#adishailan

The drug in question, Gavin was pretty sure, was some kind of tranquilliser. What kind, he didn’t know. Mainly because he’d been fucking tranquillised and it was hard to even see straight right now. He was just pleased that he’d even figured out it was a tranquilliser. Although, to be fair, it was pretty easy to figure out.

Normal, non-tranquilised Gavin would never have been so calm to wake up handcuffed to a radiator. He even fucking smiled at the nut-job staring down at him, having not quite clued together the level of shit he was currently in. All Gavin had known, in that first dizzying moment of vague lucidity, was that someone was smiling at him and it would be rude not to smile back.

It took him all of ten seconds to realise that something was wrong. That, hey, why was he in handcuffs? And, oh also, why was he bleeding a lot? Then the fact that he was still smiling for some godforsaken reason finally sunk in.

He opened his cracked, parched mouth and, even in his relatively mellow and blitzed out state, managed to get a good number of swears out.

“Yooou phck a cunt cock suck- sucking mother fucker fucknugget.”

It wasn’t his best but it did the job and got his head roughly ploughed into the side of the radiator.

So yeah, here Gavin was, (not-so)freshly woken up once more but this time by a splitting a headache and a bad leg cramp. God knows how much time had passed with him chained up to a rusted old scrap of frustratingly unbreakable pluming, sporting a painful wrist, a bloodied up nose and what was most likely a concussion. All this, on top of a case of mild dehydration and the left over drugs churning through his system, made for quite an unhappy Gavin.

Ugh. His head. It felt like someone had cracked it open and slapped in a lump of cement where his brain should be. He needed coffee. Something full of sugar, maybe caramel syrup, or one of those weird over sugared Christmas mixes that Tina always brought in. Blinking blearily, Gavin glanced around the bare, piss stained room he’d been locked up in. All there was to be seen was an old, rusted bed frame leaned up against the furthest wall, a dilapidated white door with splinters sticking out of it’s splinters, and a lot of stains on the what-was-probably-once-white, threadbare carpet. Yeah, chances were, he wasn’t going to get that cup of coffee any time soon.

God. This was just his luck wasn’t it? What was worse was that Gavin had been uncharacteristically idiotic on this case and forgot to leave a note with Tina.

She was going to kill him. They had a system going and everything. When he couldn’t get her to be his back ups on arrests, he was supposed to leave a quick post it note with address, time and whether Gavin managed to blackmail someone into being his backup or not... Or at least a text saying telling her to look after his cats if he died.

But no. Gavin just had to forget the one goddamn motherfucking time the perp got the drop on him and jabbed a damn needle in his neck. Did anyone know where he was? Would anyone even bother looking? Tina would try but hell if anyone else would spend more than five minutes on his case before gleefully giving him up for dead. He hoped Tina would rip them a new asshole but she’d probably be too nice for that. She’d just go off and look for Gavin herself, if he was missing too long. Good old Tina.

Wonder if she’s started looking yet.

Gavin blearily blinked up at the cracked, damp-stained ceiling, shifting his head slightly and ignoring the odd grating feeling humming from the base of his throat. There was a window in the room that nutjob had locked him in. He stared at it for a few minutes before he realised his eyes were hurting and looked away. That meant it was day, right? If his eyes were hurting, that must be the case. He looked back, only briefly this time. Yeah. It was light, so it was day.

It had been early in the evening when he turned up at Johnny Rudd’s house, badge, cuffs and gun in hand, ready to arrest himself a red ice dealer. So that meant it had definitely been at least twelve hours since he got knocked out…

I should’ve waited for Tina.

Gavin dully considered that depressing thought for a grand total of four seconds before deciding: fuck that thought. It wasn’t going to tell him what to do! He wasn’t going to sit here and mope like a dog at the vets. Gavin was more of a cat person. He was gonna hiss and spit and claw any motherfucker who came at him with a needle like his life depended on it.

But first…

Gavin took in a deep breath and forced himself up onto his knees, hissing through his teeth as his chest flared with pain. It didn’t feel like anything was broken but there was probably at least one sprained rib. He pushed past this, instead focusing on angling his body closer to the radiator, his hips pushing up against his bloodied hands. He ignored the strange way his left shoulder sagged forward and the jagged jolts of what felt like hot needles bursting out from his right arm. Just a bit closer, just a bit- there! Gavin grinned as he got his left hand into his pocket, only to scowl as he realised Nutjob Rudd had been smart enough to take his keys off him. All he had left were some cough sweets, a broken lighter and a lotta lint. He needed to wash his jeans better, he really did.

This was not the pressing issue right now though. No, the pressing issue right now was the fact that Gavin had nothing on him to break free, his gun was missing and-

*Clink*

-Someone was unlocking the door.  

