Chapter Text
Considering everything that had happened over the past month or so, sitting alone wasn’t all that bad. In fact, Connor found it a perfectly adequate pastime. He did it quite often at Hank’s house when Hank was otherwise occupied—with work or sleeping or whatever men on the far side of fifty do—and had to leave Connor to his own devices.
Provided, this occasion was rather different.
“Come on, Connor. Do you really think—for one fucked up moment—that I’m going to leave your sorry ass by itself on Christmas?” Hank said as walked into the living room.
“Today is just like every other day to me, Hank. I do not mind spending it alone,” Connor replied.
The first true taste of isolation he’d gotten was at Jericho—humans regarding Connor as something less wasn’t an issue. More often than not, humans had some (rather illogical) reason to hate all androids. Equally.
But sitting there with the other androids, with Markus’ tenuous trust and the others’ distrust—that was the first time he had felt well and truly alone. Because he was with his people and they liked each other perfectly fine. Just not Connor.
So at the end of things, he was okay with being alone in this circumstance.
“Not under my watch you aren’t.” Hank walked over to Connor and roughly grabbed his arm. “Come on, let’s get you into one of Gran’s Christmas sweaters, they’re hideous—I’m sure you’ll love them to bits. We’re going to Tina’s Christmas party.”
Though Hank had initially shown displeasure at the idea of attending Tina’s Christmas party, Connor acquiesced and let Hank pull him to his closet where he spent the next couple of minutes browsing—four minutes and twenty-seven seconds to be exact but Hank was working on getting Connor to be a bit less ‘creepily accurate’ and more general.
That was how he’d ended up sitting alone once more, albeit at Tina’s Christmas party. One thing was for certain: it was a lot more entertaining than watching Sumo sleep, and on occasion, bark at his own farts. Despite that, he’d spent hours idly watching Sumo and trying to figure out the mathematics behind the spots—there was none as far as he could tell—and paying apt attention whenever the St. Bernard rolled over, huffed, or did anything really, such as the aforementioned barking at his own farts. Just like Hank, Sumo preferred to spend his days lazing in the sunniest spot he could find whilst eating only the most tantalising (read: all) morsels of food.
Not that watching people was all that different to watching Sumo. From his position on Tina’s gaudy red and white striped couch Connor watched intently as Gavin Reed and Chris Miller competed as to whom could burp the loudest and longest after chugging a glass of soda. Connor suspected that whatever they were drinking was spiked—willingly—with something alcoholic.
At that exact moment, right after letting out a game winning burp, Gavin made eye contact with Connor.
In reaction, Connor looked away from Gavin, turning his gaze to his neatly folded hands and tucking his legs closer to himself. Because leaving them where someone could trip, fall, and hurt themselves was silly. Really.
“Dipshit, what’re you doing here?”
It seemed that Gavin had taken it upon himself to initiate conversation with Connor—an unprecedented event that made sense when one took the fact that Gavin had been drinking into account. Since up until this point, Gavin had avoided Connor like he was the plague and most likely would not have approached him under any other circumstances.
“Hank said that I should come so that I wouldn’t be alone,” Connor answered Gavin honestly.
Gavin sat heavily next to Connor, prompting the couch’s old springs to squeak in protest. The other man draped himself over the back of the couch, looking more relaxed than Connor had ever seen him. Observing this moment gave Connor the oppurtunity to contrast it against Gavin’s general disposition and made him realise: Gavin was always as tense as a spring under pressure and just as ready to release. Additionally, it was almost nice to see Gavin in such a relaxed state as he stopped looking like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Something Connor understood well.
“Fat load of good that did. You’re sitting here alone—all by yourself—Hank really did help didn’t he? Bet you he’s probably up Fowler’s ass or something like that.”
“It’s impossible for Hank to be up Fowler’s—“
“Come on. You can’t be telling me that you don’t understand that. I know you know what I mean ‘cause you’ve understood Hank just fine so far. No way that now you suddenly can’t compute the shit I’m saying.”
Now would not be the best time to admit that he had been occupied with comparing Gavin at the Detroit Police Department to the Gavin that sat next to him. Or that he had more than enough processing power to do the same for every person present at Tina’s party and still have some to spare for calculating pi to the nth decimal—an embarrassing fact.
“While I have an extensive dictionary of many colloquialisms, it is sometimes a challenge to recognise one when I have not heard it before. It is an issue that I have noticed and am attempting to rectify.”
“But about the others?” Gavin asked. The drink he was holding—not the same one he’d had at the burping contest—sloshed around the glass and got precariously close to the rim. “I’ve seen the other androids in interviews and they use and understand that crap just fine.”
“My ability to understand and make use of colloquialisms is inferior to other androids. I was created with the intention of doing police work therefore being able to hold a superficially satisfying conversation was not an issue,” Connor admitted.
“Why not ask one of your android friends to help you out there then?”
There was one issue with that. He had no ‘android friends’ as Gavin had put it. He spent his time with humans and humans only. Jericho was out of the question—he was still notorious for being the Deviant Hunter that ‘always completed his mission’ and it was a label that would stick.
Apparently, there was a huge difference between androids that had no choice but to follow orders that were mostly peaceful and androids that had no choice but to follow orders that directly resulted in the death of three androids—one of which would have occurred even if he were not on the scene, and possibly others.
