Chapter Text
And I will meet you there, beyond the pines
Templed in twilight or dawn
The light and easy air
Tracing the lines on our palms.
—Thrice, “Beyond the Pines”
2039-07-15
Lane County, Oregon
The sign on the leaning gate reads Fire Road, No Trespassing. By the overgrown state of the road beyond, those orders have been followed.
Connor doesn’t stir from where he's pressed up against Nines' side, but he can feel Connor’s awareness that they’ve come to a halt.
Connor's hand tightens around Nines' wrist. With a note of bright gold amusement, he grabs Nines across the interface, dragging him down into the artificial reality of the sanctuary.
Midnight sun holds Connor’s recreation of the tundra to a blue murk. A late spring snow smothers the wildflowers on the slope, fading to black sand wherever the water can reach.
Connor kneels in the surf, scooping up a palmful of dark sand as the ocean washes over it. The sand slides easily through his fingertips, returning to the seafoam.
Nines takes another half-step back, keeping a careful distance from those reaching waters. The snow crunches under his feet, brittle with the freeze and thaw.
He calls, “Everything where it should be?”
“I don’t think I’d remember if it wasn’t,” Connor says.
He means it philosophically, but Nines must not hide his reaction well. Connor tightens his grip on Nines’ wrist in the real, and Nines feels the brush of lips against his forehead.
“I’m here, Nines,” Connor says. It’s a strange doubling; the proximity of his voice, out there, and the slight distance to it here in the sanctuary.
“I know,” Nines answers.
Connor plucks at the twining note of disbelief that Nines doesn’t manage to bury. He smiles softly in the twilight. “I’m having a hard time believing it myself.”
The sanctuary collapses.
The both of them blink back into midafternoon sun, carved apart by the high pines surrounding them. Nines is grateful to leave the black waters behind, but less so to feel the full weight of the last few days - months - settle across his shoulders again.
The weight of what’s lying in the bed of the truck behind them.
Connor frowns at him, reaching up to smooth away imagined lines of exhaustion on his brow. “We should’ve stopped earlier.”
“I’m alright.”
Connor quirks a doubting eyebrow, tugging at the lingering diagnostics on the edge of Nines’ awareness. His leg's 72% repaired, his arm 88%. Connor had spent some time in a bright California sun digging shrapnel out of Nines’ thigh, and he hadn’t missed the fact that the shrapnel in question had been SQ body paneling.
(Connor had, in fact, suggested Nines remove the leg so he could see what he was doing. Nines had refused. He’d been equally unmoved by Connor’s suggestion that ‘It’s a leg, Nines. It’ll pop right back on.’)
“Knitting muscle takes time,” Nines says, as Connor’s mouth firms in disapproval.
“And thirium,” Connor replies. He pushes aside two empty thirium wrappers laying atop the cooler in the footwell, pulling another chilled pouch free.
Connor falls back into the seat as Nines drinks, studying the tall sentinel pines of an old-growth Oregon forest ahead. He rolls his ring across the back of his fingers as he surveys the location, taking on a distant gaze as he drifts into analyzing topographical maps. “Here, hm?”
“There’s nothing of interest out here.”
“You’re going to bury me in a place with nothing of interest?” Connor teases.
Nines smiles crookedly. “It’s irreverence like that that convinces me you’re real. That, and—” He taps his knuckle against the heel of Connor’s palm to arrest the slow roll of the ring through its motions. “—you convincing Pevek to give your ring back.” The spider had proven surprisingly territorial of it.
Connor throws a lazy smile his way in return. “I’m very persuasive.”
Nines sets the empty thirium wrapper aside, locking down the truck with a brush of his hand across the control panel.
“Is it that urgent?” Connor asks, quietly.
A body in the bed of the truck is urgent, yes. But… he lowers his voice. “I’d like to do it now.”
He reaches for the door handle, but Connor drags him back with a hand on his collar: kissing him once, chaste, on the lips. Doing it to do it, Nines thinks. Because it’s a choice he can make.
Then Connor’s turning and sliding out the door, leaving Nines in open air.
He climbs out slowly onto the dirt track, letting his damaged leg adjust to motion again.
