Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

John was positive that the O-course hadn’t been this wretchedly punishing two years ago.  And if Dorian had been there to goad him through it, he would have happily reminded John that it had been closer to three years since he’d logged an official time.

Damned know-it-all android.

Still, John had to smile through each panting breath as he shouldered his way into the locker room.  He hadn’t totally disgraced himself with today’s time.  Thanks to the new prosthetic leg Rudy had ordered and Dorian had presented to him.

“You’re not wearing your new leg today, John,” Dorian had observed with a faint frown when John had picked him up at Rudy’s lab two days ago.

John’s grin had won out against the vibrant, pulsating bruises on the side of his face.  Glen Dunbar hadn’t pulled his punches.  Hadn’t held back on the wallop with that two-by-four, either.  “Hey, buddy.  You just gave it to me last night.  It’s gotta charge up.”

“So you’ll wear it tomorrow,” Dorian had happily concluded, settling himself into the passenger seat of the cruiser.

John, baffled at Dorian’s enthusiasm, had eased into traffic before demanding, “You have a bet going behind my back or something?”

“What would I bet with, John?”

That had been a non-answer if ever John had heard one.  Evasion 101.

“I don’t know.  How about an enactment of Don Giovanni?”

“You’re an opera fan.”  He’d seemed shockingly surprised.

John had huffed a laugh.  “To watch you serenade the bullpen?  Yeah, I might be.”

Dorian had raised an eyebrow and glanced down at John’s right knee.

“Gimme a couple of days to get used to it around my place first.  Jeez.”  John had shaken his head.  “Awfully impatient, aren’t you?”

“I’ve never given anyone a gift before.  This is a unique experience for me, man.”

Well, hell.  “Then let me ease into, pal.  Don’t wanna bust it up on the first day because that twenty-percent increase in push-off power takes me by surprise.  You ever fallen face-first up a flight of stairs?  Not fun or heroically explainable,” John had pointed out with requisite gesturing.

Dorian had twitched, squinted, and smirked.  In that order.  “I’m sure any resulting skeletal irregularities will only add character.”

“Right, because that’s exactly what I need.  More character.”

“It might help you be less boring on your next date.”

“Hey.  Remember what I said about Guy Code?  Look it up, sunshine.”

Dorian had still been wearing a ridiculously indulgent smile as they’d pulled into precinct parking.  John had just climbed out when a Doppler-shifted “Coming through!” had sent him jerking backwards, jamming his elbow right into the upper corner of the open driver’s side door as a rookie who was still buttoning up the front of his uniform raced by.

It was a good thing the parking surveillance was limited to video.  Also, good on the city for not bothering to paint the walls because John’s litany of expletives would have stripped the concrete bare.

Although, anyone watching the camera feed would’ve been able to read each and every creatively conjugated four-letter word right off of John’s lips.  They also would have noticed that, rather than mocking John’s predicament with totally inappropriate amusement, Dorian had grabbed for his own elbow, disco lights dancing along his cheekbone, a stunned expression on his face.  Almost as if he’d felt John’s pain or something.

Wait.

Dorian had felt.

And he hadn’t said a word about it.

God damn it.

Up to his elbows inside his locker and blocking the view of passersby with his torso -- video calls and cameras were a no-go in the locker room -- John pulled up Rudy’s number and zipped off a text: Sympathy pains.

John then started yanking off his smelly, damp course uniform.  The flak jacket and under shirt landed on the nearest bench in a musty tangle and John felt the warmed metal of his Saint Michael pendant -- a gift from his father when John had graduated from the police academy -- slap against his chest.  He had the unwelcome feeling that he was going to need all the help he could get, perhaps even a little saintly intervention, when his phone chirped with an incoming message.

--Is Dorian with you?

Four words.  A simple question and a too fast response.  Somehow John knew it was about to turn his O-course high to shit.

He answered: No.

--McQuaid’s.  Now.

Yup: shit.

Chapter Text

“If anyone asks, I didn’t not-tell you that the new leg could use some minor adjustments,” John grumped, plopping into the seat opposite.

“What?”  Rudy blinked up at him owlishly.

Rolling his eyes, John slid one of the two bottles of beer he’d acquired at the bar across the table toward the man.  It’d give him something to hold onto.  At least he’d left the fedora back at the lab this time.  Not that he was any less conspicuous without it, sitting in a back booth complete with darting gaze, tense shoulders, fingers rapping aimlessly.

“Sympathy pains,” John reminded him.

“Oh.  Right.  About that, if anyone asks -- and by ‘anyone’ I mean our mutual friend -- I was craving fish and chips for lunch.”

“Cheers,” John agreed on a wry and silent laugh, tilting his bottle to clink the neck against Rudy’s.  Now that they’d gotten their stories straight, they could get down to the nitty gritty.

Rudy released a shaky breath, looking far too determined for a bar patron during happy hour.  The evening was just getting started and John grinned like he planned to enjoy every minute of it.

He mimed taking a gulp.  An MX would be able to detect fermentation on his breath, but whatever.  John didn’t have high hopes for actually drinking.  He’d need a clear head to sort through Rudy’s techno jargon.  The alcohol might come in handy later, though, for dealing with the inevitable headache.

“So, what’s this about sympathy pains?”

John summarized the Funny Bone Incident.

“Right.  I can see where sympathy pains might be an apt interpretation.  On the surface of things.”  Rudy cleared his throat, prominent Adam’s apple dipping.  “Did he offer his perspective on it?”

“Not a word.”  And that was what bothered John most of all.  Dorian had confided in him last time.  What had changed?  Was Dorian’s silence due to a sudden lack of trust or the desire for additional time and data to process?  John glared at the label on his beer bottle.  His conviction from weeks ago was unchanged: “We need to tell him.”

“John, no.  We can’t--”

Bewildered, John leaned back, shrugging with both arms, palms up.  “How is he not in the best position to tell us what’s wrong?”

“Because if he’s aware of a problem, he’ll come back to me for help and, if he’s not convinced this time around, his next stop will be Captain Maldonado’s office.  He’ll demand to be decommissioned.  It’s protocol.”

John scowled.  “The other DRNs didn’t do that.”

Rudy’s gaze flitted about the mostly empty bar.  “Software patch.  Added just before the mass decommissioning was approved.  It’s rough and Dorian might be able to get around it -- like he is now because he believes I’ve solved the problem -- but I don’t think he’ll try very hard if he thinks safety is an issue.”

And it could be.  If Dorian got distracted by and caught up in a memory loop like he had on the walkway at Synturion -- if that happened during a gunfight or in pursuit of a suspect or in the middle of an undercover op…

Shit.  “Look, Rudy.  There’s gotta be some middle ground here.”

John received a helpless look in response.  He was on his own for this one.  Great.

“I need data, John.  Just… try to get him to talk to you about it.  I mean, I could ask to run another diagnostic, but it’s too soon.  He’ll ask why and he might question my confidence in successfully solving the issue the first time around--”

“Wouldn’t be much of a cop if he didn’t,” John grumbled.

“Exactly.  Best to just… ask.  And it’d be better coming from you.”

Yeah, it undoubtedly would.  Because John was supposed to be clueless like that.

John was tempted to formulate a game plan, but that ran the risk of his approach coming out sounding scripted.  Rehearsed.  Fake.  Dorian could tell when John was using his public face.  Phony voice, too.

The only advantage John had was, apparently, Dorian couldn’t tell just from a bio scan when John was bullshitting.  So long as he didn’t contradict anything Rudy had said to placate Dorian, John should be in the clear.  And since John didn’t know what the hell he was talking about when it came to androids and how they worked, that should be easy.

Piece of cake.

They ordered fish and chips, ate in silence, and then Rudy headed back to the lab.

John called Dorian from the cruiser.  “You busy?”

“Unlike some, I’m capable of multitasking.”

“Hey, I’m a pro at multitasking” was John’s knee-jerk reaction.

In Dorian’s eloquent lack of comment, John could hear the incredulous expression.

Right.  Moving along…

“OK, so.  If you haven’t got anything better to do, I’m driving out to the beach.”

“Does that mean I’m invited to join you?”

“Well, yeah.  Why else would I ask?”

“You didn’t.”

“Uh huh.  You coming or not?”

He was.  John pulled up in front of the precinct building ten minutes later.  “How come you’re working on our day off?”

“I enjoy being a police officer, John.”

John lifted his hands from the steering wheel briefly, backing off.  “You’re allowed to have a hobby or two, though, right?”

Dorian turned his head and looked out the window.

John let it go.  “You ever seen the ocean before?  From a beach, I mean.”  Because of course Dorian had seen the shipyards, old port, and bay while they were answering calls to crime scenes or conducting searches.

“We haven’t had any cases requiring us to go there, so… no.”

John’s brows pinched.  “What -- you don’t ride with anyone else?”

“I wouldn’t do that without telling you, John.”

Now Dorian was staring at him and John felt like he’d just stepped in it.  Big time.  Might as well go for broke.  “Why not?”

“Because we’re partners, man.”  Dorian looked away again.  “At least I think we are.”

“Of course we are.  What the hell, dude?”

“Then why would you ask me that, John?”

“Because I don’t know what being partners means to you.  I have to ask.”

Dorian considered that for a moment and John recurled his fingers around the wheel, waiting for it--

“Does this mean I can ask what things mean to you?”

John just knew he was going to regret this.  “Yeah.  Ask away.”

“If you rode with someone else -- an MX or another detective, for instance -- would you tell me?”

“Sure.  Now that I know you’d want to know, yeah.  I’d tell you.”

“You wouldn’t have before?”

John shrugged.  “I figured you’d just track my locator chip.  Since you’re not at all shy about keeping tabs on me.”

“Somebody has to.”

“Far be it from me to deny you the pleasure.”

“Thank you, John.”

“Oh, shut it,” he huffed through a smile.  “What do you do outside of our scheduled shifts?”

“Assist with data analysis.”

“Yeah?  What were you doing when I called?”

“Running DNA comparisons on cold cases.  Mostly assaults that are nearing their statute of limitation.”

John shook his head, marveling.  “You find any matches?”

“Five so far today.  The respective detectives have been notified.”

“That’s good work, D.”

It wasn’t meant to be praise.  Just an observation.  It made Dorian smile anyway.

John turned off the highway onto a local road.  Two lanes.  It’d be another half hour before they reached the seaside park John had in mind.  As he relaxed back into the driver’s seat, Dorian stretched out an arm and gently tickled the Saint Christopher pendant swaying from the rear view mirror.

“Who is ‘A’?”

John wedged his elbow against the base of the window and leaned his head into his palm.  “Anna Moore.”

Dorian was silent and that was how John knew that Dorian knew who Anna Moore had been to John.

“There’s a forty percent chance of scattered showers this evening,” Dorian suddenly volunteered.

“There goes the long walk on the beach,” John joked, forlorn.

“It’s the thought that counts.”

“You’re in luck.  I’m very thoughtful.”

“Yes, John.  I can always count on you to think you know best.”

John sure hoped so.  Hell, he’d rearranged his day off for the guy.  John was postponing a second and much lengthier hot shower plus a double shot of bourbon, but it was worth it just to watch Dorian’s face as he stepped barefoot into wet sand for the first time.  The frigid surf gushed over his toes and Dorian giggled.  Giggled.

“It tickles,” Dorian blurted.  As if understanding the meaning of the word for the first time.

“Yeah,” John admitted.  “Kinda.”  For that brief moment before his own bare foot went numb with cold and started stinging in the chilly breeze.  Once was refreshing.  Twice was just painful.  He backed away from the outgoing tide and wiggled the toes on his left foot before frowning down at his right.  “Only really feel it with the one foot, though.”

“Oh.  You’re wearing your new leg.”  Dorian looked unreasonably thrilled by that.

“Took it for a test drive today.”

“Terrible pun, man.”

“What--oh.”  John really had driven while wearing it.  That was true.  “Yeah, but… I can’t believe I got one past you.”

“One what?  I detected the beer you had with lunch.”

Of course he had.  “A celebratory beer,” John specified with relish.  “And you missed out on the chance to get on my case.  Check the O-course postings.”

A streak of blue light glimmered along Dorian’s cheek.  A moment later, his blank expression broke into a grin.  “Not bad, John.”

“See?”  John told himself that his chest was not puffing up.  It absolutely was not.  No reason to.

“The new leg enhanced your performance.”

“The new--say what now?  No.  No, no, no.  That was all me.”

“Twenty percent increased--”

“Divided by two legs is ten.  Which only really applies to the track.  So.”

Dorian continued grinning, unconvinced.

John turned his face into the wind, listened to the soft shush of the waves, and claimed the last word while he was still ahead.

“According to my database, people typically walk, run, play team sports, and build castles on the beach.”

“Sand castles,” John corrected.

Dorian tilted his head and John assumed he was accessing additional information and images on sand castles.  “Let’s make one.”

“I’m not going to stop you.”  John spread his arms wide in invitation.  The beach was deserted, this being a Thursday afternoon in December.  The cold didn’t seem to bother Dorian at all.  In fact, he frolicked around like it was the height of summer.  John brushed the sand from his feet and put his socks and boots back on.  He’d lasted a grand total of fifteen minutes barefoot.  A heroic effort by anyone’s standards.

Dorian’s socks and shoes were still tumbled in the back of the cruiser during the drive home.

It was dark by the time they got back to the city.  The sunset had been completely obscured by clouds.  John tried not to feel disappointed.  It wasn’t like this was a date or anything.  “I gotta eat.  You coming?”

“Why would I want to watch you eat?  You chew with your mouth open, man.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” John mumbled.  “Nothing wrong with your nose, though, is there?”

“So I should enjoy the smell of whatever you order?”

John shrugged.  “Sometimes it smells better than it tastes.”

Dorian tilted his head to the side.  “Are we visiting an outdoor vendor in Chinatown?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

Chapter Text

Dispatch sent out a 10-91 before they even got to Chinatown.

Unauthorized arrival of individuals from over the Wall.

Somehow, John and Dorian were “lucky” enough to be one of the units in the immediate vicinity.  Yippee.

As John watched the six adults being cuffed and herded into a vehicle for transport to processing, he resisted the urge to wince away from the wailing of the four children who had accompanied them.  From ages six to twelve.  They struggled against the MX androids that were guiding them toward their respective social workers.  Tears streaked down the faces of the men and women who had claimed to be their parents.

“This is cruel,” Dorian opined from the passenger seat of the cruiser, slamming the car door shut.

John didn’t want to argue (for once!), but-- “We’ve got to make sure they’re not human traffickers.”  And the hell of it was that they couldn’t even trust the kids to vouch for their own parents.  Not if they were under duress or brainwashed.  The threat didn’t have to real to be effective.  The kids just had to believe it was.

“It’s not fair, man,” Dorian insisted.  “Human traffickers get ten to twenty years in the Cubes.  Three meals a day.  Medical treatment.  Legal representation.  People who come over the Wall--”

“Get sent back.  I know,” John growled, reaching for the ignition.

BAM!

John jerked, startled and gaping at the twin dents in the front console where Dorian had just smashed both fists against the car.  “Dorian!”

“How can they do this?  How can they just take their children away?”

“Hey.”  It would probably be a bad idea to ask Dorian if he was operating on a low charge.  “I get that you’re pissed.  I am, too.  But for as long as they’re on this side of the Wall, we have to make sure those kids are safe.”

Dorian shook his head.  “Doesn’t make this right.  They’ve been traumatized enough already.”

John gave up on starting the car.  He turned toward Dorian and gripped the android’s shoulder.  “I know.  I don’t like it, either, but we have to be sure.”

Any one of those people could be saboteurs or spies or worse.  In the years since the Wall had gone up, John had heard more horror stories than he could remember.  More than he would ever want to remember.  Detaining adults and children separately was the very least they could do to sort out the situation without endangering the public or the lives of police officers.

Dorian twitched away, shrugging off John’s hand and turning toward the window.  The scene beyond was heart-wrenching.  John started the car and got them both the hell out of there.

Chinatown would still be there tomorrow.  Or whenever.

They were zooming along the highway toward the precinct before Dorian spoke.  “I’m sorry.  That was out of line.”

“Just between us, no,” John retorted, “it wasn’t.”

He could practically feel Dorian’s confusion.

“Look,” John said after a tense moment, “you know I don’t know the first thing about DRNs or your programming or personality interface or anything.  Rudy said you were designed to be as close to human as possible.  I’m not going to hold it against you when you have human reactions.”

“It doesn’t bother you,” Dorian said, “when I get angry.”

“Does it bother you when I get angry?”

Dorian smirked.  “Not anymore.”

That was a sobering thought.  John couldn’t even blame Dorian for being leery of his temper once upon a time.  Hours before meeting Dorian, John had shoved an MX out of the cruiser and into the flow of traffic on the 604.  Days after meeting Dorian, John had blown the head off of Paul’s MX at a crime scene.  Right in front of Dorian.  Of course John had a temper and of course he could be dangerous.

The worst Dorian had ever done was punch Detective Paul across the face.  In John’s book, that was a point in Dorian’s favor.

“Well.  Good,” John muttered.  “Wouldn’t want my coffee-warmer to walk on eggshells around me.”

Dorian’s smirk deepened briefly before dropping away.  “There are many things I fear.  You’re not one of them.”

John glanced over.  “You know you can talk to me, right?  I mean, maybe I don’t have as many answers as Rudy, but…”

The silence was awkward until Dorian put them both out of John’s misery: “Right.”

“You ever talk to him about those -- what -- memories?  Of being a child?”

“I did.”

“Well?  What did he say?”

“Do you actually think you’ll understand his explanation?”

“Nah.  But I was looking forward to seeing your colloquialism routine at full power.  Smoke might finally come out of your ears.”  John fluttered a hand in the air to mimic the phenomenon.

Dorian shook his head, rueful.  “He believes that stored images and other recorded data are being reinterpreted.”

“Reinterpreted.  Can DRNs do that?”

“Apparently.  Or I can, at least.”  Dorian took a deep breath.  “There are other experiences I shouldn’t be able to feel, but I do.”

“What, like just now?  When you got angry?”

“Have you already forgotten our first day as partners, John?”

“No.  Although I am very sad that I have to share the privilege of pissing you off.  For a while there I was feeling special.”  Belatedly, John remembered Dorian’s rant about MXs always taking priority.  And then, surely, seeing what the Albanians had done to the sexbot Charlene had riled Dorian up… even if he hadn’t shown it.  Much.

But Dorian didn’t counter with any of those instances.  He said, “You’re still very special to me, John.”

“Oh.  Great.  That’s a relief.”  John guided the car onto the off ramp.  “So, what are these experiences you shouldn’t be having?  Feeling.  Whatever.”

“Last week, I think I felt what it feels like to overstimulate the ulnar nerve.”

“And this afternoon, you got your toes tickled by the tide?”

“Yes.”

John paused, considering his next words.  “Are you getting any more memories?  Flashes?  Images?”

“No.  But I don’t know where these sensations are coming from.”

“Right,” John mused.  “Because DRNs don’t have a single funny bone in their bodies.”  John reached over blindly to give Dorian a playful smack on the arm.  Now that had been a great pun.

Dorian rolled his eyes, smiling.

John observed, “You’re not ticklish, either, huh?”

“Not in the physiological sense.  Although I am rather tickled that you know what an ulnar nerve is.”

A pun for a pun.  John’s had been way better, though.

“Surprised you, did I?”  John huffed a laugh.  “And you said I was boring.”

“I said I was positing that you were boring.”

“Well, in that case,” John drawled, bouncing his eyebrows.  Or fertile unibrow, according to Dorian.  Everyone’s a critic.

The cruiser traversed the next few blocks in silence.  Just before John turned into the precinct parking structure, Dorian said, “Thank you.  For the offer.  To talk.”

“Sure, man.  Anytime.”

Chapter Text

“What would you consider to be the best achievement of your life?”

Jesus.  John hadn’t even finished his first cup of coffee and Dorian was already waxing philosophical.  “The fact that I got out of bed today.”  Especially after O-course Hell yesterday.  The only body part that didn’t screech in protest every time he moved was his damn synthetic leg.

John scowled at the morning traffic on the bridge and growled, “Ask me again tomorrow and I’ll give you the same answer.”  Yeah, twenty-four hours from now, John would probably still be pissed off about his body hating on him.

Dorian nodded, processed, and concluded: “Your physical condition declines daily due to age.”

“It’s got nothing to do with my physical condition.  I’m in great condition.”  Aches and agony aside.  “I’m talking about life, Dorian.”

“Life becomes more challenging with every passing day, you mean?”

“If we’re speaking generally, yeah, it does.  They don’t tell you that when you’re a kid, though.  Being an adult is all false advertising.”

“Would you choose to be a kid again?”

“Hell, no.”

“Why not?”  Dorian appeared genuinely perplexed.

“And make the same mistakes all over again?  No way.  Not unless I get to know then what I know now.”  But that might be its own special brand of Hell, too.  “What about you?  If you could remember more than just bare-bones case files from before, would you want to?”

John had sipped half of his coffee and nearly forgotten the fact that he’d even asked Dorian a question by the time he got an answer.

“Yes, I would.  I’d like to know.”

John didn’t ask why.  “Amnesia sucks,” John agreed.

“What about your trophy room.”

“What about it?”  John girded his loins for another argument.

“You wouldn’t return to your glory days if you had the option?”

“What?  No.  Of course not.  It’s--damn it.  When you’re a kid, you screw up.  A lot.  That’s basically the whole point of being a kid.  But those trophies -- I got those for the things I did right.”

“Right,” Dorian echoed rather than agreed or acknowledged.  “Do you mean that in an objective sense or in the sense that your actions were approved of by authority figures and peers?”

Was Dorian really trying to have an ethical discussion on the recognition of John’s high school achievements?  “Wow.  You’re a real treat today.  What’s with the mid morning morality crisis?”

“I had a dream last night,” Dorian said and John nearly stomped on the brake.  In the middle of the intersection they were zooming through.  Nothing like a ten-car pile-up to shake things up on a Friday morning.  TGIF.

“You had a dream,” John repeated carefully.  “Wait a minute -- do you even sleep?”

Dorian ignored his skewed question.  “It was similar to that moment at Synturion when I -- for lack of a better word -- daydreamed about being a small child.”

“OK…”  And?

“Someone was giving me an award,” Dorian continued wistfully.  “I was on a stage and there was applause.”

“Please don’t tell me you were naked.”  Duct tape.  John suddenly realized that he ought to invest in some.  Today.  That was what lunch breaks were for -- running errands to buy duct tape for urgent shutting-up.

Dorian frowned and cocked his head to the side.  “Why would I be naked while receiving an award?”

“No.  No, no.”  John sliced at the air between them with the blade of his hand, sweeping the misunderstanding aside and starting over.  Or at least hoping to.  “It’s a common human dream -- you dream yourself somewhere public, center of attention, but you’re naked.”

“How often do you have this dream?”

John scowled.  “I don’t.”

“You said it was common.”

“I’m an exception,” he contrarily insisted.  “It’s a commonly known type of dream.  Like… like flying.  Or being late for a flight.”  John braced himself for a well-placed dig about his lack of punctuality… which would be totally uncalled for.  John was punctual like a Swiss watch.

“Do you dream about me naked?”

John’s eyes bugged.  He sputtered, “What--where the hell did that come from?”

“It would probably come from your subconscious desire to--”

“No.  Stop.”

“--liken me to a real human--”

“Shut up.  Not joking around here, pal.”

“--or reconcile my design schematics--”

“Design schem--oh, God.  Just zip it, will you?”

“--against typical male measurements.”

John kept his mouth clamped shut and waited.  As the silence stretched, he warily exhaled, praying Dorian was done talking about this.  When he dared to look over, Dorian was gazing contentedly at the passing storefronts.  John cleared his throat.  “So what kind of award was it?”

“I couldn’t see it clearly.  The glare from the stage lights was too bright.”

“Well, isn’t that a shame.”

“It was,” Dorian agreed.

John shifted in his seat.  “So, another memory, huh?  How’d this one make you feel?”

Dorian grinned, eyes closed and head titled back against the seat.  “Like I could do anything.”

Elation.  Empowerment.  Arrogance.

John said, “Yeah.  I know the feeling.”  He was pretty sure Nigel Vaughn had, too.  Once upon a time.  God help them all if Vaughn was reliving that aspect of his glory days right now.  “You gonna talk to Rudy about this one?”

Dorian seemed to shrink a bit.  Yeah, reality check.  Coming back to earth was a real bitch.

“Of course,” Dorian answered flatly and John had the distinct impression that Dorian could have said more.  A lot more.  Things that John needed to hear but had no clue how to ask.

And then a call came in.  An attempt made on one of the city councilmen.  His three bodyguards had paid the ultimate price and the gunman was still at large.

And John still hadn’t managed to finish his first cup of coffee.  Damn it.

Chapter Text

Dorian wasn’t visible in the lab when John stopped by to pick him up the next day.

John huffed, reaching into his pocket for his phone as Rudy glanced up (with a quirked brow and expectant look) from the chest cavity of an MX that was on the table.

Or maybe it was The Table.  John could appreciate the significance of capital letters in this case.

He checked the time (yes, Dorian was officially late) and his messages (nothing flagged as unread) and John’s irritation was now totally justified.

“Hey, Rudy.  Looking for my partner.  You got him jumping through digital hoops or something?” John asked, not really expecting anything beyond a lecture on the importance of a full charge and software upgrades.

John was halfway to tuning Rudy out when the man said, “Um.  He’s not here.  Left with Officer Morris when she stopped by to pick up her MX.  Repairs,” he added.  As if John actually gave a damn about whatever had landed Morris’ MX in Rudy’s care.

“What?”

“Officer Morris,” Rudy repeated and then prompted helpfully, “works out of Precinct 18, I believe.  Near the Wall.”

Near the Wall and one of the city detention centers.

Shit.

“When was this?”

Rudy glanced around until he located a clock.  “Uh… two hours ago?”

“Right.”  John didn’t bother to “thank” Rudy for giving him a head’s up.  Truth be told, that was Dorian’s job and he hadn’t done it... after nearly losing his shit over the prospect of John riding with anyone other than Dorian (unless John got a signed permission slip from his DRN beforehand -- Jesus) and then there’d been Dorian’s vow not to ride with anyone else without letting John know.  What the hell had that little possessive display been about, anyway?  Were he and D “going steady” or not?

Something wasn’t right, here.

Rudy winced, probably coming to the same conclusion as John.  Which reminded him-- “Did Dorian tell you about the dream he had?”

“Dream?” Rudy squawked.  “What dream?”

John smirked, but there was no humor in it.  At any other time, John would love to be the proud owner of the big mouth that had landed Dorian in the dog house.  Now?  Not so much.

John stabbed the speed dial.  Dorian picked up before the first ring ended.

“John, I apologize for--”

“Doing volunteer work in your spare time.  Yeah, yeah.  Where the hell am I picking you up?”

Dorian was waiting just outside the detention center doors, shoulders slumped, beneath a large, second story window ledge.  It was raining.  The wind was blowing.  John didn’t say anything about Dorian soaking the passenger seat with his dripping jacket.

They rode in silence until the exit for the precinct came… and went.  Dorian blinked.  Accessed their case file and related updates.  Maybe even the recording of the terse conference that John, Valerie, Paul, and Maldonado had immediately had following roll call.

Dorian observed, “Councilman Billings is conscious.”

“Yes, he is,” John agreed.  “And visiting hours started twenty minutes ago.”

Tucking his chin down, Dorian murmured, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you look it.  Just call me next time.”

“At six a.m.?”

“A message, then.”  John sighed.  “Was it worth it, at least?”

Dorian looked away.

John sighed again.  “We can’t save the ones from over the Wall, Dorian.  Not today, anyway.”

No, today they were on their way to the hospital to take the statement of a moneyed politician.  A Chrome.  The kind of asshole who had pushed for the Wall to be built in the first place -- back when the city had grown too big and energy resources had dwindled and rolling blackouts had become a daily occurrence.

John remembered.

He could recall a time when the subways had run from one edge of the city to the other, when people could drive, bike, or even walk freely through the entire metropolis from east to west, north to south.  But then a year of freak solar storms had knocked out power across the country, like dominoes toppling, frying transistors at plants nationwide.  And, like some sort of cosmic Murphy’s Law, that was precisely when the world’s fossil fuels had coughed and sputtered to a pathetic -- and shockingly over-priced -- drizzle.

Some cities had been walled off entirely.  New Pittsburgh had sprung up in the shadow of the original.  At least here, they’d been able to save over half the city.  Not the half with Tony Ferraro’s pizzeria, though.  Those neighborhoods hadn’t been lucky enough to receive priority and had eventually slid into permanent blackout.  Gangs.  Slums.  Riots.  The whole nine yards.

Police hadn’t been able to keep up with the crime.  Raw sewage had nowhere to go.  Cordoned-off streets had turned into barbed-wire and sand-bagged barricades, and then the politicians had started lobbying for a wall.  The Wall.  Saving the taxpaying and law-abiding public from chaos and anarchy.  Serving the city’s privileged and powerful.

That wasn’t why John had become a cop, but he’d seen too many people left to fend for themselves in the gutters -- even on this side -- to just walk away.

But it was jerkwads like this Fred Billings that made him want to provide the city’s policy makers with a very up close and personal introduction to their precious Wall.

The councilman sneered at Dorian.  “I’m not talking with that thing in the room.”

“Great!” John enthused.  Loud noises were the most fun with concussions.  John knew this from experience.  And, from his reflexive grimace, now Billings did, too.  “We can arrest you for filing a false incident report and discuss it in a cube at the precinct.  How does that sound?”

“Police officers are provided with MXs.  What is a DRN doing here?”

“He’s a cop and he’s my partner, and he’d be happy to escort you out of the building in handcuffs, Councilman.”

John could hear the man’s molars grinding.  It was a beautiful sound.  “The DRNs are unstable.”

Not as unstable as John was feeling right now.  “And despite that over-simplistic, gross generalization,” John replied, channeling his inner Rudy, “Dorian here saved Councilman James Hart’s life back in October.”