A swell of deep seated nausea surged through Gavin as he did his best to twist around and face the door, feet pulled tightly into his body, ready to lash out and kick like a kangaroo. Not like one of the cute kangaroos you find on calendars and cards and all that shit, but like one of those freaky buff ones Gavin saw pictures of online. The ones that look like gym rats gone wrong, on the testosterone and steroid high of a lifetime. Yeah, Gavin was gonna kick himself some serious ankle.

The door opened and a blurry man-shape stepped neatly forward.

Gavin squinted, as if it would make a difference to his messed up vision. He probably looked completely deranged to whoever was there, sweating and grunting and glaring at them with with a cross-eyed squint to match the battiest of old crones.

“Whoz the?” He asked, tripping over his swollen tongue. He stopped, swallowed down his broken words and tried again, slower this time. “Who a your?”

Nailed it.

“Detective Reed, I’ve found you,” announced the blur.

Gavin contemplated that for a few seconds. ‘Detective Reed’? That sounded promising. He slowly unfolded himself from his lopsided attempt at a crouching tiger stance. The blur moved closer and turned into a man. A rather familiar man with grey eyes, a stupid, high collared white jacket and a blue LED.

“I know you!” Said Gavin, or, at least, that’s what he tried to say. It came out a bit more like: “Ayye noah ou!”

To be honest, Gavin really didn’t. Know him that is. He knew of him but they hadn’t really spoken before. RK900, or whatever he called himself, was rather infamous at the precinct. He’d been there a grand total of two months and by god did everyone hate him. Well, ‘hate’ may be a bit of an exaggeration. But most people disliked him, or were annoyed at the very least. By what Gavin had heard, RK900 was aloof and haughty. He tried to tell people how to do their jobs and had a nasty little habit of jumping in on other people’s cases whenever the smallest, flimsiest link could be made to one of his investigations. And he always got away with it.

Always.

Apparently even Connor wasn’t overly fond of the new tin can, generally avoiding his company, and the only other person that ‘bundle of sunshine’ disliked was Gavin himself. The bar was so low and RK900 had still managed to limbo under it.

Gavin, for once in his life, hadn’t really formed much of an opinion on the relatively new focus of the office gossip. For the last half year or so since all that android revolution shit, Gavin had been desperately trying to ignore every and any android he crossed paths with, in the hopes that it would all just go away like a bad dream… or at least in the hopes that Connor wouldn’t give him another concussion.

Gavin had taken one look at Connor-mark-two with his dead-grey eyes, broad hulking shoulders and dark frown, and decided that he liked his gorgeous head the way it was, thank you very much, and with no bloodied dents in it. Gavin had proceeded to ignore the first and only attempt at an introduction from the terminator, password lock all his files with outdated references and random numbers, and keep the hell away from both RK models as best he could. It worked well with the 900 android, who was often out on fieldwork, but didn’t always work out with Connor who was fucking everywhere Gavin looked. One minute he’d be cozying up to the detectives, the next he’d chatting with the receptionists or laughing with the officers. He was like some sort of social butterfly, but robotic and goofy looking.

If Connor was the android equivalent of a social butterfly, RK900 was the equivalent of a social slug. Occasionally, Gavin saw him, lurking by his desk and glaring into space like the air had wronged him somehow, but most often it was just the slimy trail of devastation and the juicy gossip he caught onto.

Gavin’s tangent of thoughts on butterflies and slugs suddenly broke as his blurred eyes registered the movements of said android, walking closer to him.

“You are heavily sedated,” stated the robot slug, kneeling in front of Gavin now and grabbing his head with both hands. Without warning, he sharply tilted it back.

This time Gavin’s words came out much clearer:

“Ow! Ow! Fuck off!”

The android ignored him.

“You have a sprain in your neck, a broken collarbone and rib, a fractured wrist, a grade two concussion and a split lip.”

“Shut up and get me the hell outta here, asshole,” was Gavin’s eloquent response to all this, except again it was too garbled and slurred to make much sense.

RK900 seemed to make some kind of sense from it though as he shook his head and answered: “It is a bad idea to move you with these fractures and breaks. I have called an ambulance. It should be here within approximately twenty-three minutes.”

Gavin huffed out a sharp, bitter laugh and rattled the cuffs against the radiator, somehow managing to stare down the android from below as he ignored the wave of burning, grating heat searing out from his right wrist.

This earned Gavin one of the most unimpressed looks he’d ever received. He met it, glare for glare, utterly unrepentant even as his whole body throbbed with pain induced nausea.

“Fine. I will break the handcuffs. Do your best to hold still.”

