Typical. Just as he thought this day couldn’t get any worse it started to rain. Great wet globs of the stuff that soaked him to the skin in thirty seconds, ran over his face in rivers and dripped from the ends of his hair into the hole in his partner’s chest cavity, torn open by the fucking canon blast that greeted them as they’d rounded the corner, standard issue weapons drawn like the butts of some massive cosmic joke.

They might as well have been carrying water pistols for all the good their rounds did them, but they’d fired anyway, six shots each before whatever the assault weapon in the arms of the synthetic asshole they’d been chasing down had finally powered up enough to send a fucking rocket powering in their direction. And Dorian, damn him, had taken it upon himself to play bullet catcher, human shield, cop protector; whatever he wanted to call the stupid, dumbass move he’d made, pushing John sideways with such force he could have sworn his fucking shoulder had been dislocated when he’d impacted with the trash bins, and not even considering getting out of the fucking way himself.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

‘Dorian…. Oh, Christ….’

Maybe it was good that it was raining because when backup finally arrived no one was going to be able to tell the water on his face from the tears gathering in his eyes. He’d watched his partner take multiple bullets and carry on shooting, watched him stand at the centre of a firefight and take down every last man firing before dropping himself. But he wasn’t the fucking Hulk. This shot had ripped through him, tearing him open and leaving an exit wound John could possibly have got his head through. Any circuitry inside that wasn’t already fried was sparking and smoking. Dorian was as… as dead as any human would have been if they’d taken a hit like that. But Dorian wasn’t human. He could survive. He had to survive.

John couldn’t stop touching although he had no idea what to do with his hands. He stroked the side of Dorian’s head, thumb tracing the curve of his eye socket even as he tried to avoid looking into his partner’s lifeless stare. Their suspect was long gone; John, at least, had his priorities right. When Dorian was fixed they were going to have a very long and meaningful conversation about how dead was dead and one day Rudy wouldn’t be able to fix him. But not today. Today wasn’t going to be that day. John refused to entertain the idea that today was that day.

He was aware of sirens, deafening as they got up close, shouts and car doors slamming and people asking him things. But what he heard was Rudy’s quiet intake of breath next to his ear. He felt Rudy’s long fingers on his shoulder, such a rare touch he almost toppled backwards, but he wasn’t the guy’s focus and neither should he have been.

‘Fix him,’ John instructed, commanded, demanded. ‘You have to fix him.’

Rudy looked at him, stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, mouth open, expression utterly unbelieving.

‘He’s…. There’s less of him left than not.’

‘I’ve seen you fix bots without heads!’

‘John….’

‘You have to fix him!’

He didn’t realise he’d shouted until Maldonado was shouting at him right back and that didn’t make sense because the captain didn’t go out into the field.

After that, there wasn’t much he remembered until he woke up on Rudy’s cot in the lab. He hoped he’d been sedated but by the ache in his jaw he suspected actually he’d been punched, possibly before he’d punched someone else. He could imagine Paul’s MX carrying him from the back of the car, dumping him there while Paul recorded the whole event. He was probably all over the internet by now. Then his brain reminded him of the reason for his behaviour and he was up between one heart beat and another.

‘Rudy?!’

‘Don’t…!’ But the warning came too late. John was out in the main lab, eyes catching on the sight of his partner lying on a workbench with tubes and wires snaking out from inside his chest and the open panel at the side of his skull. ‘Sorry.’

John didn’t move. He didn’t want to get any closer but he couldn’t not be in the room now.

‘How’s he doing?’

‘The damage is massive.’

It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what Dorian looked like on the inside. Once, he'd fixed a head wound with bubble gum and a used ear bud, and on numerous occasions they’d carried on working with Dorian sporting sparking bullet holes to his torso. But this was different. Rudy had been right; more of Dorian’s insides were gone than were still in place. But they were just… parts, robot parts. His head was still completely intact. Or at least it had been.

‘What are you doing?’

It clearly took a moment for Rudy to understand that John wasn't asking him to explain his obvious attempts to fix Dorian.

‘Oh. I’m taking a backup of his central processor and his memory. Just in case.’

John wasn’t sure he wanted any more detail. He didn't want to know what 'just in case' meant or what would follow that eventuality.

‘Can you fix him?’

‘I don’t know. I need time.’

‘Whatever parts you need….’

‘I’m not short on parts. I might be short on expertise.’

John shook his head and tried to smile, tried to sound positive and encouraging.

‘You’re brilliant, Rudy. If anyone can do it –‘ He faltered. He couldn’t take his eyes off his partner, the robot in pieces on the workbench like a computer or a fucking toaster.

‘I need to work on him, and I need to do it without you looking over my shoulder. Besides, you don’t really want to see him like this.’

He was right and John knew it.