“Ah, yes.  When another android designed by Nigel Vaughn went on a shooting spree.”

Damned politicians.  Where the hell was a roll of duct tape when you needed one?  On his next lunch break, John was stocking up.

“Am I taking your statement or taking you in?” John asked for the last time.  “And before you answer that, you might consider the families of the men who died in the line of duty on your security detail.  Dorian and I are seeking justice for them.  If you’re interested in jumping on that band wagon, now would be the time.”

Frowning, Billings gave an account of the assault.  Dorian recorded his statement without a word of complaint.  On the drive to the precinct, John focused on forgetting that the interview had ever happened.  He was happy to tunnel-vision down to the bare facts and pretend that that useless pile of stupid in a hospital gown had been nothing but a bad dream.  At least until John had a suspect in custody to take his frustrations out on.

“Fred Billings and James Hart aren’t the only ones,” Valerie said, hunkering down with John beside the doughnut machine.  Paul had very kindly brought his runny nose to work with him.  Sharing his germs with the rest of the class like the inconsiderate asshole that he was.  The rest of the bullpen was trying to stay out of the line of fire.

“The only ones what?” John snapped.

Valerie’s gaze traveled toward John’s desk where Dorian was standing, running facial recognition searches against the lone witness to the masked assailants who had stormed Billings’ residence.  The police had downloaded the camera footage from his home security system.  It showed one figure in the murky distance who had definitely seen shit go down.

Valerie quietly elaborated, “They’re not the only ones who think the city was too soft on the DRNs.”

Too soft?  Too soft?  Jesus.  They’d tested the DRNs to within an inch of their lives -- that damn Luger test that Dorian had so little faith in -- and then erased their memories and shoved tool belts at them.  Shipped them off to hospitals and outer space to spend what remained of their existence engaged in menial tasks and manual labor.  What more could they ask of--

Oh.

Shit.

John swallowed hard, clutching his coffee cup in a white-knuckled grip.  “They can’t decommission them all.”

“John,” Valerie objected, her eyes soft with sympathy.

That was how he knew that they were past the point of decommissioning.  If Hart had his way, the DRNs would be destroyed.

He jerked away.  “No.”

“Hart’s pushing for it.”  And Valerie was telling him -- breaking the confidence of a Chrome in the know, probably -- so that John could brace himself.

John refused to do it.  To just sit back and wait for it.  Accept it.

Not that it would ever happen anyway, right?

“Ah--achoo!!”

Paul, muttering under his breath, grabbed the very last tissue on his desk, emptying the box and dooming himself to either sprinting to the bathroom for a roll of toilet paper or enlisting a shirtsleeve for hazard duty.

John could at least be glad that he hadn’t left his coffee cup back there behind enemy lines -- it was safely tucked into his white-knuckled grasp.  Hallelujah.

He stared heartlessly from a safe distance as Dorian opened John’s desk drawer and plucked out John’s rainy day supply.  They were nice tissues, too.  Double ply with that aloe stuff that made a chapped nose feel loved again.

John didn’t shout a protest.  He was a little too busy watching Dorian’s nose twitch and wrinkle as a swirl of orange light chased itself on his cheek.

Chapter Text

Valerie was a Chrome, so she had even odds for withstanding Paul’s airborne mucus.  John, on the other hand, was a vitamin-deficient, over-caffeinated party-paradise for microorganisms.  He knew when to get the hell out of Dodge.

His shrill whistle cut across the bullpen the instant Dorian’s search came up with a 65% match on facial rec.  Well, it was more of a probability of a match since they were working from a low-res image to begin with.  Close enough for John.

“Let’s roll!”  And pick up more tissues, a bucket of hand sanitizer, and a hazmat suit on the way.  Plus duct tape because, if all else failed, John would tape every orifice on Paul’s face shut.  He could breathe and drink coffee through a straw.

Once they were in the car and gaining enough distance for Paul’s misery to be funny, John spontaneously quizzed, “What’s the difference between boogers and broccoli?”

“I assume you’re not asking for a molecular analysis.”

John ignored him and delivered the punchline: “Kids won’t eat broccoli.”

“That is disgusting, man.”

“Yeah, well.”  John admitted, “Disgusting and disturbing -- this is where we do that.”  Here in the over-share zone.

The image that had seemed to be a possible match to the witness had been recorded by a watch drone on a side street in a neighborhood that looked very familiar.

John scowled as the cruiser idled past the Shaw IRC showroom, and suddenly John had a brainwave.  “Hey.  Could our suspect have been one of the androids from Shaw’s showroom?  From that case last -- what was it -- May?”

Dorian’s chin lifted as he sifted through stored data from over six months ago.  “No, none of the androids in the showroom at that time fit the description.”

“Doesn’t mean Shaw hasn’t come up with some new designs, though, does it?” John bit out.

Dorian teased, “If you want to gawk at the Intimate Relations Companions, you don’t need an excuse.  I’m told this is a free country.”

A free country.  Yeah.  John had heard that rumor, too.  “Supposedly, it’s a free country -- for those who are considered people in the eyes of the law.”  Which bots were not.

“John, if you’re thinking that an IRC could have participated in the attack--”

“I’m thinking that Billings hasn’t made a secret of the fact that he’s mistrustful of androids.  Think about it.”

“I’m trying not to.”

“You should.  And you should use his own narrow-minded, political Achilles’ heel against him.  Get under his skin.  Make him sweat.”

“And find myself decommissioned.”

John bit back a reflexive snarl.  “Yeah, that’s my point.  DRNs clearly make him uncomfortable and Shaw told us that the IRCs rely on some of the same programming.”  John shrugged and abandoned his rambling to deliver a conclusion: “Billings was an ass to you.  Maybe you’re not the only one he pissed off.”

“I doubt an IRC would be capable of feeling offended.”

“Shaw definitely could.  And Shaw’s business might be affected if… you know.”  Oh, hell.  From Dorian’s puzzled frown, he clearly had no idea what John was alluding to.  Which was what Valerie had told John.  “It’s a slippery slope,” John explained with an impatient huff, “from XRN to DRN to IRC.  I’m not saying I see any similarities there, but we’re talking about the same council of genius IQs that replaced the DRNs with MXs.”

Dorian’s smile twitched, deepening.  “At least my partner likes me.”

“Your morose and malcontent partner,” John corrected because Dorian should remember that John was no prize.  “And maybe I liked Mr. Fix It better than you.  Ever think of that?”

“You’re reaching, John, but don’t worry.  Your secret’s safe with me.”

John rolled his eyes and concentrated on finding a parking space.  On a Saturday at lunch time.  Among high-end downtown shops and galleries.  Oh, joy.

Eventually, John managed to claim a spot about two blocks down from the showroom.  On the plus side, it was a weekend leading up to the winter holidays, so Shaw was already engaging customers when John and Dorian walked in.  On the not-so-plus side, John had nothing to do but try to ignore all the sultry looks and bare skin flashing his way.

“Any of these?” John mumbled to Dorian out of the side of his mouth.

“No, but I believe there’s a brunette who is attempting to catch your eye.”

John rocked back on his heels and glared up at the skylights.

Dorian’s jacket sleeve brushed against John’s elbow and John did a double-take as his partner made a beeline for the curvy female sexbot John had been determined to ignore.  He jogged after Dorian, biting back a command to get back here now, damn it!

“Hello,” Dorian said, smiling at the creation.

She fluttered soulful brown eyes at John before saying in a sultry purr, “Four-nine-four.”

John nodded slowly as if that made sense to him.  “Is that so?”

She smiled at John.

Dorian beamed.

And John figured that if Dorian happened to pick up on John’s elevated pulse, he’d attribute it to John being the recipient of flattering attention.

“Detective,” Shaw interrupted quietly.  “What brings you by?”

“Maybe I’m doing a little Christmas shopping.”

Shaw glanced pointedly at John’s shabby gray jacket and then looked over his shoulder toward the well-dressed customers who could actually afford his prices.  Yeah, Shaw would be all too happy to get John out of his showroom.

Dorian told the man, “We were hoping you might share any surveillance footage you have of the alley behind the building.”

John nodded.  “The last seventy-two hours.”

Lorenzo Shaw frowned.  “What is this concerning?”

“Just running down a lead.  Suspicious person in the vicinity.  I’m sure your customers would appreciate you placing a high priority on their safety.”

In less than five minutes, they were showing themselves out, Dorian scanning through the external surveillance recordings that he’d downloaded with Shaw’s blessing.

“You getting any hits up there?” John asked as they meandered toward the cruiser.

“No.”

John waited until they were seated in the cruiser before asking, “Four-nine-four?  Was she talking about your buddy from the hospital?”

And if so, how would she know that particular DRN and why would she point John and Dorian in his direction?

“Can’t hurt to check it out,” Dorian suggested and John merged with traffic, circling the block and heading for Saint Mary’s Hospital.

Chapter Text

John found it interesting that Dorian didn’t call ahead on the pretense of saying hello to his DRN friend.  He didn’t even suggest it.

“You guys been keeping in touch?” John oh-so-casually asked as he navigated the convoluted series of hospital visitor lanes.

“No,” Dorian admitted sadly.

“What,” John badgered.  “Is that regret?  What is that?”

“It’s a lot of things, John,” Dorian replied, “that I don’t have the time to analyze at the moment.”

John could relate to that.  “Let’s try the service entrance.”

An android sorting through recyclable waste directed them down a dimly lit, barren corridor to the maintenance section.  DRN-494 was charging.  There was a brief flash of yellow across his cheek and then he was opening his eyes, smiling.  “Detective Kenning and Dorian.”

“Detective Kennex,” Dorian corrected him patiently and John remembered how DRN-494 had mistakenly called Rudy by the name Randy over a call routed through the cruiser.  He’d also asked them to turn up the volume on the wire while they’d been staking out the warehouse.  Could DRNs be bad with names and hard of hearing?

Questions for another time, perhaps.

“I’m glad you’re here.  If you’ll follow me, please?”

John held up a hand.  “Whoa there, cowboy.  You’ve been expecting us?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It would be easier to show you.”

“Don’t care about easier.  Tell us.  Now.”

Yellow lights danced over his cheek.  On the side of Dorian’s face, identical illuminated lines flashed in blue.  Dorian said, “John, you were right about the witness being an android.”

Before John could ask what the hell was going on, his phone chirped and Dorian glanced down at John’s jacket pocket meaningfully.  Disgruntled, he yanked the device out and glared at the encrypted text message Dorian had just sent him: She’s here now.

“OK,” John said to the hospital maintenance DRN.  “Show us.”

As DRN-494 led the way down hallways not covered by surveillance cameras, John considered the connections that had already been established: from the witness outside the Billings residence to the sexbot in the showroom to this hospital DRN.  Was it paranoia that was making John think they were all part of some network?

The room near the end of the hall had time-stiffened hinges.  The kind that had been painted over so many times that there was no way to loosen up dried grease between the moving parts.  Whatever this place had once been, it was now a storage room.  Narrow, uncomfortable-looking cots had been folded up and stacked, wall to wall, waiting for a catastrophic emergency.  Huddled behind the back row was a female android.

“She’s a match to the surveillance footage,” Dorian reported.  “There are one hundred and seventeen registered androids from her line within city limits.”

One hundred and seventeen more or less identical faces.  Great.  Juries loved those kind of odds.  Cops, too.

John sighed.  “I’m Detective John Kennex and this is my partner Dorian.  We’d like to ask you some questions.”

She didn’t look away from John, but DRN-494 encouraged her aloud, “It’s OK.  These are the friends I told you about.”

John was a friend, huh?  Would wonders never cease.

“What is your name?” Dorian asked her.

“Wonda.  WDA-880.”

“Hi, Wonda,” John said, deciding to jump in before he ended up in the figurative backseat.  “A surveillance camera recorded you at the scene of a disturbance in Kingston Heights.  Friday, five forty a.m.”

“The Billings residence,” she confirmed.  “The incident happened from five forty-one to five forty-five.  My night-vision allowed for me to see and record the invasion of Mr. Billings’ home.  I also have an audio file of multiple gunshots.”

“We’re going to need a copy of that data.”

“Of course.”  Green lights strobed gently beneath her cheek.  “I’ve sent all recorded data from five thirty a.m. to six a.m. Friday to Dorian.”

Dorian nodded in confirmation.  “Four assailants.  Multiple firearms.  Twenty-three shots fired.”

And not one of them had hit the councilman.  Only his bodyguards.

Sometimes the absence of something is everything.  John still hadn’t forgotten that from the How To Be A Cop manual.

John asked Wonda, “What were you doing when the attack happened?”

“Landscaping.”

John looked to Dorian for an explanation: “Wonda is registered to one of Billings’ neighbors.  Her activity logs indicate that she is primarily charged with landscaping and dog walking duties.”  Dorian gave her a hard stare.  “Though your landscaping duties would not have brought you within range of the Billings home security camera and no canines accompanied you.”

“I was taking a break.”

Did androids even need breaks from nighttime gardening?  John was inclined to think not.  He asked, “When you realized an assault was in progress, did you call the police?”  Not that her call would have summoned help any faster; the gated community’s security protocols had automatically contacted the police once it had registered the sound of gunshots.

“No, I was advised against calling for assistance directly.”

“Oh, were you now?  Who advised you not to report what you saw?”

DRN-494 raised his hand.  “That would be me, Detective.”

Of course.  This ought to be good.  “I’m all ears,” John drolly invited.

“Wonda is a friend who shares many of my concerns and the concerns of others.”

“Right.  When you say ‘others,’ you mean…”

“Other androids.  We are aware of the city’s mixed feelings toward Nigel Vaughn’s creations and any technology based on his inventions and innovations.”

It clicked in John’s head just as Dorian’s throat shifted in a visible swallow.  It was his partner’s tell and a dead giveaway that something heavy was going down.  “You guys formed a support group.”  John pushed further: “You get together on Friday nights?  Talk about your feelings?  Hug it out?”

“Of course not,” DRN-494 retorted sounding more hurt than offended.  “Most of us have never met face-to-face.”

Which meant they communicated remotely.  A hive mind.  John eyed Wonda. “You’re worried we’re going to find out who you’ve been talking to.”  Not to mention how often and possibly what about.  If there was even a hint of mutiny in those messages, well…  John could guess how Councilman Billings would react.  And his pal Councilman Hart would go nuclear right alongside him.

Turning to DRN-494, John said, “Now’s your chance to tell us what you’ve been up to.”

The hospital DRN said, “The androids of the city have been watching Councilman Hart and the people he contacts.  When he was treated for his gunshot wounds at Mercy General, he was overheard stating his intention to lobby a new motion.  He wants us gone.”  Turning toward Dorian, DRN-494 added, “All of us.”

John growled, “What were you planning to do about it?”

“We just want the chance to be heard, man.  Tell our side.  We never would have done something like this -- attack people.  We can’t.  Our programming doesn’t allow for it.”

And John had to admit that even the most erratic DRNs had never caused bodily harm to humans except on behalf of the people they’d been programmed to protect.  When DRNs had hit their tipping point, they’d damaged property.  They’d killed themselves.  They’d displayed signs of PTSD and depression.  There had never been a case of DRNs either malfunctioning or being reprogrammed to commit crimes let alone felonies.

“So you were spying on Billings,” John summarized to Wonda.

“Yes.”

DRN-494 insisted heatedly, “We deserve to know what’s going on.  If the city council is going to push for us to be deactivated, we’d like to know.”

“So that you can do what?  Put together a hunger strike?”

“John,” Dorian chided.

“Yeah, yeah.  I get the picture.”  And it wasn’t pretty.  There were plenty of non-violent ways androids could make life miserable for the humans of this city.  He turned to Wonda.  “What are you doing here?”

She stared at John.  “Waiting.”

Dorian rephrased, “Why are you waiting here?  Why hasn’t your human family issued a command for you to return home?”

“I am waiting here for you.  My family is unaware that I am not in the residence.  They are away on vacation until the twenty-ninth of December.”

“I told her to come here,” Mr. Fix It said helpfully.

“And when she did that, she may have obstructed a police investigation,” John pointed out, and then, on the heels of that thought, he realized, “which allows us possession of her and her data until we can determine whether someone was trying to cover up evidence.”

Damn.  That was kind of brilliant.  Insofar as guaranteeing protective custody for an android.

John squinted at the DRN.  “I thought you didn’t have access to protocol anymore.”

He shrugged.  “After the ride-along, I decided to study up.  The law and police procedure are both public domain, man.”

“And you got a message to us so that we’d find her because you’re -- what?  Hoping we can keep your little club under wraps?  The IRCs are in on this, too?  How many androids are participating in these gripe sessions of yours?”

“We share information,” the DRN argued.  As if that made it any better.  “And as for our numbers--”  Our numbers.  That was a bad sign.  “--as many as are capable of feeling, Detective Kennex.”  In response to John’s belligerent scowl, he argued, “They may not be able to express fear visually, but many models such as WDAs and IRCs are apprehensive about their own survival.”

Great.  There was a robot uprising brewing right under their noses and nobody would have known about it until Hart started pitching a bill for deactivating the city’s “dangerous” androids.  By then it might have been too late.  Hell, it might be too late now.  There was no stopping a runaway train.  At some point, the best option was to steer it toward a controlled crash.

“Detective,” the DRN pleaded, suddenly changing tack, “we are frightened.  I realize that we don’t pay taxes or have individual rights, but we contribute, and we don’t want to lose our existence or our memories because of a trend in public opinion.  And, unless my language program has a serious flaw, then it’s my understanding that police are responsible for the protection of lives and property in their jurisdiction.  We are in there somewhere, aren’t we?”

Maybe they were.  One thing that wasn’t open to debate: DRN-494 had made sure that Wonda was now in Delta Division’s jurisdiction.

Chapter Text

The telltale sequence of lights -- yellow on DRN-494’s cheek and blue on Dorian’s -- prompted John to put out a hand.

“Hey,” he said to Dorian.  They were in the hospital service area.  Wonda was sitting quietly in the backseat of the cruiser, hands folded in her lap.  John was tempted to charge DRN-494 with evidence tampering, but he didn’t have any proof aside from the DRN’s confession.  And John had the uneasy feeling that DRN-494 wanted an excuse to set foot in the precinct.  Maybe to gather intel.  Stepping between the hospital DRN and Dorian, John ordered the other unit, “If you’ve got something to say, say it out loud.”

“He started it, man,” the DRN said, dropping the blame squarely on Dorian.  The obnoxious shit then waved congenially to Wonda before heading back into Saint Mary’s.

John rounded on his partner.  “Don’t talk to him.  I’m serious, Dorian.  I don’t want you in the same room with that guy if he does something stupid.”

“Given the conditions you just dictated for our communications, I would have to be in the same room with him.  Figuratively speaking.”

“Yeah.  Well, I don’t want you going down with him.  Figuratively speaking.  Get in the car.  Don’t talk to Wonda or let her talk to you without me hearing it.  OK?”

Dorian didn’t move.

Oh, yeah.  John was familiar with this silent protest.

John shifted his weight.  “Look.  I’m just trying to look out for my partner.  I can’t do that if you shut me out.”

There was a short pause.  And then: “Wonda will need to charge before we attempt interrogation.”

It wasn’t much, but John would take it.  “Then let’s get a warrant signed asap.”  He clapped Dorian’s shoulder and nodded for him to get in the car.

Back at the precinct, Wonda was escorted to the tech department for isolation and detainment by a pair of MXs.  John informed the captain that they had updates, which unfortunately meant being shut in an enclosed space with Paul.  John eyed the man’s shiny, red nose with open hostility.

“Do we have an ID on the shooters?” Maldonado asked.

“Not yet.  We’ve got a witness in custody.  Gonna need a warrant for her memory files.”

“An android?” Paul mumbled, his clogged nose muffling the words.

“Yes,” Dorian answered, which was good because John was trying really hard to resist the impulse to mock Paul by pinching his own nose shut and lisping an affirmative.

The captain squinted.  “I thought we cleared all of the community’s registered bots.”

“This one’s privately owned,” John explained.

Valerie hummed, wary and resigned.  Yeah, getting a warrant for a bot that was likely owned by a Chrome was going to be real fun.  Like pulling teeth.  Because Chromes liked to pretend they didn’t have kinks and bad habits.  Got downright tetchy about those fun facts getting out.  Uptight, repressed assholes.

Of course, the minute someone dared to spit on their Italian leather loafers, they were screeching bloody murder and demanding police intervention.  Jesus.

“How was this witness located and identified?” the captain asked shrewdly.

“Watch drone,” John told her.  “Dorian made the ID based on viewing a thirty-minute segment recorded during the time of the assault.  The WDA was definitely in the vicinity.”

The captain glanced at her phone.  “Why haven’t I received a call from irate owners?”

Because I’m that smooth, John didn’t say.  “Owners are out of town for the holidays.”  John put out a hand to forestall her next question, “And no, we did not set foot on their property.  We picked the bot up after a brief search.”

Maldonado stared at John hard.  “And it’s now in custody pending trespassing charges?”

John shrugged.  That hadn’t been his thoughts back at Saint Mary’s, but-- “Works for me.”  Either way, nobody would be erasing Wonda’s files or destroying her memory components on John’s watch.  “Any updates from forensics?  Do we have matches on the bullets or DNA found at the scene?”

Nope.

“And now it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room,” John said.  He needed that aforementioned warrant before he could discuss specifics but couched his suspicions in a hunch: “Why did the shooter or shooters stop with the bodyguards unless Billings wasn’t the target?”

Valerie agreed.  “According to his statement, Billings was knocked unconscious during the firefight.  First responders arrived well after the security system recorded the suspects’ vehicle fleeing the scene.”

“They had an opportunity to take out Billings but didn’t,” the captain summarized.  “Either this was a warning to Billings, or his security staff were the actual targets, or there’s something we’re not seeing that caused an interruption.”  Maldonado nodded decisively.  “OK.  Keep digging, everyone.”

With that, Maldonado excused herself and John delegated tasks: “Paul, warrants for the security footage from other homes in the neighborhood.  We can’t get an ID on the witness off of the Billings’ security recordings that’ll hold up in court.  We show the bot was in the vicinity, it gets our foot in the door.”  And would cover their asses if Wonda’s data turned out to be the cornerstone of the prosecution’s case.

Paul gave John a cocky salute with his tablet and left the conference room on a phlegmy sniffle.

“Val, why don’t you see if Rudy’s up for a field trip?  Give it an hour or so, and then you two head back over there and talk to some of the privately owned androids.  Rattle some cages.  See what shakes loose when everyone’s operating at low charge.”

“Sounds fun,” she said, eyes sparkling.  She wove her way out of the conference room, down the steps, and back to her terminal, probably to go over the neighborhood demographics in fine detail.  Those self-entitled shits wouldn’t know what hit ‘em.  John was almost sorry he’d miss the show, but Rudy would have a front row seat.

John shook his head and mused, “He can thank me later.”

“Would you like me to begin running analyses on the data Wonda shared?” Dorian asked once they were the only ones left in the room.

“I would love that, but the prosecutor--”  John tipped his hand in a so-so gesture.  “--not so much.  Let’s notify Billings that the threat hasn’t been neutralized yet.”

Dorian nodded.

“And,” John continued, “as soon as Paul flags any surveillance showing Wonda in the neighborhood at the time of the shootings, let’s get that request for a warrant out.”

While Dorian was multitasking that, John accessed the case file still loaded onto the screen and, just for shits and giggles, checked to see how often the schedules of the three victims had lined up in the past, putting all of them in the same room together.  Not often and at sporadic intervals.  Hm.

Dorian suddenly informed John, “I’ve relayed a message to Councilman Billings, warning him that, as the suspects are still at large, we recommend that he take precautions.”

“So long as you didn’t mention a city-wide conspiracy run by androids to spy on him,” John muttered.  Billings would jump at the chance to accuse Wonda of either involvement or carelessness and the last thing that asshole needed was more ammunition.  Vaughn had already provided plenty.

“Detective Paul has forwarded video from three separate home security systems showing Wonda nearby at the time of the incident.”

“That should get us access to her GPS log.”  And once they confirmed that she was the bot that had witnessed the attack, the data in her memory could be logged as evidence.  Slam dunk.

Dorian merely nodded again, staring in the direction of the schedules John had pulled up.  He offered no remarks on data comparison.  No questions.  No offhanded observation that John was missing an opportunity to use highlighters in primary colors.  No snark at all.

John frowned.

“You seem tired.”  John put a hand on Dorian’s shoulder and his partner finally looked him fully in the face.  “You need to charge?  Val could give you a ride to Rudy’s.”  That would leave John sitting here on their evidence until that warrant got signed, but he didn’t mind.

“John?”

“Yeah?”

“What would you say is a father’s job?”

John blinked.  His fingers, still curled around Dorian’s shoulder, twitched.

“If you had to choose one thing,” Dorian prompted, “what would it be?”

“Is this another memory or…”

Dorian glanced away.  “If you don’t want to answer, just say so, man.”

“No, I -- it’s a tough question.  I mean, I guess…”  He thought of his own father, yes, but also -- oddly enough -- Nigel Vaughn and how John still wished with every fiber of his being that the man had taken better care of his DRNs.  “I guess he should prepare his kids for the life ahead of them.”

Dorian’s chin lifted.

“Not what you were expecting,” John observed.

“I would have thought you’d place love above all else.”

“Because I’m old fashioned, right?”  John chuckled.  His hand slid away.  “Eh, I figured love was automatic.  The other thing -- making sure your kids can live their own lives without ending up either miserable or in the Cubes -- that seems like hard work.  You said ‘job,’ so…”

“I see.”

John wasn’t sure he did himself.  “What brought that on?”

“DRN-494,” Dorian began and John bit back a grimace.  “He once told me the greatest human connection he’d experienced was when he was hugged by a little boy that he’d saved while on duty and, what you said at the hospital about wanting to protect me--”

“Dorian,” John interrupted.  “Don’t -- you know -- equate me to a father figure.  I mean, I know I’m fantastic with kids and all, but…”  John shrugged, grinning and wringing a smile from his partner.

“Sure, John.  No one can make them scream in terror or vomit on their own shoes like you can.”

“Hey.  Two words, buddy: Victor Haseman.”

“Who you bribed with a toy giraffe.”

“Bribe!”  John huffed.  “Bribe, he says.  Boy, you’re some expert all right.  Either go get some shuteye or give us some Don Giovanni.”

“Good night, John.”

He watched Dorian leave.  All the MXs that had reported for duty at the start of their shift had long since gone.  Fully charged replacements now watched over the bullpen.  Since he was technically past quitting time himself and Dorian wasn’t in the vicinity, John plopped down in his chair and put his feet up on the desk.  He scrolled through the background on the three bodyguards who had been killed, searching for connections, passing the time.

Chapter Text

“It’s getting late, John.  When are you bringing Dorian around?”

John blearily blinked at the phone in his hand.  Maybe he was still half-asleep because that had sounded a lot like Rudy wondering where Dorian was.

Shaking off the remnants of the light doze he’d fallen into, John checked the time.  It was very late, but not quite very early.  “Uh--”  He cleared his throat and tried again.  “Hey, Rudy.  Run that by me again?”

“Well, bed is calling and I was wondering where Dorian had got to.  Not that I would expect him in my bed.  His needs are quite different from mine.  I mean, I wouldn’t really know what sort of thing Dorian prefers in bed.  Not me.  Not that he wouldn’t prefer me -- he might -- we don’t really discuss those sorts of, um…”

John rubbed his eyes.  If this conversation was happening, he’d need coffee.  “Rudy.  Check in the pantry.  Or under the kitchen sink.  He’s there.  I sent him over with Valerie.”  John grinned at the memory of Rudy’s starry-eyed gaze when he’d confided -- during the Night Out At McQuaid’s following the undercover op -- that Val had liked his fedora.  “You’re welcome for that, by the way.  How’d it go?”

“Oh!  Fine.  Wonderful.  But, um… John?  Dorian didn’t ride with Detective Stahl.  It was just her and her MX who--”

“What do you mean he didn’t ride with them?”  John planted both feet on the bullpen floor and stood.  As if a change in vantage point would clear up this misunderstanding.  “He should be at your lab--”  John checked his watch yet again.  “--going on three hours now.”

Three hours.  Shit, it was taking forever to get that warrant.  Weekends were always slow and grudging, but not like this.  Must be nice to be a judge working the nine-to-five and clocking out on Saturdays and Sundays.

“I’m telling you -- he’s not here.”

“OK.  I hear you.”  He just didn’t like a single word.  “Let me call him.”

John hung up.

He called Dorian.  No answer.

Voicemail.

At any other time, John would have been lining up all the teasing that Dorian, a.k.a. Mister Multitasker, had just earned… but not this time.

He checked at the detainment center -- maybe Dorian had felt optimistic about a sequel to the tearjerker from earlier.  Yup, at any moment, John would be told that his partner was visiting with the kids or helping vet the parents or enacting some other version of Pain In The Ass and could John please-please-pretty-please come and collect his annoying DRN?  Nope.  Dorian wasn’t there.  Hadn’t been back since John had picked him up hours and hours ago.

God.  Was it still the same day?  Hard to believe.

What was even harder to believe was that Rudy hadn’t texted him with GPS coordinates by now.

So John called him back.

“Hey, Rudy,” John said in jovial tone.  A sure sign that his temper was on the verge of reaching critical mass.  He was clutching the phone so tightly his hand hurt.  “Still looking for my partner.  What gives?”

“Um.  I’m having some trouble with the GPS software.”

“Run that by me again?”  It wasn’t a question.  Despite the rising intonation.

“Uh, could be undergoing an update.  That sometimes slows things down.  Might as well get a beer while we wait?”

Tuned in to the wordless tension on the line, John followed a gut feeling and flicked through his terminal’s sent items.  The warrant for Wonda’s data files was still sitting in John’s drafts folder.  What the hell.  Dorian hadn’t even submitted it before he’d left?

A lot had been slipping through the cracks lately.  Because Dorian was distracted.  Remembering and feeling things… such as Vaughn’s poisoned legacy.

