Chapter Text
“Hank!” Connor shouted, finally driven to break his silence by the terror blooming within him, convinced that he was about to witness the man’s long delayed suicide.
The lieutenant jolted in surprise and turned to look at Connor, shocked to find that he was not alone at his son’s gravesite. “Jesus- fucking -Christ!” the man gasped when he laid eyes on the child lurking behind him in the dark. He struggled to get to his feet, but slipped on the wet grass and fell backwards instead, dropping something from one hand in the process.
It was a flask that tumbled across the grass, Connor realized with a surge of relief that threatened to rob his legs of their strength. It was a flask, not a gun that Hank had pulled from the glove compartment of his car.
“What the fuck?! ” the lieutenant rasped as he finally managed to get to his feet, face pale, blue eyes wild, looking for all the world as though he’d seen a ghost.
For half a beat, Hank’s grief stricken mind was convinced he had seen a ghost, that it was Cole standing there before him, swathed in his own jacket, just like he’d used to do before-
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t Cole, the lieutenant realized as he raised one hand to press over his chest where his heart felt ready to burst clean through his ribcage. This boy did , however, bear an uncanny resemblance to his dead son, especially those big, expressive blue eyes.
The strange child took a step towards him, and Hank unconsciously took a step back in response, which made the boy frown. He raised his hands before him, though he had to give them a shake to make the overlong sleeves of Hank’s jacket fall back so they could actually be seen. “Hank, it’s alright, it’s Connor,” the little boy said in what he probably thought was a soothing tone.
Hank stared at him for a long, silent minute. After a moment, he said, “Oh. Good.”
“Yes,” Connor said, smiling as he took another step towards the lieutenant, who remained rooted in place this time. “I’m fine, you see, I-”
“You’re not a ghost.”
“No,” the android replied, the relief he’d been naive enough to feel fading at the statement as the sudden calm Hank appeared to be experiencing began to strike him as odd.
“So I’ve just lost my mind.”
“Uh-”
“About damn time.”
Connor watched as Hank bent and grabbed up the flask he’d dropped, uncapped it, then proceeded to take a long drag before turning and marching off into the stormy night. “Hank, wait!” the android called and chased after him. Maybe he should have waited until the other detective was in a calmer state of mind to confront him with the truth. He’d just been so worried about what Hank might do in his grief he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Please, just let me explain!”
“Oh, you don’t have to explain anything, ‘kid’,” Hank said with a bitter laugh and sarcastic, one-handed air quotes as he took another drink from his flask. “You’re just a… whatchca-call-it… amalgamation of my guilt and grief or some psych bullshit manifesting to haunt my ass and remind me what a horrible person I am for getting not just one son killed-” here he turned slightly to look at Connor, who was still trailing helplessly after him, “but two. Two brilliant kids snuffed out before their time like nothing cuz I wasn’t able to keep them safe.”
The smile that took over Hank’s features was brittle and full of self loathing, a heartbreaking sight that drew a fresh wave of tears to Connor’s eyes. They were in an old section of the graveyard now, surrounded on all sides by towering monuments to the dead, casting both of them in deep shadow.
“So, you know, you can go back to whatever wretched corner of my mangled brain you came from,” Hank said and waved his flask dismissively at Connor, walking backwards now. “Cuz trust me, you don’t have anything new to tell me; I already know I’m a murdering piece of shit,” he continued with a bitter, almost pitying smile. “Come back when I black out and check out my nightmares, though. I’ll give you the tour,” the lieutenant drawled and lifted his flask for another drink.
Connor opened his mouth to beg him to calm down, to stop drinking his sadness away for once in his damn life, but before he could, Hank’s ankle caught a decorative bit stonework half-buried in the lawn by the passage of years. The man grunted as he started to topple over backwards, blue eyes going wide in surprise.
Before he could begin to stumble though, Connor lunged forward, grabbed him by the wrist, and dragged him upright again.