Once the truck bed cover is rolled back, the both of them fall into symmetry at the tailgate, studying the shrouded body there. There’s just the bared plastisteel shine of a foot where it’d fallen from beneath the blanket Nines tucked around him.
Connor moves first: climbing up into the bed of the truck and tugging a blanket down from where they’ve been loosely piled, something to slide beneath the chassis for carrying.
Nines skates a tentative fingertip across the seam of the chassis’ bare instep before firming his grip, lifting the chassis’ heel to pull the blanket beneath. He drags the old chassis towards the tailgate himself, sliding an arm beneath its knees.
“I can carry…” Connor begins, but he stops as he looks Nines over. What he sees, Nines doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know - but he doesn’t argue any further, only drops down from the truck bed with a tarp tucked beneath his elbow and a shovel in hand.
Nines picks the old chassis up, bringing it up against his chest. It isn’t as heavy as he remembered it being.
They step past the gate, Nines with the dead weight of -57 in his arms, Connor with the shovel resting against his shoulder. They study the decayed dirt road ahead, the sloping mountain rising and falling on either side.
“Did you have a particular place in mind?” Connor asks.
Nines shakes his head.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” Connor says.
Nines nods. They begin to walk.
Just like the old days.
The sun has faded to late afternoon by the time they stop, throwing the forest floor into an early twilight.
It’s the trees that bring Nines to a halt. A pair of Sitka spruce stand side-by-side at the end of this clearing: convoluted roots twining together to erupt out of the rich soil, reaching hundreds of feet overhead. There's evidence of fire scarring the trunks, but both have attained centuries of growth nonetheless.
Connor pauses alongside him, following his gaze. He sets the tarp and shovel aside and scuffs a foot against the forest floor, dark with decaying pine needles. Then he plants a sneaker on one of the jutting roots of the leftmost pine, levering himself up to press a hand to the scaled bark.
“What do you think?” he asks, looking Nines’ way.
Nines nods, tilting his head back to study the needle-lace fringe of the canopy overhead.
Someplace with trees, he thinks, letting his eyes fall shut.
When he opens them again, Connor’s dropping back to the ground and tucking a piece of bark into his pocket.
Connor keeps his gaze turned carefully away as Nines arranges the chassis on the ground, settling the blanket around its shoulders. He pauses to lift -57’s hand, one last time. He grazes his thumb across the pockmark of damage there, tracing old lines of healed plating.
It’s a strange thing. There’s nothing to grieve, is there? But this is the body he knows. The one he’s loved. He can only imagine how it is for Connor, wearing something entirely unfamiliar.
He sets the hand down, arranges the blanket carefully around -57’s shoulders.
“How about here?” Connor asks, the toe of his sneaker poised over an open patch of earth a yard ahead of the two trees.
Nines nods, taking the shovel up himself.
It’s slow digging, a meshwork of fine roots getting in the way. Connor works on getting the tarp arranged around -57 as Nines works, his fingers moving deftly to secure the tarp in place with rope. There are no more tremors in Connor’s hands. He’s sharp and sure in a way he hasn’t been in months, everything Nines doesn’t feel like now.
Tired. He’s tired. He can’t shake how it felt, that terrible waiting as he drove west from Kawich. Fleeing the sunrise with that aching absence in the passenger seat.
He pauses in the rhythmic motion of digging to catch Connor with a hand against -57’s cheek, fingers splayed against the pale plating.
“-59’s never felt cold like this one has,” Connor says thoughtfully, feeling Nines’ stare. His lips tug in a weighted smile as he stares down at his own hand, flexing new fingers experimentally. “Breathing in air cold enough to crack thirium lines, you know? This… this has never felt anything like that.”
Nines feels that fear tug in his chest again, the doubting parts of him recoiling. “But you remember.”
“Of course,” Connor says. “I don’t miss it.”
Nines turns back to the task at hand.
When the grave is deep enough, he sets the shovel aside and drops in. Connor slides -57 his way, helping him lower it slowly into the earth. Nines kneels long enough to center the body, his fingertips lingering on the cold tarp.
When he looks up, Connor’s offering him a hand up.