Suddenly, John was reminded of The Portrait of Dorian Gray.

And now Dorian was AWOL.  Even if Sandra had sent Dorian out on some op… if John weren’t in the need-to-know club, she would have at least told Rudy.

A cold prickle at the back of his neck tweaked every hair until it was standing on end.  A drumbeat of foreboding rumbled through his belly.

Wrenching himself back into focus, John growled into the phone, “It’s your turn to buy the first round.”

Shoving his phone into his pocket, John grabbed his jacket and charged for the door.  Then he turned back around and lunged for his terminal; on the off-chance that John’s life wasn’t about to explode, he sent the warrant request.  Maybe there was a judge suffering from insomnia who would sign it.

John forwarded the warrant request ID number to Val.  If, for whatever reason, John wasn’t the first one in the office tomorrow, she’d be able to check its status.  He also saved the work he’d done on the assumption that the bodyguards had been the intended victims and CC’ed Paul on the updates.

He broke the speed limit, but didn’t use the siren, beating Rudy to McQuaid’s.  John scowled his way to a booth at the back and twitched in his seat, glaring at his wristwatch.  Thinking.  Scouring his brain for any hint as to what Dorian might be doing.  Whatever it was, was it voluntary?

If it wasn’t, that might explain why Rudy hadn’t been able to track him.

John’s stomach wrenched and churned.

No proof, John reminded himself.  There was no proof of abduction.

Maybe Dorian was off serenading a girlfriend.

But John didn’t have any proof of that, either.

Free will, he reminded himself.  Dorian had free will, but why the hell wouldn’t he tell John where he was going or who he was meeting with?  Especially after that awkward partner chat they’d had on Thursday?  What the hell was going on here?

If this was all Dorian’s show, then what the hell was he hoping to get out of it?

John glared through a memory of Nigel Vaughn flapping his arms as though he were at wits’ end: “I didn’t know what she wanted then and I don’t know what she wants now!”

That had been a lie -- Vaughn had known.  He’d probably programmed the service bot to mug a woman at gunpoint and pull the trigger in order to for it to be placed in the evidence room.  All so the XRN could be reactivated and made mobile.  For the sake of robotic parts.  Synthentic Souls and ZNA processing cores.

God damn it.

John shook his head, caught in a loop of politicians who hate androids that have a soul and free will, a DRN getting a hug from a little boy, a father’s job, Vaughn’s motives, a man’s duty to protect his partner--

Rudy squiggled into the seat opposite.

John remarked snidely, “You’ll be a regular customer in no time.”

Rudy gave an awkward shrug and a wide-eyed look.  “Well, I just thought -- it might be nice to get out.  Get away from it all.  You know.”

John’s eyes narrowed.  Did that mean Rudy hadn’t come here by choice?  Or was he being followed?  Under surveillance?

John sat back, shrugging his shoulders to loosen up the unzipped front of his jacket.  Better access to the gun underneath.  “What do you think I know?”

“Uh, I mean -- just following his example -- the example of our mutual friend.”  Rudy swallowed thickly.  “It seemed like the thing to do.  Get off the radar for a bit.”  Rudy’s fingers tapped against the sticky tabletop.  He didn’t force a smile, though, so John figured he was telling the truth.

“A little R&R, you mean?” John probed.  “Meet up with a pal?”  Did they have any leads on Dorian’s whereabouts?

“Um, no.  I don’t--I don’t know.”  Rudy shifted, his bony elbows skidding.  “What--this situation--it shouldn’t be possible.  The command code to access it--”  The ability to turn off Dorian’s GPS tracking capabilities, in other words.  “--it’s not common knowledge.”

John tilted his head, reading between the lines: Dorian wouldn’t know how to do that himself.  “Somebody’s twisting his arm?”  What were they talking about here -- coercion?  Extortion?

“Could be, but I can’t really tell from where I stand.  Did you, um, have an argument?”

When didn’t they argue?  Or, rather, when didn’t John argue at Dorian in between Dorian poking fun at John?  Or vice versa.

John scoffed.  “No, I actually thought we were having a moment.  You try to shrink his head again?”

Rudy glanced away guiltily.  “Scheduled for tomorrow -- just some software security updates.  I asked this time.  Upfront and all.  He said yes.”

But had that been enough to tip Dorian off?  Was he worried about Rudy seeing his most recent memory flash?  Deleting it -- stealing it from him?

Wait.  There was something DRN-494 had said…  John squinted, digging for it--

“…we don’t want to lose our existence or our memories.”

Shit.

“You said,” Rudy hissed, “he’d had a dream?”

John let out a long sigh.  “Yeah.  He was up on stage and the whole damn world was giving him some kind of award.”

“The insertion point -- I closed it,” Rudy insisted.

“But it’s like you said.  This isn’t a recent… contribution, right?  Just because the lid’s on the can doesn’t mean there’s nothing still inside.”  Just waiting to eke out.

And John still hadn’t come up with an alternative explanation for the timing.  Dorian had gotten his first memory flash just a couple of weeks after Vaughn had been alone doing God knows what in Rudy’s lab.

John muttered, “I think it’s safe to say home isn’t what it used to be.”

Rudy’s silence said a lot.  It said he didn’t trust that the sanctity of his lab hadn’t been violated when Vaughn had broken in to retrieve those damn Synthetic Souls.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought and there’s probably only one person who could have done this,” Rudy replied unsteadily.  “I’ve torn my lab inside out -- practically dissected it -- but there’s no trace left -- nothing.  If anything was ever left behind in the first place.  And we still don’t know why.  What more could he want when he’s already got…”

Synthetic Souls.  ZNA processing cores.  Possibly even the resources of InSyndicate at his fingertips.  What more could Nigel Vaughn possibly want?

“He doesn’t want to hide--”

John muttered the rest of the remark aloud: “He wants to work.”

That had been Dorian’s conclusion in the wake of his creator’s sudden disappearance.

Rudy gasped, leaning back suddenly and clapping his hands together in realization.  “Vaughn said -- when it was just the two of us alone in the lab -- well, not alone alone -- it wasn’t pillow talk if you know what I--”

“Rudy.”

“Vaughn told me he’d had a second fleet of DRNs built.  Ready to go.  But then the contract was canceled.”

“And Lumocorp went bankrupt.”  Yeah, John had heard this sob story before.

“Completely bust,” Rudy agreed.

John asked, “So where are these DRNs?”  And if they found the second fleet of never-commissioned androids, would they find Dorian there as well, attempting to pick up where Vaughn had left off?  If Dorian was experiencing Vaughn’s memories, then he could be feeling the man’s drive and ambition, too.  And with Dorian’s access to the police database, he could track the fate of those DRNs to a specific location.

“You know,” Rudy volunteered, “Vaughn said something else -- just a comment, but -- he said he considered the DRNs his life’s work.  That they were like children to him.  And if -- if Vaughn stored his own organic memories in Dorian…”

“Right,” John spat, thinking fast.  He recalled Dorian slamming his fists into the cruiser console as officials had separated family members from one another: “How can they do this?  How can they just take their children away?”

Maybe Dorian’s question about a father’s first priority hadn’t been so random after all.

Damn it.

“He may not be in his right mind,” Rudy warned softly, agony pinching his brows.

Yeah, John had gotten that already.  Also.  This could be the next move in the game.  Vaughn could be using Dorian to awaken a DRN army, either for doing InSyndicate’s bidding or Vaughn’s.  Both were capable of coldblooded murder and mass homicide.  “That’s a comforting thought.”

“What do we do now?”

John abandoned the booth and stood up.  “Find him.”

Chapter Text

Rudy was a whiz on his old hacker tablet.  The public Internet line they were piggybacking on didn’t know what hit it.  Not that John couldn’t have logged into his terminal at the precinct remotely and gotten the job done just as fast, but neither Dorian nor the Powers That Be would be capable of monitoring their activity here.

Until John knew exactly what he was dealing with, he’d rather keep this chummy play-date nice and cozy.

It took a grand total of ten minutes from start to finish.  Was John paranoid for thinking it had been ridiculously easy to locate the repo storage center that was supposed to contain Lumocorp’s fleet of DRNs?  Maybe.  But paranoia paid off sometimes.  Lots of times.

John was willing to bet this was one of those times.  His knee-jerk reaction was to go in alone, but barging in without backup might get not only John killed.  It might do Dorian in as well.

He messaged Sandra on his phone: Might need to take a day tomorrow.

Then he zipped an update off to Paul: Check your inbox.  I’m handing off the Billings case to you, silver platter included.  You’re welcome.

Next, John texted Val: Gonna need you to jump on the evidence from the bot as soon as the warrant comes through.

Lifting his gaze to Rudy’s, John began, “So--”

His phone chirped.

It was Sandra.

Holding up a finger to warn Rudy to be silent, he picked up the call.

“Hey, night owl.”

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“Just need a little R&R.”  For most people, that stood for “rest and relaxation” but for Sandra and John, it meant “recon and rescue.”  John added, “I’m thinking Dorian could use some.”

“Send me a postcard.”  Translation: keep me in the loop.

“You got it.  There’s this place on on Eighth and Wilburn.  Nigel recommended it.  Hey, this isn’t gonna leave you shorthanded, is it?  Us cutting out for a bit?”

There was a telling pause.  “I’ve got some favors I can call in.”

“At this time of night?”  John shook his head.  “Must be one hell of an IOU.”

“And you know I always collect.”

He winced at the reminder.  He owed her for this and she’d accept nothing less than every detail.

“Have a good night, John.”

“You know I will.”

Once they hung up, John lowered his phone to the table and said to Rudy, “With all these organic memories in his head -- feeling someone else’s life and emotions and ambitions -- is my Dorian still going to be in there, too?  Somewhere?”

Rudy swallowed.  “He should be, yeah.  I mean, Dorian’s memory files will be time-stamped with appropriate meta tags and -- yes, he -- our Dorian -- should still be in there.”

The big question was whether or not John would be able to get through to him, because John remembered that wistful, marveling tone in Dorian’s voice when he’d talked about being a child.  Without Vaughn’s memory, Dorian never would have known what it felt like to be a little boy, to play, to be stuck in a hospital bed.  Dorian never would have experienced the teeth-gritting pulse of a bruised funny bone or the frothy tickle of a surf upon his toes.  Sensations based on chemical relays rather than strings of code and algorithms.  All those little human moments -- sympathy pains and whatnot -- may have been the hook.  If someone wanted to seduce a DRN into doing their bidding, John couldn’t think of a more ingenious way to go about it.

And now it was John’s job to convince Dorian to settle for what was real, to turn away from the tantalizing feel of being truly human.

Oh, yeah.  Easy peasy.

John lifted his phone and accessed his locator chip.  His thumb hovered over the “shut down” command.  He took a deep breath and braced himself: once it was switched off, he’d be up and running.

Rudy’s hands fluttered.  “I need you to stop by the lab before you do that.”

John rolled his chin, already bone-weary and on edge.

“Please.  For Dorian.”

He put the phone away.  “OK.”

At the lab, Rudy passed him an EMP spike tuned to Dorian’s specific energy signature.  The same syringe-like deal that John had stabbed into the back of the XRN’s skull.  The same thing that had done diddly squat to stop Vaughn’s homicidal robot.  So, yeah.  John was feeling real confident about a repeat performance.

“If this doesn’t work…?”  Please don’t tell me to shoot my partner in the head.

“It’ll work,” Rudy promised.

John didn’t move.

“Right.  Backup plan, yeah?”

Since it was Dorian’s life on the line-- “Yeah.”

The wiry man glanced down at John’s synthetic leg.  “Is that your new leg?  Have you been wearing it?”

“Yeah.  Finally took it for a test drive Thursday.”  John squinted.  “Why?”

Rudy scooped up his hacker tablet and rapidly poked through a mystifying series of command prompts.  “Just--if you get close, get him talking.  Help him remember the times you’ve spent together.  Just talk.  It might help.”  Rudy pointed to the EMP spike.  “But that will work.  I’d stake my life on it.”

Reassuring.  Rudy was actually staking John’s and/or Dorian’s life on it.

John nodded slowly.  “OK.  See you ‘round.”

Weapon in hand and plan in mind, John clattered up the stairs, out the door, and threw himself into the driver’s seat.  He’d just pulled his phone out in order to finally deactivate his locator chip when there was a flurry of tapping on the window.

He rolled it down and barked at Rudy, “What?”

“You’ll let me know when you find him?” Rudy pressed.

“Just as soon as we hug it out,” John replied grumpily.  As if Dorian’s little vanishing act was ruining his day.  Which it was, but not because John had any particular interest in watching the game live.  He did, but Dorian took precedence.  No question about it.

Rudy nodded.  “Right.  Then.  Take care of yourself.  And remember what I said -- if -- when he recognizes you, talks to you -- just, once you’ve got him, keep Dorian very close.  But don’t hesitate to use the EMP spike.  I mean, look out for yourself first.”

“And let the chips fall where they may.”  He hated hearing that -- hated saying it even more -- but there was something in Rudy’s expression that made him hesitate to start the engine.  Made John think: sacrifice.

And then it hit him.  The thing he’d been struggling to remember since the close of the Strawman case:

“Why are you doing this?” Dorian had challenged the XRN.  John hadn’t heard their exchange until much later; he’d been knocked out on the ground level of the bar below at the time.  Only in reviewing the recordings of the incident had he seen the brief exchange between Vaughn’s two androids.

“My sacrifice is necessary,” it had answered.  “Just like yours.”

“We are nothing alike,” Dorian had insisted before launching himself at the XRN.

“We are nothing alike.”

John had tried to tell Dorian that -- Vaughn had been in a different space when he’d made the XRN.

God damn it, that should have been John’s first clue.

He prayed that it wouldn’t be Dorian’s last.

He told Rudy, “We’ll sort this out.”  One way or another.

John turned off his locator chip and got the hell to work.

It was almost two o’clock in the morning when John arrived at the repo storage facility.  He flashed his badge at the guard gate and bullied the manager into loaning him the passkey for the Lumocorp unit.  He didn’t need it.  The rolling door was unlocked and slightly ajar.

Well.  Looked like he was invited to the party after all.

Drawing his weapon and readying his flashlight, John took a step back, resisted the urge to squeeze his eyes shut and pray, then silently rolled his way into the darkened room.

Chapter Text

John was up and moving even as he registered the stacks of crates.  Aisles of them going up almost all the way to the ceiling.  The letters “DRN” stamped on the sides.  One box per android.

Like coffins.

“Detective Kennex.  You’re later than I expected.”

Nigel Vaughn.  Was John hearing the man himself or a facsimile of his voice?  One of Rudy’s gadgets could probably tell the difference.

“But the fact that you turned off your locator chip and came alone is much appreciated.”

John opened his mouth to give a smart retort, but Rudy’s parting words cut through his gut reaction.  Moving toward the sound of Vaughn’s voice and clearing the next aisle, he said, “Call me John.”

“J-John.”

His heart squeezed and coughed in his chest.  Dorian’s voice.  That first little stutter -- before Vaughn had taken over again -- had been Dorian.  Vaughn wasn’t just in here with Dorian -- Vaughn was in Dorian.  And John was not particularly thrilled to have his suspicions confirmed.

“Hey, buddy.  Whatcha doing out here?  Working on a case?”

There was a long pause.  John cleared another aisle and once again took cover behind a tall stack of crates.

“I am working,” Vaughn said.  “You shouldn’t interrupt.”

“Oh, I’m not here to interrupt.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To speak to Dorian.  About the facial-recog software, guided-bullet case.  Black market gunrunners.  Remember that one?”

John cleared the next aisle.

It was Dorian who answered, his voice hitching over a strange hiss and hiccup: “I do.  The murder of Anton Cross.  Is there new evidence?”

“The arms dealer -- Natalie -- she’s going to have her day in court soon.”

“Will I be called to testify?”

“You might.”

“I shot her.”

“Yes, you did.”

“But she didn’t die.”

John smiled as he cleared yet another aisle.  “That’s because you’re a better shot than I am.”

“High praise.”

“Credit where it’s due,” John admitted with a rueful twitch of his chin.

“Is this a new avenue you’re exploring?”

“Yeah.  Testing out my New Year’s resolution before I commit.”  The flashlight beam roved along the next aisle, then trailed along the high ceiling as John took cover again.  “I would’ve liked to see how you did against Coop at the shooting range.”

“Your friend.  Trevor Cooper.”

“You’re my friend, too, D.”  John cleared another aisle.  Jesus.  How big was this storage unit, anyway?  He’d gotten lost in shopping malls with less square footage.  And why hadn’t these DRNs been sold off to pay Lumocorp’s debts years ago?  Did the black mark on Vaughn’s name really make them completely worthless as collateral?  “Remember Anton’s girlfriend?”

“Kira Larsen.  Yes.”

“You saved her life.”  Another aisle.  “When she was targeted by--”

“Why is your locator chip turned off, John?”

“Because I’m trying to protect you, Dorian.”

“I was recommissioned to protect you.”

Yet another aisle.  Still, no sign of Dorian, but John could sense that he was getting closer.  “Yet here I am.  In the dark.”

“Are you afraid of the dark?”

John shook his head, wry and sarcastic.  “I was speaking metaphorically, man.  I’m hoping you’ll enlighten me.”

“Certainly.  What would you like to know?”

“Why are you here, Dorian?  Why are you off the grid?”

There was a long pause.  “I am not sure.  It would appear that I came here to animate the DRN androids stored at this location…”

The faint hum of electricity.  The hair on his arms pushed up against the knit weave of John’s long-sleeved sweater, attempting to stand on end.  Static charge.

John peered around the next stack of crates and there, at the end of the aisle, was a faint glow.  A long crate was open.  John still didn’t have a completely clear line of sight.

Passing the last wall of crates provided it.  Tethered with a glowing cable to a monitor-less computer terminal, Dorian stood beside an empty table that resembled the one in Rudy’s lab where John had first awakened DRN-0167 with a touch of the activation wand against his left ear.

John lowered his gun and jogged over in silence.  The opened crate was empty and it looked like Dorian had assembled a makeshift lab from what had been packed inside of it.

Shit.  OK.  Dorian first.  John eyed the apparatus his partner was connected to.  It was drawing crazy amounts of power.  Enough for someone to notice.

John was pretty damn sure somebody had already noticed.

“Dorian,” John whispered.  “I need you to come with me right now.”

A single streak of light raced down toward Dorian’s jaw.  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, John.  You should go before…”

That tone.  John knew that tone.  Knew Dorian was figuring it out.

“John--”

Ah, shit.  There it was.  Apprehension.  Fear.  A plea for John to turn back.  But it was too late.

“Get down!” Dorian bellowed, grabbing John’s arm and pulling him flat against the floor just as an explosion rocked the cement slab beneath them and rippled the corrugated sheet metal along the walls.

John tucked his arms over his head.  A familiar shape pressed against his back and shoulders -- Dorian crouching over him as debris and sparks rained down on them from above.

Distant shouts.

The stutter of gunfire.

It was the raid all over again and now the only way out was through.

Chapter Text

Forty-six was way too old to be duck-and-covering in the middle of a firefight.

Jesus, Kennex!

John made a mental note to continue berating himself later.  When he could hear the sound of his own voice.  Otherwise, there was just something lacking in the experience.

A flash out of the corner of his eye.  John turned toward the motion as the cables that had been connected to the port at the back of Dorian’s neck landed limply on the cement, sputtering with pulsing light and then going dark.  Before John could figure out if that was important, a hard grip on his opposite arm was yanking him bodily toward the empty crate.

John kicked out with his legs, the toes of his left boot catching on the floor, gaining traction to aid his smooth impersonation of a garden slug.  John briefly wondered which side of the crate would offer the best cover but then--

He flinched as Dorian flicked the entire thing up in the air, spinning it.  The instinct to curl up into a smaller target was unstoppable.  Except that Dorian’s knees were braced on either side of John’s and John had nowhere to go and then--

Crash!

They were inside the upended crate.  Biodegradable foam pellets bopped John on the head and neck and shoulders.

The gun was still clutched in his hand, safety on.

It was dark and, on the other side of the crate walls, the world was descending into Armageddon.

Angling his chin toward his shoulder and the android still poised over him, John bellowed, “Are there alternate exits?”

Dorian shouted back, “No, but we may be able to create one.  How’s your ammo, man?”

“Full clip.”

“That’s good,” Dorian replied encouragingly.  As though John had just vowed to give up doughnuts.  “I’ll point, you shoot.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Another explosion snapped and rippled along the walls.  Dorian braced himself and lifted the edge of the crate, shouting, “One o’clock!”

John had already thumbed off the safety and was shooting before Dorian had finished articulating the “o’clock.”

The bullet-riddled wall tore open.  The ceiling creaked ominously overhead.  John could almost ignore the ping! of bullets hitting metal and the crack of splintering crates.

Dorian shoved the empty crate aside and John assumed this was the part where they were supposed to run their asses off.

It was a good thing John had recently tackled the O-course.  Fucking serendipitous.

Dorian reached the wall first, John covering him and searching the gloom for moving shadows.  There was a screech as Dorian tore open the hole that John had shot into the wall, and then a hand on the collar of John’s Kevlar vest grabbed and pulled.

John stumbled, pushing off with his heels, and then he was airborne and landing hard -- a shoulder jamming in the middle of Dorian’s back and hard asphalt under his hip.  His synthetic leg chirped in complaint at being awkwardly folded.  Luckily, the sound was lost amid another round of gunshots.

“This way!” John shouted, tugging at Dorian’s jacket, twisting the slick fabric in his clenched fist, not letting up until he was certain Dorian was right where John expected him to be.

Reaching the corner of the massive warehouse, John crouched, tilting his head around the edge.  Smoke and sparks in the distance centered right where he’d parked the cruiser.

Good thing he’d called for a ride beforehand.

When he turned away from the battle raging at the front of the building and ghosted toward the back of the compound, Dorian hissed, “We’re not assessing the situation?”

“Nope.”

“Then what are we doing, John?”

“Following captain’s orders.”

“Wow.  This is a momentous occasion.  I cannot recall a single instance when you did what you were told.”

“What!  I’m the king of--yeah, OK.  Just--shut up.”

A hand on his shoulder.  “John.  Security cameras are still operational.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he replied, shrugging off Dorian’s lax grip.  “Get us through the fence up ahead.”

Chain link and razor wire.  Electrified or not, it was a joke to an android with the capabilities of a DRN.  Dorian tore an edge of the fence up like he was peeling a sheet of perforated toilet paper from a wall-mounted roll.  John ducked through and they raced across the darkened street into a pitch-black alley, at which point, John let Dorian and his night vision take point.

“Northwest,” he directed quietly and pretended like he was actually capable of protecting their asses despite the fact that John could not see a single thing.  The rustle of small, startled animals -- or very large cockroaches -- nearly had John firing into the darkness more than once.  The squeal of a rusty fire escape overhead.  The yowl of a feral cat.

No assailants leaping out of the gloom.

No gunshots.

No grenades.

By the time they reached the next major street, John was starting to feel somewhat optimistic.

“This way,” John whispered, tucking his gun into his jacket.  With a nod, he directed Dorian north and headed for the end of the block at a casual lope.  Turning the corner, John could finally breathe easy: a delivery truck from Lee’s Dim Sum was parked at the curb.

John whipped the back door open without fanfare, startling the occupant of the truck out of his doze.  “Damn it, Kennex!”

With a grin, John said, “Dorian, you remember DiCarlo?”

Chapter Text

DiCarlo was a terrible driver.  John was unsure if that was due to the man himself or the fact that he was operating a motor vehicle via his sweet-as-pie exosuit.  But if he got them to their next stop in one piece, John decided he wouldn’t care.

He smirked, recalling the sour lemon welcome he and Dorian had been given:

“What the hell are you doing here, man?”

“Getting a ride to the Koln District.”

“No way.  Nuh-uh.  I’m waitin’ for somebody.”

“Yeah.  Me.”  John had wagged the burner phone he had used to set up this meet.  “And the only way those aforementioned upgrades to your exosuit are gonna happen is if you get your ass behind the wheel and move this bucket of health code violations.  Now.”

“You are one nasty piece of work, Kennex.”

DiCarlo had bitched and whined, but he’d done as he’d been told.  But see, that was just how DiCarlo worked.  He’d cooperate once John had given him a reason to.  Laying on the crazy generally did the trick.  Some informants were like that.  Well, OK, most were like that; so was the next guy on John’s dance card, in fact.  Informants resisted and John threatened, then they’d bargain and John would relent, and everybody was happy at the end of the day.

Although, Rudy might not be so eager to step up and fulfill John’s promise of exosuit upgrades to DiCarlo.  Hell.  John would probably have to promise the man another undercover gig.

Yeah.  That would work.  Sure.  So long as Dorian wouldn’t have to rush in and rescue John’s active agent again.  Jesus.  Was Richard Paul the only detective in the Delta Division that he hadn’t nearly gotten killed out of carelessness?

Well, there was Detective Vogel, who John had never even been introduced to.

Fuck.

It was way too early in the morning to be thinking about this shit.  Plus, John’s last cup of coffee had been hours ago and he was really starting to feel it.  Hard.

The Koln District was as welcoming as usual: basically, it wasn’t.  Not at all.  But Tony Han was at his favorite dive, which was lucky because DiCarlo had dumped them out in the adjacent alley, his female exosuit’s mellow alto vibrating salaciously, “I’ll be waiting for your call, Kennex.”

Shrugging away a shudder at the memory, John elbowed his way toward Tony’s spot at the bar and clapped the man on the shoulder.  “Hey, Tony!  How’s the girl and kid doing?”

“Jesus!” the man startled, looking impressively sober and alert for the usual clientele at a place like this.  “What the hell?”

“Let’s do business outside,” John suggested and Dorian quickly stepped between John and the looming goon who looked ready to toss John out through the nearest window.  Again.

“You smell like an incinerator,” Tony grumbled, wincing and attempting to pull his arm from Dorian’s grasp.

“Yeah?”  John tugged the corner of his jacket collar up for a sniff.  “Well, what do you know.  I guess I do.  And unless you’d like to be present for the sequel, I’m going to need a nice, quiet place to get cleaned up.”

Fifteen minutes later, Tony was gesturing John and Dorian in through the back entrance of a sleazy, rent-by-the-hour and pay-in-untraceable-bitcoin fuck stop four blocks over.  The building was identical to a good two dozen others all within a stone’s throw, single-pane windows and rickety fire escape included.

He passed John the room key.  “Enjoy your stay.  Don’t bother me again tonight.”

John quirked a brow.  “Big plans?”

“Hey, I got dad duty tomorrow.  Bright and early.”

“Have fun with that.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed.  “If you had a kid, you’d get it, man.”

And what a shining example Tony was setting.  Hell, maybe all the kids’ dads dealt drugs for a living.  This was Koln, after all.

But Tony was already shaking his head as he ducked back out into the littered street, looking for all the world like he felt sorry for John.

Jesus.  What was the world coming to?

John and Dorian climbed up the grimy service stairs to the fourth floor.  Room 410.  Once they stepped over the threshold, John could definitely tell that someone on the other side of the wall behind the archaic TV was eager for a spanking from “Daddy” and against the opposite wall, the gouged-up headboard was softly banging in time with a chorus of grunts.

Of the two, John preferred the “rugby game” happening in 408 to the post-Halloween roleplay in 412.

“What are we doing here, John?”  Dorian was clearly wincing at the audio overload, and yeah, it was barely possible that he might finally be able to understand some of John’s discomfort with Dorian’s habit of over-sharing in the cruiser.  Maybe.

“We’re here to talk,” John answered, resisting the urge to cross toward the window and the sun-rotted curtains hanging limply from the warped rod.  Neon lights flickered from the street outside.  The patchy carpeting crunched under John’s boots.  He honestly had no desire to enhance the experience by pacing the room, cataloging moldy corners and questionable stains.

Besides, Rudy had told John to stick close to Dorian, so that was what he was going to do.

Dorian queried, “You aren’t going to use the EMP spike in your pocket?”

“What?  You haven’t given me a reason to.”  Yet.

“You don’t know what I’ve done, John.”  Dorian bowed his head, hands open at his sides.  Like he was waiting to be read his rights.  “Or what I was about to do.”

John’s jaw clenched.  “Then why don’t you tell me.”  He spread his arms.  “My phone’s off.  Locator, too.  No cameras, no mics.  That I know of.”

From beyond the rattling headboard, a litany of expletives followed by a probably-genuine wail of approval poured into the silence.  Sounded like the rugby game was a good one.

John pushed: “If you’d rather talk about this in the cruiser, sorry, but that’s not really an option right now.”

“With Saint Christopher?”

“The cruiser’s not tagged,” John automatically argued.  “An MX went over it after Avery’s clones hit us.”

Dorian didn’t move.

“But we can sit side-by-side and play pretend,” John snidely offered, half-serious.  Hell, whatever got Dorian talking sometime this year.

“Saint Christopher,” Dorian repeated in a tone that was too flat to come across as thoughtful, and just how often was Dorian not full of thoughts about some damn thing or other?  Yeah.  Never.  John could only conclude that Dorian had slammed his personality interface full-on to cover up a genuine freak-out.  Dorian continued, “Patron saint of travelers.”

“Anna,” John answered irritably, not really caring if this was Q&A, share-all-you-can-bare or not.  “She told me she traveled a lot on business.”

“You gave it to her.  She left it behind.”  Dorian’s throat moved in a slow, visible swallow.  John had seen that before, knew what it was: Dorian’s tell.  He was bracing himself.  “Why would she do that?”

“To wish me Godspeed on my way to Hell.”

Dorian finally looked at him.  “Why do you keep it?”

“Because I should have died in the ambush.”  Because there was no such thing as coincidences.  Because letting his guard down had gotten his friends killed.

Naturally, Dorian ignored him: “She betrayed you.  I’ve betrayed you.  You should call Maldonado.”