‘Who hit me?’

The way Rudy looked at him, he didn’t need a verbal answer.

~

Maldonado saw him before he reached Paul’s desk, which was empty anyway.

‘Where’s Richard?’ he demanded even while he was ushered into the captain’s office.

‘Out chasing down the bot who attacked you. If he fails, you can have one for free. If he finds him, you’re even. Deal?’

John nodded grudgingly as he dropped into a chair close to the large expanse of desk, and reached out to fiddle with a glass ball seated in a shallow metal dish. The captain set a single measure of bourbon in a heavy glass in front of him and sat down herself.

‘It’s early,’ he pointed out, reaching for the drink.

‘I think you probably need it.’ She was looking pointedly at his hand. It was shaking when he picked up the glass. ‘How’s Dorian?’

‘He’s got a hole in his chest the size of a football.’ There was a slight hint of hysteria around the edges of his voice and he swallowed the liquor in one.

‘Rudy’s good and very motivated. If there’s anything he can do, he’ll do it.’

John couldn’t think of an appropriate response. He couldn’t think of an inappropriate one either. Most of his focus was back in the lab and on his phone, waiting for the call, waiting for news. It could take days. He’d wait days if that’s what it took; drink coffee and eat monosodium glutamate until he was so wired his own heartbeat vibrated against his ribcage. The last thing he wanted to do was sleep; he and his subconscious weren’t on great terms, given the chance to torture him it would revel in the opportunity to weave nightmares worse than the ones he already lived with.

‘If it’s as bad as you’re describing, it’ll take time.’

‘I’m not riding with an MX.’ There was flat refusal in his tone that he knew the captain had heard countless times before.

She almost laughed.

'I can’t afford for you to ride with an MX.’

‘They’re nothing but machines.’

‘Dorian’s a machine.’

‘Dorian’s more than that and you know it. That’s why you put us together. He’s worth more than a million of those soulless things.’

‘You’d defend him with your life.’ It wasn’t a question, and when John looked up he could see the hint of a smile playing over her lips. ‘Today, that’s what he did, defend you with his. He would die for you, John, and not because it’s his programming or his job but because it’s a decision he can make for himself. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same to save him.’

John stopped fiddling with the glass ball in the metal dish and leaned forward. There was no point in denying it although he doubted he would ever be fast enough or strong enough to catch a bullet before Dorian could.

‘I need you to promise me. If something happens to me, you won’t just turn him off, you won’t just… decommission him. He deserves to know he’s safe even if I end up retired or dead.’ She looked at him for a long time and eventually he had to look away, into his empty glass. ‘I hate that the department owns him, that he’s property.’

‘Why do you think I gave… I assigned him to you?’

John shook his head slowly.

‘I have spent months wracking my brains trying to work that one out.’

‘And?’

‘Because you needed someone to look out for me, make sure I didn’t do anything stupid?’

‘No. Because I thought you needed someone to care about more than you cared about yourself. I thought that was the only way you wouldn’t get yourself killed. And I was right. He’s good for you. So do you honestly think I would do anything to pull that good out from under you, just as it’s starting to work?’

He snapped his head up, expression an outward portrait of the confusion he felt.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You’re the detective, John. You work it out. Go home. Get some rest. Or go to the lab and get some rest. You’re riding a desk until Rudy works his magic.’

It’s a second or two before he can push out the words, ‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘He will. Trust him. He’s in awe of Dorian too. Just… not quite as deeply as you are.’ John opened his mouth before he meaning of her words filtered through and he closed it again.

~

He went to the lab.

There was a note from Rudy telling anyone who cared to read it that he’d gone for Chinese food and would be back in fifteen. Dorian was on the work bench, right where he’d been when John had left, the hole in his chest and the side of his head still open. Standing at his side, John stared at him for a few minutes, Maldonado’s words playing on a loop in his brain. Then he picked up Dorian’s heavy hand and lifted it to his face, pressing his check against the back of it, man-made skin over knuckles. His hands were usually warm, his skin humming just slightly with the life it contained. Hands that had flipped a van onto its side with the same ease they’d pulled John in close for a hug after they'd disarmed a bomb.

John turned his head slightly to the right, bringing his mouth in contact with Dorian’s fingers. The day one of those same bombs had been locked around John's throat, his partner had pushed himself to the point of shutdown to save his life. They'd found him on the roof of the clock tower, power completely drained, as lifeless as an MX.

John parted his lips, mouthing the base of Dorian’s index finger. Without him, Maldonado was the only barrier between Dorian and death, or Dorian and a lonely existence on the International Space Station. He wasn’t sure which would be worse, but the thought of Dorian alone for years on end was more painful than the idea of him decommissioned and back in that body bag. He thrived on being alive, on experience, on human contact. He needed John as much as John needed him.