“I need to show you what happened,” Nines says abruptly. He should’ve done it earlier, before -57 was a faceless shape—
“You don’t have to do that now,” Connor says, fingers curling back.
He does, before -57’s buried and gone. He catches Connor’s wrist, braces for him to refuse - but Connor accepts. Apprehension and sympathy color the line.
It doesn’t take long: memories pass in milliseconds. Human blood staining the desert hardpan, the SQ crumpling to its knees, -59 reaching unbidden for Connor’s fading chassis.
He feels Connor’s breath hitch as he pauses and watches -59’s activation again, again: parsing through the android’s secondhand memories, the ones Nines had erased along with the rest of its autonomy.
Nines says nothing. Doesn’t know what to say. He can’t stop thinking of how -59 had offered a hand when they’d gotten to the truck, to Connor. He can’t stop wondering if that was a choice or a programmed instinct, and he doesn’t know what’s worse.
Connor tightens his grip on Nines’ hand, leaning down to slip an arm around him and drop his head heavy against his shoulder.
Everything Nines has been carefully withholding, everything he knows it will do Connor no good to hear - it spills out anyway, unbidden.
I erased him, and then… Did he end up in that body? Dying in your place? Nines asks, a twofold grief coiling in him. Or - if you were right - if the transfer isn’t the same, if I lost you anyway, the soul of you—
Nines, Connor interrupts, a gentle word to cut his rising panic short. And he's Connor in every way that matters, here in the surety of their own minds. How could Nines doubt, hearing him like this: a song that can't be mimicked.
Still, he can’t stop the slow bleed of regret. I killed him, he says. Whatever he could’ve been.
Connor pauses across the line, doubt and apprehension, but it warms to something more sure as he begins to speak: I don’t know about that. I don’t know that we… switched, so much as did what we were supposed to do. Move on to the next, together.
The warm golds of Connor’s consciousness go pensive, briefly. I didn’t like to think of the prior RK800s as pieces of myself. I didn’t like to consider myself dead or… failed. I preferred to keep that distance, treat them as an unreality.
Pieces of prior lives strain the edges of the interface. Fire and water, carefully smothered.
Connor says, I think… I’ve always been all of them. Everyone that came before.
There's still the question of what -59 could've been: someone free of everything Connor experienced, as -57. Kamski, Svalbard, the agonies of a slow and brutal shutdown.
I know, love, Connor says, and this time he's mirroring the grief Nines feels. I don't know that there's a good answer for that.
Nines sinks back, reaching to brush the stubborn cowlick of hair back from Connor’s forehead. He hasn’t bothered to grow it out, yet, leaving it to the close crop of their default programming.
He drops his hand to Connor’s cheek, willing the synthskin away. The plating beneath is flawless, the serial number scripted there standing out in sharp relief. So. Does that make you -59, then? he asks.
I suppose so, he answers. But I’m still the android that woke up and decided to be Connor.
Decided to be mine, Nines answers, the words scripted in tentative blues and grays.
Connor grins at that, twisting to press a kiss to the ring on Nines’ hand. Yours.
He reaches to peel the skin back on Nines’ face in turn, studying the webbing of damage where the soldier had struck him with the butt of his rifle. It seems unfair, doesn’t it? Now you’ll carry all the scars.
Nines thinks of the weight of Connor in his arms and answers, I prefer it that way.
Then he takes Connor’s offered hand at last, climbing back up to solid ground.
They fill the grave by the handful. It’s something Nines wants to remember: dark loam between his fingers, the sound of the dirt falling going softer and softer still as -57 slowly disappears.
When the last of the dirt’s settled into place, Nines sinks back with a frown to study the grave. It seems… plain. It needs flowers. But there aren’t any flowers here. The canopy’s too dense, most of them clustering in the high meadows they'd hiked through to get here. He should've gathered some. He hadn't thought to.
His surprise is all the brighter when Connor empties a pocketful of stolen flowers onto the grave: pimpernel, monkshood, hyssop and yarrow. Golds and blues and purples. Nines hadn't even noticed as he'd stolen them on their way here.
Nines blinks down at the last smudge of yellow and green Connor lays across the churned earth: the dried cinquefoil Nines had forgotten on the dashboard, worn down to its last crumbling petals.
