Partners - Reed900 series

Partners

After a week rest at home, Gavin returns to the job. He's confined to his desk for now, with his arm still in a sling and under the constant watch of Nines.
"You should turn off your terminal," the android suggests, no, instructs. He sits at his own desk, his watchful eyes trained on Gavin.

The detective scrunches up his nose. "I'm fine, Tin Can."

"Do I have to list the signals that tell me you're not?" Nines turns his chair a little so he can give Gavin his full attention. Or so he can easily get up to turn off Gavin's terminal for himself.

The detective pushes the little button that switches the terminal's screen off and rummages through his desk drawer in search of the bottle of painkillers. Nines being right - Gavin has a headache from looking at the screen for more than half an hour - doesn't mean he has to acknowledge it verbally.
He gets up from his chair and walks off in search of something to occupy himself with during his mandatory 'screen break'. He's not really supposed to be back at work already, yet a week of sick leave had him crawling up the walls of his home. Fowler let him back into the bullpen, on the condition that his android partner would monitor his health closely. As if Nines needs an order from the captain to do that.

Gavin finds Tina on the other side of the bullpen and sits down on her desk without asking.
"I was working on those, asshole," she grumbles, pulling at the corner of a manilla folder he is sitting on. "Now those reports have your ass print all over them!"

"Makes them more interesting to read," Gavin smirks, though he does lift his lower half to allow Tina to pull the folder from underneath him. 

"Mandatory break again?"

Gavin nods. "You up for a coffee break?"

She smiles apologetically. "I'm sorry, Gavin, I can't. I took a break with you an hour ago already."

"An hour and a half," he corrects her. "Come on, Teens, I'm bored!"

"Some of us have work to do, you know," she chides him lightly, pricking her finger in his thigh. "Go find something to do without computer screens or something."

"Like what? Assort the coffee cups in the break room by size and colour? There is nothing to do here that doesn't involve a screen." He had already sorted through evidence, picked up some old case folders from the archive for who ever needed them and he was sick of the odd looks he got when he brought his co-workers a round of coffee. Okay, he never ever brought them coffee before, but he was bored. B. O. R. E. D. And whenever he looked at a computer screen for more than half an hour at a time he got a headache, thanks to his - slowly healing - concussion. So he had to find something else to do.

"I think Connor already did the coffee cup thing," Tina answers with a chuckle. "I don't know, Gav, alright? Maybe you should take off for the rest of the day? I know it sucks being at home and not being able to work, but it's not like you are getting a lot done here either."

"Excuse me? I'm making myself useful!" Actually, Gavin doubts his own words. His partner is picking up his slack, unintentionally showing him that an android could take over his job. It sets Gavin on edge, dredges up some old feelings.
"You know what? Fuck this. I'm going for a smoke."

This whole ordeal has him smoking more than usual. A while after they started working together, Nines took it upon himself to make the detective quit smoking. Gavin put up a fight at first, yet the android was nothing if not persistent. He tried different methods, from telling Gavin off, to hiding his smokes, and eventually settled on the method of distraction. It took Gavin a while before he was on to that, he actually thought RK900 finally gave up on trying to make him quit at first. In the end, the one that gave up was him; it was not like he quit smoking all together, he just smoked a lot less on most days. Besides, if he wanted to keep up with the android in the field, he needed his lungs fully functional.