‘I… er… I just needed to get some food.’

John dropped Dorian’s hand in surprise, catching his wrist before it hit the edge of the bench.

‘Rudy.’

‘I hadn’t eaten all day.’

‘How is he?’

‘Not much different from when you left an hour ago. You should go home.’

‘I don’t want to go home.’

‘Right. So… kung pow chicken or beef chow mein?’

~

It was strange to watch Rudy work, but Dorian’s insides were no more horrifying than John's own when he thought about it. The only difference between Rudy working in the lab and a surgeon in a hospital was the lack of sterility. John wondered if there were other bots, bots owned by millionaires and businessmen, who were cared for in clean rooms and dust-free environments so as to protect their delicate, internal workings.

He rested fitfully through the night on Rudy’s couch and went out for coffee in the morning, after finding Rudy asleep with his head on the edge of the bench Dorian lay on. His phone rang three times during the day, Maldonado the first time, Valerie next, then Maldonado again calling him into the office, telling him they needed his help on a case Richard was working on.

Rudy told him to go so he grudgingly went. They didn’t need him out in the field, he knew he’d made it clear where he stood on MXs anyway and no way was he could to be let out on his own without backup. But he did have knowledge about a group Richard thought might be responsible for the death of a senator two weeks earlier and he got caught up in the chase despite only watching, co-ordinating from the side lines.

It was the earlier hours of the next morning when Richard’s team returned, triumphant, and he got caught up, somewhat surprisingly, in the camaraderie of that too. So when someone said his name from just behind his shoulder at just gone four-fifteen am, he turned before his brain processed the familiarity of the voice, and he was looking at his partner before he realised who had spoken.

‘Dorian….’

Everything – the threat of losing him, the knowledge of sacrifice, even the success of Richard’s team – combined together, and he wrapped his arms around Dorian, gathering him into a hug apparently as unexpected as the one Dorian had subjected him to months back in the park. Dorian, to his credit, recovered quicker than he had, and returned it, face falling into the crease of John’s neck, long lashes brushing against his throat. It didn’t matter to John that the whole department was watching, although he had an inkling Maldonado would have something to say to him when she next got him alone.

When they did eventually break apart, Dorian stepping back after John loosened his arms, he looked his partner up and down, looking perhaps for the joins, for the telltale evidence of his injuries or the advanced tech trickery he knew Rudy was capable of. But there was just Dorian, grinning at him with his eyes alive and his hands warm again.

‘I just came to say hi before bedtime,’ he told him, and something in John raged against letting Dorian out of his sight so soon.

‘Do you need to recharge?’

‘I am fully charged.’

‘Come back to my place. You and I need to have a talk about stepping in front of lunatics with rocket launchers.’

‘John, it’s my –‘

‘If you say it’s your duty, I swear to God I’ll stick my synthetic foot in your face and kick you into the nearest concrete pillar.’

Dorian smiled, and to be fair there hadn’t been a single note of malice in his tone. If anything, he could hear the deep affection underlying his own empty threat.

‘You’re tired, John,’ Dorian pointed out as they stepped from the lift into the parking garage. ‘It’d be best if I drove, don’t you think?'

John grinned.

‘Nice try.’

~

He let them into his apartment. He loved his apartment, loved the view from the rooftop rooms in the building that should have been condemned but had ended up being bought and rescued by a true connoisseur. It reminded him of the summer he'd spent in New Orleans, back when he was a student.

He watched Dorian walk to the windows in the lounge and look out over the old part of the city. He hesitated, not sure how physical it was safe to get with his police-issue bot, not sure what Dorian would think. But the way he felt, he needed to know that Dorian was alive, to have more evidence than the mere sight of him.

Crossing the room slowly, cautiously, he stopped behind Dorian and carefully wrapped his arms around his partner’s waist.

‘Thank you for saving my life,’ he murmured, resting his forehead on the back of Dorian’s head.

Dorian didn’t freeze or flinch. He seemed happy to go with John’s unexpected physical proximity.

‘I’ll always protect you,’ he said, hands coming up, long fingers curling over John’s forearms.

John breathed out.

‘Who protects you?’

Dorian moved his head to the right, presumably to see John’s face, but it just gave John free and easy access to his throat and he took advantage, not allowing his brain to engage because he knew what it would be saying – screaming – and he wasn’t in the mood to listen.

‘Are you okay, John?’ There was curiosity in his voice, a little concern, and something else, something John might have interpreted as the beginnings of arousal if Dorian was human. He moved his lips against the smooth skin between Dorian’s shoulder and his neck, not kissing exactly. He missed being physically close to someone, missed the heat from another body, the touch of another person. And Dorian was a person, no one would ever convince him otherwise. ‘John?’