He imagines something in him breaks, seeing the cinquefoil there: a clean sound. A good sound. Something to divide what was from what will be.
“We’ll come back, sometime,” Nines says. “Plant something.”
“Whenever you like,” Connor answers, helping him back to his feet.
They move back towards the truck hand-in-hand: golden hour light breaking through the old-growth forest in streams, painting patches of fern and moss in light. It will make a nice room for the sanctuary, Nines thinks. He sets the details away, memorizing the sound of the wind through the pines overhead.
He isn’t expecting Connor to press him against the truck and lean close, gaze steady and intent.
“I did not miss that part about the killswitch,” he says, sliding a hand beneath his shirt to open a patchwork shine of interface across Nines’ lower back.
“Chloe caught it in time,” Nines answers. “I’m fine.” And he shows as much across the interface: a stolid, orderly mind that wavers only slightly on the edges.
Connor scowls. “Stop with the ‘I’m fine,’ Nines, that’s my act. Was anything corrupted?”
“I might’ve lost my chemical analysis module,” Nines admits. He has the memories - in that he has Connor’s pronouncements of tangy or sweet - but the tactile side of those moments are gone.
“It’s fine,” Nines interjects, cutting off the tide of Connor’s disapproval before it rises to his tongue. “I’m already rebuilding the module.” He has Connor’s schematics to work off of, after all.
“We’ll have to start from scratch,” Connor says, leaning closer still.
“Could say the same about you,” he answers.
Connor grins, a breath away from his lips, and then he’s abruptly falling back with the truck’s keys upraised. He'd stolen them from Nines’ front pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Driving, Nines. You’re halfway to fried.”
“I’ll do a full stasis when we stop,” Nines argues. “Give those back.”
“You don’t think I can drive?”
When Nines lunges for the keys, Connor takes a neat sidestep to force Nines to stutter-step on his bad leg, giving him the time to dance a few more feet back and raise the keys high.
Nines scowls. “I know how you drive.”
Connor hums as he plucks up the door key, stepping towards the cab. “Perfectly?”
“Erratically,” Nines counters. He falls back, biding his time until Connor’s climbed into the driver’s seat. Then he pounces, putting leverage and the tight quarters of the cabin to his advantage, pinning Connor to the seat. He pauses just long enough to steal a kiss from Connor as he pries the keys from his outstretched hand.
“I let you do that,” Connor says.
“You won’t make the mistake again, will you?”
Connor reaches up to carve his fingers through Nines’ hair, grinning. “Absolutely not.”
Nines ushers him to the passenger seat.
“Once we’re back down to proper roads, I drive,” Connor says.
“Maybe.”
“Nines…”
“I’ll consider it,” Nines amends, and throws the truck into reverse.
+++
2039-07-15
Cedar Grove, Oregon
Connor leans forward over the dashboard, eying the Local Market sign looming overhead in the dark. Their last brush with civilization, and it’s little more than a sloping country store, a scattering of charging stations and a single gas pump. The sign in the window says Open in bright blues and reds.
He glances at Nines. Not asking for permission, per se, but maybe an informed opinion.
Nines says, “No.”
“The truck has to charge,” Connor argues. “And…” He points to a small sign that says Souvenirs.
“We’re supposed to be laying low, Connor, not browsing.”
“We can be humans for awhile longer.”
Nines makes a face. “I’m a little wanted at the moment.”
“As if you didn’t blind the cameras ten minutes ago,” Connor retorts. As if the both of them aren’t watching the news feeds, waiting for either of their faces to appear.
“Stay here if you want,” he concludes and slips out the door.
He closes the door on Nines before he can retort, but Nines’ voice follows anyway: >> Be careful.
> I’m always careful.
>> Maybe, but you’re very rarely prudent.
He gets the charger situated and throws Nines a cheerful wave, turning towards the front steps.
There’s an android behind the counter, a VH500. As Connor steps through the door, the android hastily shuffles something beneath the counter and gets to his feet, eying him warily.
Connor pauses, offering his best politely disinterested expression. The VH500’s shoulders ease, his LED resuming a less frantic blue-gold shuffle.