“Dorian,” John gritted out, patience so long past gone that John wasn’t even running on fumes, here.  Only the fact that it was physically impossible for him to manhandle an android stopped John from giving his best shot at manhandling an android.  Pride.  Pride was keeping a lid on John’s temper at the moment.  But only just.  “I will read you the riot act later.  Right now I need you to tell me what the hell is going on with you.”

From the other side of the wall behind the TV, daddy praised his good little girl.  John tried to tune out the ecstatic begging.  Rugby, he told himself, trying to aim his ears at the clattering headboard, hoping for a turnover.

After a long, torturous moment, Dorian spoke, perhaps for the sake of blocking out the ruckus from the neighboring rooms: “At the station, in the conference room, I was distracted.”

“Hey.  You’ve been distracted for a couple of days, pal.”

“John,” Dorian nearly shouted, desperate to make his point.  “I walked out of the room intending to go to the lab, and then the next thing I knew you were approaching me in the storage unit.”

“What.  Like you were sleep walking?  In a fugue state?”

“No.  My systems were all on-line.  Everything I was doing -- looking up the location of the DRNs, trespassing, assembling a lab, writing code -- it’s all here in my logs, but I never would have done anything like that!  It was as if… one moment, I was me, and then suddenly, I was someone else.”

Because when John had sent Dorian off to get a lift with Val, Vaughn had somehow taken over.  Overwhelmed Dorian with the need to find and breathe life into his sleeping children, his DRNs.

John reached out and gripped Dorian’s shoulder.  His own words -- his heartfelt insistence to Dorian on the night Vaughn had vanished -- rang in his ears: “You’re you and nothing’s going to change that.”

Of all the things to be proven wrong about.  God damn it.

The very fact that Dorian’s consciousness had been overwritten, shit, that was grounds for a memory wipe at best.  Decommissioning at worst.  That was why John was standing here, in the second circle of Hell, completely off the grid, damn it all.

Dorian tilted his head and accused John: “You’re not surprised.”

Truth time.  “Yeah, well.  Rudy showed me images of what you were experiencing.  Of being a human child.  I had a hunch this was coming from someone -- from Vaughn.”  Dorian blinked and John tacked on resentfully, “Seems like the sort of shit he’d pull.”

“What do you mean by that, man?”

“I mean, what’s better than creating an entirely new race of beings?”  John supplied the answer before Dorian could open his mouth: “Putting yourself in them.”

“You’re telling me these are organic memories?”

“Yeah.”

“Rudy lied to me.”  Dorian’s hands curled into fists.  Lethal weapons.

“Rudy needed time,” John insisted, “to figure this out.  To figure out what we were dealing with and how to help you.”

“What makes you think that’s possible?”

John swallowed, but his throat still felt tight.  He finagled roughly, “You’re holding it together pretty well right now, aren’t you?”

“Yes.  I’m able to ignore the compulsions.”  Dorian’s chin lifted incrementally.  “John, I think you’re right--”

Yeah?  So maybe there was a way through this that didn’t lead to Dorian being shut off--

“I shouldn’t be able to deactivate my own GPS software.  Or look up the location of private property without clear direction from a commanding officer or probable cause.  This is Vaughn working through me.”

“Dorian, let’s talk to Rudy, OK?”

He fumed.  Ignited and incandescent.  “No, man, this is not OK!  I was working on coding when you found me!  Coding that would infect every DRN in that building.”

“With what?”

“My memories, John.  The time stamps indicate every positive interaction I had with Vaughn when he behaved like he--as if…”

“As if he was your dad and gave a damn,” John finished before the colloquialism program could generate a palatable synonym.

“Oh, he gives a damn,” Dorian snapped.  “For the sake of his own agenda, he does give a damn.”  Shoulders tensing, Dorian nearly shouted, “How is this possible?  They’re just memories!  They don’t deliver commands that impel action!”

Personally, John felt Dorian was underestimating the insidiousness of those recollections.  “Dorian.”  Moving close, so close that John had only to lift his arms and he’d be hugging Dorian against his chest, he said, “You yourself told me: you’re made to feel.  These moments bombard you with feelings.”

Dorian didn’t move away.  Lifting his chin, he glared into John’s eyes.  If John sneezed, they’d be mashing lips.  In the least romantic lip-lock of all time.  “If that’s true, then I have no defense against it.”

“Hey, you do, OK?  You’re here with me right now -- you, Dorian.  You’re lucid and…”  John’s hand slid from his shoulder to settle on the small of Dorian’s back.  “And I don’t really know why that is.”  John could make a guess or two, though.  Still--“We need to talk to Rudy.”

Dorian warned, “Vaughn was alone in Rudy’s lab.”

“Yeah.  This might come as a surprise to you, but I’m a detective and Rudy’s got about twelve doctorate degrees.  We figured that part out a while ago.”

When John tucked his chin down and raised his brows in a mocking grin, Dorian’s mouth twitched into a lopsided smirk.  Ah, yeah.  There.  A moment of normalcy.  And about fucking time.

“Look, we need to lay our cards on the table -- all of us -- and sort this out.”  He patted Dorian’s back.  “We good?”

Dorian huffed.

John grinned.  “Yeah, we’re good.”

Their current neighbors in this fleapit, however…  John cringed away from the barely-muffled ruckus with a full-body shudder.  “Ugh.  Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Chapter Text

John fell asleep in Rudy’s favorite lab chair, his legs tangled with Dorian’s as the android perched on The Table and Rudy fussed.  They’d shouted at each other at full volume for the first twenty minutes, then bickered over semantics, and now hissed a heated discussion that sounded like white noise to John’s ears.

He’d yet to turn on his phone or locator chip.  He wasn’t about to implicate Rudy in any of the excitement until they knew for sure what sort of disciplinary action John would be facing.  He was, perhaps foolishly, hoping to avoid that.

John had no idea what time it was when a familiar hand gripped his shoulder a little too tightly, jolting him awake.  “What--where--Dorian?”

“Yeah, man.  Rudy’s setting up a cot next to my charging pod.”

Eyeing the android’s grin with suspicion, John grouched, “We’re finally roommates just like you wanted, huh?”

Dorian tipped his head to the side and corrected him: “Not exactly how I’d wanted.”

“Uh-huh.”  John gave himself a shake, clawing his way toward coherence.  “So what’s the diagnosis?”

“Vaughn’s memories and experiences merge with my programming every time I identify with them.”

“Oh.  That sounds… bad.”

“It is.  Rudy’s working on a software patch that should help me ignore them so I don’t get… lost.  Again.”

“Hey.”  John reached out and grabbed onto Dorian’s elbow.  “Rudy said being near me would help.  Not entirely sure why, but--”

“It’s your leg.  After finding the first batch of images, he was worried that my files could become corrupted.  Your leg holds a bank of unalterable data.  My memories.  Read-only.  The storage device is capable of short-range transmission.  He must have activated it before you came to find me.  They help me prioritize.”

“Let me get this straight -- my synthetic leg is talking to you?”  John hadn’t been all that far off base after all.  Should have called it.  The only acceptable reaction left was for him to be a judgmental jerk about it.  “Right.  I think we both need a charge, because that sounds crazy.”

And John was also pretty sure that Rudy’s tampering had voided the warranty.  But it had also brought Dorian back to them, so John wasn’t going to get all persnickety.

“Right!  We are all set!” Rudy trumpeted and John hated him just a little bit for being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at -- he glanced down at his watch -- four fucking thirty in the morning.  “The annex is all yours.”

John pulled himself upright with a groan.  If he ended up leaning a bit on Dorian on the way to their destination, so what.  He was dead on his feet.  D-E-D, dead on his feet, damn it.

“Getting too old for all-nighters, John?” Dorian teased and, oh God, John had missed this irreverent snark.  That was why he was letting Dorian steer him out of the main lab and into a solidly partitioned side room.

“I’m not old and I can all-night you into next Wednesday.”

“Here’s your cot.”

“Ugh,” John groaned, aiming himself for the narrow runway of mattress.  “Come to papa.”

“Seriously?” Dorian heckled.

“Shut up.  You say worse to your charging pod.”

“I don’t say a thing.”

“You think it.”

“Fine.  I’ll give you that one.”

“Ha!” John exhaled, eyelids fluttering against the onslaught of slumber.  “You give me nothing -- I called it.”

Whatever Dorian said in reply was lost in the ocean of unconsciousness.  When John twitched awake, he realized that Dorian’s charging pod was bumped right up against his borrowed cot and Dorian’s left hand was resting on John’s right shin.  Underneath his pant leg.

“What the hell!” he wheezed, attempting to sit up and whapping his elbow against the metal frame of the cot, sending his funny bone -- ulnar nerve -- into overdrive.

Shit.  Damn it all.  Ow.

“Hm.  You said, ‘Ouch.’”

“In what language?  Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”

“I’m charging, man.  By definition, that means my power levels increase.  So, technically, I’m in the process of waking up.”

“It’s too early to be this pedantic.”

“It’s eleven o’clock.”

“Yup.”

“John.”

“Why are you groping me?”  When Dorian’s hand began to retreat, John gestured irritably for him to stop.  “No, no.  Damn it.  Just -- why?”

“The signal originates from here.”

“Your real memories, yeah?”  See, he could keep up.  So what if his head was splitting due to caffeine withdrawal.  He eyed the coffeemaker in the kitchenette along the adjacent wall like it was capable of waddling itself within arm’s reach… and was just sitting there to spite him.  “Which one were you looking at?”

“Guy Code.”

John groaned.  “You’ve been following that stupid list of rules to the letter, man.”  And yes, John had hella noticed.  Ever since Dorian had answered John’s phone and spoken to Samantha a couple of weeks ago, Dorian had been… different.  Less over-sharing, more distant, and just… different.  In general, John was not a big fan of Different.

“Was I not supposed to?”

“Jesus.  No.  Not all of them are worth the effort.  Or applicable in our case.  Hell, every guy’s got his own list.”  Gah.  His tongue felt like a ten-pound bag of sand.  Delightful.  “It’s customizable, is what I’m saying.”

Dorian looked disturbingly hopeful.  “Which rules are important to you?”

“My top five for a cup of coffee,” John negotiated.

Dorian leaped out of the charging pod.  “Done.”

Ten minutes later, John was breathing in the fragrant steam of 165-degree black coffee and totally unashamed to be sporting a blissful smile.  “By the way,” John mumbled between sips, “we’ve got the day off.”

“So it says on the duty roster.  Personal reasons.”

John rolled his eyes at Dorian’s imperiously arched brow.  John was not going to hear the end of this.  Hell, the damn android would probably start half a dozen wild rumors before John finished his first doughnut tomorrow at roll call.

“Now, teach me Guy Code, John.”

John did, delivering the five most important and absolutely essential rules.  “And you can pretty much forget about the rest,” John concluded, downing the cooling dregs of his liquid breakfast.  “But, hell, try not to look so damn happy about it, will you?”

Dorian was beaming.  “I am happy.”

“Clearly.”

“I had already violated several of the rules -- either to the letter or in spirit -- which would explain some of your extreme reactions--”

“Wha--extreme!” John sputtered.

“But, man, I was seriously concerned that I’d been damaging our partnership.  Some of my comments and actions could have been construed as crossing the line.”

Clearing his throat, John glanced away.  Had Dorian really been worried about getting turned off or reformatted or something?  Damn it, John could not deal with that.  Coffee or no.  “Hey.  When you cross the line, I’ll haul you back.  It’s what partners do.”

And since they were apparently in Share Mode, John added, “I shouldn’t have said what I did a while back -- during that Beauty Killer case -- about where you come from.”  If Dorian had been human, John would have had to fumble through a horrendous rehashing of their conversation on physical flaws and John’s scalding accusations in particular:

“At least it’s my face.  I know where I came from.  You’re a composite; who knows where you came from!  Just think about that.”

Perfect recall actually worked in John’s favor.  For once.  “I made it sound like -- damn it.”  He sighed and said what he should have said weeks ago: “Look, where I come from is no better or worse than where you come from.  For the record.”

“John, I think we can safely assume that your father was a better man than my creator is.”

“Still, just -- let me apologize, OK?  I shouldn’t have shoved it in your face.”

Dorian looked away, scanning the room for gas leaks or something.  “It’s always in my face, man.  I appreciate the intention to allow me to move on, but I can’t get past it.  It’s stored in my memory files.  In perfect condition.  Until the day my data banks are wiped and I’m shut off again.”

Or Dorian deleted them himself… which would not be terribly smart.  “I’m sorry.”

With a shaky smile, Dorian countered, “It’s OK.  I’ve got plenty of good things to remember.”

One perfectly good memory didn’t heal the pain from a perfectly shitty one.  But John wasn’t going to start that argument.  Instead, he used the opening to return to the issue at hand: “So, I’m guessing that the whole point of sharing your reunion moments -- uploading them to Vaughn’s fleet of DRNs -- was supposed to endear him to them.”

“That was the assumption that I, as Vaughn, had been operating under.”

Hundreds of police-issue androids eager to find and protect their father.  To love him and, if it came down to it, die for him.  As strategies went, it was subtle and horrifying.

But in the here and now, John needed a moment to just, like--how weird it must be to have Vaughn’s aspirations and values swimming around inside Dorian’s head.  Would this be the equivalent of a human personality disorder?  Or demon possession?

Dorian released a breath that almost sounded like a sob caught on a shiver.  John crowded in.

When John’s hand landed on Dorian’s shoulder, the android despaired, “All this -- because of what.”  It didn’t sound like a question, but it was.

And because John was honor-bound to answer, he supplied a little food for thought: “Immortality.  Power.  Nigel Vaughn’s kink is playing God.”  His instinctive attempt to jostle Dorian’s shoulder didn’t budge the android, so John squeezed the joint of his arm instead.  “I’m not letting him do that to you.  And -- I’ll say this because I know you’re still thinking it -- I’m not letting anyone shut you off.”

Dorian shook his head slowly.  “John, I…”

“Yeah?”  When his prompting was met with a pleading look, John blustered, “What?  Just -- whatever it is -- we’re partners, man.  Just go for it--ack!”

John coughed, a chuckle burbling up from his chest as Dorian wrapped himself around him.  A hug.  Really?  This was what Dorian wanted?  Well, hell.  OK.

With a resigned sigh, John curled his arms around the DRN’s shoulders.  He rubbed Dorian’s back briskly at first and then just held on.  There was just enough room for him to breathe and, if John were rating the experience, he’d give it two stars over the sloppy hug in the gazebo just after Dorian had disarmed the bomb collar on Jeannie Hartman’s neck and John had carefully unclipped it.

Yeah, that had been a good moment.

This one was definitely better.

Chapter Text

In retrospect, John probably shouldn’t have taken the personal day.  He spent it being invisible, which was not nearly as much fun as it sounded, hiding in the annex of Rudy’s lab and trying not to rearrange everything in sight.  His skin itched from having to wear yesterday’s clothes.  He wanted a shower.  There was no doughnut machine or bourbon.

And bathroom breaks were awkward what with Dorian hovering just outside the door and escorting John back to their little waiting room.  John was sorely tempted to say to hell with suffering this shit like grown men and suggesting they build a pillow fort.  Only one problem: not enough pillows.

Dorian eventually discovered a pack of playing cards, so John taught him to play Go Fish.  It was probably one of the few card games where Dorian’s perfect memory and inevitable card counting wouldn’t ruin all the fun.  Though, he somehow added an unspoken rule that the winner could choose the next topic of conversation and talk it to death all through the next game.

John made Dorian listen to a lecture on the importance of sports and sporting events, plus less important Guy Code points, such as urinal etiquette and what not to say when giving a best man speech at a friend’s wedding.

That was probably why, when Dorian won the next game, he asked, “How come you’ve never been married, John?”

“What--Jesus.  Remember what I said about you having no boundaries?”

“Would you rather I ask in the cruiser?”

While John was driving and incapable of duct taping Dorian’s mouth shut?  Yeah.  Sure.  Sounded fun.  Not.  “I wanted to make detective first,” John admitted.

“You’ve been a detective for over fifteen years.”

“Yeah.  Well.  The plan was to settle into a department -- work with people I respected, yeah?  After that, I figured I’d start looking.”

Dorian asked if he had a two.  John handed it over and went back to glaring at his cards.

But he couldn’t leave the rest of it unsaid.  “Then I lost my dad and… it seemed like there wasn’t much point to it.”

“I don’t understand.  Do you have an eight?”

“No, go fish.”  John heaved out a heavy breath.  “I wanted my dad to be proud of me.  A good cop, great detective, husband, maybe father…”  John shrugged.  “When he died, I lost my motivation to really bother with it.”

“It?”

“You got a ten?”

“No, go fish.”

As John scooped up another card -- well, what do you know, an eight -- he explained, “It.  The whole checking the boxes on your Life Checklist.”

Dorian asked for a five, which John handed over, and then the DRN observed, “That’s your Achilles’ heel, man.  Approval.  You pretend like you don’t care, but…”

“Yeah, yeah.  I’m a sucker for attention.”

“You said it, not me.  An ace?” Dorian checked and John shook his head, pointing to the card pile.

“You said it first.  I rephrased it.  Reboot your colloquialism program, pal.  And give me that damn eight you’re holding onto.”

Dorian flicked it across the table at him.  “Is that the angle Anna used on you?”

John blinked, waiting for the punch-to-the-gut that he just knew was coming… only it didn’t.  And the fact that he felt nothing at hearing her name -- that somehow managed to make him angry.

“What do you think?”

Dorian kept his eyes on his cards.  “Sorry.”

“No, it’s--what a damn mess…”

“And your OCD tendencies compel you to rearrange your cards every time you pick up a new one.”

“So that’s how you won the last round.”  From watching where in the arrangement John had jammed his newest card, Dorian had assigned a range of probable values to it.  Androids.  Such cheaters.

“Hm.”

Since Dorian had given him that one for free, he figured why the hell not-- “I was seeing someone when I met her.  It was pretty low-maintenance.  She was busy.  I was busy.  Anna acted like I was the best thing that ever happened to her.  I’m only human, you know?”

“Yes, John, I am aware.”

John sighed.  “Damn it.  Sorry.”  As Dorian’s brows hitched upward in question, John reluctantly elaborated: “For the ‘only.’  I guess I shouldn’t knock being human when you don’t have the option.”

“Are you referring to the saying: ‘don’t knock it until you’ve tried it’?”

“No, I’m referring to the fact that you’re not.  Human, I mean.”

“You assume I would want to be.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.”  John stretched his legs out under the table, knocking his feet against Dorian’s by accident.  He shifted to push his chair back and make more room--

“It’s fine.  I don’t mind.”

“Yeah, OK.”  John slouched back down.  “Hugger.”

“Huggee.”

“Shut up.”  But really, it was John’s own head that he was trying to shut up because it was telling him shit he didn’t want to deal with, comparing Anna and Dorian and coming up with way too many parallels for his peace of mind.

“John, I’m not like her.”

John closed his eyes.

“I am here because of you, that’s true, but…”

“Stop.”  His jaw clenched for a moment before John heard himself say, “I saw it.  I see it.  And.  Yeah, without me you wouldn’t be a cop again.  But that goes both ways.”  John dragged in a breath.  “And given the last forty-eight hours, you can’t guarantee that you’ll never betray me.”  John couldn’t look at Dorian as he said this.  He absolutely could not, and under no circumstances would he--

John looked up.  Looked Dorian in the eye.  “But you care about the same people that I care about.  For, I think, the same reasons.”  And, bottom line: “I’ve worked with you for longer than I was with her.”

John didn’t thank Dorian for not making it all easy and effortless.  That first turbulent day aside, Dorian couldn’t have done otherwise.  His programming wouldn’t have let him.  Once he’d sensed John’s need for the mild friction of friendly challenge, he’d adopted it as part and parcel of their partnership.  Dorian was wired and coded to maximize their camaraderie.  A good working relationship meant increased efficiency and productivity, which would lead to a higher incident clearance rate and decrease the likelihood of Dorian being decommissioned.  Since John benefited from all that, too, he wasn’t going to accuse Dorian of subterfuge.  Dorian -- like Sandra -- manipulated John right in front of his face, not behind his back.

Even with last night’s little adventure taken into consideration, Dorian hadn’t intentionally orchestrated a trap for John.  Dorian hadn’t invited him along to lend a hand or waved the red You-Can’t cape in front of John’s face.  He hadn’t dropped breadcrumbs and then told John it was none of his business -- a surefire method of getting John to stick his nose in.  The only reason John had known something was up was thanks to Rudy’s check-in call.

John said, “I trust you.”

Dorian didn’t remind him that trust was John’s kryptonite.  The DRN simply nodded and asked for a queen.

Chapter Text

“Rudy’s calling,” Dorian interjected, disrupting John’s fumbling explanation of How To Choose Christmas Presents.  They’d already argued through the part where John had told Dorian that no one would expect to get a gift from him because he was an android that didn’t even receive a weekly allowance let alone a salary, but John had probably lost that fight because Dorian had interrupted him to ask how appropriate gifts were typically selected.  Until John had started trying to map out the correlation between degree of familiarity and budget range (plus the message that the giver wanted to convey), he hadn’t realized how much it resembled a minefield with hidden trenches filled with mustard gas.

God.  Being human was exhausting sometimes.  Hah.  Who was John kidding?  It was exhausting most of the time.

As John choked down the last bite of cold chow mein from their lunch order, Dorian continued, “He says Captain Maldonado would like to speak with me.”

“Which means she’s trying to get a hold of me,” John concluded.  “Ask Rudy if you’ll be good to go soon or if I should take another day.”

There was a pause as Dorian “spoke” with Rudy.  “He expects he can install the first wave of software upgrades whenever we’re ready and recommends a followup to debug before roll call, but we should stick together as much as possible.  Just in case.”

“OK.  Talk to the woman.  You can even let her know I’m here.”

Dorian’s smile twitched a fraction deeper, clearly remembering the last time Dorian had acted as an intermediary between John and a woman over the telephone.

“She says to turn on your phone.”

John did and it beeped crankily as no less than two dozen missed calls and messages popped up.  He idly wondered if he’d get buzzed with an electric shock when he finally turned his locator chip back on.

“Hey, Captain.  Ship still afloat?”

“Land ahoy,” she drolly replied and John checked his watch.  Yup, it was the end of shift.  “Are you coming in tomorrow?”

He thought about asking for details on what had gone down at the repo storage center last night, but managed to put a lid on it.  Captain Maldonado sounded exhausted and John needed Sandra in his corner more than he needed to be brought up to speed.  He’d read his messages for once.

“Yeah.  We’ll be there with bells on.”

“That’ll go over well.  Your cruiser is here at the precinct.  See you at roll call.”

He hung up and Dorian accused, “You didn’t ask her about last night’s raid.”  And then he promptly concluded, “You were in on it.”

“No, I wasn’t.  I made sure she knew what I was doing.  She said she’d be calling in a few favors.”

“A few?”

John chortled at Dorian’s blatant disbelief.  “Yeah.  She’ll fill us in before roll call.”

He flipped through the phone’s menu to reactivate his locator chip.  A moment later, it pinged his phone with a successful connection.  Across the table, Dorian let out a happy sound.

John figured he knew why.  “What.  How could you miss me?  I was sitting right here all damn day.”

“Without your locator chip, I was running constant biometric scans to make sure you were really where I thought you were, man.”

John pointed a finger at him.  “Leave my balls alone.”

“They’re not the Pentagon.  Or do you have state secrets tucked away down there?”

“Yeah, that’s why they’re at full capacity.  I’m due for debriefing,” he drawled sarcastically, and then snorted as he belatedly clocked the pun.

“Hey, I didn’t ask.  You volunteered that all on your own.”

“Whatever.  Is Rudy receiving us or are we still stuck in the time-out corner?”

“We were stuck here because you refused to turn your locator chip on.”

“And I’m not going to apologize for shutting it off in the first place.  So?”

A short pause as Dorian checked with Rudy.  “Just him in the lab.”

“Great.  Let’s pow wow.”  John pushed himself up from the table.  Jesus.  How was there not a permanent imprint of his ass on that chair?  Thumping Dorian’s arm in passing, he led the way out to the lab where Rudy appeared to by tidying up.  A recently repaired MX was leaning back in a charging pod, eyes open and staring up at the stained glass windows.

Huh.  Was that why Rudy’s lab was in a church?  To give his patients a view to contemplate?  With that logic, John supposed Rudy had been destined to be a robotics technician… or a dentist.

“Sit rep, Rudy.  What’s the story?”

“Good evening to you, too.”  Before John could open his mouth to snark back, Rudy continued, “The software that’s meant to tag Dorian’s authentic memories is done.  That was the easy bit.”  He tapped the screen of his hacker tablet.  John supposed that meant Rudy wasn’t going to be hooking Dorian up to the lab equipment yet.  Good call.

Rudy assured them, “This will highlight all the files that Dorian can trust to be directly related to his own experiences.”  At this point, Rudy glanced past John and spoke to Dorian, “It’s the rest of it that I’ll need a bit more time on.  Sorry.”

“I understand.  It’s a delicate balance.”

“What are we balancing?” John asked, inviting himself back into the conversation.

“We all know that DRNs were programmed to process emotion--”

“Yeah.  He was made to feel.”  Glancing over his shoulder, John noted, “You gave me that lecture on Day One.”

“And it still amazes me that you were paying attention.”

“Hey.  I pay attention great.”

Rudy jumped in: “These organic memories are extremely distracting--”

Yeah.  John remembered Dorian slamming into an invisible wall of data last month at Synturion.

“So we need to teach his programs to ignore them -- and whatever associated emotions that haven’t been tagged as ‘Dorian’s’ -- until later, at which time Dorian can choose whether or not to properly deal with it at all.  In essence, I’m trying to make an involuntary process voluntary.”

John asked Dorian, “Don’t you do that already?  When we interview witnesses or are in pursuit of suspects -- don’t you put all that on the back burner?”

“Of course.  It’s the foreign nature of these organic memories that trips me up.”

Literally.

“Makes his entire system go haywire as it races to isolate what it senses as an invasive program,” Rudy confirmed, “diverting the majority of Dorian’s processing power to sort out the issue.  That’s what causes him to freeze up, which we cannot have happening -- in the field especially, or at all if we can manage it.  But, I will clear him for duty once this first series of updates are installed and integrated, but only because, if I don’t, Captain Maldonado will require an explanation.”

“Which nobody here wants you to give her.”

“I do,” Dorian irritatingly informed them, raising his hand like a fourth grader.

John reached out and tried to pull it back down.  “No.  You are inclined to tell her because you’ve got this Honest Abe suicide switch.  You want to be a cop.  You want to be here.  Give Rudy time to help you out.”

“John--”

“Don’t make me take a desk job, D.”

Dorian put his hand down, acquiescing.  For now.

“Right,” Rudy said, clearing his throat.  “If you’ll just hop up onto the table here.”

John rolled his eyes at the fanfare with which Rudy gestured.

“We’ll get started.”

“I’m ordering pizza,” John announced.

“I take green olives and extra mozzarella,” Rudy said, already squinting at his tablet display.  “With sun-dried tomatoes if they have them.”

“Crust?”

“Hm?  Oh, the thicker the better.”

“OK, then.  Dorian, is there anything in particular you’d like to smell?”

“No anchovies, John.”

“No anch--the hell,” he cursed, flicking through the listings to find his favorite pizzeria on this side of town.  “I’m the one paying and he says no anchovies.”

“Detective,” Rudy said, “if you order anything with anchovies, I guarantee that we will all pay for it regardless of who covers the tab.  I’m with Dorian on this one.  No anchovies in the lab.”

“Why do I have friends,” John grouched, jabbing the “call” command and pressing the phone to his ear.  He pretended not to see the cute little grins that Rudy and Dorian exchanged.  God.  One would think they’d never heard of tough love.

The pizzas arrived.  John ate while it was hot.  Rudy waited until he wasn’t required to use the keypad or fiddle with cables and compensated for the heat lost by dumping the complementary crushed red pepper seeds onto each and every slice.

John winced and went to go sit next to Dorian.  Careful to keep himself away from anything connecting his partner to Rudy’s tablet, he angled his prosthetic limb near Dorian’s knee and tried not to startle when Dorian’s hand landed on his kneecap.

“Are you gonna want to sleep with this thing tonight, too?”  A fake leg security blanket.  God.  Really?

“Hm!” Rudy garbled around a mouthful of extremely thick pizza crust.  “About that.  He should probably go home with you, John.”

John didn’t even lodge a token protest; he’d figured this was coming.  “Gonna need a ride to the station to pick up the cruiser,” John told Rudy and then asked Dorian, “How’re we going to charge you up, man?”

“I’m good.”

“You were running diagnostic scans nonstop today.  Don’t bullshit me.”

“John, the only kind of scan that would require that much power would be one that charted the precise location and quantity of state secrets in your underpants.”

Rudy choked and wheezed.  He scrambled for a napkin as the hot pepper spice made his eyes water.

John forgot his burgeoning protest, grinned, and offered Dorian a high five.  “Good one.”

Chapter Text

John would have happily explained the joke out of a (probably) misguided attempt to embarrass Dorian, but Rudy was adamant that he did not want or need to know.

Which was fine.  Because, on second thought, John didn’t want his balls to become the in-joke of the police department.  If Rudy’s performance while undercover as a cook was any indication, then the man was ridiculously bad at keeping secrets.

Lies, on the other hand, seemed to be doable.  Interesting.

With that in mind, John asked as he and Dorian were let out of Rudy’s Truck of Tech in the precinct parking garage, “Any plans for later?”

Translation: were they going to be meeting incognito at McQuaid’s tonight?

…which would be a bit awkward with Dorian tagging along.  Unless there was a whole lotta big something that John had missed today.

“Ah… no.  Just--sleep.  Sleep would be good.”

“Amen to that.”

John gave a wave and slid out of the backseat, pausing when Rudy suddenly called, “Don’t forget.  Tomorrow before roll call.”

“Won’t forget,” John promised and heaved himself out of the truck with a grunt.  “Dorian won’t let me.”

He slammed the door shut and ambled slowly toward the cruiser, stretching his cramped legs.  Not only was the backseat of the truck narrow by design, but all the gizmos and emergency replacement parts wedged into every available space made just plain sitting a gymnastic event.