Gavin really didn’t like the guy’s tone but he still listened and braced himself. There was an ever so slight rise to RK900’s brow but otherwise his face was back to being as immobile and blank as ever. Perhaps he had been surprised, not expecting Gavin to concede so quickly, having mostly likely heard of Gavin’s famously bad attitude and penchant for disobedience.

His fingers dipped down around the left cuff first (which Gavin appreciated considering how messed up his other wrist was). He then proceeded to pull it apart like it was made of plastic and not solid fucking steel.

“R’mind me not t’get on yer bad side,” Gavin slurred out, grinning toothily as RK900 gave him a puzzled frown in return. The grin fell off his face quicker than a rain of bricks when the android reached for his right hand. Gavin didn’t move though. He just gritted his teeth and thought hard about the whistling sound of air escaping through them as he heaved out several quick and pained breaths.

“I told you we should have waited, detective,” said RK900 in a stupidly condescending tone. Gavin glared up at him, then looked away. Pain did a good job at bringing his mind back to the here and now, waking both him and his attitude from the surly depths of his sub-consciousness.

“Whatever plastic. How long’ve I been here?” He asked, shifting slightly and leaning more heavily against the radiator. Yep, he wasn’t moving any time soon.

“Twenty-two hours, thirty-six minutes and seventeen seconds,” RK900 informed him before bringing up a finger to Gavin’s split lip and lightly dabbing at the crusted blood there.

Gavin blinked at him, at the android still crouched before him, as he put the blood in his mouth.

“Whathfck?”

“You have a large volume of Benzodiazepine in your system. It is interesting that you are still mostly coherent. Still, you need to concentrate on staying awake, Detective Reed.”

Gavin didn’t say anything to that, he was still processing the fact that the android was apparently half-vampire.

“Don’ fuckin’ do that. S’not normal,” said Gavin, shaking his head and immediately regretting it.

When the black spots finally faded away from his vision, RK900 had taken a seat in front of him, LED yellow as he either processed something or started communicating with someone in his head. Fuck if Gavin knew which one. All he knew was: blue = good, yellow = thinking, and red = bad/get the fuck away.

“Sooo, less than twen’y-four hours, huh? Tina must’ve been, uh, desperate to call you in,” Gavin sneered. RK900’s dead eyes turned away from the ceiling and back to Gavin, the LED pulsing yellow for only one more second before cycling back to blue.

“You are mistaken, detective,” RK900 informed him, in a voice that would’ve been just like Connor’s if it had just that little bit more emotion in it. What kind of emotion, Gavin didn’t know, just something to make it more whiny and annoying. “Officer Chen did not request for my help.”

Gavin swallowed dryly and mulled this over. “… So why’re you here?”

“I noticed that yesterday you had compiled the evidence for your red ice investigation, ready to make an arrest, which you did not do. You are comparably faster than many of the other detectives so I decided to look into your location and ascertain what happened. I checked your apartment but you had not returned last night. I proceeded to explain this to Captain Fowler but he was reluctant to declare you missing. I had finished my other cases and nothing else to do so I decided to further investigate myself.”

Gavin’s wide-eyed gaze, which had only been growing wider and wider with every word RK900 spoke, suddenly shuttered and froze.

So he only decided to help Gavin because he was bored...

What a prick.

Still, Gavin didn’t leave much in the ways of clues about his whereabouts, what with his hushed up methods and mishmash of odd passwords. It was surprising how fast RK900 had found him. Perhaps his other coworkers would’ve taken much longer… if they even bothered to look at all. And by the time he was found (again if Tina managed to do the job or forced someone to help her), that nutjob might’ve come back and actually got up the courage to do him in.

Gavin owed the walking hunk of plastic. He owed him. Ugh, Gavin hated owing people stuff. It gave him a horrible feeling in his stomach, like indigestion, except worse because it involved emotionsTM. This, coupled with the fact he was pumped up with drugs and suffering a concussion, was why he was about to make a terrible, terrible mistake.

“‘Kay. Fine. Thanks or whatever. Lemme know if you ever need anythin’ prick.”

RK900’s LED went yellow at this, and this time Gavin was pretty sure he was doing the processing thing. It was still yellow even when he nodded in a serious way and said:

“That would be useful.”

Luckily (or perhaps unluckily) Gavin never had the chance to ask what the hell he meant by that, as, in that very moment, the door to the room burst open to allow in a crew of puffy-jacketed ambulance workers.

Perhaps if they had been a little less loud, and a little less boisterous about moving Gavin and sending his vision into showers of concussion induced stars, he would have noticed the way RK900 stared at him, standing up now, hands steady and still by his sides, considering mercury eyes intense and unblinking.