Connor glances towards the television screen mounted above a small eating area. “By midnight tonight, androids will join us as citizens of this United States,” President Warren pronounces, the shadows beneath her eyes apparent with the past few days of stress.
He’s sure Nines could relate to that exhaustion. Connor feels trapped between a strange dichotomy: the elation of moving easily, feeling properly aware for the first time in months - and a strange dreamlike disbelief.
He walks through to the freezer section, regarding the stacks of ice with a passing amusement. Pokes through the arrangement of snowglobes lining the shelves, dangling keychains advertising Pacific Wonderland on vintage miniature license plates.
He plucks up a rotund plastic recreation of a beaver, forwarding it to Nines. > The Beaver State.
>> Fascinating.
> Captain Setton is from around here, you know.
>> I have the same personnel file you do.
> You’re grumpy when you’re tired.
Nines sends a particularly rude shade of chartreuse in answer.
He continues to pass a hand over the small trinkets, touching each with his fingertips. He’s testing the different textures, trying to find the point where this new body falls into place as properly his.
It’s not that 59 isn’t functional; he just hasn’t quite dragged the vague veil of the in-between away. Rising waters, old ghosts, all of it clings to the edge of his consciousness. It’s like he tried to explain to Nines: something about this new body has every RK800 that came before him feeling closer, more real. The ones that burned or drowned or jolted into sudden dark.
He can’t shake the strangely calm thought that that’s what he is, now. Another prior life. 57 closed his eyes on a desert sky and never expected to wake, and maybe he never did, not in the way Connor would expect.
He steps through into an arrangement of blankets and t-shirts and lets his eyes fall shut, dragging his fingers slow from rough wool to soft cotton.
Of course I’m me, he thinks for the thousandth time since he’d awoken on the side of the highway.
Maybe that’s all I ever was, he thinks. Everything that came before.
Connor turns over the weight of what Nines showed him back at the grave.
What he finds of 59’s brief memories, he doesn’t particularly want: the sound of Nines’ rib plating cracking as the SQ slapped him aside, sending him skating across the floor. The way Nines’ spine snapped back when the Myrmidon had tried to destroy everything he was.
Strange to remember standing by while all that happened, to remember watching it and feeling nothing.
Connor doesn’t know if there’s anything of -59 left. He can’t stand outside himself, can’t wake the had-been/could-be of 59. All he can do is study the hidden cobwebs of doubt draped over him and think, Were you sleeping? Was I?
He pauses to burrow his fingers into a particularly velvety blanket, shining faux-silk threads outlining a glossy impression of the state seal. We’re alive, either way, he thinks to this new body. You and I. We’ll make it work, won’t we? All these old ghosts.
When he woke as -57, Jude asked his designation, and he answered, Connor. He chose. He became himself. That’s all he can know, limited as he is to his own consciousness.
He piles the blanket up in his arms and carries it to the counter. The android eyes him sidelong, blurting: “$42.95” without bothering to touch the cash register.
Connor obliges in physical cash, part of their remaining Vegas winnings. The android snatches up the money and makes change rapidly before dropping his hands beneath the counter once again.
Connor borrows a view from the security camera at the VH’s back and says, “The paisley would suit you.”
The android freezes in place, gauging Connor one last time.
“I think…," the VH says,"I mean, I don’t know, but—“
He slowly raises up a handful of ties, shaking loose one that’s embroidered with multicolored cats.
“Excellent choice,” Connor says with a smile. “Here, it’s on me.” He drops enough in cash for the tie and more on the change still scattered across the counter. Something to get the android started, at least.
The VH abruptly brightens, flashing a smile that looks more like a cautious mimic of something he’s observed than a preprogrammed response. He ducks his head and pries the tag free with care before draping the tie loosely over the collar of his uniform, frowning in focus as he evens up the ends.
>> The truck’s at 96%, Nines says.
> Coming.
“Welcome to living,” Connor says, gathering the blanket into his arms.
The VH shoots him another tentative practice-smile before returning to the grave task of tying his first tie.
“The attendant has selected a half-windsor knot in a pattern called Feline Frolic as his first act of deviancy,” Connor says as he pulls the driver’s side door open on Nines.
Nines looks down at him. "No."