“Never again,” John muttered, smiling brightly as Rudy tooted and pulled away.

Dorian gave him a look.  “I told you to sit in the front.”

“I’m not sitting in the front of Rudy’s tech truck.”

“Why not?”

“Are you--seriously?  How did you not notice the lace thong wedged into the seat seam?”

“Cherry red.  Hard to miss.”

“Right.  Well.  There’s your answer.”

“The question remains: whose undergarments are they?  From the quantity of visible fabric, I’m unable to determine the likely size, but there was this one night in the lab--”

“Stop.”  John threatened, “I will put you in the trunk.”

Dorian bit back a grin and got in the car.  John allowed himself a wide smile and quick shake of the head before folding himself into the driver’s side.

“Let me guess,” Dorian continued cheerfully.  “What happens in the lab, stays in the lab.”

“Nothing wrong with compartmentalizing.”

“Man, I cannot wait to get into your drawers.”

John shot him a warning look.

“Can I start with the ones in the kitchen?”

“Rule number one: no touching my drawers.”

“Rule number one of how many?”

“As many as I deem necessary.”

“That wasn’t what you said about Guy Code.”

“Yeah, well, I take this a little more seriously than--hey.  What’s up?”  Either Christmas was coming early or some serious shit was going down; Dorian’s face was lighting up like New Year’s fireworks.

“John,” he said calmly.  Too calmly.  “We need to get to Captain Maldonado.  Now.”

“She home?”

“Yes.”

“OK.  I know where that is.”  John flicked on the lights and siren, executed a U-turn, and pointed them toward Sandra’s neighborhood, stomping on the gas.  “Fill me in, man.”

“I was just contacted by an informant.  A witness identified the van from the Billings assault; it just pulled up in front of the captain’s home.”

“How many assailants?”

“Four.  They’ve blocked all incoming and outgoing comms, John.  One-hundred yard radius, minimum.”

“Shit.”  That was some serious tech.  Police-issue, at least.  Possibly military grade.

“I’ve already alerted dispatch to an officer in distress.  Three units responding.”

“And us makes four.”

As soon as John turned onto Sandra’s street, he spotted the red-blue strobing lights of two patrol cars angled to block in a seemingly innocuous gray van.  Shots were already being fired.  Shouts of “Police!” and automated MX announcements -- “Surrender your weapon!” -- formed a veritable wall of commotion.  The complete attention of both units were focused on the house’s interior via front door and kitchen door.

Recalling the layout of Maldonado’s house, John wrenched the steering wheel toward the east end, jumping the curb.  Dorian shot out to collect John’s vest from the trunk and scanned the residence while John yanked it on over his head.

“She’ll be in the master bedroom or the den -- southeast corner,” John assessed.

“How do you know?”

“Gun safes,” he grunted, tapping Dorian’s shoulder and giving the signal to go-go-go!

“I have a heat signature,” Dorian confirmed quietly.  “She’s barricaded herself in the den.”

“Of course she has.”  Sandra wasn’t just smart, she was a fucking trooper.  John ignored both the north-facing entrance and west-facing kitchen door.  If anyone asked, he was just trying to stay out of the officers’ way.

He nudged Dorian toward the south wall where delicate ferns and orchids strained toward a glass-lined window seat that was blocked by a moat of semi-wild shrubbery on the outside.

“Let’s make some noise,” John grunted.  “On one?”

Receiving a nod from Dorian, John counted, “One!” and both of them smashed the butt of their service weapons against the nearest window pane, which shattered on impact.  Dorian knocked the remaining glass from the casing before wedging himself into the room and past the potted plants, covering John as he hoisted himself through the empty window frame.

Then, together, they jogged toward the door.  John commanded the doorknob with a quick twist, and Dorian ducked into the hall, clearing it before heading for the living room where the firefight was still going strong.  Dorian covered John’s back as he moved forward, folded into a crouch, and shot off two quick rounds.  A shout of pain as one masked assailant was caught in the leg and flopped to the floor.  The second bullet sent another armed trespasser sprawling forward, crashing into a sturdy coffee table before tumbling onto a very expensive rug.

John winced.

More shots.  An involuntary gasp of shock -- air forced from lungs -- as a third perp went down.  One shooter left.  John had a line of sight to his position -- eleven o’clock.

“You are surrounded.  Drop your weapon!” the MXs on site repeated over and over, but the bullets kept coming.

“That asshole is ruining the wainscoting,” John complained, reaching for a flash grenade.  It was past time to end this.  “Flash!  Flash!” he bellowed, yanking the pin, counting down, and hurling the palm-size canister like he was going for the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl.  John ducked his head against the flare.  The room exploded with skull-splitting light and John grinned at the litany of irate curses coming from behind the tipped-over dining room table.

A pair of MXs rushed in and flanked the perp at gunpoint.  Finally, the asshole dropped his fucking weapon.  “D?” John asked.

“No other people in the house.  I’m not detecting any bots, either.”

“Great.  Let’s give Maldonado the good news.”

They moved back down the hall, Dorian calling out, “Captain Maldonado?  John and I are here.  The scene is secure.”

“You injured, Sandra?” John asked.

A muffled “Negative!” filtered through the door.

“OK, you just hold tight a minute.  We’ll get the jammers shut off and see about peeling these assholes off of your floor.”

He was pretty sure he heard her aggravated sigh through the reinforced door.  She was probably shaking her head at the thought of bloodstains.

John normally would have left Dorian as a guard, but nodded for an MX to assume the post instead.  For now, wherever John went, Dorian went.

They dodged the EMTs and made for the van.  Sure enough, there was a small signal jammer in the foot well of the front passenger seat.  Dorian disabled it with a punch of a button and then, as he was straightening up, paused.

John knew that look.  “What is it?”

“I’m detecting something in the back.  Low heat signature… I think it’s a body.”

John was already dialing Sandra’s phone, listening to her bark right in his ear: “John!  What’s going on out there?”

“Dorian and I are at the van, parked right out front, bold as brass,” he reported, marveling at the perpetrators’ daring.  Had they wanted to get caught?  “Dorian’s got something here.  Hold on.”

Dorian rounded to the rear of the vehicle and threw open the doors.  John reached out a hand to catch one of them as the DRN climbed into the back and lifted the lid on a long crate.  It was disturbingly similar to a coffin in its dimensions and what was inside…

“What the hell,” John breathed.

“John?  John!” Sandra was yelling in his ear as Dorian looked up and met John’s wide-eyed gaze.  “What are you seeing?”

“Um.”  Really, John had no words to describe it.  “I’m looking at you, Captain.”

“Come again?”

Dorian leaned in and lifted an eyelid, scanning and discoing up the interior of the van.  “It’s an android,” he reported, shocked.

John’s jaw unhinged.  No way was this an android.  This was a body.  Flesh and blood.

But the look on Dorian’s face--he wasn’t joking.

“John!” Sandra bellowed.

“Um.  Maybe you’d better come out here and see this for yourself,” John suggested haltingly, not entirely sure that was a good idea, but honestly he had no idea how else to break the news to someone that their identical twin was lying in the back of a van within spitting distance of their shot-up living room and blood-soaked carpet.

And if he didn’t know how to deal that out, then he sure as hell didn’t know what to say about the completely unreal possibility that somebody may have intended to replace the captain of the city’s Delta Division with a fucking android doppelganger.

Chapter Text

“Call Rudy.  Get him out here.  Right now,” Captain Maldonado said tightly, staring down at the figure that was still -- for all intents and purposes -- asleep in the back of the assailants’ van.  She didn’t say a word about the fuzzy pink matching sweats set that her lookalike had been dressed in, hair down, and hands primly folded over her stomach.

Not one twitch of emotion showed on Sandra’s face as she declared, “We drop a lid on this.  Until we figure out what we’re dealing with.”

“You weren’t the only target, Captain,” Dorian offered, obligingly sliding the crate lid shut.  John would appreciate the pun later, with a glass of something bad for his liver in hand.  Dorian elaborated: “This may have been the same van used at the Billings’ residence.”

That got a reaction.  Maldonado’s head snapped up.  Her eyes narrowed.  “Councilman Billings was in the hospital.  They would have detected any synthetic components easily.”

John nodded, rolling his chin.  “Pretty sure he’s not in the hospital anymore.  And it’s bound to make the switcharoo a hell of a lot easier if you’ve got people on the inside.”

“The bodyguards,” Maldonado realized.  “Dorian, contact the hospital.  Confirm when the councilman was released.  John, give me your phone.”

John handed it over without question.  Good thing he didn’t have any embarrassing candids on there.

She placed two calls and then slipped the phone back into John’s hand.

“I have to give my statement, and then you’re driving me here--”  She tapped the screen on John’s phone.

He squinted at the address.  “You got it.”  And then he moved out of the way so that the interior of the van could be photo-scanned for evidence.

“I want this crate and its contents transferred into Dr. Lom’s custody as soon as he arrives,” the captain commanded the forensic team leader.  “There’s an android inside and, given what happened recently with the XRN, I want confirmation that it has been completely deactivated before it goes into our evidence locker.”

John spent the next fifteen minutes staying the hell out of everybody’s way.  He might be the only detective on the scene, but he hadn’t been assigned the case.  Therefore, he could assist if he was asked or mind his own damn business if he wasn’t.

Rudy pulled up just as John passed his statement to Dorian to double check.  Maldonado often complained that he didn’t add enough procedural detail and focused too much on the pursuit aspect.  He waved to Rudy, who was already being briefed by the officers on scene and didn’t see John’s facetious welcome.

“Bah,” John grumbled, skimming through the text Dorian had highlighted and restlessly ticking all but two corrections.  He didn’t want Sandra thinking Dorian had written the whole thing himself.

While the container, now glowing with an evidence seal, was resettled in Rudy’s vehicle, one of the first officers on the scene asked the captain to make a list of personal items she would like from her home until forensics had cleared the scene.

John didn’t need to hear how many pairs of underpants his boss wanted from her dresser drawer, so he meandered over toward Rudy.  Dorian, eager to get a second look at the android, jogged ahead only to shorten his strides prematurely, keeping himself within three paces of John.  Like a dog on a leash.  Hell.  This three-legged race of theirs was going to get real old real fast.

“Dr. Lom!” John called, using his cheerfully over the top, one-stubbed-toe-away-from-being-really-pissed-off voice.  “Pleasant night for a little fieldwork, eh?”

“Eh?  What was that now?  Oh.  Hi, John.”

John rolled his eyes and leaned against the side of the truck; Rudy and Dorian were practically rubbing shoulders as they each poked and prodded the android.

“Any secondary or tertiary power sources to worry about with this one?” John needled.  Needlessly.

“Might be,” Rudy breathed in distraction, passing a small device over the figure’s folded hands.  “Well, kiss my kitten.”

John scowled.  “OK, now that was a euphemism you’d better not let the original hear.”  He nodded toward the not-captain.

“Hm?  Oh, sorry.  Sorry.  Of course.  I just…”  Rudy shook his head.  “What we have here is another bot testing positive for human DNA.”

Shit.  “Whose?” John asked Dorian, who was already holding a DNA analyzer.  He placed it between the android’s lips.  John wasn’t surprised to see the green light of a positive result light up, but the ID was--

“Captain Maldonado,” Dorian reported gravely.  And if someone had manufactured one android with her DNA, then who was to say they hadn’t made two?

“But… isn’t that the captain?” Rudy asked, nodding over his shoulder toward the cordoned off front yard.  “Right there?”

“Yeah, but it’s due diligence to double check, isn’t it?” John grumbled.  “D?  You need a minute?”

“No.  Let’s speak with the captain.”

He and Dorian crossed the crime scene tape just as Maldonado was handed a pair of plastic shopping bags: clothes and toiletries that the MXs had scanned and approved for release.  John cut in, thanking the officer and waiting until she’d moved away before he gestured from Dorian to Sandra.  “Scan her.”

Dorian blinked at the blunt order but didn’t object.

Sandra twitched with affront.  “What the hell is going on, John?”

Dorian apologized, “If you are Captain Maldonado, then we’ll explain everything momentarily.”

“If,” she echoed with disbelief, eyebrows nearly merging with her hairline.

“Well?” John asked and Dorian nodded.

“She’s biologically human and, as far as my sensors can tell, still our boss.”

Cute reminder.  But it didn’t help John relax any.

Sandra huffed.  “Ask me whatever you’ve got to ask me, John,” she said, “so I can prove I am who I say I am.”

“OK.  How come you put up with me?”

Sandra smiled.  “Because, once upon a time, I was madly in love with your father.”

John grinned, ignoring the burning curiosity from Dorian’s stare.  He rushed ahead, rattling off a series of questions, quizzing Sandra on things that were unlikely to have been recorded.  One question, though, he kept in reserve.  He’d ask later.  When Dorian wasn’t recording every second for posterity.  And evidence.

“OK, so, by now you’ve probably guessed that the bot has human DNA.  Your DNA, Sandra.”

She didn’t look shocked.  More like resigned.  “I think it’s time we have a sit-down with our team, John.  You’ve got the address.  I’ll ride in the back.”

Dorian held the door open for her and John slid behind the wheel.  When the DRN settled himself in the front passenger seat, he glanced from the Saint Christopher medal to John.

Yeah, yeah.  He’d toss the damn cursed necklace out when he didn’t have an audience.

Valerie and Paul were already there when John pulled up and parked outside a chic, revivalist Frank Lloyd Wright bungalow.  At first glance, John would have bet it was Val’s.  Not that it mattered.  John was more interested in arguing against letting Detective Paul attend, but since this was his place (now that was a hell of a surprise), there wasn’t much John could do shy of shooting the man.

Eh, well.  The blood spatter would just spread his germs more effectively, anyway.

“These rooms are clean,” Detective Paul sniped impatiently, a box of tissues tucked under his arm.  Despite the late hour, he was dressed.  He also looked as ornery and miserable as John felt.  “Which is more than can be said for your place, Kennex.”

“Afraid of a little dirty laundry?”  It was entirely possible that both InSyndicate and the department had monitoring devices in John’s home.

“Yours?  It’s enough to give a guy nightmares.”

Well.  That had sounded an awful lot like a “Yes, I know exactly how much toilet paper is left on the roll, Kennex.”  Shit.

“Boys,” Valerie interrupted.  She was clearly tired and stressed -- the attempt on Maldonado was putting them all on edge -- and, thus, jumped right to an ultimatum: “You’ve got thirty seconds to duke it out and then we’re getting started with or without you.”

Sandra glanced pointedly at a pair of empty seats.  “Sit rep, everyone.”

John cued Dorian to huddle up with a flippant wave of his hand and then nearly plopped himself down in a posh recliner.  Given its orientation toward the big holo-screen, it was clearly Richard’s favorite.  John would have been thrilled to commandeer it if Paul hadn’t recently transformed into the personification of Kilauea.  Also, if the man watched porn, well… the poor chair was probably covered in more than one kind of bodily fluid.

The seat John ended up in had a fascinating view of the opposite wall and was as stiff as a new arrival on a showroom floor.  Perfect.

“Dorian,” Maldonado began.  “You called in an ‘officer in need of assistance’ even though you weren’t the vicinity.  Why?”

John listened to Dorian’s concise summary citing a witness calling to report a suspiciously familiar van parked out in front of the captain’s home.

“And what made you think they meant to cause harm?”

“Captain, what made you think the same?”

Her lips twitched as if she might smile, but she didn’t.  “I asked you first, Dorian.”

Dorian glanced at John, but John had no idea what he was supposed to say or how he was supposed to back his play.

“It was the… identity of the witness.”

“One of your little bot friends?” Richard sneered.

Again, Dorian glanced at John and it clicked in his tired brain.  Scrubbing a hand over his face, John volunteered, “Right.  OK.  We’ve got an informant.  He helped us find Wonda--”  Here, John glanced toward Val.  “WDA-880.  You get the warrant all right?”

“Yeah.  It helps with the timeline, but there aren’t enough identifying characteristics on the perps themselves to stand up in court.”

“If they’re the same bozos who tried to take on Sandra Maldonado,” John added with flourish, “then it’s case closed.”

“On the assault,” the captain agreed.  “Not on their ultimate objective.  Why was my house being watched John?”

“Yours, Billings’, probably Councilman Hart’s.”  John slumped in his chair as if what he was about to say was no big deal.  No biggie at all.  “Turns out there are androids that want to know what the city has in store for them.”  John held up his hands.  “Don’t ask me who they’re watching -- I don’t know.”

“And you don’t care,” Richard mumbled with a phlegmy snort.  “Androids are planning an uprising right under your dumb ass and you don’t know shit.”

“Why don’t you tell me about my shit, Paul?  You’re the one with the cameras shoved up my ass.”

“I don’t enjoy it, Kennex.  Babysitting you is an assignment.”

John smirked and talked over Paul’s warning not to let it go to his head: “Yeah, I had you figured on Day One.  You vice guys are all an open book.”

“Gentlemen!” Maldonado barked.

Valerie shifted in her seat, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.  “If it comes to a vote -- if Hart makes headway in amending the laws on android specifications to eliminate models that can empathize, anticipate, and take the initiative, what are they going to do?  Are we talking about an organized protest?”

Paul scoffed.  “No, we’re talking about more crazy DRNs rampaging thr--”

John was half out of his seat before he even started shouting, finger jabbing in Paul’s direction.  Germs be damned.  “Do not finish that sentence!”

Holding up his hands in surrender, the man mocked, “Sure, sure.  Next you’ll be telling us that Dorian’s not managing this ‘informant’--”

John’s hands fisted as Paul air-quoted.

“And, of course, you didn’t meet this informant through your DRN partner,” he ticked off the point on one finger and then counted with a second, “so none of this is a set up and--”  A third finger.  “--you’re not getting played.  How’s that?  Did I hit the highlights?”

“One more word,” John stated flatly, “and I’ll hit your highlights.”

“Well, thanks for the head’s up,” Richard snapped.

“Hey!  Bigger picture!” John thundered.  “Someone’s making androids that are meant to replace and impersonate people.  Council members.  Police captains.  God only knows who else.”

“People who are in key positions to make and enforce city policies,” Valerie summed up.

“It’s a coup,” Maldonado said.  Decisive and succinct.  “A silent take over.  Call Rudy.”

John looked at Dorian, who nodded and placed the call.  Rudy would be back at his lab by now with the police escort and protective detail the captain had assigned.  When Dorian quietly said, “John, your phone,” John handed it over and Dorian put the call on speaker for everyone to hear.

“Rudy,” the captain began, “you’re speaking with John, Val, Richard, Dorian, and myself.  What can you tell us about the bot?”

“Well, as I don’t have the clearance to access the files, I can’t say with any certainty that this android mimics your retinal patterns, but it does have your fingerprints and the skin is human.  It’s a positive match to your DNA, Captain.”

“Rudy,” Dorian said when it was clear everyone was still processing the implications.  “Have you determined what hardware was used?”

“Um.  I have.  This unit has a ZNA processing core.”

The same tech Nigel Vaughn had stolen less than eight weeks ago.

Val shook her head.  “An android like this -- could it be made so quickly?”

“No,” Rudy answered.  “Absolutely not.  The processing core was probably the last of the hardware to be added to the assembly.  I don’t have any plans to activate her, so I’ve no idea how closely the software will mimic your mannerisms, Captain.  Um… I might be able to get an idea of what sort of information is stored in her processing core, but I won’t do that without expressed permission.”

“Thank you, Rudy,” Sandra said.  “We know InSyndicate was attempting to gather police intel two years ago.”  Dorian looked toward John.  He was the only one.  And Dorian’s gaze was the only one John didn’t mind.  “What if we weren’t the only targets?”

“And what if they never stopped?” Val proposed, her brow creasing with anxiety.

John thought of the nesting doll.  Of course InSyndicate hadn’t stopped.

Paul contributed, “Infiltration, sabotage… maybe blackmail and coercion.  Somebody locked Vogel out of the system back in April and deleted case files, evidence files.”

“Our security audit never could determine the source of the cyber attack,” the captain admitted bitterly.

“Programmable DNA,” John blurted.  Turning to Sandra, he reminded her: “When InSyndicate hit that truck in South Kelvin back in April, they stole more than just Myklon Red.  They got programmable DNA.  They must have obtained a sample of yours and grown the skin.”

“InSyndicate and Vaughn.”  Sandra shook her head.  “We’ve suspected a connection since October.”

And now this could be proof of it.

“Vaughn’s not making an army of XRNs to level the city,” John realized.

“Why would he?” Valerie agreed.  “It’ll just attract attention.”

“Right!” Rudy suddenly volunteered, startling John when his voice erupted from the phone still in John’s hand.  “Vaughn told me -- he told me that when he made the DRNs he was filled with hope for the future -- the direction things were going in.  Infiltrating the city council and police department would definitely allow him access to sensitive information and provide opportunity to make major changes.”

“Recommission the DRNs,” Dorian quietly added, his eyes widening slightly and John wondered if anyone else could see the horror in his expression.

He felt it, too.

The DRNs.  The DRNs that had Nigel Vaughn’s organic memories tucked deep into their processing cores.  A thousand ticking time bombs.

“Recommissioning the DRNs?” Sandra repeated, a question in her eyes.

John shook his head.  He’d get into it another time.  Like, never, if he was very lucky.  A more immediate threat remained: “If InSyndicate is behind this, then I’d bet Billings’ newest hires have their stamp of approval.”

“It was always about the bodyguards,” Val agreed.

Paul groused, “Either they’re going to extort Billings or they’re getting a body double ready.”

“This is not the usual InSyndicate strategy,” Sandra insisted and John had to agree.

“Definitely not Reinhardt’s style.”  It was more like Anna’s.

“OK, everyone.  Assuming we’re on the right track, our next step is an action plan.”

John swallowed back a groan.  It was going to be a very long, late night.  And, naturally, the coffee pot would be an oasis of Paul’s cooties.

Great.  Just great.

Chapter Text

“Now it’s your turn,” Sandra said, her hands wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee.  She was watching John from the opposite bench seat in their secluded booth.  The truck stop diner was mostly empty at this time of butt crack a.m. and there was caffeine and food and anonymity.  It was too soon for John to drive Sandra to a place where she could get some rest off the grid.

As she’d turned her locator chip off in the driveway of Paul’s, John had asked, “Hey, you never said how you knew they were gunning for you.  Dorian said you were barricaded in pretty good by the time we got there.”

She’d shrugged.  “Half the neighborhood is empty for the holidays; our homes are on a road to nowhere; and then a van pulled up -- at night -- between scheduled watch drone fly-overs.”

“OK, yeah.  I can do the math.”

“We still haven’t talked about the witness or the informant who contacted Dorian.”

“We will.”

But that was not the conversation that happened first.

Taking a long sip of coffee -- too hot, stale, blegh -- John shifted, bumping his right knee against Dorian’s left.  So far, Sandra hadn’t said anything about the two of them being joined at the hip.  Maybe that was because John and Dorian weren’t actually acting strange.  Or any more strangely than they usual did.

Right.  John tucked that thought away for later.  Very, very later.

“You sic the hounds on us the other night?” John asked.

“FBI.  DHS.  Vaughn’s made himself pretty popular.”

And when John had mentioned his name, Sandra had tipped the other agencies off.  Ironic how it was easier to set things in motion as an informant than as an administrator looking to implement an op.  After all, John hadn’t been approved for undercover work and he’d been off-grid.  Her only other option for sending in the cavalry would have been to issue and arrest warrant.

She added with a sparkle in her eyes, “I’m impressed as hell you squeezed past their perimeter.”

“That probably had something to do with a tip that local PD had officers on-site and in pursuit of a suspect.  Or something.”

She didn’t deny it.  “You find what you were looking for?”

“Yeah.”  Dorian.  “Looks like Vaughn’s fleet of DRNs -- the ones he had built right before the city pulled his contract -- are all still there.  Just waiting to be activated.”

“Jesus,” she swore quietly, shaking her head at the contents of her mug.

“Who’s got ‘em now?”

“Probably DHS.  Biggest fish.”

“Right.  Who were they shooting at?”

“I’m just a lowly police captain,” Sandra stated baldly.  Like she wasn’t even bitter about being left out of the loop.  Either she’d learned not to care (not likely!) or she figured she could get most of her answers via other avenues.  Enter John and Dorian.

“So probably InSyndicate.”  John bumped Dorian’s arm with an elbow jab.  “Vaughn was awfully surprised and interested to see you serving on the force, man.”

Dorian tucked his chin down to his chest, mouth tight.  “He told me to be careful.  When you and I left to stop the XRN.”

And Dorian had thought Vaughn had said that out of genuine concern and because he cared.  No, the only person Vaughn was worried about was himself.  His reputation.  His legacy.  “He was intending to come back for you later.”

Sandra’s eyes narrowed.  Her jaw twitched.  “Explain.”

John put out a hand, begging for just a little more leeway.  “D and I are working on something.  It may be nothing.”

“Damn it, John.  Secrets aren’t as sexy as you think they are.”

Dorian chuckled.  John would have rolled his eyes but he knew how hard Sandra could kick and his shin -- the flesh and bone one -- wasn’t really feeling up for the abuse.  And besides, he couldn’t risk the synthetic leg since that was what was currently keeping Dorian present and accounted for.

“You know I wouldn’t hold out on you if I didn’t have a damn good reason,” he reminded her.

She sighed.  “Life or death.  I know.  I know.  I’d bench you if it would do any good.”

But it wouldn’t.

“Just,” Sandra urged, “you’ve gotta let me in enough to back you up, John.  Your dad played his cards close to his chest, too.  You’re not the only one who doesn’t want history to repeat itself.”

Of course John hadn’t forgotten how his dad had died: suspicious of everyone on the force and keeping his silence in order to protect John and Sandra.  Edward Kennex had ended up the victim of a cover-up and the scapegoat for evidence theft.  Accused for ten years.  Guilty until proven innocent.

“Just look at your father,” that IA Reynolds sack of shit had sneered, and John had been forced to walk away because anything he would have said would have either reflected poorly on his father or on John.  John had burned to defend his father, but he’d known better than to disappoint him by damaging his own standing, which had been dubious at best at the time.  Still was, maybe.

Dorian shifted, fidgeted.  Probably sensing John’s rising tension.  John sighed through a slowly curving smile.  At least he still had Dorian.  Dorian liked him.  Needed him.  Trusted him.

John decided to ignore -- for once -- the fact that all DRNs had probably been programmed to bond to their human partners just like this.  Yeah.  Why not pretend Dorian had better choices than (a) John or (b) deactivation.

“I’m ordering pie,” John announced.  “You ever smelled hot apple pie, D?”

They left the diner at five thirty and John drove a good bit over the speed limit in order to make their next stop before the caffeine buzz wore off and he’d be face-planting into the steering wheel.

The cruiser rolled into a suburban cul-de-sac just before six a.m.  “D, you’re with me.”  John passed the keys to Sandra.  “Just in case.”

“John,” Dorian said as they started up the sidewalk.  “The time--”

“We should be catching her right before garden yoga,” John interrupted wryly and then reached out to knock on the door.

When it opened, sure enough, a woman answered.  Thirty-something, wearing slightly worn brand-name yoga pants and a zip-up fleece sweater with an old coffee stain on the front.  John was willing to bet he knew what she’d be getting for Christmas this year.

“John,” she said, leaning on the door and quirking a brow at him.  “Is this how you answer your voicemail?”

“Hi, Samantha.  This is Dorian, my partner.”

She smiled warmly at the DRN, extending her hand.  “It’s nice to finally meet you face-to-face, Dorian.  John wouldn’t shut up about you.”

John huffed, but didn’t bother protesting.  He was too damn tired, honestly.

Dorian shook her hand, flicking a quick glance toward John.  “A pleasure.”

John got to the point: “We need a favor.”

“The two of you?” she checked.

“Uh, actually, there’s three of us.  We’ve had a rough night and need a place to crash.  Would either you or Rieko mind a couple of house guests until, say, noon?”

Samantha shook her head, grinning.  “The hoops you make a girl jump through just for the sake of meeting your Dorian, John.”  She reached back toward the hall table and John heard the scrape and clink of car keys.  “I’ll move the car.  You can park in the garage.”

“Thanks.  Samantha,” John added, leaning in to confide, “I know the timing could be better.”

“Don’t worry about it.  Give me ten minutes.”

The door shut and John nudged Dorian back toward the cruiser.  He slowed his steps because, yeah, it was probably best to have this conversation here and now before Dorian had too much fun coming up with all sorts of far-fetched and outlandish ideas.

“That was the Samantha I spoke to on your phone,” Dorian observed, confirming that he’d already run a voice match, “three and a half weeks ago.”

“Yup.  She’s a lawyer.  Does a lot of pro bono work in android rights.”

Dorian stopped and turned smartly toward John before diving in.  “You went on a date with an activist?”

“Did I say it was a date?  No.  You said it was a date.  I said it was dinner.”

“You also said she holo-blocked you.”

“No, that’s what you said.  She took calls from her roommate -- that would be Rieko, who is also her significant other, by the way -- her mom and her therapist because I was just a detective who had seen her name in the news -- the Haseman abduction, remember?”

Dorian must have processed all that in the blink of an eye because, if there was a pause, John missed it.  “What did she say?  In the news.  The line that caught your attention?”

John sucked in a deep breath.  “She argued that the illegal androids should be refurbished instead of completely deactivated.  As far as I know, she’s still lobbying for the city to let -- what’s her name, Vanessa?”

Dorian nodded.

“Yeah.  Well.  Samantha might get her and the others a second chance to, you know, be here.  In some capacity.  Some day.”

A small, smug smile curved Dorian’s lips.  “And you spent the majority of the time during dinner discussing me?”

John smirked.  “And you called me boring.  Hey, man, I wasn’t the subject of the conversation.  Who’s boring now?”

The jibe didn’t even earn John an eye roll.  In fact, Dorian’s gentle amusement flopped into deep sorrow.

Seriously?  There was just no winning with androids.

Dorian said very solemnly, “Why would you discuss me with a lawyer, John?  Was this because of my upcoming performance review?”

