In which Gavin is nervous, Nines is stressed and Crash Bandicoot makes a cameo.

Song- 'The sky is a neighborhood' by the Foo Fighters.

Slight spoiler for this chapter: In this run of the game it was mostly pacifist but Connor forced an interface with Carlos's android, making him self destruct in front of Gavin. So Gavin thinks red LEDs = bad and self-destruction.

"Bangin' on the ceiling. Keep it sky is a neighborhood."

Gavin muttered along to the old song belting out of his phone, sweeping up the last of the kitty litter into the dustpan and dumping it in the bin. He thumped the dustpan on the bin twice more with the best of the song before turning back to the litter-box to refill it.

"Heart is a storybook." *Knock* "A star burned out." *Knock knock* "Something coming up ahead."

Gavin frowned, hand stilling on the edge of the plastic box. Did he just hear something?

"Don't-" *Knock* "-look now!"

"Music off," he called, shrugging off his glove and dumping it in the bin as the song stopped. The sudden hush was all the louder for the music that had been playing moments before. Gavin frowned, wondering if he imagined it. Then:

*Knock*

There was only two people he could think of who would want to visit him but both of them were at work right now and neither knocked like that. Before going to the door, Gavin picked up the metal bat he kept by the TV and gripped it as best as he could with his plaster cast in the way. There was another quiet knock as Gavin crept closer to the door, bat balanced on the crook of his neck. Slowly, he peered through the peephole.

"For fucksake," he exhaled, all tension leaving his body in one fell swoop. He dropped the bat behind the door and swung it open.

"The hell are… you…"

Something was wrong. Nines had his head tilted to his right, eyes trailing over the grain of the doorframe. His body was stiff and his face held that familiar blank expression on it; the one that Nines often wore when he had yet to figure out how to express an emotion.

Gavin didn't say anything. He just stared at Nines with a stupid, gormless look plastered all over his face.

"…Can I come in?" Nines asked, still not looking at Gavin.

"Uh, yeah, sure," Gavin murmured, stepping to the side. Nines walked in, footsteps hushed, and Gavin caught sight of his LED.

It was red.

"I'm done here."

"What the fuck is it doing?"

"It's destroying itself…"

"Stop it goddammit!"

"-rry for arriving earlier than expected," Nines was saying, standing in the middle of his living room, glancing around in a vague way.

"It's… okay."

"Captain Fowler insisted that I leave work early today," Nines continued on, still not looking at Gavin. "I wanted to start working on a new case, but he insisted it was procedure."

Oh. That- yeah, that explained it. Gavin wondered what sort of case it had been and what could have been bad enough for Fowler to personally step in. But it didn't really explain why Nines was here.

"You, uh, want a beer or something?" Gavin asked, before remembering that androids couldn't drink. Idiot. Idiot. Still, it sort of did the trick; Nines finally looked at him.

"Androids do not gain any benefits from consuming alcohol," he stated.

Crap, he was back to the 'do not's.

"Uh," Gavin stalled, looking around. "Sit down, I'll get some TV on."

That didn't work either. Nines did sit down but his LED was still a worrying shade, even as the dancing celebrities did a clumsy can-can that resulted in a high heal flying into the face of one of the judges. Gavin laughed, it was fake, obviously so, but Nines didn't notice. He just stared at the screen, blank and unmoving.

Fuck, okay, this wasn't working. Nines was still stuck in his head. He didn't get distracted by mindlessly watching things. Gavin should have realised that by now. Nines learned by doing. He was always thinking, always moving, following some kind of purpose or goal. He need to focus on something that required, well, focus. And, just like that, a lightbulb flickered on over Gavin's head.

"Gimme a sec," he said, unconsciously patting Nines on the shoulder before standing up and rummaging around the draws below the TV. Behind him, Gavin could hear a soft creak of the sofa as Nines shifted. Gavin didn't look around though. Instead, he knelt down and turned on his game station, plugged in a slightly dusty controller and put in the old PS game he just found. It was only then that he looked around.

Nines was staring down at him, intense and unblinking. Gavin would have said he looked curious but he'd seen Nines curious. This wasn't it. He didn't know what it was. He treated it like it was curiosity though.

"I'm betting you've never played a video game before," he said.

Nines thought about it, his red LED mixing with faint splattering of yellow. Gavin's heart thumped painfully in his chest.

"No, I have not. Is that the lesson for today?"