“Holy shit,” Hank said, voice soft and surprised as he stared down at the child in front of him who still maintained a hold on his wrist, hands cold as ice against against his skin. Were manifestations of your inner guilt supposed to be able to touch you like that? Deciding this was the kind of question that a sober mind just wasn’t equipped to handle, Hank lifted his flask again, but before it moved more than a few inches, the child snatched it right out of his hand.
The lieutenant was so surprised that the boy was able to take it from him without resistance, and Hank could only watch as he then turned and hurled the flask away from them with a grunt of effort.
“Hey!” Hank exclaimed as it hummed away into the dark, spilling its contents in all directions along the way, and struck some distant tombstone with a loud clatter before disappearing from sight. The lieutenant scowled down at the boy and said, “That was a perfectly good thing of whiskey you-”
“Yes, I do know!” Connor snapped fiercely, blue eyes bright as he glared back up at Hank and stomped one foot impatiently in a show of frustration he’d never allowed himself to exhibit in the past. All of his very adult ‘self control’ tended to get in the way, but now, stuck as a child with only a fraction of his usual restraint, he was relishing the opportunity to let it out for the first time. “Fuck your whiskey, Hank, I’m sick of it! You were getting better ; I’m not going to let you slip back to where you were because of me!”
“Oh fuck you, you little muppet, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” Hank snapped back. “You’re not Connor, you’re just some fucked up jigsaw of my hang-ups about Cole combined with my grief over losing my damn partner! You’re the two of them pushed together to form some sort of weird-” Hank seemed to run out of descriptors at that point, and could only gesture wildly at Connor’s new body, expression irritated.
“You just gestured at all of me!”
“Yeah,” the lieutenant snapped, “I did.”
Realizing he wasn’t getting anywhere, Connor tried another tact. “My name is Connor. I was an RK800, model number 313 248 317-51, and we first met at Jimmy’s bar on November fifth, 2038 where you were also drowning your sorrows in whiskey, and I made the stupid decision to buy you one for the road before we went to the scene of Carlos Ortiz’s murder.”
Hank scoffed and spun on heel, then started walking away, but Connor kept talking.
Details of their cases together during the week leading up the to revolution, the gift he’d gotten Hank for his birthday just a few weeks ago, that time they’d conned Gavin into picking up an extra case so they could go to a basketball game… Connor enumerated them all in exhaustive detail as they wandered through the graveyard. Hank didn’t seem to be heading anywhere in particular so much as away from Connor, appearing to ignore his cataloguing of their time together but, eventually, they found themselves within sight of the gate.
Before they reached it, however, Hank’s control finally broke and he rounded on the child behind him, expression a tortured mix of fury and grief as he shouted, “Shut up ! Just shut the fuck up!”
His vehemence actually managed to make Connor not only stop in his tracks, but shut is mouth so hard his teeth clicked.
“What the hell are you trying to prove?” Hank demanded, words verging on a shout, voice rough with emotion. “You think this’ll somehow prove you’re really him?” he snapped with a sharp, frustrated wave of a hand. “I already know all of this! Or is that the point? Just drive me further down the fucking rabbit hole reminding me of all the little details of what a great fucking life I had before?” An ugly, heartbroken laugh escaped the man and he took a step away from Connor so he no longer loomed over him.
“God,” he muttered to himself as he pushed his sopping curls back from his haggard features, “that’s what this is, isn’t it?” The lieutenant closed his eyes and took a breath as he turned his face skyward. The rain had gradually begun to die off, and was now a miserable drizzle that seemed somehow colder than the downpour that had preceded it. “You’re just here to beat me over the head with how much I took him for granted until I crack and finally get the guts to shoot myself, aren’t you?”
Hank opened his eyes again and looked at Connor, a dead, tired expression on his face as he let both his hands drop to hang numbly at his sides.
“N-no!” the android managed to stammer, wiping furtively at the tears on his cheeks where they mingled with the rain. “I’d never hurt you, Hank, I’m just trying-”
“Go ‘try’ somewhere else, kid,” the man said with a sharp shake of his head then turned and started walking towards the gate.
