The phone bordered on the answering machine before someone finally picked up.
"Tempest. Monto speaking."
"Monto."
"...Gavin." Smooth, chocolatier voice belonged to whom he hoped would pick up the phone first. Thank hairy christ. Monto knew this was his second job, most did at Tempest, but they weren't privy to his law enforcement gig.
"I'm not coming in tonight."
He tsk'd. Monto typical behaviour.
"Come on. You're here two nights a week tops and we need you. It's Saturday."
Gavin chuckled, with no weight behind it. "Don't want to fill my spot with an Android yet, do you? Probably don't have to worry about insurance in case I get my shit kicked in, either."
He heard Monto's patience wear by way of his slow exhale.
"You know her Highness is going to be furious with you. Feed me your shtick so I can pass it on."
"Amelia broke up with me."
The line became hush. Like the man cupped his handover the receiver.
"Aw fuck , Gavin. Okay. Jen's still gonna call you, but that's enough. I understand."
"Yep."
"You still gonna be here tomorrow night? Next week?"
"I hope so. Wouldn't want to be replaced by one of those protesting shit cans."
"Be careful, Gavin. Let them hear you and one is bound to give you a fat lip and replace you."
"The day I see an Android at Tempest, is the day I see Jen losing the plot."
"Okay, now you're pushing it. But I know how you feel about them, so I'll just shut my damn mouth."
His reassuring nature while swift was uplifting. Gavin couldn't help but tease.
"Try not to miss me too much."
"Ha, ha. Be going through a box of tissues."
Gavin smiled.
"Thanks, Monto. Appreciate it."
"Yeah, you do."
Yes, he would take the hiding from his second boss like a champ - but no regrets were had for that night he spent splayed out in his double bed sloshed, rolling around on the mattress. He'd had hours cosying up to his mistress, a bottle of Sailor Jerry.
His apartment, in his teary blur, usually below room temperature cold - that night he was warm, blissed out, emotional. The room spun in washed out blues and low lit cream lights; he had felt the spectrum he should have fuckin felt in that apartment With Amelia. Probably begging on his knees.
Take me back.
Gavin hated his gut feeling seldom, but now harder than usual. She was never going to take him back, at least not then, in her beautiful get-up and perfectly coiffed hair.
It was funny how life threw him that curve ball - despite having done this time and again - thrusting images of their eight months through his mind. How they met.
She walked into the bar, he was standing behind it placing glasses away, she's a drinker - not a heavyweight, but comfortable at any bar, two thumbs and more worth of on the rocks Jameson, her poison. Her brown coat with modest lapels clung to her form with brown hair flowing freely around her shoulders. He noticed her first when she'd walked right past Monto, the other handsome bartender (Gavin had said that, everyone working at the bar knew that), to talk to him. She looks in her late twenties at most.
That already raised an eyebrow but when she opened his mouth to ask him about his night his smile came from an honest place.
"And why do you hide behind the bar with your thousand yard scowl?"
"I'm not hiding anything. I work here? It's a thing people do for a living." He gave her the fashioned charming smile he saved for his moonlighting. For the customers.
"Ah, no, no. No. This is the fourth night I've been here, new bar, fresh face. And you don't work here for a living. You're here, maybe once a week?
Gavin pushed air through his nose, trying not to take the bait.
"Good detective skills, miss alcoholic."
She took a sip of her drink, with cat's eyes travelling down his body. "Do I get a prize? Another drink, on the house?"
"You'll get one thing. Not a drink, though."
"One? Thing?"
"An answer to a question."
Amelia's wicked smile tore through his defences like a claw.
"What's your name?"
Oh, how slowly the rawness of him came through.
He missed her. The boldness, her initiative, the way she was as tall as Gavin himself. But like most good things in Gavin's life, they tended not to stay.
He scowled. Fuckin' hell, that's depressing. He ran his hand over the scratchiness of his beard. He had tomorrow off, thankfully. Even in his drunken haze, sensibility didn't escape him. Plus, he didn't want to fall backwards into what was left of Hank Anderson.
As a friend once told him, "Look, I drink, but the problems stay."
"Yeah, they're staying, all right."
The DPD wouldn't care about his interpersonal relationship problems; colleagues tolerated his irritating behaviour at best. It was something of a front Gavin couldn't shake and didn't want to shake off. Shit like this alcoholic haze he was in. Getting too damn close to people.
Only at Tempest did he feel some stress relief from the daily pressures of his routine, his career. The workaholic Gavin.
Sometimes, he lingered at work so he could spend less time at home, saying that he was a hard worker. The lies come from a place of truth.
Detroit in its entirety, the experience with the exploding Android, seeing RK800 shot right in front of him, all part of the job.
That day was a bureaucratic nightmare - an extra hour of paperwork was enough to make him take another sip of booze.
Things hadn't been so bleak, but living to work and pay off debts, old loans. Things had a way of catching up on him. And catch up they would. Sometimes it'd surprise him how much his situation didn't get to him as much as others. The sticky situation he hid from others was perfectly stifled.
He'd joined the force out of principle, back when it wasn't all so beyond repair and androids were just a turn of the century, an obsession in Kamski's eyes. Back when he didn't have to see Connor at every turn, with receptionists made of wires of infinite saintly patience.
Reaching over for a much needed cigarette, he lit the thing, caught himself, and scowled. He'd finish this one out of obligation.
He watched the smoke coil to the ceiling.
It had not always been this bad. Before he made detective things were different. He still had the stars in his eyes and the Noir stories playing in the background.
He'd make the first of many arrests that lead to his eventual promotion, almost 5 years exactly, making detective.
Then, he realised there was so much more competition. He saw the recruits getting younger and younger. He soured over the years; he had many open cases, with an average level of closed cases. He had become just a number - not special. A cog in the police wheel.
Heck, one of his only intact bridges for a colleague was Tina and she hadn't made detective yet.
It took him six years after floundering around in his youth just to become a police officer and rationally he knew comparisons were not helping his bitterness. The niggling thought in his mind stayed predominant: he felt stuck in place. The shiny new feeling of making a difference was no longer a consideration, a sad slow plodding behemoth that could never be mounted again. Gavin's drive was wearing down and it showed: wash-worn and smoke stained clothes, and a dulled, dinged badge.
Fowler had been on the cusp of putting him on a performance plan. Two warnings too many. And Gavin used to pride himself on stepping on people without getting write ups. Heck, he lived for it.
Then there came the androids, factory setting ready to obey like good little solid state drives, not a single one making one wrong move.
All perfect and pretty and never forgetting one iota of detail.
Makes me sick.
"For fuck's sake."
He stumbled up from the bed, cursing himself for reminiscing. He sloppily filled up the water bowl in his kitchen, seeing Astra meowing up at him with her yellow doll eyes. He heard the auto feeder for her grind a feed - there to his workaholic tendencies.
He made his way to the couch, Astra was there, her white fur shedding all over his holey washed-out shirt but he didn't mind. She nuzzled up to him despite probably smelling like a garbage factory, and he switched the television to the same movie every night - it was the only way he could sleep now, the background noise to fall asleep.
Fall asleep he did, with his phone in the bedroom.
After twenty minutes, his phone began to buzz, but Gavin was already long gone.