He took a deep breath and dropped his arms, stepping back. Dorian was a person, one he was definitely taking advantage of, and Dorian wasn’t likely to stop him from pressing it. But he turned from the view, reached for John, stopping him from moving away.

‘I don’t have a problem with you getting close. I just need to know you’re okay.’

‘I don’t want you sacrificing yourself for me. I don’t want you dying for me. You’re not an MX, you’re not a soulless robot. You’re my partner and my friend. Your worth isn’t measurable in dollars. Get it?’

Dorian smiled.

‘Got it. But John, it’s my job to protect you. And even if it wasn’t I would still do it because like you said, you’re my partner and my friend.’

John took a deep breath and looked at Dorian, really looked at him, sparkling eyes and unmarked skin. He was beautiful, and that wasn’t something he’d ever thought about a man
before.

‘The only way to resolve this, that I can see, is if we both make a concerted effort to keep on breathing.’

‘I don’t breathe.’

John rolled his eyes.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yes, I do.’

Dorian moved in for a hug and John went with it, holding tight, finding comfort in the solid, heavy build of his deceptively slight partner. John knew himself, recognised the yearning inside him and knew what was going to happen if Dorian didn’t stop it. What the hell were the chances of that? But when Dorian loosened his hold, John turned his head and buried his face in the haven of the bot’s neck and instead of being pushed away, John was coaxed closer as he knew he would be, Dorian’s fingers stroking through his hair, other hand splayed against his back.

‘What do you want, John? I can give you whatever you need. I want to but you have to tell me. You have to ask me.’

This wasn’t a good idea. This was amongst the worst ideas John had ever had. In the past, loads of cops had slept with their partners, so much time spent together translating into feelings of intimacy either real or imagined, either way it hadn’t stopped them. But since the introduction of mandatory partnerships with first the DRNs then the MXs, if partners had developed relationships they kept it damn quiet. John couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to go to bed with an MX no matter how desperate they were. Dorian was already separate in his mind from all other bots. His snarky nature and quirky sense of humour, his deep compassion and enduring grace. John lifted his head. Soulful eyes, full lips… he was kissing him before he realised it, the tip of his tongue sliding into Dorian’s willing mouth.

That was consent, apparently, because it was like flipping a switch. Dorian’s hands were everywhere, sure and strong; over his shoulders, down his arms, across his back, stopping short of the waistband of his jeans. John didn’t know if he wanted to stop there or not. This intimacy was one thing, and it was a good thing. It felt amazing. But sex… that was another. He didn’t know if he was ready to be palming Dorian’s porn star cock, feeling inadequate in comparison. He’d been with guys before, but not guys built like Dorian. His empathy chip wasn’t the only thing he had in common with sex bots.

He wasn’t ready, he thought, until Dorian asked him straight out.

‘Do you want to go to bed, John?’

And he said, ‘Yes.’

~

He needn’t have worried. Dorian went down on him like a pro, ignoring his protests when he was about to come, swallowing every drop, sucking him clean before climbing up his body and licking his tongue deep into John’s mouth.

‘You think I need to worry about human semen when I can inject a dead guy’s blood into my neck?’ he murmured, and as far as post-coital small-talk went, John had heard more romantic sentiments.

‘What can I do for you?’

Dorian looked down at him with a wan smile.

‘I don’t know, John, what can you do for me?’

Turned out that when Dorian came, John jerking him off with a hand so tight it would have caused his own cock to explode, he lit up like an HUD from head to foot, whole body shaking with the force of his release.

It caused John to come up with his own unromantic, post-orgasm line, ‘What the hell was that?’

Dorian was stretching like a feline next to him, rolling over onto his side.

‘Pent-up frustration, same as you.’

John rolled over too, to face him, synthetic knee balancing him, one hand supporting his head, the other reaching between them almost of its own accord to map expertly defined pectorals, taut abs, the swell of a perfect ass, the rise of a sculpted thigh. He ran fingertips into the crease of Dorian's leg, eyes catching on the neat triangle of short hair above his resting cock. He had fine hairs too on his legs and arms, but nowhere else. The doc had gone to a lot of trouble to make his creation as close to human as possible and however angry John was at his betrayal, he could only be thankful for that.

'I understand you won't want to be shouting about this from the rooftops,' Dorian murmured. It brought a smile to John's lips.

'Best not to. Although I will update my dating profile status to 'in a relationship' if you don't mind?'

Dorian's face lit up, blue lines chasing one another across his cheek as purple dots danced in his eyes. It was a pattern John hadn't seen before and it took him a moment to realise that he was processing the raw data of emotion. He was happy. His beaming smile was proof of that.

'Not at all. I would be relieved actually. It's a full time job maintaining your inbox.'

'Asshole.'

But the insult lost most of its sting in the kiss John inadvertently followed it up with.