At a loss for what else he could possibly do to convince Hank that he was not only who he claimed to be, but not a figment of his guilt stricken imagination, Connor felt himself slipping rapidly into panic again, entire system in danger of seizing and possibly failing altogether. If he couldn’t get Hank to believe him, then what was the point? He didn’t trust anyone else the way he did the lieutenant; he was utterly alone in the world, and the prospect terrified him.
Hope slipping through his slender fingers, Connor felt himself begin to cry in earnest. It was a strange feeling that he had no control over at all, which only frightened him further as his shoulders began to shake with great, heart wrenching sobs that left him gasping. He wasn’t used to not being fully in control, to being subject to unfamiliar subroutines that left him in the backseat of his own body.
He was scared and alone and all he wanted, all he really wanted was…
“H-Hank!” Connor wailed helplessly as he rubbed fruitlessly at his tear stained cheeks with his soaking coat sleeves. The tears were coming so thick and fast now that he could barely even make out the lieutenant as he walked away.
The cry brought Hank up short just shy of the gate, dragging his gaze from the sidewalk under his shoes to look back over his shoulder at his own personal ghost. He knew he shouldn’t, but the sound of such genuine distress coming from a child triggered a parental instinct he’d thought long dead and buried. What the hell was he supposed to do with this? Granted, the kid was crying the way he wanted to cry right then, so maybe it was just his subconscious trying to bleed off some of the pain welling up in his own heart... but still.
Realizing that Hank had stopped and looked back, Connor opened his mouth to speak, but found he couldn’t. A sound of frustration escaped the android as he rubbed at his face and tried again. “Do you- do you remember the morning after the revolution? When we met up at the Chicken Feed?” Connor managed to ask in a small, distressed voice as he finally dropped his hands to his sides.
Deciding to indulge his guilt for a moment in hopes that doing so would make it relent a little and leave him alone for awhile, Hank sighed heavily and said, “Yeah?”
“When you saw me, you didn’t even say anything, you just gave me a hug,” Connor said, expression wistful and pained. “-and that… that was the first time I really knew everything was going to be okay.”
The words were like a knife in Hank’s heart, and he felt his hands tighten into fists inside his jacket pockets. The child was losing his fight to maintain control of his emotions, and was starting to cry again. It was brutal, watching a boy that looked so much like his own son fall apart like that.
“After all the fear and the bloodshed, in the face of all those unknowns… when you hugged me, it felt like I’d come home ,” Connor admitted, shoulders shaking as he buried his face in his hands again, the heels of his palms pressed into his eyes in a vain attempt to staunch the flow of tears. He’d never told anyone this before, let alone Hank, but there on the verge of losing everything, any shyness he’d felt on the matter was dead and gone. “I had this epiphany;” he said voice barely above a whisper. “It was so simple ; like- Oh, this is what family is. This was why you were so sad, because you’d had this once and then you... then you lost it and-”
A small, distressed sound escaped the android and he suddenly found himself unable to stand. Connor’s skinny legs simply folded up on him and he found himself squatting on his heels, face pressed into his cold, wet knees.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose it too! You’re my family, Hank, and I-I just-” A hoarse, wretched cry was pulled from his chest before he said, in pleading tone, “I kind of died today, Hank, and I could really use a hug right-”
There were arms around him then, lifting him easily into the air before dragging him into a tight embrace against a broad chest. Connor went rigid with surprise, then limp with relief as he found his head resting against Hank’s shoulder, the breath all rushing out of him in a single breath. Without his telling them to, the android’s arms went immediately around the man’s neck and he buried his face in the collar of Hank’s waterlogged coat.
“It’s alright, son, I’ve got you,” Hank said, voice rough with emotion, hands shaking as he cradled the boy in his arms, holding him tight, as though he were afraid Connor might disappear if he let him go. “I’ve got you,” he repeated, tilting his head so his cheek rested against Connor’s hood.
