#zenvin

i like to think that connor, hank, gavin, and nines are all in the break room or something. shooting the breeze, slacking off, what have you. and gavin ‘foot-in-the-mouth’ reed makes some comment about pre-constructions and the ‘weird cyber mind-palace you’ve got going on’ to connor.

connor doesn’t rise to the bait and instead earnestly begins telling gavin about his previous handler and how he got her removed and changed to markus after the revolution to always keep him on the right track. and gavin goes ‘huh.’ and looks at nines for a second. asks him who his ‘handler’ is.

and connor. sweet, idiotic connor blurts out ‘you never told him it was him, little brother?’ hank puts his head in his hands, and nines’ led spins yellow, yellow, yellow.

nines just gets up and walks out the room. doesn’t confirm or deny – he doesn’t even protest or glare at his brother on the way out. he just walks for a while. and his processors must really be fried because gavin can never usually catch up to him when he’s like this (gavin of course citing nines’ ‘long ass fucking legs what the hell’ as the reason.) but here gavin is, trying to catch his breath as he always does, looking at him with wonderment in his eyes.

‘if you’ve come here to mock me,’ nines starts through gritted teeth, ‘then don’t bother. it’s not even true.’

and gavin isn’t a lot of things. he doesn’t always know the right words to say nor what the correct emotional response is to most situations he encounters. but he is a perceptive little fucker. and more than that, he’s head over heels in love with over six feet of pure stupid android, and he knows when his tin can is lying to him.

so instead he rises onto his toes, takes his dumb, beautiful partner’s face into his hands and forces him to look in his eyes. nines won’t at first, of course, but eventually he does.

like all natural things. the tide follows the moon, the sun falls below the horizon, and gavin’s eyes gravitate to nines.

and gavin murmurs ‘how long have you been in love with me,’ as if that’s fair. as if nines isn’t bombarded with his molten eyes and his strong arms and his open face. as if he could ever go against the laws of nature; the grass grows towards the sun and nines moves towards gavin.

nines’ led is red now. he can’t quite find the words and there’s nowhere to escape to anymore – now that the zen garden’s gone, that is. and it’s a strange thought but a small part of him misses the snarky angel in his so-called ‘mind-palace’. nothing compared to the real thing; he’d admit that in droves, but he missed the ease of communication. zen gavin never needed to hear his thoughts – a perk of being a part of him – but more importantly, nines never had to ask for affection from him. in his own head he had carte blanche to do whatever his thirium pump desired. that wasn’t as easy on solid ground.

so he misses his handler. but he has his living, breathing human in front of him. one that he cannot telepathically communicate with, but a man who is so heartbreakingly alive and willing to try to understand. 

and so nines settles on, ‘i couldn’t begin to tell you if i tried.’ and while he can lie to gavin, he doesn’t now. nines’ mind works differently to other androids, let alone humans. it’s less that nines discovered that he was in love with gavin, and more that he discovered love because of gavin.