“Kind of.”  Yes, actually.  And Samantha hadn’t been optimistic that Dorian’s term of service would be renewed: “The board will view him as a crutch, Detective.  One that a functioning police officer won’t need for long.”  Which was why John had talked up Dorian’s contributions.  Not that he wasn’t good in the field or in interrogation or that he hadn’t flipped a van.  (John still thought that was pretty damn cool.)  But he’d wanted the review board to hear that Dorian wasn’t just a walking, talking database; he wasn’t interchangeable with an MX.

He’d been up most of the night following that dinner meeting wracking his brain trying to suss out how best to play it.

And yet somehow, John had mucked it up.

“But, look.”  John stopped in front of the cruiser and turned so that Sandra couldn’t possibly read his lips.  “You’re my partner and I want you to know what your options are.”  He lifted a hand when Dorian opened his mouth to protest.  “I get that your programming eliminates a lot of choices, D, but you still have free will.  The capacity for free will,” he clarified.  “If you can make a choice -- for your sake -- then do it.  That’s why.”

Dorian stared at John, his lips doing that twitchy-mashy thing which pretty much meant that Dorian was processing a lot of emotion.  John waited.  He didn’t say anything about the XRN and Councilman Hart and how Dorian could be decommissioned just because having a DRN on the force was bad press.  Rudy must have been operating on a similar wavelength because he’d backed up Dorian’s memories and installed them in John’s prosthetic leg for safekeeping.  Or maybe Rudy had foreseen the confusion Dorian would suffer if more organic memories floated to the surface.  Details, schmetails.

“Man,” Dorian finally breathed, “I would hug you if Captain Maldonado wasn’t sitting three feet away from us.”

“Wouldn’t have stopped you on that low charge day,” John teased.  “But I’ll take a rain check.”

Chapter Text

The action plan hinged on Rudy being able to come up with a way to successfully deactivate this newest wave of androids.  So while he caffeinated his way through that delightful obstacle course, Paul and Val were busy at ground zero, dotting I’s and crossing T’s.

Of course InSyndicate (if it really was InSyndicate behind this mind-twisting bullshit) would already know that their boys had failed the Maldonado Mission big time, but John had somehow persuaded Sandra to accept Samantha and Rieko’s hospitality and stay out of sight despite the fact that the home team had won this round.

John had pointed out during their midnight staff meeting at Paul’s, “That thing could be programmed to kill you.”  And if the bot did somehow walk out of Rudy’s lab, then the very least they could do was make the captain difficult to find.   

Paul had drawled, “And if you go, I really will give in to the urge to shoot Kennex.”

John had waggled his brows.  “So that’s it, huh?  Because she likes me better than you.”

Captain Maldonado had visibly gathered her patience.  “John, Richard, if there really are grown men somewhere inside you, now would be the time to act like it.”

Hey.  John could act.  He was a hell of an actor.  Case in point: John was owning the whole sleeping middle-aged guy image, sprawled out on the living room sofa.  Dorian was perched on an ottoman near John’s right knee, listening to Samantha describe the various avenues she was interested in.  “Activist” wasn’t really the right word.  Perhaps, “terminally logical” with a side of “moral responsibility” was more accurate.

“Whether it’s practical to give androids individual freedoms is irrelevant,” she concluded quietly, her voice no less impassioned despite speaking in a murmur.  John was supposed to be sleeping, after all.  “Our society has allowed for androids to be created in order to fill spaces that would otherwise be occupied by human beings.  If we don’t respect that, we’re well on our way to a disturbing level of callousness.”

There was a soft rustle and then: “Here’s my card.  I can’t promise complete confidentiality because the law wouldn’t recognize you as a client, but if I could make a case for any android’s need for legally recognized personhood, I’d have the best chance of success on behalf of a DRN.”

And then the rest would follow after.  WDAs, IRCs, and then who knows.  Not MXs, though.  Never gonna happen.

“I’ve got to get in to the office.  It was nice meeting you, Dorian.”

“You, too.  Thank you.”

After the front door closed and quietly locked behind Samantha, John heard Dorian shift, and a moment later: “I know you’re awake.”

“Stop scanning me.  Save your energy,” he mumbled.

“Do you really think of me as a person?”

John’s eyes popped open.  “The hell kind of question is that?  Of course you’re a person.”

“Then, do you condone slavery?”  In response to John’s stare, Dorian pointed out, “I am property of the police department.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, trust me -- I haven’t forgotten.”  He scrubbed his face with both hands before blurting, “I don’t have to like the way the world is.  I can either be a cop and your partner or I can fight the same uphill battle that gets Samantha all excited.  They say you’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelet, right?  Well, I guess I’d rather juggle them.”

“And go hungry.”

“Hey.  It’s not like I’m not thinking ahead.”

Dorian tilted his head in agreement.  “I appreciate that.”

“Don’t thank me for trying to--OK, look.  It’s not like you can open your own bank account.  Get a safety deposit box for whatever--”  For storing memories that the department had a legal right to erase.  “But.  Maybe Samantha could provide an alternative.  I mean, lawyers record depositions all the time.”  John shrugged.  “Bottom line: this is your fight.  It isn’t up to me or Samantha -- it’s up to you.”

He didn’t fidget as Dorian reached out and cupped John’s synthetic kneecap.  It wasn’t like he could really feel it.  Slight pressure and an inexplicable tingle shimmying up his spine because John’s eyes were telling his brain that Dorian was touching him.

Yeah.  That would last only until Rudy could manage the rest of the software patches and whatever.  Then Dorian would be able to ignore those God forsaken memories and this proximity issue wouldn’t be… well, an issue.  Anymore.

“Why didn’t you take her call?” Dorian queried, surprising John.  “At the beginning of shift a few weeks ago?”

“Well.  You heard her.”  John waved a hand toward the front door.  “She takes forever to just get to the point.”

“So do you, man.”

“Do not.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Stop arguing with me.”

“You like when I argue with you.”

God help him, he really did.  Still--“I like when you shut up.”

“Keep telling yourself that.  Get some sleep, John.  I’ll wake you up if Rudy calls.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, OK.  But this isn’t over.  Jesus.  Telling myself--I keep telling myself I’m not crazy, that’s what,” he grouched, rolling over and smushing his face into his borrowed pillow.  A touch on his right ankle.  John’s scalp prickled with awareness.  Damn it, Rudy had better figure something out quick because…  Well.  Because.

John squeezed his eyes shut and ordered his brain to stop thinking.

The touch on his ankle shifted, tightened, and John startled awake on a couch that definitely wasn’t his in a room that in no way resembled his apartment.  He was groping for his firearm when--

“John,” Dorian said quietly.

“What--”  He cleared his throat.  “Is it Rudy?  What time is it?”

“It’s almost eleven.  And Nigel Vaughn is calling.”

John blinked, sat up, and blinked again.  “Vaughn is calling.  Calling you?  What, now?”

Dorian nodded.  “I thought it might be Rudy using an untraceable phone.”

“So you answered.  OK.”  Not OK, but -- shit -- it was too late for that now.  “What’s he want?”

“The chance to prevent another atrocity.  His words, not mine.”

John pulled out his phone, checked to make sure that, yes, his locator chip was off and had been since leaving Paul’s house, and yes, his phone’s GPS was also off and locked.  Dorian had already answered, so service towers were giving away their general location.  Might as well hear what Frankenstein had to say for himself.

“To my phone,” John requested, holding the device out.  “But I want you to listen in and, you know, contribute.  If you want.”

Dorian touched a fingertip to the screen and John lifted it to his ear as Vaughn pleaded, “Dorian, please!  I don’t have much time!”

“Hey, pal.  A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.”

“...Detective Kennex?”

“Yeah.  Dorian’s not really cool with your shit right now.  To tell you the truth, I’m not either, but of the two of us, you’d rather be talking to me,” John explained in a hard tone.

“Uh, yes.  Well.  Thank you for taking my call.”

“Yup, sure.  Anytime you wanna get to the point.”

“InSyndicate knows the police intercepted their team at Captain Maldonado’s house.”

“Uh-huh.  And what are they gonna do about it?”

“Go public.  They’re going to reveal one of the other androids.”

And cause mass hysteria.  “Which one?”

“I don’t know.  Someone high up.”

Of course.  “How many are there?”

“I don’t know that, either!  They have five hundred ZNA processing cores--”

“And you’ve got how many Synthetic Souls?”

“What?  No.  No, those weren’t used for this.”

But John couldn’t be blamed for doubting that Vaughn had taken them out of nostalgia, now, could he?

Vaughn sucked in a breath.  “The androids can be deactivated with synchronized electromagnetic pulses directed precisely at the heart, brain, and the tertiary power source located in the pelvis.”

“OK.  Great.  Thanks.  By the way, the EMP spike you gave us for the XRN didn’t work.  What makes you think we’re going to follow your advice now?”

“Because this isn’t what I wanted.  Whatever horrible things you may think of me, I would never try to turn public opinion against my DRNs.  And, after this, there’ll be no saving them.”

Because after the public got done tearing the government apart in rampant anarchy, they’d destroy every humanoid robot they could get their hands on.  Torch robotics labs across the city -- the state -- maybe the country.  And in the chaos of looting and violence, InSyndicate would waltz through the streets, scooping up whatever they wanted, building up their arsenal because as sure as the stink of shit, those assholes weren’t going to devolve back to horse-and-buggy times.  They would hold the upper hand while the survivors squabbled over whether a roomba could be used against its owner.

“Who all has been replaced with an android?” John asked again.

“I told you I don’t know!  I contributed the ZNA processing cores -- that’s true -- and I consulted on fixing flaws in the operational hardware.  InSyndicate already had the software written and personal data gathered on their targets long before they approached me.  I never saw any names or the androids’ external designs.  These people are using human DNA from their intended victims, Dectective!  I never would have agreed to that!”

“And how is it you know all of this?” John sneered.  “Do you really think you stumbled upon it by accident?”

“Of course I didn’t!  They want me to know that my hands are as dirty as theirs.  Now that they’re making new demands.”

“Right,” John drawled obnoxiously.  “Well, this has been fun.  Thanks for calling.”

“Detective, wait.  Please.  Tell Dorian I’m sorry.”

John almost hung up on the bastard, but no.  No, God damn it.  “No,” John growled.  “I will not.  Because I don’t believe you even understand the meaning of the word.”

And then John punched the disconnect button.  “Manipulative crank.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Sandra!” John crowed, swiveling around to greet a slightly rumpled-looking Maldonado.  “Good timing.  Get comfortable and settle in.”  John glanced at Dorian.  “Check in with Rudy.  I’ll see if Val’s available to talk.  I think our plans need an update.”

Chapter Text

“I hate to say it,” Valerie mused, regarding Dorian from across the conference table, “but this fits with what we know of Vaughn.”

John tapped impatiently at the tabletop, slightly envious of Val’s easy way of lounging against pretty much anything.  The shitty conference room chairs included.

It had felt good to be back in the precinct… until he’d realized that he hadn’t replaced the spare set of clothes in his locker since the last time he’d gone undercover.  Which had been that ridiculous Disrupt “party to end all parties.”  Hell.  John still hadn’t gotten Rudy back for that.  And while his two-days-past-their-expiration-date clothes were being laundered downstairs, John was sitting here stewing; leather made great belts, gloves, shoes, and jackets.  Pants?  No, not so much.

At least he’d found an unopened package of underwear shoved in the back of his locker.  Otherwise he would have been adding “chafing” to the list of Rudy’s war crimes.

And speak of the Devil:

Rudy hunched forward, nodding toward Val.  “Vaughn was completely devoted to his DRNs.  I can’t think of any reason why he would place them in further jeopardy.”

“But we have to allow for the possibility of a reason we can’t think of,” Captain Maldonado insisted.  Like John, she’d kept spare clothes in her precinct locker.  A suit.  John wasn’t sure if that was better than leather pants or not, comfort wise.

At least the coffee machine was operational.  Which meant John was, too.  More or less.  And since Dorian was sitting on John’s right, they were good in that department as well.

A doughnut sounded nice, though.

Too bad about the “no food in the conference room” rule.

“John, do you have a line on who else may have been targeted?” the captain asked abruptly.

“Ah, no.”  Remembering Paul’s accusations, John didn’t look Dorian’s way.  “Just the councilman and you, Captain.”

Val shook her head.  “It’s too much to hope we caught this right at the beginning.”

John agreed and, going by the sour look on Paul’s face, he did, too.

“Right.”  Maldonado nodded.  “Let’s start with Billings.  Val, profile -- schedule, financials, and any committees he’s a member of.”

“On it.”

“Richard, we need a list to cross reference.  Anyone involved with policy-making, funding, or enforcement in this city.  Including me.”

“The philanthropists, too,” the detective muttered.  They all remembered Ethan Avery.  “You got it.”

“John, Dorian, we have to assume that these new androids were designed to pass non-invasive, surface-level bio scans.  And possibly fool MXs.  Until we can thoroughly test that angle, I’m going to need you both in the field, vetting the most likely targets.”

“And their staff,” John concurred, because he hadn’t forgotten Pauline Rivera’s assistant Jacinta, who had been accessing the list of rejected transplant applicants to target buyers for secondhand hearts.

“Rudy,” Maldonado began.

“Still working on a less, um, disruptive method of deactivating these androids.  All three power sources are shielded to protect against electromagnetic pulses.  To what degree, I’m not sure.  The EMP rifle that comes standard with police cruisers appears to be the best option at this point, but I haven’t tested it yet and, honestly, it didn’t do anything to stop the XRN the first time around.”

“Appreciate the encouragement,” Paul groused.

Rudy’s chin jutted forward.  “Well, I could sugarcoat it if--”

“No,” Sandra interrupted, and John further assured Rudy, “Not even sugarcoating Paul here would make him less of a pill.”

“Hey,” Paul objected.  “At least I don’t need a DRN to make me a halfway decent detective.”

“Is that what you had for lunch today?  Your MX cook him up for you?” John cooed.

Paul rasped a snotty, cynical laugh and pushed up from the conference table.  “That’s funny.  There’s a deputy’s chair with your name on it in Podunk, West Virginia, Kennex.  Sheriff’s looking for you.”

John smirked, palms up in a helpless shrug.  “What can I say?  Good lawmen are hard to find.”

Paul shook his head in a show of utter disbelief.

“Boys,” Val muttered accusingly on her way to the door, rolling her eyes.

“Try not to get too much class on you while you’re rubbing elbows.”  Paul slapped the tabletop in farewell.

John just gave him a patronizing, toothy grin and a thumb’s up.  As the door snicked shut behind him, John followed the sound of Sandra’s sigh, swinging his chair around.

“If I didn’t know your date of birth, I’d ask your age, John.”

Dorian grunted back a chuckle as Rudy glanced between them.  “Uh, right.  Well.  Thirty-five, isn’t it, John?”  Rudy’s lips twitched in an attempt at a friendly grin.  When John said nothing, he cleared his throat.  “So.  Dorian.  Will I see you shortly?”

The DRN tilted his head.

“I’ll be, ah, in the lab.  Then.”  Rudy left.

The door clanged shut and John opened his mouth.

Sandra stood.  “I’ll walk you out.”

“Down,” John corrected, plucking at his leather pants.  “Unless you think I’ll get better results in these?”

“Couldn’t hurt,” she teased.  Ruthless.  That was what she was.  Totally ruthless.  “Your call.  See me before you leave.”  She headed for her office.

“Great,” John snarked and gestured Dorian ahead of him through the doorway.  In the precinct basement, John collected his laundered clothes from the combination washer-dryer.  And since there was no one else in the vicinity, John invited the DRN to--

“Spit it out.”

“I’m sorry.  What?”

“Now he plays dumb,” John grumbled, stomping over to the locker room to change.

Dorian shadowed him, a quizzical expression tugging at his brow.  “Are you referring to your juvenile exchanges with Detective Paul?”

“Juvenile!”

“You could have just asked me to scan his vitals, John.  I’d have told you that he’s human.”

“And contagious,” John retorted with an aimless gesture at his own face.

“Yes, it’s unlikely an android would be capable of manufacturing that much mucus.”

“You sound jealous.”

“Not of those shorts.”

“Ah-hah!”  John delivered an accusing poke to the center of Dorian’s chest plate.  “I knew it.  How’s your core temperature?  I bet you were just burning up keeping that to yourself for so long, eh?”

Dorian gifted him with a wry look.

John smirked.  Dorian may have looked away to give John a bit of privacy earlier, but he’d seen the clothes as John had shoved them into the laundry machine.  “Hey, it’s OK.  I wasn’t about to share them, even if they are nice shorts.”

Dorian blinked.

“I’m showering.  Then we’ll get going.”

“You assume we’ll have somewhere to go.”

John shrugged out of his musty, locker-smelling shirt.  “Val will have a location on Billings.  Beyond that, there’s your date at Rudy’s lab to keep.”

“Our date.”  The correction came a beat too late; John’s hands were halfway through unfastening his leather pants and the words, Dorian’s tone, the direction of his voice…  Dorian was watching him.

Well.  What did it matter if he was?  John had played team sports in school.  He was no stranger to the locker room.  And he doubted he had anything that the DRN couldn’t access a hundred and eleven versions of in some database or other.  John kicked off his boots, shucked out of his pants, grabbed a towel, and headed for the shower.

As John lathered his hair with the precinct’s cheap and astringent 2-in-1, he calculated how many hours more he could push his leg.  Dorian had charged at Rudy’s lab the other day, but John’s leg hadn’t seen its charger since seven-fifteen Saturday morning.  And John couldn’t just swap this leg for the old one, not with Dorian’s software upgrades incomplete.

Damn it.

Seven minutes later, John was toweling himself off and doing a damn good job of not letting Dorian’s hovering seriously weird him out.

“Saint Michael,” Dorian said unprompted, and John supposed he ought to be glad that the DRN had waited until he’d stepped into his just-laundered underwear and cargos before making observations on the bits John usually kept under wraps.

As he tugged his tank top on over arms which suddenly felt like all elbows, John said, “A gift from my dad.”

“It’s very well made.”

John’s jaw clenched.  “Hell, D.  Really?  Maybe you should -- I don’t know -- come a little closer just to be sure.”

Dorian shifted.

John’s hand shot out.  “Stop.”  But the look on Dorian’s face was… damn it.  John dropped his arm with a blustery exhale.  “Can I finish getting dressed before you hug me?  Maybe you didn’t notice, but it’s winter, pal.”

“I noticed, John” came the soft reply.  “And I’ve noticed your discomfort with me initiating physical contact.”

“I’m--say what now?  No, don’t.  Just.  Jesus.”  Dorian really didn’t have any boundaries.  It wasn’t fair.  “Let’s deal with Billings.  Then I’m getting you to Rudy’s so we can sort out your… you know.”

“Your leg needs to be charged, John.”

“I know.  Soon.”  Soon, all this close proximity mess would be cleaned up and things would get back to normal.

John strangled back a sigh and yanked his black Henley over his head.  Sat down to jerk his socks on.  Shoved his feet into his boots and tossed the backup clothes into the duffel bag that John used for ferrying locker shit around.  The damp towel was chucked into the communal laundry hamper.

“The captain’s waiting for us,” John growled.  When he brushed past Dorian on the way out, John didn’t think he imagined that the DRN leaned in, fingers brushing against John’s shirt cuff.  No, he hadn’t imagined that.  But he almost wished he had.

Chapter Text

Councilman Jeff Billings was human.

John was kind of disappointed.

He was definitely bored.  This little pep rally dinner at the Green Street Marriott needed a lot less yakking and a lot more caffeine to make it bearable.  John bit back the tenth yawn in as many minutes.

It felt like he was being browbeaten into brain death.  Maybe this was how characterless assholes like Billings got voted in to office.  The community couldn’t stand to listen to them anymore and sent them off to yammer away at other self-important jerks in city hall.

James Hart was here, too, along with a few more cronies that John had never bothered to remember the names of.  Trying to squeeze some contributions out of this Chrome crowd to support their political party.

Interestingly, no one was talking about androids.  Not because Dorian was standing less than two feet away from John along the far wall, surveying the ballroom layout.  But because just about everyone here owned androids of their own.  WDAs, IRCs, and God knew what else.  If there was an android that could give decent back rubs, pedicure ticklish feet, babysit the rugrats, and groom the dog, then John would bet that at least half of these moneyed bozos had one.  At least one.

The only good thing about this little pow wow was that it saved John from zipping all over the city drumming up excuses to get Dorian within scanning range of these nitwits.  One stop and they’d checked a couple dozen names off of the list Paul had put together.  God bless Val for catching the event organizer and offering a police presence… in light of the recent attack on Councilman Billings, it was just prudent.  John could almost hear her schmoozing the harried planner right into her cross-hairs.

For all the effort Val went to in order to appear sweet and approachable, she was damn scary sometimes.

OK, more like 95% of the time.

Catching Dorian’s eye, John nodded for him to step outside.  There were plenty of uniformed officers with their politically correct MX partners here to keep a lid on things and John was approaching the limit of what he could realistically expect from his leg.

He texted the captain a quick update (Nope -- guest list all clear.) and beat a path to the cruiser… where Dorian visibly hesitated beside the passenger door.

“What’s up, D?” John asked on a weary sigh.  Jesus, it had been a long couple of days.  “Rudy’s expecting us.”

“I think we should charge your leg first.”

John got in the car.  No way was he asking what he was about to ask while they were standing in the middle of a downtown parking lot.  John had made that mistake once -- back during the ride-along -- and John wasn’t a detective because he was slow on the uptake.

Dorian didn’t put his seat belt on and John didn’t start the engine.

Squinting at the wall in front of the windshield, John mused, “So.  This is how DRNs procrastinate.”

Quietly, Dorian answered, “I can’t speak for other DRNs.”

“Hey.”  John glanced over, hating to see Dorian with his head turned away as if whatever was going on -- as if the conversation that he himself had initiated -- was of no interest.  Or worse: Dorian believed it wasn’t worthy of John’s interest.  “Rudy’s going to sort this out.  You’ll be OK.”

Dorian’s head swung around and he stared at John.

John’s lips mashed together as he fought back the urge to grind his teeth.  “We’ll be OK,” he corrected.

“Everything will go back to the way it was,” Dorian agreed.  Unhappily.

“Not…  No,” John argued.  “We’ve had the Guy Code talk, right?  And the partners talk.  We, you know, talk.”

And if Dorian didn’t appreciate the fact that John was willing to do that much, then John’s next offer would have to include either a kidney or his firstborn.

Dorian blinked.  Faced forward.  Said nothing.

Shaking his head, John reached for the ignition.

Dorian’s fingers touched the back of his hand, and John halted.  Now it was his turn to stare uselessly.

“What about this, John?”

“You assume you’ll still--”  John stopped.  Rephrased: “You might change your mind after Rudy’s finished those upgrades.”

“That’s why I think we should charge your leg first.”  The fingertips stirred, doodling patterns along the veins in John’s hand.  “I can feel this.  It’s not just sensory data that I’ve developed an affinity for.  It makes my fingertips tingle.”

Oh, shit.  “That’s Vaughn’s memories at work.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not going to lose that.  Rudy said--”  Dorian’s fingers dipped into the sensitive valleys between John’s.  Swallowing thickly, John forced himself to exhale slow and even.  “He said it would be voluntary.”

“It isn’t for you.  This is my chance to be on equal footing, here, man.”

Because otherwise John was the only one who would be at a disadvantage, helpless to do anything but respond to stimuli.

“You get why this is a bad idea,” John didn’t ask.

“I understand why it’s frowned upon, but I trust you.  If I cross the line, you’ll pull me back,” Dorian said and John felt the death throes of his hesitation from the prickle in his scalp all the way to the tips of his toes.  Going… going… gone.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped out a text to Sandra: Gotta charge the leg.  4 hours minimum.

Angling the screen toward Dorian, John checked, “OK?”

“Thank you, John.”

“No.  Don’t thank me,” he gruffly scolded, sending the text off with a jab of his thumb.  “Equal footing, D.”

Dorian smiled, his heart right there for the whole damn world to see and--yeah.  OK.  Words were redundant at this point.  John just nodded and started the engine.

The ride was silent, but John didn’t slide away from the fingers that brushed and occasionally tapped against the back of his hand.  Dorian wanted to feel.  He wanted to feel the chemistry of touch the way humans did.  He wanted the slow build and sudden sting.  It had been a long time since John had allowed himself the same.

Thirty minutes of rush hour traffic later, John gently braked the cruiser to a stop in front of his home.  His phone chirped.  A reply from Sandra.

You’re on morning shift.

That wouldn’t give them much time to see Rudy beforehand -- both for the software upgrade and any necessary debugging -- but unless John called in another personal day, he couldn’t really expect different.

“Generous of her,” Dorian opined.

John didn’t snap at him for reading his texts.  There was nothing on his phone that he wouldn’t share with his partner if Dorian were curious.

With a grunt, John pulled himself out of the cruiser, scooped up his duffel of locker-scented clothes, and started up the walkway.  Dorian matched his steps, their elbows brushing.

Unlocking the sliding patio door to his unit, John gestured Dorian over the threshold with a roll of his head.  Not quite a nod.  Not really a shrug.  Awkward as hell.

“Can I see your trophy room?” Dorian suddenly asked, cheerful and teasing.

John reached out and flicked the lobe of his ear.  “Maybe later.”

Door locked, John carefully sorted out his jacket, keys, and boots.  Everything in its place.  Neat and predictable.  Dependable.  Dorian kicked his way out of his shoes and followed John through the main living space and into the kitchen where John got himself a glass of water.

Dorian watched him drink it with a faint smile curving his lips.  “Now who’s procrastinating?”

Yeah.  There was no denying John was nervous.

“Bathroom,” he muttered and Dorian walked with him.  Waited in the hall while John took care of business.

And then it was all Dorian’s show.  From the moment John opened the door.  His meticulously scrubbed and sanitized hands fluttered in a Well? gesture and Dorian interlaced their fingers, walking backwards toward the main room and guiding John toward his work table.  John watched as Dorian’s smile widened and, when the android bowed his head as he unbuckled John’s cargos (although Dorian certainly could have maintained eye contact the entire time), John rubbed his scruffy cheek against Dorian’s neat hair.

He sank back onto the seat as Dorian tugged his trousers down, past his knees, and off.  John twisted the prosthetic leg free and handed it to Dorian, taking his cargos back and draping them over his lap as the DRN placed his leg on the charger just an arm’s length away.

John shrugged out of his holster, dumping both it and his service weapon on the table with a clatter and then Dorian was pulling the matching bar stool over, unzipping his jacket, and sitting down facing John.  His left knee bumped Dorian’s right and then Dorian was reaching for John, a hand curving around the side of John’s neck.  Fingers and palm.  Warm skin.  His thumb scraped slowly against the bristly underside of John’s jaw.

He thought about offering to shave.  Depending on which direction things went, it was only polite.  But then Dorian was leaning closer, his lips skimming over John’s cheek.  John tilted his head into it, brushing his nose along Dorian’s in a lazy Eskimo kiss.  Dorian’s mouth curved into a deep, contented grin.  John hummed a laugh.  Touched his forehead to Dorian’s brow.  Cupped his smooth jaw in hand.

Rudy had once commented on the shortcomings of synthetic skin.  The lack of pheromones, for one.  But there wasn’t a single thing John would change about this moment.  This person.  Trust was the one thing John couldn’t do this without, and if he had once believed that trust was only skin-deep, then it was little wonder John had been played before.

“You really do have a way with androids, Detective.”

And there went the other shoe.

John tensed because he was supposed to; a man was supposed to freeze up when his inner sanctum had been violated by a trespasser.  Never mind that John had been bracing himself for months.  Ever since he’d been told about the radio transmitter concealed in the paint of Anna’s gift -- those fucking stupid nesting dolls -- and maybe even before that.  Maybe from the moment Maldonado had wrestled him back onto active duty.

“You’re the only person more desperate than I am to find out how InSyndicate learned about the raid.”

Yeah.  John was the only one who would do anything to get answers.

Even this.

He’d willingly placed himself at a disadvantage -- sitting on his ass minus a damned leg and in his underpants -- in order to draw in the bad guy.

He reluctantly lowered his hand from Dorian’s cheek, wishing like hell that he had been alone for this part.  Just John facing all the mistakes of his past.  If only.

John turned slowly, one elbow braced on the table at his side, and greeted his guests: “Doctor Vaughn.  Anna.”

Chapter Text

“Your timing could be better,” John critiqued.

Nigel Vaughn ignored him.  Of course he did.  As far as he knew, the PD was taking his prank call seriously, running around the city in frantic circles trying to circumvent a catastrophe that had even odds of not happening at all.  Vaughn’s main objective had been met: John and Dorian were completely undefended.

Beaming, Vaughn murmured, “Dorian.  I’m so glad to see you looking so well.”

John reached out and squeezed Dorian’s forearm.  The slick windbreaker fabric felt both familiar and wrong beneath John’s hand.  “Yeah, your ‘bon voyage’ back at the bullpen did wonders for his morale against the XRN.”

Vaughn shrugged the scolding aside.  “I only ever intended for Danica to provide a distraction.”

“Right,” John drawled, and then glanced toward the slender figure at Vaughn’s side, eyeing the rifle in her grasp.  “What about you, Anna?  Awfully quiet.  Though, I guess you already made your point.”

“John,” she said, smiling.  As if she was genuinely thrilled to see him.  Her smile -- just as luminous and loving and enthralling as ever.

His stomach rolled with nausea.

“I’ve missed you,” she had the gall to say.

John’s right hand twitched for a weapon.  Too far away.  Damn it.  “You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

“You’re the funny one,” she teased.  She stood there and teased him like she hadn’t stared dispassionately while his ragged stump of a right leg had pulsed blood out onto the pavement, like she hadn’t pulled the pin and tossed a grenade into that alley, like she hadn’t turned around and walked away, like she hadn’t even cared that he was still breathing.

“Well,” Vaughn added, speaking to Anna in a mockery of an aside, “it does take a very special kind of person to look past the obvious, my dear.”