"You said you'd consider it," Connor says.
"I did. No."
“Vetoed,” Connor announces, depositing the blanket and a fresh bag of thirium in Nines’ lap. “Move over.”
Nines plants his heels stubbornly against the floorboard. “Absolutely not."
“What’s your leg’s functionality at now, love?” Connor asks sweetly.
Nines’ scowl deepens further still. “I don’t need my left leg to drive.”
“If you think I can’t bodily move you when you’re down two pints and rewiring half your limbs, you’re wrong—"
"Try me—"
It still takes a fair amount of violence.
In the end, the truck is charged and a ruffled Nines has been herded to the passenger seat and smothered beneath a fuzzy blue-and-gold rendition of the state oxen.
Connor settles back into the less-familiar driver’s seat, stretching out his legs. “This is nice,” he says, not at all smug. “I should do this more often.”
Nines makes a point of engaging his seatbelt with an audible click beneath the blanket. Connor rolls his eyes. “I’ve only crashed one truck, Nines, and it was mostly intentional.”
“Mostly,” Nines answers. “You seemed very surprised by that tree, at the time.”
“I might’ve underestimated it.”
“It was a substantial tree.”
“Well, I know that now.”
Connor reverses with an uncharacteristic caution, getting the truck pointed towards the blacktop once more. With the truck thrown into forward motion, he flicks the radio on. As soon as the dial settles on the crackly there-and-gone ghost of a Portland pirate station, he reaches to catch Nines’ hand, holding it tight.
Nines pries the cap off of the thirium with his free hand. He takes a long drink before asking, “Where are we heading?”
“Somewhere,” Connor says, as they pull out onto the main road. He shoots Nines a sideways smile as the pine trees begin to crowd either side of the road in the dark. Somewhere. He’ll just leave it at that.
+++
Nines doesn’t rest, of course. Not while they’re in motion, not while android rights are still pending and not while there’s the occasional car moving past. Humans - mostly humans, Connor notes - heading points unknown in the tangled backroads of the Cascades.
Connor follows the winding mountain roads until the signal drops to satellite only, eyeing each gravel side-road for the promise of somewhere discreet.
He finds it at last on the banks of the Blue River: a small encampment that promises Cabins! Hot Water, Reasonable Rates. 1/2 mile. It doesn’t seem to have a name. Certainly doesn’t have a social media presence.
The half-mile consists of a pockmarked dirt road that might’ve had gravel once, the truck’s suspension creaking and groaning at every sudden drop into thick mud. Nines braces in grim silence, drawing a wordless concern from Connor, but he shakes his head and smooths over the discomfort leeching across the interface.
Connor takes it slower, nonetheless - easing the truck along as gently as he can until they meet the narrow shack of a front office. The light’s still on. Connor takes that as a good sign.
He promises Nines he’ll be back shortly, slipping out the door.
It’s a human behind the front desk. An elderly man named John Provelli with his nose buried in a faded paperback copy of Neuromancer. There’s a pair of reading glasses by his elbow, but he seems disinclined to use them.
“William Gibson,” Connor says. “I enjoyed that one.”
The man pokes an overgrown eyebrow above the edge of the book. “Bit before your time, isn’t it?”
Connor laughs. “Very. But I liked the themes. Sentient AI and technological revolution, you know.”
“Seems topical,” John says.
He smiles as he admires the well-stocked bookshelf to the man’s right. “I suppose so.”
John shuts the book around his forefinger and regards Connor more closely. “What’re you looking for? One bed, two?”
“A queen, if you have it.”
“’course.” He turns towards the pegboard set into the wall behind him, plucking a set out of keys out of the neatly labeled ranks. “Cabin got a nice turnover just this morning. One night?”
“Open-ended, I think. Is that alright?” Judging by the number of cabin keys still hanging up, Connor thinks it’ll be just fine.
“First night’s deposit now, and we’ll bill the rest when you check out,” John answers, laying the keys across the desk.
Connor studies the rates on the walls and lays down the appropriate cash. John looks like he’s about to comment on the oddity of someone his age carrying cash, but he withholds the thought; only tucks the cash away and nods before handing the keys his way. “Cabin #14.”
