He complained more, called Nines some names. Nines didn’t hear much of it. He was too busy losing himself to the taste, the knowledge that he was tasting Gavin everywhere, in as many was as he could possibly manage. He rolled his tongue along every finger, then let his lips trail down Gavin’s wrist as the man pulled his hand away. Nines’s head rolled heavily on his shoulder.
“You look so fucking drunk. Drunk on me.” A weak, breathless laugh. Gavin rose onto his knees and gripped Nines by the cock, lining him up with his entrance. “Wait ‘til you get a load of this, baby,” he whispered, pressing kisses to Nines’s cheek. “You’re gonna love it.”
It felt… It just felt. Nines couldn’t describe it. He certainly couldn’t waste precious processing space trying. Gavin sank down on him with a loud, ragged laugh that was more loosely-contained-howl than something he’d ever make in public. Nines floundered, twitched, and shook. He seized Gavin’s hips tight and struggled to make sense of what he was feeling, but, failing that, just tried to keep aware. Gavin couldn’t seem to stop himself from shifting and shuffling, rolling his hips forward and clenching down as he acclimated himself to the girth of the length firmly buried inside him. He was taking it well compared to how most humans probably would if they found themselves in a similar position.
Nines, on the other hand, couldn’t say the same. He’d never experienced something like this before, this… burning, overwhelming heat. The pressure was intense, only beaten out by the flood of sensors information rolling over him at every possible angle. He could feel Gavin’s heartbeat, measure his blood pressure, and feel his internal temperature all at once.
And it was wet. So wet. Nines shuddered as he began to leak, adding additional lubricant that rolled down his length, coating his pelvis and Gavin’s ass as he bottomed out.
“Fuck, it’s been awhile,” Gavin groaned, dragging his hand up his own chest to roll at his own nipples. It elicited a new wave of heat through Nines’s systems. He sucked in a large breath to counterbalance it, systems struggling to avoid overheating. Gavin glanced down at him. His brow furrowed. “You still with me, tin can?”
A sound emerged from Nines’s general form. He had his lips cracked but he had a feeling that the entirety of his being was responding at once. A crackle, a static-charged whimper. Gavin looked confused, then he just grinned. He leaned forward, Nines’s cock dragging out of him until just the tip remained inside.
“Is that so?” Gavin whispered, pressing a sweet kiss to his cheek before sheathing Nines back inside faster than even Nines could process. A wet, lewd squelch followed the movement. It rang in Nines’s ears like a gunshot. Then, it got louder.
Gavin rode him the way he danced, which was to say he did it completely under his own terms and with Nines entirely at his mercy. He rocked his hips, swiveled and clenched. More and more lubricant leaked down his thighs. The strong line of his throat filled Nines’s vision as he threw back his head to groan at the ceiling. “Oh, fuck, fuck, right there,” he kept groaning, mindless pleas bubbling up that Nines knew he should listen to, obey, but hadn’t the foggiest idea how to go about doing it. Every time he tried to access some additional protocols or query a search through a database, Gavin was bucking down on him, stealing the thought before it could gain traction.
Nines was one of the most high-end androids ever created. It was probably a huge oversight to learn his processing capabilities were stymied so easily by the efforts of one incredibly ambitious human detective.
His eyes widened when Gavin pitched forward, bracketing his head with his arms. More pressure, a shift in angle. Nines’s vision went white, then slammed back to him with the clenching of Gavin’s internal muscles. His hips never stopped moving, even when Gavin grinned down at him and crushed their mouths together. A free kiss, Nines’s mind supplied unhelpfully as he was once again flooded with the taste of Gavin across his palate. One of many. He pried a hand off of Gavin’s no doubt bruised hip to cup the back of his skull tenderly, holding him there. It felt so nice to be able to touch him like this. He had to think Gavin thought so too.
“Mmm, Nines,” Gavin whispered hoarsely, his sweaty forehead pressed against Nines’s cheek. He mouthed at his chin, the edge of his jawbone. His hard, wet cock rubbed insistently against Nines’s abdomen. “God, baby. You feel so good inside me. Do you feel good? You like it?”
Nines wasn’t sure if he could speak. If he tried, he had a feeling all he’d be able to produce would be another burst of static. He settled on nodding, on turning into Gavin’s tender kisses. He ran his tongue along the seam of Gavin’s lips, whining in the back of his throat when Gavin just smiled and refused to part them for something deeper.
He was soothed with a quick peck to the corner of his eye. Gavin’s stubble scraped against his skin, eliciting a shiver. But then Gavin was sitting back up, leaving Nines against the bed alone. “Good,” Gavin said, drawing his hands up his own body, fondling and rubbing and dragging lines of red along the paths his fingernails took. “’Cause I’m not gonna stop until I get you to scream.”