It was too much. God, it was all too much to happen in one day. Hank felt like he’d been run through a blender then told to pull himself together and stand upright under his own power like nothing had happened. Impossible though it sounded, though, he’d damn well do it for Connor’s sake, because whatever had happened to his son, whatever body he happened to be inhabiting at the moment, that’s what the android was. His son. And he’d go through hell itself if it meant getting him back.
“I’m so sorry, Connor,” he said, tears rolling down his cheeks and disappearing into his beard. “I’m such a fucking idiot, I’m sorry,” Hank continued as he rubbed the android’s back absently in hopes of soothing the tremors and hiccuping sobs that still shook his little body. “You’re alright now, you’re safe. I won’t let anyone hurt you again,” he continued quietly, voice low and vehement as he rocked gently back and forth the way he had Cole all those years ago.
Gradually, Connor’s tears slowed and all his pent up stress and fear fled in the face of Hank’s gentle, familiar voice murmuring quiet reassurances in his ear. The android’s eyes slipped closed and his tremors faded under his father’s soothing hand. He wanted to thank Hank, to tell him how happy he was to see him again, how much he loved him… but he was tired. Tired in a way he’d never experienced before, and rather than words, all that managed to escape the android was a heartfelt sigh.
Carefully, Hank reached up and pulled back the hood of Connor’s sweatshirt, revealing the gently whirling blue of his LED, as well as the rest of his face. He’d been a father more than long enough to recognize the feeling of a child falling asleep in his arms, but it was peculiar to experience it with an android, so he’d had to check.
Without giving it a second thought, Hank pressed a brief kiss to the boy’s hair, then said, “Let’s go home.”
Connor barely stirred when Hank buckled him into the backseat and shut the door quietly after him, and he remained asleep the entire drive home, chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. It was a strange thing to behold considering the lieutenant had only occasionally seen Connor sleep in the past.
Shutting down for a couple of hours a night was generally recommended for androids to maintain peak system efficiency (just like shutting down a normal computer at night while it wasn’t in use), but otherwise it was simply used as a way to conserve power when they had nothing else to do. He’d never seen an android just… drift off the way Connor had in his arms, and Hank could only assume that it was some sort of setting specific to the YK line. They had been designed to emulate a child’s habits as closely as possible with the goal of replacing an actual child in a family setting, after all.
Hank found his gaze inevitably darting to his rearview mirror every few moments the entire drive home, half to check on Connor, half to reassure himself that he hadn’t disappeared and this was all a dream after all. The android’s head lolled against the window, hiding his LED from sight with the exception of the blue faint glow it cast across the glass, and as Hank brought the car to a stop at a light, he allowed himself to examine Connor’s new face more closely.
After a moment’s study, Hank decided that while Connor looked startlingly similar to Cole at first glance, once you got over the initial shock their differences became more obvious. The android’s hair was lighter, for one, and with the heat on full blast in an attempt to warm the both of them up, it was starting to develop a bit of a curl. They had the same fair skin, though Connor had a dusting of freckles Cole never had, and his eyes seemed wider.
At the end of it all, though, they could easily have been brothers.
Stranger than the android’s similarities to his son, however, was the fact that Hank had never seen a YK like him before. There had been only a few out on the market before the revolution had put an end to android production, and he was fairly certain none of them had looked like Connor did now. Some sort of custom job, maybe? He still didn’t have any idea just how his partner had wound up in his this new body to begin with; something to ask once they’d gotten home and cleaned up.
Hank pulled the car into the driveway soon after, unbuckled his seatbelt, then turned in his seat to look at Connor, who was still out cold. The lieutenant hesitated for a long minute, torn between reaching out to wake the android and relishing just one more moment watching him out of fear that when he tried to touch him, he might disappear. Finally, he gave himself a mental shake, then let his hand drop to pat Connor’s knee, feeling inordinately relieved when his fingers met met not fog, but solid flesh. Or plastic, he supposed, but it was all the same to him in the end.
“Connor,” he said, voice gentle in a bid not to startle the android.