“Of course,” Connor says, earning another puzzled look from the man. He adds a, “Thanks,” heading out the door before he can confuse him any further.
He follows the curving dirt roads around to an isolated cabin at the end of the row: #14, painted across a pine stake planted in the ground.
“Just needs some red paint,” Connor says. Nines shoots him a look, but there’s amusement beneath the disapproval. It’s a far cry from the Svalbard shed where they got their start.
The cabin inside is warm but dry. Connor has his doubts about the recent turnover: a cloud of dust puffs up from the comforter when he drops his bag there. A few brisk shakes of the comforter and opening a few of the windows is enough to get a cross-breeze stirring through the stale air, clearing some of the dust-haze.
By the time Connor has the majority of the bags settled, Nines is sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees. This mattress is far from the glamor of the Vegas suite, but it’s more than large enough for the both of them.
“There’s rumors of something up north,” Nines murmurs as Connor steps close. “Something about Nunavut.”
Connor sets to unbuttoning Nines’ shirt, scanning through the news again as he does so. “Mm.”
Nothing specific, yet. Ship movements and warnings of an insurrection, but whether it was the androids or the humans revolting - that isn’t clear.
Nines shrugs out of the shirt himself, kicking his pants to the floor in a distracted motion. “If it’s making the mainstream news, it must be big.”
“Bigger than us,” Connor warns, pausing to rest a palm against the crook of Nines’ neck.
Nines thins his mouth, saying nothing. Something changed in Kawich. Something with 59, Connor thinks, and he doesn’t know how to settle those kinds of ghosts.
All he can do is push Nines back across the bed, kissing him slow before he says, “After this, Detroit."
"Or Montana," Nines counters. They'd sent the RK900s there. There could be others.
"Or Montana," Connor agrees. "We work with Jericho and do what we can for the others like us. Right?”
But even that has Nines shying away, and Connor snorts a laugh as he picks up Nines’ reservations across the interface. He says, Yes, it may require public speaking.
I’ll let you do that part, Nines answers, a blush tinging his cheeks.
Connor laughs, a warm sound across the interface. What makes you think I'm any good at it?
I've never seen you tongue-tied, Nines answers, tracing the line of Connor's spine with his fingertips.
Connor hums a pleased note, kissing the lines of his throat in return. But he can still feel the tangle of Nines' consciousness, hazed and unfocused.
“First, rest, Nines,” he says aloud. He extracts himself from Nines' wandering hands to shrug out of his own clothes and herd Nines towards the proper pillows, asking, “When’s the last time you were in stasis for more than ten minutes?”
“Somewhere around the time you mentioned you were dying,” Nines mumbles as he collapses headlong into the bed. “I don’t require as much as you.”
“Tonight, you do,” Connor says firmly, leaning down to press a kiss to the constellation of freckles on Nines’ shoulder. “Rest, love. I’ll keep watch this time.”
“Just awhile,” Nines murmurs, eyes drifting shut, and the bright song of his consciousness across the wireless fades to a steady low hum.
Connor arranges the blankets over him and pads away on bare feet, pausing at particularly interesting patches of rustic-cut floorboards underfoot. He takes his time with this small world: setting the chair in the corner rocking with a flick of his finger, pinching the heavy plaid curtains between his fingertips and letting them fall. He watches with interest as they shift restlessly in the evening breeze.
He listens with a faint smile as midnight on the East Coast comes and goes. Without a sound, he and Nines pass from something owned to something free.
What’s ahead are only his choices. His and Nines’.
When Nines wakes, they’ll map each other out again, the old and new. They’ll decide on a future together.
But for now, there’s a cool breeze and a riot of midsummer noise drifting through the windows. Connor climbs back into bed, tugging the covers over them both to throw them into a fuller dark. He runs a hand over the slope of Nines’ back, watching the skin retract and reform even in stasis, lighting them both in pale blues.
He settles down until he’s curled around the warmth of him, resting his forehead against his; feeling the faint stir of his exhales and knowing this is theirs, only theirs.
“I’ll be here when you wake,” he murmurs.
Hours or days, Connor doesn’t mind. He keeps an ear to the woods and he lets his eyes fall shut, drifting into the comfort of their old song.