There wasn’t time enough to ask what he meant by that, even if Nines felt himself capable of speech at a time like this. Gavin made sure of that. He grinned like a demon and braced his hands on Nines’s crooked knees, lifting himself and then dropping down with every inch of force gravity allowed him access to. The pace was fevered, disjointed. Nines kept leaking, kept pumping Gavin full of lubrication they didn’t need. It dripped from Gavin’s ass and dampened the sheets, causing Gavin’s knees to slip and slide, adding another note of unpredictability to his movements. Purely organic in a way that defied Nines’s attempts to map it and prepare for it. Every time he thought he had it down, Gavin stuttered or clenched around him; a constant assault on his systems was ushering in an approaching climax. Nines just tried to buck upwards, desperate to take Gavin over the edge with him.
“You like that? I just—” Gavin groaned, grinding down in a way that sent his body shaking. “Oh, I just fucking bet you love this. You gonna come? You gonna come in me? Fucking do it. Do it, I fuckin’ dare you. Do it, Nines. Do it, do it, do it, do—Oh fuck!”
Nines might have screamed. He might have soft rebooted too for all he knew. It was impossible to know and it wasn’t likely that he’d ask Gavin after the fact. His limbs locked up and his cpu screamed at him, filling his vision with warnings and alarms. Gavin shook to pieces in his lap, and then everything was silent—blissfully silent, black, and perfect.
But then reality washed back in like a lifted fog. Nines saw but didn’t process. He saw Gavin stutter and swear, his jaw dropping as his own orgasm stole over him in a wave strong enough to knock him flat onto Nines’s chest. The release coated them both, hot and sticky. Nines blinked, systems struggling to rekindle. He wanted to taste it before it dried. He wanted to know what it tasted like when Gavin lost all control.
But he couldn’t. His limbs weren’t his own and he had a passing feeling that they wouldn’t be for awhile yet. Gavin was a limp puddle of flesh and satisfaction in his arms. Scratchy, stubbly kisses scraped at his jaw and neck. Nines hummed, another wave of processors waking up in response. He turned his head into the affection. He kissed Gavin back as much as he could.
“Mmm,” Gavin hummed, purring like a content cat. His voice sounded so deep and rough. He’d shouted himself raw. “Mmm, fuck. That was good. That was fucking great. You turned my insides into a slip ‘n slide, you disgusting fucking jizzpot. Was it that good for you?”
“It was… amazing,” Nines answered, finally finding his voice through the static thick in his vocalization components. He utilized a bit of his processing power to calibrate the sensors, his form of a throat clearing. When he spoke again, the words were much clearer. “You were amazing, Dete—Gavin.”
Gavin grinned lazily at the near slip. “Damn straight. I’m a fucking delight,” he grumbled, grunting a bit as he pulled off of Nines’s flaccid cock. He winced and flopped down at Nines’s side, wrinkling his nose as lube poured down his thighs in a steady trickle. “God, you’re so fucking big. Might as well just stay here for the night after you fucked me lame.”
A measure of guilt passed over Nines at that. He knew how eager Gavin was to return to his home, to his regular life. “I’d be happy to assist you in returning to your home, Gavin,” he offered, wincing once more when he realized he’d in affect just invited himself over. Presumptuous. Not good. “Or call you a cab,” he tried next, backpedaling. “I could call you a cab right now.”
Gavin cracked open an eye, his frown contemplative as it stretched the scar taut over his nose. “You could, couldn’t you,” he mumbled, closing his eyes once more. “You fuck me lame and try to call me a cab after. They should make break up songs about you.”
“I… don’t know what that means,” Nines said truthfully.
“It means you should shut up for a bit.” Gavin threw an arm over Nines’s chest, shifting closer to rest his head on his shoulder next. With every breath he took, warm eddies of air lit up Nines’s sensors as easily as a physical touch might. “I want a nap. Then, I want to go home.”
Rejection was… bitter. Very bitter. Unpleasant. Nines didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit.
“So…”
Nines blinked back to awareness. He glanced at Gavin who had rolled onto his shoulder while Nines spiraled. He was staring steadfastly at the chipped, dingy ceiling, fingers tapping out a broken rhythm on the hard plane of Nines’s thirium pump. Belatedly he realized it was in time to the pumping. Nines swallowed and asked, “Yes, Gavin?”
Gavin’s lips tightened. He took in a breath, then let it out. “Wanna come back to my place?” he asked the way one might rip off a bandaid. All at once to spare a lingering pain. “Like. My real place. Not this shithole.”
Oh.
Oh.
Warmth filled Nines. Filled him to the brim. He half worried he might be in danger of overheating, but no… No, he supposed this was what true happiness felt like. Warm. A little bit frightening.
“Yes,” he said anyway, burying his face in Gavin’s shoulder. He reached out with his fingers and touched them to Gavin’s jaw. The stubble tickled the sensors there, and when Gavin smiled, he felt the muscles at work beneath the skin. He felt the expression take form. Because of him. “Yes, I’d like that very much.”
Gavin let out a laugh of a sigh. “Good,” he said, flopping back down onto the sheets. “You’re driving. And carrying the shit inside. Maybe me too. We’ll see.”
“Of course, Gavin,” Nines smiled. “Whatever you say.”