“They—” There was a chance that Gavin would not remember this come morning and Connor felt compelled to take advantage of being able to confess the things which bothered him for a reason which did not present itself—“They have come to the conclusion that trusting me is an irrational decision and thus take no interest in allowing me in their presence whatsoever.”
A few moments passed and Connor began to get worried—had he upset Gavin in some way? Gavin had asked a question, and though it had made Connor uncomfortable, he had answered truthfully.
When Gavin finally spoke it was nothing like the simulations Connor had started to ostensibly run. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Before Connor could reply and say that no, he was not kidding Gavin, the man continued.
“I’ve seen the shit that you’ve done. You risked your freshly deviated ass to go to Cyberlife Tower and turn—convert—whatever the fuck you did—a bunch of androids. And don’t get me started on how you threw that Traci case. It’s clear even if you’re drunker than Hank. Either way, they should be grateful, really fucking grateful, that you risked your plastic ass for their cause.”
“Thank you,” Connor said, stopping Gavin before he could continue. Which, in retrospect, did not work all that well.
“The fuck are you thanking me for? I’m just going on about how stupid you guys are—not like we’re much better. I mean there was that one time Tina dared me to do a doughnut with the DPD car in the parking lot of a Dunkin’... So yeah. I’m fucking sorry that you’re stuck by yourself on Tina’s shitty couch.”
“It isn’t as bad as you think, Gavin. Tonight has been a wonderful opportunity to study how humans act when inebriated. Furthermore, I don’t understand why you are apologising—you did not cause them to act like that and you were incapable of stopping them from doing so.”
Gavin’s hand lifted as if to whack him on the arm, Hank had done it before and called it a friendly punch, before he changed his mind and slung it over the back of the couch once more. “It’s a—I don’t know how to explain it but I can sympathise with you. No one should be treated like that by their own people.”
“Oh. I understand.”
A few minutes of silence passed between them. During which he spotted Hank with Jeffrey Fowler, as Gavin had predicted. They were sitting at a table near the center of everything and each of them were armed with a bottle of beer. Hank swung his around excitedly as he spoke and most likely relayed a story from his younger years when things weren’t as ‘royally fucked up’ as they once were. At least according to Hank. Connor had no data on the situation.
He also didn’t have data on what was happening at this moment. Next to him sat the one and only Gavin Reed. A man that had pegged him as nothing but a nuisance from day one and yet, here he was, giving Connor the time of day, apologising for things that were not even his fault.
Something niggled at Connor. Clearly Gavin had experienced something similar.
Looking back it was clear. Like with Connor, there was a divide between Gavin and the rest of the Detroit Police Department. Even his friends, Tina and Chris, tended to keep away from him during his shift and he swapped partners more than Hank swapped bottles of alcohol. In that moment it made sense in a morbid fashion.
“I’m also sorry, you know.”
Connor cocked his head to the side. “What for?”
“Everything I did in the DPD. The punching you, the calling you dipshit and meaning it—usually I don’t mean that sort of thing—the punching you again. All of that.”
“There is no need to apologise for that. Even though people don’t admit it, there’s a difference between a deviated android and one that isn’t.”
“So you didn’t know any better? That just makes it even worse,” Gavin said, his voice low and simmering angrily while his hand gripped his glass tightly.
“I disagree.”
Right now would be when Connor explained why he disagreed to Gavin, but no logical reason came to mind. There had to be something that wasn’t just ‘he was a machine’ because while it was true, he still had enough free will to go out of his way to aggravate Gavin when it could be easily avoided. However, there was something else—
“Though you were more aggressive with me, you did not treat me any different to how you would treat someone you dislike. For example, you also call Hank names and sometimes threaten him—though you do not go through with them,” Connor explained.
Scoffing, Gavin said, “Way to make a man feel good about himself. I mean really.”
“I’m merely stating facts. Like how you there is a higher percentage of redundancy within your speech when you’re drunk.”
“Yeah sure. Don’t think I didn’t notice you doing the same thing earlier on. You sounded like you’d been hit with a dictionary when you were on about how shitty people have been treating you. Fucking assholes.”
Which was true. Connor did have a tendency to rely more on his programming when under any form of stress. This resulted in him sounding a lot more robotic than he usually did—something that didn’t happen before he deviated and must have just evolved over the last few weeks.
“I guess so,” Connor replied and that was it for that particular line of conversation.
“Do you like cats?” Gavin asked, changing the topic suddenly and Connor was more than pleased with that.
“I guess so,” Connor reiterated. “I’ve never really been around cats, only dogs, so I have yet to formulate an opinion on the species.”
“Well I’ve always been around cats and I swear they’re even more asshole-ish than me, but I’m sure you’d like to meet the little shits I’ve got one day. Because I know you’re a dog person and all but you can’t really ‘formulate’ an opinion on dogs until you also know what cats are like.”
Leaning back on the couch, Gavin smirked and looked, for all intents and purposes, as if he belonged there. There where he was right next to Connor, keeping him from being alone—even if they didn’t like each other and there was still more tension between them than in a rubber band that was stretched past its limit and ready to snap.
And it was about time that the above occurred.
Smiling, Connor replied, “Meeting your cats would be wonderful! You have three of them, right?”