Time That Tears Us Apart (BoyxBoy/Android)

Chapter 3: Minutes Are All We Have

Loop #22
November 8, 2038

Gavin realized he was just going through the motions. He had been going through the motions for the last few times actually if he was being honest.

Gavin pretended that this was just business as usual. He kept going through the same handful of days, acting out the role he knew he was supposed to fill. It was so easy when you knew what to expect because nothing ever changed.

Gavin was sick of it.

So this time Gavin was trying something different.

This time he was absolutely determined to keep his distance from Connor. Maybe if he never made the connection, never made proper skin contact, then he'd be free of this bizarre version of Groundhog Day.

Maybe.

That was the hope anyway.

But it was a lot harder than he expected.

Avoiding Connor completely was near impossible when he kept getting dispatched to the same crime scenes, but by now he knew the script.

It became stupidly easy to avoid touch when you knew exactly where someone was going to be and when.

But, surprisingly, that wasn't the difficult part.

What was difficult was his missing soulmark.

Gavin had no idea how wrong it would feel to deliberately leave his arm bare when he knew exactly who his soulmate was.

But that was also part of the problem, wasn't it? Actually knowing who his soulmate was. What he was. Even after all this time he still had a hard time processing it, so most days he tried not to think about it.

Though that didn't stop him from missing the mark like it was a limb.

Tracing it through the fabric of his shirt had become something of a habit, especially when he got lost in thought. He knew where each letter and number was supposed to be, he had memorized it ages ago.

It was right there, permanently imprinted on his mind and if given the chance he could map out their intended location on his skin. If given a marker he could draw it out himself, but he had never seen a marker the correct shade of blue.

And grey was out of the question.

Gavin sat at his desk as he traced over the space now, letting his middle finger draw where each character should be. He let his mind drift as he pretended to read a case file he already knew the contents of.

But all he could think of was the missing mark as he drew it out with the pad of his finger.

CONNOR RK800
#313 248 317-51

What did he know about Connor?

Hell, what did Gavin know about any android? He'd spent years loathing the damn things, despised the fact that they had ever been created. Now he didn't know how to feel.

Gavin tried doing some research, to see if it would help him make sense of all this bullshit. Of course, he came up empty-handed. Even with extensive research, he had never found any mention of anyone else with a soulmate that was anything less than human.