Gavin put on another fake grin, ignored the question and patted the carpet next to him. "Controller's our of charge. Cable doesn't reach that far so park your butt here."

He looked back to the game screen, flicking through the main menu and loading up the game. A slither of tension melted from his frame as he heard the sofa springs softly clunk and felt Nines's arm brush up against his. One of these days, Gavin was going to address the whole personal space issue.

But not today.

He passed the controller to Nines just as the black screen exploded into a wash of bright colours and vibrant music.

"It's Crash Bandicoot two!" The voice-over gleefully announced. "Vortex strikes back!"

Nines stared at the screen, then slowly turned to face Gavin, who just leaned over and pressed the X on Nines's controller.

It took less than thirty seconds for Nines to get completely used to the controls and after that the level flew past. When Nines got all the apples and the crystals in the first few levels without even loosing one life, Gavin decided he needed to amp up the distractions.

"You've got an unfair advantage," he said, tapping Nines on the head, just below his red and yellow LED, making him look away from the screen. Even looking at Gavin, his hands still moved and Crash managed to dodge forwards, jumping away from the dynamite explosions and spinning into the pogo stick wielding, straight jacket clad dog.

"You need a handicap."

"What sort of handicap?" Nines asked, finishing off the boss with one last spin.

"Me," Gavin smirked.

Gavin only had one controller. With his left arm out of commission, Gavin took the right side of it while Nines took the left. Sat this way, Gavin was way into Nines's personal bubble, practically plastered up to his side but he didn't think Nines minded. His LED was mostly yellow now with only the odd flash of red. Better, but not there yet.

It took about ten seconds for Gavin to ruin Nines's deathless winning streak. He grinned unapologetically when Nines frowned at him. They re-spawned and started running.

"Jump," Nines said, and this time they cleared the canyon gap. They still lost a life that round, but it was further on this time.

"Press the square Gavin, that was the circle."

"I'm pressing, I'm pressing. You know you don't have to get all the fruit."

"I know," said Nines but he still circled Crash back around to the un-crushed box. Gavin snorted and made Crash face plant on the boxes.

They played like this for a while, Nines giving instructions and Gavin fucking them up nine times out of ten. With how close they were sat, it was hard to see what was going on with Nines's LED, but he felt less tense now, he had an expression back on his face (mostly frowns but Gavin would take what he could get) and he was talking more.

"This game is not factually accurate."

"Heh, no shit."

"This character looks nothing like a eastern barred bandicoot."

"Yeah, that's cause he was made in a lab by the big head guy," Gavin said without thinking.

Nines's hands jolted and Crash ran headfirst into a wall.

Uh. Okay. Ixnay on the ablay. Gavin could roll with that. Their character respawned and they continued playing.

"What's the real bandicoot look like then?"

"… It was a small nocturnal mammal that weighed less than two kilograms and had a short tail, an extended nose and three to four whitish bars across the rump," Nines murmured, rushing Crash forward across several a slippery ice platforms.

That was definitely from Wikipedia. There was no way that wasn't from Wikipedia. Gavin decided to focus on the more pressing issue though:

"Who says 'rump'? It's 'ass', or maybe 'butt' if you're a kid. Not rump."

"Jump, Gavin," was all that Nines said to that, but Gavin could hear the smile in his voice. Maybe. He looked up. Crash fell into a hole, but he didn't care.

It was a smile.

Gavin leaned back a bit and glanced at Nines LED. He let out a soft exhale at the blue colour, then turned to face the screen again.

"So… you wanna talk?" He asked in what he hoped was a nonchalant tone, helping Crash jump up to another platform.

Nines didn't say anything for a long time, simply pressing the buttons on the controller and staring at the screen. He didn't tense up though and his face didn't go blank again. Gavin quickly turned his attention back to the game just in time to avoid loosing their last life.

"… I don't think I do," said Nines so quietly that, had Gavin not still been listening out for his reply, he would have missed it. "Is that alright?"

"Yeah," said Gavin, clicking down on another button and spinning Crash into a large tower of boxes. "That's fine."

Nines shifted slightly, looking away from the game, drawing Gavin's attention away from it too. He was smiling down at him. It was the small one, the one he created himself. Gavin grinned back and let go of the controller to ruffle his hair, wholly uncaring of Crash's tragic demise on the screen as Nines frowned and gently batted him off, trying in vain to put his messed up hair back to normal.

Next Lesson:

Small Talk