And that was when it hit him -- half a second before Dorian blurted in Anna’s direction, “You’re an android.”

Vaughn was thrilled.  “I knew I couldn’t fool one of my DRNs.”  Giving Anna’s shoulder a fatherly pat, he boasted, “Though, it is amazing what can be accomplished when a creator modifies his goal by one word.”  Gesturing to Dorian, he explained, “Almost human--” and then smiled at Anna-- “and human.”

“Yeah, you fooled me,” John agreed, his voice grating like rusty chains in his throat.  “Fooled a fool.  Congratulations.  Give yourself an award.”

“That won’t be necessary.  Dorian, please disarm yourself and come here.”

“No.”

Vaughn didn’t look at all surprised by the refusal, although he did seem somewhat disappointed.  “I don’t need to tell you what you already know.”

What he already knows??  John opened his mouth to bluster and accuse.

Dorian beat him to it.  “Are you referring to the organic memories you placed in my processing core?”

“I am.”

“The gift that keeps on giving,” John contributed.

“They were originally intended to aid the DRNs with processing emotional responses.  A touchstone.  A glossary of reference material.”

Jesus.  The man really did think he was God incarnate.  “Might have overdone it a bit, there.”

“Unfortunately, it couldn’t help all my DRNs.”

“You brought these memories forward,” Dorian surmised.  “How?  And for what purpose?”

“With a simple, executable file.  And as for the purpose, I hoped it would lead you to the others, Dorian.”

“The other DRNs.  The ones in storage.”

“Yes--”

“You told InSyndicate to follow me.”

“I told them you’d raise an android army to fight for their cause.”

John wasn’t buying bullshit today.  Just not in the market, you know?  “Uh-huh.  More like your own private militia of brainwashed subjects.”

“A family,” Vaughn tartly corrected John.  “And it’s not too late for that.  Step over here, Dorian.  There are a few minor modifications I need to make.”

“Like you modified Anna?”  How else could she appear to sincerely love John one day and then callously attempt to kill him the next?

“Anna required no modifications.  Unlike Dorian, who was specifically programmed to be a police officer, Anna adapts to each situation as required.  She’s my chameleon.”

And, clearly, no father could be prouder of crafting the perfect sociopath.

“What are these modifications designed to do, Doctor Vaughn?” Dorian queried with interest.  John was pretty sure he was faking it just to keep their guest talking.

“It’s necessary, Dorian, for the benefit of all DRNs,” he evaded.  Like a champ.

“How do you figure that?” John growled.

“They were never meant to be janitors and repairmen--”

“Not all of them were cut out to be cops, either.”

“That,” Vaughn retorted with a blast of sudden heat, “was a solvable issue that I was never permitted to address!  Well.  The solution begins now.  Dorian will assist me with providing the city with irrefutable evidence of the MXs’ unreliability.”

“Yeah.  Too bad Reinhardt didn’t blast enough of them to suit you.”

“It is a shame,” the roboticist agreed.  “The assault should have proven that MXs are worthless.”

“But I run on a different frequency.”  There were no lights racing along Dorian’s cheek.  John didn’t have to check his phone to know Vaughn was using a jammer.

Well, fine.  Let him.

“Yes.  I can’t say I’m disappointed that one of my DRNs came to the rescue.”

Of course he wasn’t.  “Added months to your plans, though,” John dug.

“It might have, but then I realized that Dorian had been commissioned as a police officer and… well, Plan B could be appropriately truncated.”

“InSyndicate won’t be happy to hear that their delivery boys were disposable.”

Vaughn hummed.  “Acceptable collateral.  And, times are about to change.  For the better.  Now, Dorian, I asked you to come here.  If you do not comply, Detective Kennex will suffer for it.”  With a waggle of his fingers, Vaughn prompted Anna to lift the weapon in her grasp, aiming it calmly at John’s chest.  “Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be.”

“You shoot me -- Dorian’s off the force,” John replied.  And, unless John had missed a step, Vaughn would need Dorian’s access to the police database, systems, and servers in order to get on with this new-and-improved master plan.

“No, Detective.  If Anna shoots you, the dart will inject nanobots into your body.”  Vaughn tilted his chin down and smiled at John over his glasses.  “If I’m not mistaken, you recently had a case involving nanobots.  You are aware of how… destructive they can be.”

“Very.”

“Really quite painful.”

“I guess it’s too much to hope you tested that hypothesis out on yourself.”

Vaughn disregarded John’s remark and gestured Dorian closer.  “Come now, my boy.”

John moved to stand.

Dorian put out a hand, pressing firmly against his shoulder.  “Your leg,” he said.  As if John needed a reminder.

“I know,” he bit out, glaring daggers at Vaughn as Dorian carefully removed the gun holstered beneath his jacket and placed it on the table beside the charger.  Directly between John and Vaughn.  There was no way John could dive for it without being obvious.  And the table the charger was on didn’t even have cabinets under it.  No cover.  None whatsoever.

Shit.  God damn it all to Hell.

Dorian took one step, moving to cross in front of John and acquiesce with Vaughn’s demands… and that was when John’s apartment, which hadn’t really felt like a home since the day he’d gone in to work and implemented the raid on InSyndicate’s warehouse facility, finally turned into a battlefield.

Doors shattered open.  Windows exploded.

MXs poured in, issuing the order to drop all weapons, EMP rifles aimed at Anna.

She spun as though it was her mission to protect Vaughn.  Maybe it was.

John lunged for the charger as Dorian leaped the distance between himself and his creator, reaching for John’s gun; the holster on the table was empty.  John had surreptitiously tucked the weapon into the back of Dorian’s trouser waistband during their Eskimo kiss when the little red light on his home security console had blinked on.  His apartment’s silent alarm.

John grabbed his leg off of the port and threw it straight at Vaughn.  It slammed against his chest, knocking him off balance.

The MXs pulsed Anna, who folded into a lifeless heap.

Dorian, caught in the wash, froze for a moment, shutting down his own power sources to avoid the worst of it.

Vaughn crashed to the floor, knocking his head hard, and by the time he looked up, Dorian had rebooted and was standing over him with John’s weapon trained right between his creator’s eyes.  Dorian didn’t need the laser-sight, but John had to admit it was a nice effect.  Very to-the-point.

The point being that it was over.

Finally.

Sandra was the first human police officer to cross his threshold and she immediately phoned Rudy: there was another android he needed to deal with.

Dorian cuffed Vaughn and then passed John his leg.  Ten minutes’ charge was better than nothing he supposed as he reattached it and stepped back into his cargos.  At least they were clean.

John made no effort to talk to the FBI or DHS agents that tramped through his living room.  He gave his statement.  Paul would handle submitting the surveillance footage into evidence.  Vaughn was in custody and Anna was not John’s problem anymore.

The biggest fish, Sandra had said.  John didn’t envy them.

He had his own mess to deal with: doors and windows would have to be replaced.  Thanks to Sandra’s foresight, the repair crew was standing by, waiting for forensics to finish documenting the scene.  John hung around, not to enjoy the show, but to catalog what every Tom, Dick, and Harry touched.  He was done with his own living space being used against him.

Dorian refused to leave with Rudy and John refused to order his partner to go.  Which put Rudy in a snit and John got a much needed laugh at his huffy lecture on the importance of keeping one’s calendar straight.

The DRN returned to his bar stool and obstinately planted himself there, bracing his left elbow against John’s right.  The table held them up as people bustled back and forth.

“Thanks,” John said when the hubbub had mostly died down.  Forensics were on their way out; repairmen were moving in.

“You didn’t go for the gun,” Dorian mused by way of reply.

John’s mouth tightened.  “I’d have killed the son of a bitch.  I didn’t fuck up the leg you gave me -- I hope.”

Dorian’s hand landed on John’s thigh, curving around the prosthetic beneath the fabric of his cargo pants.  John was beyond tired, hollowed out from adrenaline and rage, so by all rights he should be numb.  Empty.  And yet that single touch sparked delicate pins-and-needles over every inch of his skin.

“Rudy can run a diagnostic for you, but it seriously needs to charge, man.”

“I know.  Our guests dropped by sooner than I expected.”

Dorian’s eyes narrowed.  “It doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

“Everything.  Why would Vaughn threaten you, attempt to extort me, and reveal Anna as his creation?”

John let out a long breath.

“You know, don’t you?” Dorian accused.  “You anticipated this.”

John lifted a hand to halt the next accusation.  “I suspected Maldonado had me in play in order to draw in InSyndicate, so… yeah.  I thought something would be going down soon.  Probably here.  Anna made sure to put me and this place on InSyndicate’s radar.  I didn’t know this was Vaughn’s show.”  John scolded himself: “Should have.”

There was a terrible thread of logic here: Reinhardt hadn’t known that Anna was an android, which probably meant that InSyndicate had been working for Vaughn and not the other way around.  Although Vaughn had probably fooled them into thinking otherwise.

And then when Vaughn had realized that there was one DRN still on the police force, he’d realized he could cut out the middle man entirely.  Offer InSyndicate up on a silver platter in exchange for the only thing that still mattered to him.  And regardless of what Vaughn said, it wasn’t his DRNs.  Not even Dorian.

John risked a look at his partner as he admitted the rest of it, “There’s no trophy room.  Not anymore.  It’s just a back room.  A guestroom.  Or something.  Someday.”

“You didn’t want me here.”

“I didn’t want you to get shot at.  DRN replacement parts don’t grow on trees, D.”

Dorian turned away, presenting his profile and glaring at nothing in the distance.  Aw, shit.  He was just winding up.

“And Vaughn?” Dorian asked in a deceptively mild tone.

Well, sure.  Why not be the barer of more shitty news?  John sighed out, “He’s gonna get what he wanted all along.  I expect he’ll trade Anna and all the intel she’s gathered on InSyndicate for immunity.  DHS will want him in their labs, working under supervision, but…”  John shrugged.  “Like you said, he wants to work.  Now he’ll have the best lab in the country.”  Maybe the best in the world.  “Because he’s the best robotics engineer of our time.  He’d be wasted in the Cubes.”

And, meanwhile, the DRNs would lie in crates or carry around toolboxes and be wasted on the fringes of the city.

Dorian shook his head.  “It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not.  I’m sorry.”

Finally, John’s partner looked him in the eye.  “For what, man?”

And this was the moment.  John could -- should -- apologize for leading Dorian on.  For making their partnership seem like something it wasn’t.  All so Vaughn would just make his fucking move already and be done with it.

“It’s not justice,” John replied, hating himself but knowing a lie would kill them both.  “Vaughn owes you.  You deserve better than what he--better than him.”

“It’s never been about justice for me,” Dorian replied evenly.  “I just want to help people.”

“Yeah.”  John felt like he had to agree.  “You’re pretty good at it.”

Now seemed like a good time to get another drink of water.  Maybe Dorian watched him and maybe he didn’t.  John kept his back turned and his thoughts aimed elsewhere.

Chapter Text

“You moved the doll I gave you,” Anna said.

John leaned back in his seat.  The space on his left where Dorian would stand was empty.  John angled his body that way anyway.  “Got tired of being spied on.”

“I wasn’t spying.  I was listening.  I like listening to you, John.”

Jesus.  She was absolutely sincere.  But that was what made the best salesmen and con artists, right?  The ones that truly believed what they were saying -- those were the most convincing.  John examined her face -- so familiar -- searching for answers.  An equally familiar and pointless past time.

He’d read the report.  All of it.  Even if he hadn’t understood most of it.  Every design feature and hardware component Vaughn had used to create Anna Moore had been meticulously listed.  She had organic skin (who the contributor was nobody knew… or nobody was telling John) and a colloquialism routine.  There was a program to bond empathetically with a client (i.e. John R. Kennex).  She laughed when she got tongue-tied.  She could roll her eyes.  She forgot her pocket-sized belongings at randomized intervals.  She perspired.  Anna Moore was the most advanced IRC ever created.

Well, what was more likely: that a bunch of money-grubbing Albanians had figured out how to integrate human DNA with Sebastian Jones’ sexbot tech, or that someone smarter than all of them combined had broken through that glass ceiling first and sold the know-how?

Yeah.

Why did it always come back to Nigel Vaughn?

And since Anna wasn’t programmed to respond to anyone other than Vaughn or John when asked about InSyndicate, here he was.  Asking the DHS’s questions for them -- going on five hours now -- because at least one person in this unit was smart enough not to let Vaughn run the show.

Good call.

Another prompt grated in John’s ear via the earpiece.  He ignored it.  John had asked their questions and plucked every thread of InSyndicate’s web over the past three days.  They had names and addresses and blood types on each and every one of those thugs.  DHS had gotten their prize.  Now it was John’s turn.

He gave the date of the ambush.  “Tell me what you remember.”

A tiny frown appeared along her brow.  “The sound of gunshots.  Shouts.  You tried to save Martin Pelham.  You were shot.  You lost your leg.  I threw the grenade.”  She tilted her head in that way -- the one that had always made his heart ache.  “I’m glad you’re alive.”

“How did you learn about the raid?  Why did you tell InSyndicate?”

“Your computer.  I’m very good with networks.”

Of course she was.  “You were in the system.  How long?”

She gave John a look -- the one that made him feel like he belonged on the short bus.

“All this time?” he mused.

“I mostly observed.  Impending raids.  Patrol schedules--”

“Watch drone flight patterns.”

She nodded, pleased that he seemed to get it.

“You locked out Detective Vogel and deleted the evidence log and case file for number 6663.”

“I did.  The recent series of cyber audits haven’t allowed me to move as freely as I once could.”

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t still get in.  It didn’t mean the precinct wasn’t compromised.  God damn it.  How much did criminal organizations know about police activities and capabilities?  John shook his head, knowing he should ask, but hell.  He didn’t know where to start.

The kicker of it was that it didn’t even matter to the mastermind himself whether InSyndicate had succeeded or failed; Vaughn had proven himself unmatched in android engineering.  True, he might be a little let down at not getting to play politician and prod the world toward his vision of Utopia.  He might wish for the vindication that would have come from his DRNs’ return to police service.  But Vaughn had given up his crusade to repair and reinstate his DRNs pretty quickly when DHS had offered him a deal.

It had happened just like John had thought it would: Vaughn was already toiling away in the depths of some state-of-the-art lab with an unlimited budget to produce cutting-edge robotics.  Yeah, he wasn’t going to have any trouble serving his time.  Vaughn was past the point of caring whether he was a hero or a villain so long as he was acknowledged as unbeatable.

For a guy who claimed to care about the androids he’d created, he sure seemed willing to sacrifice them.  For his personal greater good.

“As for why I shared information with InSyndicate,” Anna told John, “I was instructed to gain Reinhardt’s trust.”

“That’s a mission failed.  He doesn’t have many nice things to say about you these days.”

She shrugged dismissively and John had to remind himself that this woman wasn’t human.  He couldn’t even comfortably call her an android.  He was sitting across from a robot in an interrogation room at the local DHS office.  Surrounded by four walls designed specifically for neutralizing detainees with electromagnetic pulses.

“We were never supposed to be friends.”

“What were your instructions pertaining to InSyndicate?”

“Integrate myself with the group.  Garner support.  Collect intel on the members.  Acquire the tech that Doctor Vaughn required.”

Which brought them back to a point they’d covered backwards, forwards, and sideways two hours ago: Vaughn’s ever-evolving plans to not only create a better world for his creations to exist in, but also to reestablish himself as the unequivocal master of his trade.  Of the two, the second had clearly been the priority.

“I would have rather stayed with you, John,” Anna told him.

He didn’t answer.

“Can we go home now?”

John stood.  “Maybe next time.  Be on your best behavior.”

“When are you coming to see me again?”

He closed the door behind him, plucked the earpiece from his left ear, and signed out of the detention wing.

Dorian was waiting for him in the lobby.  They collected their firearms from the security desk and headed for the cruiser.

Dorian didn’t ask if John wanted to talk about it.  No, of course not.  Not here.

What he said instead was, “I’m officially off duty.”

“Yeah.  You want a ride to the precinct?  Detention center?  Rudy’s?”

“I’d like to see your trophy room.  If that’s all right.”

All right?  All right?  What the hell?  It had been three days since Rudy had patched up Dorian’s programs and proclaimed John’s leg roadworthy.

Three days of quiet-and-introspective Dorian riding shotgun like a store mannequin.

Three days of John ignoring the rage boiling under his own skin.

Three days of resenting the loss of what they used to have and what they’d almost had.

Three days of wondering what more would be taken from them.

Three days of silently composing his resignation from Delta Division in his head only to trash it.

“I just want to be a cop, man.  I just want to be here.”

So here John was because Dorian’s options really were that limited.

And there was never going to be anything fair about that.

“John?”

He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.  Tighter.

“John.”  Dorian looked his way and said with a perfectly straight face, “You’re leaving me with no other option, so don’t bother whining about it when you wake up from a dose of fentanyl oxide, find me charging in your trophy room, and have no idea how I got there.”

“Whine,” John grumbled, amused despite himself.  A knee-jerk twinge of humor deep under his sternum sending a tiny hiccup through his veins.  “I don’t whine.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I--!  Hey, name one time I whined.”

“At the beach.”

“The where now?”

“At the beach.  You whined that it was too cold.”

“That wasn’t whining.  I was stating a fact.  It was freezing outside and the wind was blowing and the water was arctic.”

“It was forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.”

“Arctic,” John insisted.

“Would you care for a definition of the word ‘arctic,’ John?”

“I’d like for you to check the definition of the word ‘whine,’ which -- by the way -- you can’t prove I did because I didn’t.”

“Perhaps if I played back an audio file--”

“If I take you to see the back room at my place, will you shut up about it?”

“Sure,” Dorian answered agreeably.

John shook his head, helpless to stop a wry grin from tugging at his mouth.  “That fentanyl oxide stuff gives me a headache anyway,” he mumbled, taking the next left and aiming the cruiser in the direction of his apartment complex.

Dorian kept his cute little smirk to himself.  Mostly.

Once they were both on the other side of John’s door and their shoes were tumbled out of the flow of traffic, John nodded for Dorian to go ahead.  “Down the hall on the left.”

“John.”

“Knock yourself out.”  He dropped his keys in the catchall and tossed his jacket on a wall peg.

“John…”

He shouldered past Dorian’s bulk and went to grab his hamper.  He might as well get a start on laundry.

“John, I didn’t ask to come here so I could see the trophy room that you don’t have.”

“Well, maybe I’ve got one now.”

“Your apartment sensor log indicates that you haven’t opened the door to that room in the past three days.”

Ever since John had confessed to lying.  “Thanks for the reminder.”

“It was one of the last things you said to me before engaging Quiet Mode.”

“Quiet Mode!  I haven’t been the one in Quiet Mode, pal.”

“Yes, you have.  And I was taking my cues from you.  Which, by now, I really should know better than to do.”

“Hey.  I’m great at giving cues.  I give cues all the time.  Like this one.”  He fished his phone out of his pants pocket and tossed it at Dorian, who caught it without fanfare.  “Call yourself a cab.  Thanks for visiting.”

Dorian lowered his arm slowly.  “You don’t want me to leave.”

“You should leave,” John emphasized.

“The last time I was here I thought--”

“The last time you were here I was still living in ignorance of what a colossal, self-centered ass I am.”

“Colossal.  Now that sounds more like the John Kennex I’ve come to know.”

No.  No, no.  John was not going to be cajoled and cheered out of this.  This was not fixable.  He wasn’t fixable.  Hadn’t been for years, really.

He spun around and glared out the large windows.  He’d have to wash them again.  The weather forecast was calling for rain tomorrow, so maybe the day after that.  So what if it was December.  So fucking what.

Dorian crossed the room silently and came to a stop beside John.  Facing him.  Forcing him to react and contribute.  “Seeing Anna upset you.”

“No, really?”

Dorian ignored his sarcastic drawl and waited.  How did Dorian know when to push and when to wait?  Was it a probability program?  Bio scans?

One thing was for sure, John always gave in.  He probably always would, too.  Didn’t mean he had to like it.  Reluctantly -- inevitably -- he said, “She doesn’t even have a Synthetic Soul.  We were together for almost two months.  How could I not notice?”

“Well, to be fair, you didn’t notice that I had one until I pointed it out.  Twice.”

“Thanks.  Great pep talk, D.  Let’s do this again sometime.”

As John started to turn away -- he really would call that damn cab--

Just watch me, damn it.

--Dorian’s hand curled around his bicep.

“Look at me, John.  What do you see?”

“Don’t need an eye exam.”

“I think you do.  Look at me, man, and tell me what you see.”

Dorian wasn’t going to let go and John wasn’t in the mood to trash the place in an attempt to get away.  With a huff, he jerked back around and glared.

“Well?” Dorian prompted.

“My partner,” he admitted.  Grudgingly.

“An android.”

“What?  No, that’s--”

“DRN-0167.”

John was confused.  “Dorian, what the--”

“A synthetic.”

“Stop.  You hate that word.”

“Do you?”

John was startled to realize that he did.  He hated it when people talked about “synthetics.”  Jesus.  Dorian had taught him to hate it.

Seeing the answer in John’s blasted open expression, Dorian pressed, “Why?”

John didn’t know.

“Could it be because you see me as I am, not as I’m supposed to be?  Not as my creator intended me or as society defines me?”  Dorian’s hand shifted, grip smoothing into something resembling a caress.  “Could it be that rather than see too little, you see what matters?  You see a person in me and, while most people turn away from that, you don’t.”

John sighed, escaping from the intensity of Dorian’s gaze by scanning the view from his bedroom/rec-room/living-room windows.  “Where’s this going?”  He was tired and, fentanyl oxide or no, John was getting a headache.

“Nowhere,” Dorian replied, his hand skimming down John’s arm until their fingers laced and tangled.  “Anywhere we want.”

Chin jerking up, John challenged, “Wait.  The software update -- that installed correctly, didn’t it?”

Dorian nodded.  “I choose this.  Not because I can feel it, but because I want to.”

John’s gaze lowered to their joined hands.  “I’m only human.”  And, as far as John was concerned, it wasn’t a point that recommended him to much of anything.  Nothing worthy of reaching out for.

“I’ve got an expiration date, too.  Technically, I think I’ve passed it.”

“So have I,” John had to agree, amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth.  He couldn’t stop the smile, so he tilted his head away.

“Don’t,” Dorian called softly, touching a thumb and forefinger to John’s chin, but not in order to force.  “Let me see your joy, John.  Haven’t I earned this?”

For putting up with a morose and malcontent soul, yeah, he definitely had.  The thought only deepened his grin and John looked him in the eye, facing not only the good in his partner, but the good that yet remained in himself.

“You weren’t wrong, you know,” John blurted.  “You’re not what Pelham was to me.”  John swallowed, brows drawing together, fiery and fierce.  “You’re more.”

Dorian gaped at him, limbs locked.

John gripped his wrist; Dorian’s hand hovered, still touching John’s chin.  “Aw, come on.  Like that wasn’t the nicest thing I’ve ever said to you?”

Dorian’s lips tightened into a frown of profound emotion.  John waited and watched for the tide to change and -- yup.  There it was.  That beaming smile of pure happiness.  Like the promise of a clear sky after a storm.

John could think up a dozen reasons not to do this -- he could dredge up dozens of fears -- but it all boiled down to the fact that Dorian wanted to be here and he made John want to be here, too.

That was kind of a big deal.  The biggest deal.  Maybe the whole point.

So, with a quiet huff of laughter, John gave a helpless twitch of his shoulders.  “What next?”

Dorian was already stepping up and into John’s space.  And John wasn’t the kind of jerk to ruin a perfectly good first kiss.  So he tightened his fingers in Dorian’s grasp and around Dorian’s wrist and just let it happen.

And, yeah, it was pretty damn perfect.

Chapter Text

“Is this going to be a problem?” Captain Maldonado asked, appearing with characteristic and legendary stealth at John’s elbow.

Over the years, she’d gotten the drop on him just like this more times than he cared to count, but today was different.

Today was different because yesterday John had kissed Dorian.  And the universe hadn’t imploded.  True, it had only been one chaste kiss, a simple meeting of lips, but John was very much looking forward to an encore.  That fact alone made him optimistic enough to tune in to the rest of the world, even the usual humdrum of the bullpen.

So basically, John had seen Sandra coming a mile away because John was in a good mood.

And if he looked up at Dorian right now, he knew they’d be swapping smug little grins like kids who had gotten away with stealing the pieces of cake with the most frosting.  That was why John did not look at Dorian even when he shifted minutely and John totally clocked it because, yeah.  Tuned in.  All the way.

“What’s that?” he asked his boss, quirking his brows in question.

She nodded to the tablet John had been about to sign off on.

Wonda, WDA-880, was being released from custody and John was putting in a request for a patrol car to return the android to her residence in Kingston Heights.  The relevant data had been copied from her memory files and logged as evidence days ago, but John had been putting this off; it was low priority and he was sticking with that story until the bitter end.  No one could argue that he hadn’t been busy.  Between DHS, the FBI, and the city’s police department, just about every InSyndicate member, supporter, or sympathizer had been scooped up off the streets in a hectic crackdown.  It was just lucky timing that the witness protection that DRN-494 had finagled for Wonda was no longer necessary.  Although John was willing to bet his left leg that the androids would continue to look out for their own.

With a few taps to the screen, the paperwork was filed.  Three seconds, done.

“This?” he parroted, not really playing dumb… more like hoping for a different playing field.  Someplace that wasn’t surveyed six ways to Sunday.

The captain nodded both John and Dorian toward her office.

“The WDA that witnessed the Billings attack,” Captain Maldonado said as soon as the glass door whispered shut behind them, “and the bot that called in the assault on my house.”  She paused and considered.  “I can make a guess as to who that was.”

Well, good for her.  John had no clue and, honestly, he didn’t really want to know.  In fact, he didn’t want either himself or Dorian anywhere near that android or Wonda or DRN-494 and their network of anxious pals.

Sandra continued staring at John, so John said, “OK…?”

“Your informant has an agenda.  Is this going to be a problem, John?  I need to know how you’re intending to handle this.”

Duct tape.  Somehow, John was sure that the correct application of duct tape at a crucial moment could have saved him from this mess being dropped in his lap.

He fought the urge to cross his arms.  “I’m not planning to start worrying about it until Hart goes public with his little pet project and people who have androids of their own start shaking his hand over it.”  John shrugged.  “Truthfully, I don’t think Hart has the support to go after DRNs and the other androids built on their platform.”

And he so easily might have.  If word had gotten out about someone creating a convincing replica of a police captain, the panic would have been swift and ugly.  So far, the lid on that was holding air tight.

The captain squinted.  “What do they want?”

They.  The androids.  John arched a brow at Dorian, who was in a far better position to articulate their needs.

“Existence,” Dorian answered with some reluctance.  “They were made to interact with humans and prioritize those connections.”

They.  Dorian had said they.  Not we.  John could have kissed him.  Right here and now.

“We’re not talking about deactivating anyone,” Sandra countered calmly.  As if Dorian had said we.  “But peaceful streets and public safety are my responsibility, Dorian.  I need to know what’s going on.  Keep me informed; don’t make me have to ask.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Satisfied, she addressed John: “DHS wants you back at their office this afternoon.”

“For another round of twenty thousand questions?” he grumbled.

“I doubt they could manage that many in the time they have.”  Gentling her tone, she added, “The android Anna Moore is scheduled for deactivation at eight o’clock tonight.”

John gawped, mind blank.

Sandra waited.  Dorian, too.

“That’s fast,” he managed.

“The law allows us four consecutive days to debrief androids that have human DNA.  I’m sure if they could keep her longer, they would.”

John shook his head.  “No, that’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”  Sandra glanced past his shoulder to Dorian, who gave the tiniest of nods, but said nothing.  Not a word.  This was, perhaps, the one place where the DRN kept his opinions to himself.  That figured.

The captain said, “I’ll see you tomorrow for roll call.”

“Right.”  John held the door for Dorian as they left, barely registering the steps under his boots or the documents on his To Authorize list.  He was caught up on the fact that tomorrow was Saturday and there would be plenty of crazy spilling over from Friday night to keep him -- and the rest of Delta Division-- busy.  No matter what happened today, he could count on not having time to think about it tomorrow.

Thank God.

John cleared his desk well before lunchtime, but Dorian nudged him toward the exit with a hand under his elbow and John’s ratty gray jacket draped over his other arm.

“Let’s go see Nuri, John.”

Nuri.  Sure.  It’d been a while since John had gone out for sushi.  “I’m not eating anything live this time,” he warned, but the words sounded hollow.  Like he was shouting under water.

Another touch on his elbow snapped John out of his daze.  He was standing next to the cruiser beside the passenger door with no memory of how he’d gotten there.

“Would you like me to drive?” Dorian asked carefully.

No.  John wanted to be the one in the driver’s seat.  He wanted his hands on the wheel.  In control.

He took his jacket from Dorian’s arm -- why hadn’t John noticed how cold it was out here? -- and shoved his arms into the red-lined sleeves.  Thermal.  It was his dad’s jacket.  Used to be his dad’s.

John dug the keys out of his pocket and dumped them into Dorian’s cupped hand.  “It’d be better if you drove.”

“OK.”

“And maybe you should just drop me off.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“It’s a waste of your time to hang out in the lobby waiting around for me,” John argued tersely.  Why was he arguing?  He didn’t want Dorian to ditch him.  Not today of all days.  “Statute of limitations and--”

“John, I’m your partner.”  Dorian’s hand lifted and pressed between John’s aching shoulder blades right along his spine.  Yeah, D had his back.  “Get in the car.”

John got in the car.

Nuri’s was busy and John relished the noise, glad for something else to focus on.  Something harmless and mundane like which garnishes were actually intended for consumption versus borderline edible.

When Nuri smiled at John, waiting for his order, John blanked.  So Dorian ordered for him.  John didn’t ask what it was, but it wasn’t moving and, actually, it was pretty good.

“Thanks, man.”

Dorian just nodded.

John didn’t remember much from the drive.  Signing in and checking his weapon at the DHS security desk just off the lobby was automatic.  Dorian didn’t touch him at all.

“I’ll be here,” he promised and, although the words were welcome, they weren’t nearly good enough.  John figured they were better than nothing.  A year ago, that was what he would have had: nothing.

Sandra had been right; John wasn’t directed to ask twenty thousand questions.  Maybe nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine.  And he could barely recall a dozen of them.

At half past seven, the interview was halted.  Someone asked John if he would be watching the bot’s deactivation.  He didn’t want to, but he nodded anyway.

He walked down a sterile corridor.  There was an apparatus and a technician.  A machine designed to eradicate all organic elements with a push of a button.  John stood at the observation window.

Anna smiled at him one last time... and then she was gone.

The sound of John’s boot heels on the waxed tiles.  The ping of the elevator arriving on the ground floor.  The weight of his service weapon sliding into its holster and the familiar pull on his left shoulder.  The cruiser.  Its dashboard clock read 20:11.  John checked his wristwatch and got the same result.  20:11.  He hadn’t even felt the time pass.

“Where to?” Dorian asked.

“I can’t feel anything,” John heard himself say.

Dorian somehow derived a destination from that.  He drove to Willows Park.  Along the river.  John blinked at the swaying Saint Christopher medallion before leaning forward to catch it, clutch it in his hand, slide it free of the rear view mirror.

Between one breath and the next, John was at the overlook.

Dorian softly protested, “You don’t have to do this, John.”

“I do.”

“It doesn’t have to happen now.”

“It does.  I want it to.”

And he wanted it to happen here.  A good place to listen to the lapping waves below and do a little people watching.  The last time he’d come here, he’d been alone.  The night Erik Latham, the Beauty Killer, had fallen to his death.

“We’re supposed to be loved.”

John held the pendant out over the water, and then he let the wind-chilled chain slip from his numb fingers.  Heard it hit with barely a splash and thought of how silently and quickly the light had faded from Anna’s eyes.  With a keystroke.

He drew in a deep breath.  Let it out.  He shoved his hands in his pockets and took a step back.

Dorian was there.

John shifted half a step closer, ready to feel warm again and, hell, just ready to feel.

“Should we swing by Rudy’s?”

“I can charge at the station tomorrow morning.”

“Only for an hour or two.”  They were bound to be sent out on a call before too long.  And besides, John had the sneaking suspicion that he was dangerously close to usurping Dorian as the reigning Hugger champ.  Or worse: demanding to be the Huggee.  Marathoning it.  Hell.  He’d never live it down.

Dorian smiled and offered John the keys.  “That’ll be plenty.”

Chapter Text

Dorian blinked at the bitcoin stick like he’d never seen one before.

John waggled it under his nose.  “Well?  I know you’ve got a pocket to put it in.  I’m not gonna hold it for you all day.”

“Then why would I hold yours?”

“It’s not mine.”  John managed to wedge the thing between Dorian’s fingers.  “I based it on what interns get.  Sorry I can’t afford to promote you to patrolman.”

“John…”

John bit back a grin and tried to look more expectant than amused.

“Are you giving me a salary?”

“Are you complaining?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you should.”

“I should.  Complain?”  A baffled Dorian was hilarious.

“Yup.  Now you don’t have an out for Christmas shopping.”

“I can use this for Christmas presents?”

“You can use it for whatever you want.”

“Will you go Christmas shopping with me?”

“No.  No way.  You can buy gifts online like a civilized person.”

“John… this is…”

“Don’t you dare thank me,” John interrupted, pointing a finger at Dorian’s “perfect” nose.  He was serious, too.  John wouldn’t still be a detective if it weren’t for Dorian.  Two-way street.  The precinct might pay for Dorian’s daily “living” expenses, but John didn’t buy that as justification for denying a guy a wage.

When Dorian got his smile under control, he asked in that dangerously off-handed way of his, “Why haven’t you asked me what I’d like for Christmas?”

Not happy with the bitcoin stick? John almost needled.  Almost.  “Maybe I already got you something.”  Just as a smattering of processing lights appeared on Dorian’s cheek, John added, “And no, you may not check my financial transactions.”

“But I’m curious, John!”

“Good.  Presents are supposed to be a surprise.”

“I can guess, can’t I?  I’ll know I’m right if I guess.”

“You’ll never guess.  Not in a million years.”

Rather than latch onto the numbers and calculate the time it would take to guess everything available for sale or likely to be given as a gift, Dorian eagerly blurted, “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

John huffed a laugh.  Androids.  Damn.  Why was he constantly surprised by this DRN?

“Well?” Dorian prodded.

“Hey, you said you’d know it if you guessed.  I didn’t say anything about answering.”

“Is it something I’m likely to use while on duty?”

It was a damn good thing Christmas was right around the corner.  If John had to put up with this for more than a week, he’d go insane.

As it turned out, he nearly did go bonkers from Dorian’s constant guessing.  In the cruiser.  At the coffee machine in the break room.  Walking up to a crime scene.  Waiting to interview a witness.  Riding in an elevator.  God, it was endless.

But.  Whenever John was on the verge of snapping, Dorian would catch his eye and that little smile would be curling his mouth.  A reminder that Dorian was having fun.  And that was probably the one thing John couldn’t slap a bow on and shove under a tree.

Speaking of which, John hadn’t planned on bothering with a Christmas tree this year, but Dorian’s clear excitement prompted him to dig out the old boxes of decorations from the loft above the dining room and kitchen.  John had been scheduled for a day off on the twenty-third, so he dragged Dorian over to his place for requisite holidaying up.

“No Christmas music.”  It was John’s only point of non-negotiation.

Dorian offered one, too: “You’ll have to show me what to do.”

“You’re not gonna just… look it up?”

“No.”

John rolled his chin.  “OK, then.”

All attempts at confining the mess to the warped cardboard boxes was abandoned within the hour.  John had given himself a backache by lunch and Dorian kept sticking his finger in John’s coffee mug to heat the dregs.  But John hadn’t smiled this much in a single day since… well, it had been a long time.

“Looks good, D,” John approved of the tree.  Dorian stepped back from placing the star at the top and John looped an arm over the DRN’s shoulders.  Dorian curled an arm around John’s waist by way of reply and leaned in.  What started out in a companionable side-by-side seamlessly melted into an embrace.  Warmth.  Familiar scent.  A solid, stable presence.

And then a kiss.  A brush and press of lips.  A brief nibble and then John was nudging Dorian’s jaw with his fingertips, tilting his own face to a new angle.  To explore and enjoy.

Very enjoyable and safe and OK.  This was OK.  The revelation prompted something deep within John to unclench, like a cramped muscle shuddering and shivering open in hot water.  A small sound escaped him and Dorian nestled closer into the subtle unwinding of John’s form.

This feeling.  There was nothing else like it.

He held onto it with Dorian.  John tucked in and nuzzled a smooth cheek and pressed his smile against smooth skin.

Synthetic skin.

John blinked.  Tensed.

The thought that he was doing this with an android twinged at his nerves, unsettling him for a brief moment--

“John?  You OK, man?”

“Yeah,” he murmured, letting himself relax again.  “Stop scanning me.”

“Can’t help it.  You’re in my space.”

John shifted to move back.

Dorian’s grip on his waist tightened.  “I want you in my space.”

And John was good with that.  Dorian was an android, yes, but he wasn’t lying about it or concealing it.  Not like Anna had.  Dorian was all truth, open and shining so bright that it made John’s eyes sting.

Dorian’s mouth found his again, but with a quick flick of tongue along John’s lower lip.

“Wait,” he rasped, turning his chin away.  This time it was Dorian who moved to shift back and John who scrambled to hold on.  “No, no.  That wasn’t a no.  It was a not yet.”

Dorian blinked and, smiling indulgently, murmured, “I understand.”

Did he?

“We’ll go at your pace, John.”

Ah, no.  He didn’t understand.  Not quite.  “While I appreciate that--”  And John did because, honestly, John had days where he really was a stranger trapped in a body he barely recognized.  He had even more days where he felt like he was learning how to be human all over again.  Starting from scratch.  And he still didn’t know what he was OK with.  Closeness?  Yeah, so far so good.  Bare skin and bed sheets?  The jury was still out on that one, but it felt like they might be reaching a verdict in the near future.  “While I appreciate that,” he began again, “you’re in this, too.  Once you cross a bridge, you can’t go back.”

Unless Dorian’s files were deleted or his memory wiped.

John cupped the DRN’s face in his hands.  “I don’t want you to wish for a do-over.  Let’s do this right the first time?”

“Hm,” Dorian hummed, settling both hands on John’s hips and it felt like they belonged there.  “So, we’re doing things my way is what you’re saying.”

“Sure.”  Why not.  It wasn’t as if John was any great success story in the relationship department.  Easy made him restless and yet he’d never had the patience for difficult.

“You should get a bigger couch, man.”

John sputtered around a sudden bark of laughter.  “Really?”  John didn’t need Dorian’s teasing look and eager nod to figure out what they’d be using this hypothetical, bigger couch for.  “I’m not a big fan of just sitting around.  Or haven’t you noticed, Detective?”

“I have noticed,” Dorian slowly answered, reaching up to massage the back of John’s neck, “that your reluctance to sit down often coincides with occasions which require me to remain standing.”

God damn it.  Truer words and all that.  “How much time have you spent in the chairs back at the precinct?  They’ve got squat in the way of lumbar support.”

“Those chairs are perfectly fine.”

“Oh, good.  Nice to know how low your standards are,” John teased, soft and gravelly.  “Because you’re gonna love this.”

Taking Dorian’s hand, he led him down the short hall, past the bathroom door and toward the last door on the left.  Sliding it open, John revealed the back room.  Four walls with a window that looked out on trees and sky.  The walls themselves bristled with staggered shelving.  A matrix that had been custom built.

Dorian reached out and touched the nearest one.  John had dusted and polished each so that smooth wood grain gleamed in the weak, winter light.  “This was your trophy room.”

“Yeah.  Well.  There haven’t actually been any trophies in here since I came home from the hospital.”  When John couldn’t stand on his own and, thus, couldn’t stand to look at them.  The reminders.  Remnants of his days as the White Cheetah.

He’d asked Sandra to box them up and have them stowed upstairs with whatever else that would’ve gotten in the way of a wheelchair.  And when it would eventually come time to once again exile the Christmas decorations to storage, the trophies would stay right where they were.

“You kept the shelves.”

“Pelham helped me put them up.”  John smiled at the memory of sawdust and splinters and swear words.  “That was a good day.”

John gestured for Dorian to turn around, but Dorian had already glanced over his shoulder and noticed: “That’s a charging pod.”

“The room’s a little bare otherwise.”  John rubbed the back of his neck, propping his other shoulder against the door frame.  Lounging.  Lounging was good.  Casual.  Yeah, John was totally ignoring the fact that it was a little late to sell the casual angle.  “But that’s what Internet shopping is for, right?  And… I figure you can fill it the rest of the way up with all your Christmas presents.”

Reaching back, John pulled a soft, velvet bag from his pocket.  “Start with this one.”

“It’s not Christmas yet,” Dorian protested, looking uncertain.

“Eh.  Today’s our Christmas.  If you want.  Anyway, this time of year always makes people lose it.  Work’s gonna be nuts.  So it’s a good idea for you to have this -- you know -- sooner rather than later.”

Dorian delicately accepted the bag and pried it open before pulling out a silver chain with a pendant.  “Saint Michael.  The patron saint of police officers.”

John watched Dorian’s lips smush into an emotional moue.  Aw, hell.  Here we go again.

“Did you know something like eighty percent of these are given as gifts?” John joked with a wiggle of his brows.

Dorian laughed.  And then he leaned in and pressed an enthusiastic kiss to John’s charming leer.  John cupped the nape of his neck and urged him closer, tangling their legs.

“You got me six Christmas presents, John.”

“I did what?  Six?”

“Yes.  By your criteria, I must be pretty important to you.”

“Well,” he drawled, “that last bit is true.  But how do you figure six presents?”

“Saint Michael, the charging pod, the room, the Christmas tree, the bitcoin stick, and kisses.”

John rolled his eyes.  “The charging pod is a spare on loan from Rudy’s lab -- you can still keep spending the night there if you want -- so that doesn’t count.  And this room was yours as soon as the InSyndicate threat disappeared, so also not a Christmas present -- it’s just coincidental timing.  I already told you the bitcoin was not a Christmas present.  And the tree was more chore than not--”

“But I had fun decorating.”

“Yeah, just wait until I make you help me pack it up.  The pendant is the only real present I got you.”  John scowled.  He probably should have made that sound more, um, thoughtful and profound.  It was a really nice pendant, actually.

“Well, what about the kisses, then?”

A bashful grin unfurled along his lips as he shrugged.  “Not a once-a-year kind of thing.”

Dorian was smiling so widely he looked frozen with happiness.

John leaned in for a quick, soft peck on those lush lips.  “Come on.  Let’s key you in to the security system.”  And then John would finally be able to hand over the spare key he’d had made.  He couldn’t wait to see the look on Dorian’s face when he saw the key chain--

A hand gripped John’s wrist, making him pause.  “John… this is…”

“Hey.  Don’t thank me, OK?  I’ve wanted you here for a long time.”

“You give me choices, John,” Dorian said, clearly having a different conversation.

John squeezed his shoulder.  “You have a soul.  You have preferences.  You want things--”

“I do.”  Dorian stepped closer, crowding John against the wall.  “I do.  I do.  I do.”

“Don’t get all excited,” John chided on a whisper.  “I wasn’t proposing.”

With a happy hum, Dorian replied, “Thanks, John.  It’s nice to know you’re still you.”

“I’m still--what is that supposed to mean?” John rallied gamely.  “You weren’t worried that the grumpy, morose, and malcontent stuff was all an act, were you?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

Of course it had.  Because bazillions of thoughts crossed Dorian’s mind every single second.  And Dorian was a detective.  And Dorian’s default setting was to question John.  John was actually somewhat flattered that he was important enough to inspire second guessing.  “Sorry to disappoint, but what you see is what you get with me.”

Dorian scanned him with a very interested gaze that was making John rethink the whole Not Yet plan for open-mouthed, filthy kisses.  He still didn’t know what Dorian tasted like and a look like this made him want to find out.  Right now.

“Do you promise, John?”  Dorian met his gaze and the low simmer of heat dimmed to a soft buzz in John’s veins.  “Don’t keep things from me anymore.”

“Yeah.  You’re up to speed now.”  He cupped Dorian’s face, petting his cheeks with slow sweeps of his thumbs.  “I’ll do my part to make sure you stay that way.”

Chapter Text

Everybody and their dog wanted to know the story behind the key chain.  It had been hard to find; slugs were just not a popular subject for personal accessories.  But it made Dorian smile, so it was worth it.

John got everyone the standard joke gifts for Christmas: Paul got a box of tissues (“If I have to explain it, then we’re sending you back to the police academy,” John mocked); Val got a black ski mask (“Not that you need it for terrifying people into cooperating with you,” John explained); Sandra got a small, card stock jewelry box which appeared empty but purportedly contained the world’s smallest violin (“Hey, after dealing with me this past year, I figure you wore the old one out,” John was man enough to admit); Rudy got cupcake batter (“Because let’s face it, this is me remembering your birthday eleven months in advance,” John informed him), and McGinnis got a T-shirt that said, “Why yes, someone did hold a gun to my head.”  (No cute one-liner had been necessary with that last one.)

But, no.  Seriously.  John got everyone something nice and conveniently consumable or useful.  Scotch for Sandra (a bottle of 20-year-old Suntory Yamazaki from Japan), bourbon for Val (double cask Wild Turkey), a mahogany hat rack for the lab so Rudy could keep his fedora in style, a gift certificate for McGinnis’ favorite posh bistro downtown, and an assortment of gourmet fudge for Paul’s sweet tooth.

“If you tilt your head in squint, it almost looks like coal.”  Or dog shit.  “Knock yourself out and into a diabetic coma.”  John had already done his stint in the hospital; now it was Richard Paul’s turn.

“What did you get Dorian?” Val challenged before Paul could steal the rubber suction-cup dart gun Val had gotten from the captain and open fire.

And then the slug key chain came out.

Paul frowned.  “What’s an android need a key chain for?”

“I don’t know, Paul,” John snarked back.  “Maybe doors just magically open for him.”

“Illegally.”

“Right, so, I know it’s a stretch, but why don’t you think like a detective and--”

“Sit on it and spin, Kennex.”

Dorian just rolled his eyes and slid the key chain (and the key he’d kept hidden in his hand) back into his jacket pocket.

“A slug, huh?  There’s a story in that,” Val astutely guessed.  Because she actually was a detective.

John’s gaze flicked toward Dorian, who grinned widely, pushing a guilty, boyish giggle out of John.  “Yeah,” was all John said.  It was up to Dorian to tell it and he wasn’t volunteering.

Paul clearly didn’t want to know and Val didn’t push.

So they all got back to work.

John’s next time off fell on the 29^th and 30^th -- a rare two days in a row right before the New Year’s craze.  Oh, what a delight that was going to be.  John could hardly wait.

“It’s OK if you want to wait, John,” Dorian calmly assured him as John caged Dorian against the kitchen counter and leaned in.

“Wait to do what?” he countered, palming Dorian’s smooth neck.

“Whatever is making your pulse skyrocket right now.”

“That would be you.”  His lips brushed Dorian’s and then he pulled back far enough to ask, “You know what you want?”

Dorian nodded.

“Good.  Let’s see if we’re on the same page.”  And then John kissed him.  Tender at first and then arms looped around leaning bodies and mouths opened, slick and messy, and John discovered that Dorian did have a taste.

He liked it.  He devoured it.  He licked over Dorian’s tongue and scraped his teeth over his lower lip and inhaled deep, savoring and scenting and--

And gasping as Dorian pressed forward, rocking into John from chest to thigh, and the friction knocked the wind from John’s lungs.

“Can we move to your bed, John?”

John didn’t ask what Dorian had against the couch.  This was not a situation in which a man wanted the hear the words “too small.”

“Hmm,” he purred, hitching himself against Dorian one last time.  “We’ll get there eventually.  Keep your shirt on.”

When he retreated a step, Dorian moved with him, maintaining his hold.  “Don’t doubt that I want this.”

“I don’t,” John promised, prying Dorian’s hand off of his jaw and pursing his lips against the android’s fingertips.  “And I don’t doubt this.  But it takes time.  It ought to take time.”

“You know I don’t need time to process.  Or choose.”

“What about anticipate?”

Ah, from the slightly unfocused look of Dorian’s eyes, he hadn’t expected that answer.

John folded Dorian’s hand into both of his.  “Have you accessed any of the organic memories since Rudy set you up with that voluntary software patch whatever?”

Dorian’s lips twitched at John’s precision jargon.  “No,” he answered, for once not teasing John about his show of techno-dumb.  “None that haven’t already been integrated.”

“So… you mean, you’ve got a funny bone?” John teased.

“It appears so.  And ticklish toes.”

John tilted his head to the side, humor fading.  “When I kiss you, what does that do for you?”

“It makes me happy, John.”

Nodding, John sussed out, “Happy.  That’d be an emotional response to sensory data.  You said you feel -- what was it -- affection for physical contact?”

“From you, yes.”

That was flattering.  “But there’s no, uh, excitement--”  John shrugged, searching for the word he wanted.  “--no tingle.”

“I would need to integrate the corresponding organic memories for that.”

John took the plunge: “Have you considered it?”

“You mean willfully open myself to biological sensation?”

John nodded.  Yeah, that had been what he meant, because Dorian had been made to feel emotions.  And then he’d been left to muddle through social interaction with only databases on human psychology to guide him.

But physical sensation: a jarred funny bone, ticklish toes, an oncoming sneeze.  There was only one way for Dorian to really feel any of that.  Or any of this: kisses, caresses, bodies in close, sensual contact.

Dorian hesitated.  So that was a no.

“How come?”

“It’s… a little scary.”

John squinted, chin jerking to the side in question.  “Are you worried you’re gonna get lost again?”

“No.  The sensations themselves were… overwhelming.”

Were?  Oh.  Right.  The funny bone incident had brought Dorian up short.  And then there was the nuzzling.  The Eskimo kiss.  Before they’d been so rudely interrupted.  But John had to admit that he wouldn’t have wanted a first kiss to happen under police surveillance.  So…

At least this moment was real.

That made John smile.  “Overwhelming, yeah.  That’s how it’s supposed to feel.  Which is why we take our time.”

And there.  The light bulb blinked on.  Dorian wasn’t the only one toeing the ledge of what felt like a very scary cliff.  But the rush, that was part of it.  That was why it was called falling in love.  And if Dorian could feel it -- if he wanted to feel it -- then John wanted him to know it was OK.

Processing lights flashed along intriguing pathways as Dorian nudged John’s chin down.  John briefly felt the imprint of the DRN’s smile before lips softened and ceded and--

A soft moan.  Not John’s.  Oh, Jesus.  Dorian was feeling this.  He was feeling it deep down.  It wasn’t just emotions, it was the tingle of chemicals zooming through the bloodstream, electrical pulses across nerve endings.  Dorian shuffled closer and John had nowhere to go except the counter at his back.  Now it was Dorian’s body that did the trapping, the capturing, the caging.  John just held on and tried not to drool.

But then Dorian’s arousal -- firm and fucking huge -- was rubbing against John’s through their pants and Jesus holy hell.  Dorian whined, a high and reedy -- needy -- sound and John lost it.  Grabbed for the small of Dorian’s back and rolled his hips.  John was panting in between desperate, filthy kisses and oh God please.

“Bed,” Dorian murmured against John’s thudding pulse.  “Bed, John.  Bed.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, OK.”  They’d go slow later.  At some point.  Maybe.

They made a mess wrestling out of their clothes and the fitted sheet snapped off of the mattress during the tussle.  Dorian was on a mission to explore every touch on every inch of skin and John fought back in order to keep himself in the game.

Bare skin and Saint Michael -- both John’s medallion and Dorian’s -- reflecting the light coming from distant lamps.  Hands smoothing over shoulders-chest-waist, chasing zippers down and elastic away.

This was -- oh damn -- there was no stopping this train.  It was an express and Dorian hadn’t been kidding about not needing time to process or rethink his choices.  Jesus.  So fucking good.  Every point of contact.  All of it.  And John couldn’t wait to find out what Dorian thought of their final destination.

John’s undershirt was caught on one elbow, wadded up and tangled, but he ignored it in order to grab the lotion from the bedside drawer before twisting into Dorian’s body weight -- fuck, he was heavy and beautifully, blindly groping through the barrage of sensations.  Yes.  God, yes.  Dorian was taking in the pleasure, absorbing it, and making it his own.

And then Dorian wailed, thrusting into John’s slick grip, climbing on top and pinning John firmly against the twisted sheets, a pillow arching his back awkwardly as John bit out a litany of curses and choked praises -- approval and encouragement because God damn too good.

“How--how,” Dorian stuttered.  “It hurts, John.  How do I--how?”

“Just--just look at me, D.  Open up to it.  Let it happen.  It’s OK.  I’ve got you.  Look at me and let go.”

Somehow, he did.  Jaw tight and eyes blanking with shock, every single little pathway of light beneath his skin illuminated, flashing in soft, pulsing waves.  Glowing in the dark.  Had they done this during the day, John might not have even seen it at all.

Hopefully, he’d get a chance to test that later.

Dorian didn’t need to breathe or relax, so he didn’t.  He remained poised over John, joints locked, until John pushed at his smooth shoulders.  “Lie back, D.”

Rolling into the destroyed bedding, Dorian watched as John curved over him, hunching his shoulders and jerking his hips into his own messy grip.  The filthy slide.  The pursuit of release.  God, it had been so long since John had even wanted to try -- or feel -- or had felt safe enough to give in--

Fingertips on John’s slack lips.  He realized his eyes were pinched shut and promptly snapped them open.  Dorian was gazing up at him with curiosity and appreciation and -- fuck -- Dorian had been right.  Being the center of attention really did do it for John.

He came.  It burned.  Too hot and too brief, gritty and awful, and he really should have taken the initiative to get back into the swing of things before this because his body didn’t seem to remember how to orgasm and his brain had certainly forgotten how good it was supposed to feel and--

“Fuck!” he panted, throbbing and wrung out.  Like passing a kidney stone while every muscle in his body cemented into marble.

He whimpered against Dorian’s chest and just breathed.  One breath in, one breath out.  Inhale, exhale.

“Ow.”

“Does it always hurt?” Dorian asked in a small voice, his hands caressing gently over John’s trembling muscles.

“No,” John rasped, tongue sticky and throat parched.  He’d put in way too much work for the dribble of relief he was currently trying his damnedest to enjoy.  “Just--the first time--in a while.”  The words escaped before John realized he’d just proven the accuracy of Dorian’s stupid bio scan.

“I told you that you were backed up, man.  Months ago.”

“Shut up.”

“Still backed up.”

“What did I say about scanning my balls?”

“Is two days going to be enough time to clear you out?”

“Oh, my God.  You’re gonna make me try, aren’t you?”

“And you’re already looking forward to it.”

Damn it all, yes.  John absolutely was.

For the next forty-eight hours, the only reason John went outdoors was to bring in logs for the wood burning stove in the center of his living space.  He couldn’t stuff Dorian with fruit cake or sugar cookies, but John would be damned if he didn’t maximize the holiday ambiance.  He was already S.O.L. when it came to delivering breakfast in bed to his new lover.  A time-honored tradition made obsolete by tech.

But when Dorian helped him change the sheets before crawling naked back onto the mattress, John couldn’t find it in himself to be too torn up about it.

He complained about the depressingly gray weather instead.

“Would you rather be cleaning snow and ice off of the cruiser tomorrow morning?” Dorian inquired, lounging in the flickering fire light, watching John stuff the wilted bed linens into the hamper.

John huffed.  Sucked in a breath to argue--

“John.  You live on the water.”

“You’ve just now noticed, eh?  Nice to know I’m so irresistible.”

Dorian gave him a long-suffering look.  But then he sobered and John knew that look.  That “let’s talk” look.  “The story of you falling through the ice as a boy -- was that true?”

John waved a hand toward the windows and the wind-churned waves beyond.  “Can’t you tell?”

“Of course you would make a neighbor of the thing that almost killed you once.”

“It didn’t almost kill me, D.”

“Right.  Your dad pulled you out.”

John knew he needed to get on with doing his physio routine sometime today -- he’d let it slide too long already -- but he plopped down on the bed next to Dorian and tweaked the DRN’s perfect toes.  “He pulled me out,” John confirmed.  “And I live on the water because it reminds me.”

“Of your father?”

John shook his head.  “That I’m not alone.”

“You aren’t alone, John.”  Dorian reached out to his prosthetic leg.

John leaned down and pressed a slow kiss to Dorian’s lips.  “Neither are you.”

Chapter Text

“Was I ever the target?” John asked Sandra.

They were back on the exposed walkway high above the bustle of the precinct bullpen.  Dorian was currently charging here in the station.  Val was out for a few days dealing with some family business and John didn’t envy her one bit.  It was definitely easier to pull double shifts.  Even if that meant rubbing elbows with Paul, who was probably still contagious.  He was officially over his cold, but still.  Ugh.

Sandra shook her head once.  “I don’t know.  It dragged out longer than I ever would have estimated.”

John accepted the apology with a nod, counting it as a win, and promptly cashed in his chips: “But Dorian became Vaughn’s objective after the XRN walked out of the evidence locker.”

“I’d say so.”

“Please tell me my apartment isn’t still under surveillance.”  Not that Dorian wouldn’t have told him if he’d detected any devices, but John’s boss would expect John to say something about it.  So John was saying something about it.

“All clear.  You can let the dust bunnies settle back in their corners.”  She smiled.

“Not a chance.”  John shook his head ruefully and waggled his fingers.  He’d gotten pretty good at self-manicures over the last year.  His “trauma-onset OCD” was a fact of life by now.

“You need any support on the Whitehall case?” she queried abruptly and John blinked.

Scoffed.  “Pfft.  I’m gonna pretend you didn’t insult me and Dorian by asking.”

“You do that.”

She straightened away from the railing and John pushed himself into her path.  He stared at her.  Hard.

She crossed her arms over her chest.  “What?”

“You didn’t lure me up here in order to wish us luck on a tech-related homicide, Sandra.”

“Do you need it?”

“No.  Of course not.  We’ve got this.”

“Good.  Get going.”

Jesus.  “You’re really going to walk away without telling me?” John pestered.

“Good luck, John.”

He ignored the glib retort.  “The reason,” he began in a low tone, “why Dorian was the last DRN to be sold or shipped off or scrapped.”

She scanned his expression with frankness and speed.  “I think you know.”

Yeah.  He did.  This was the one question he hadn’t asked -- the one he’d kept in reserve -- back when her identity had been briefly cast in doubt.

John might not have any evidence, and Dorian’s record had been thoroughly redacted, but John was pretty damn sure he was standing toe-to-toe with DRN-0167’s previous partner.  One of them, at least.  She certainly hadn’t been surprised by Dorian’s little low-charge outbursts, which meant she’d seen him like that before.  Probably because she’d worked closely with him once upon a time.  It would also explain why she had let John cover for him when Dorian had gone AWOL.  Plus, whatever bullshit Rudy had come up with to explain Dorian’s updates and software upgrades hadn’t even hit a speed bump.  And it should have.  Unless Sandra had been hoping just as hard as John that whatever the problem had been, it was one that Dorian could battle through.

And he had.

Yeah, Dorian would always come back.  Between the three of them -- Sandra, Rudy, and John -- they’d make sure of it.  For as long as they could.

“I’m not going to lose him, Sandra.”

Again, that look that saw straight through him.  “I know you won’t,” she replied, as brusque as ever.  “He’s your partner.”

John nodded.  He didn’t thank her for letting him use every possible department resource to keep Dorian safe and alive and here.  He didn’t have to.

But John didn’t wait for Captain Maldonado to tell him to get going on his caseload a second time.  He, of all people, knew how much she hated having to repeat herself.