The boy startled into waking, a look of panic crossing his features as he looked around wild-eyed until he saw Hank, at which point he relaxed. “What happened?” Connor asked, combing his fingers absently through his hair.
“You fell asleep. We’re home,” Hank explained, a small, amused smile pulling at his lips as Connor’s brow furrowed in confusion.
“Fell asleep?” he asked, seeming baffled by the concept. “But I didn’t...”
“I think it’s part of the YK programming,” Hank reassured him. “They’re meant to replace human kids generally, so-”
“So their programming would need to be even more convincing than a standard service android’s,” Connor finished for him, his consternation fading somewhat as he realized his new system wasn’t flawed so much as it was built to a different purpose than his old one.
“Something like that,” Hank agreed. “Come on, let’s get inside before it starts raining again,” he said, then opened his door and climbed out.
Connor followed suit and glanced skyward as he closed the door behind him. It was after nine now, so the sky was dark regardless of the cloud cover, but thunder rolled in the distance, threatening a further wetting to anyone that lingered out of doors too long.
The quiet jingling of Hank sorting through his keyring brought Connor’s attention back from the heavens and he hurried after the man. When he caught up to him at the stairs, a peculiar impulse to jump to the short distance from the ground up to the concrete porch overcame the android. Just as he was about to indulge, his conscious mind, mature as it was and unused to random flights of fancy, tried to check it, resulting in a jumble of commands that made him stumble and miss his footing altogether.
The android threw out his hands to catch himself as the corner of the porch rushed up to meet him, but stopped just as suddenly when a hand caught him above his elbow and hauled him upright again, just shy of disaster.
“The hell are you doin’?” Hank asked, seeming genuinely baffled as he sighed and stooped down, then hauled Connor up into his arms with a small grunt of effort.
“I can walk, ” the android objected as his arms went automatically around Hank’s neck again, a frown on his small, pale face.
“ Can you?” the lieutenant grumbled skeptically as climbed the steps and unlocked the door then pushed his way inside.
Connor huffed, but didn’t comment, embarrassed by his own awkward fumbling. Besides, he didn’t particularly mind being held by Hank; after the day he’d had, it was a comfort. He felt safe. The lieutenant had long had that effect on him though, he realized abruptly as Hank closed the door behind them and then locked it, it’d just taken nearly dying for him to recognize it.
Sumo barked from the kitchen and trotted towards them happily, making Connor truly smile for the first time since he’d found himself in his new body.
“Hey, Sumo,” Hank said, sounding tired as he put Connor down and watched with some amusement as the android eagerly approached the dog who sniffed him thoughtfully at first, then licked the boy’s face and pushed his face into his chest.
“He still likes me,” Connor said, clearly pleased by this development as he scratched the dog’s ears, then lost his small hands in the thick fur at the scruff of his neck.
Hank shrugged out of his coat and hung it on a hook and kicked off his mud covered shoes. “Sumo always has liked kids. Being made of plastic doesn’t make much difference to him, I guess,” the lieutenant remarked as Connor wrapped his arms around the dog’s neck and buried his face in his shoulder. Sumo, ever the patient creature, allowed him his moment before finally heaving a tremendous sigh and walking away, forcing the android to either let go, or be dragged along with him.
Connor opted for the former, though he watched the dog go a little wistfully before turning to look at Hank. A quiet, uncertain moment hung in the air between them, but before either dared to break it, an almost violent shiver rocked the android’s little body. The warmth of the car had gone some ways towards restoring his internal temperature and drying him out, but he’d still been out in the rain for hours, leaving him chilled right down to his biocomponents.
A concerned frown crossed Hank’s face and he said, “You’re a mess. Go take a hot shower and get warmed up. You can explain how you wound up pint sized at the graveyard when you’re done.”
Connor hesitated and frowned a little. “But-” he began, feeling reluctant to leave things unexplained for a moment longer after seeing how affected the man had been at his son’s gravesite.
“Go on,” Hank said, cuffing him affectionately and pushing him towards the hall. “You’re dripping mud and god knows what else all over the floor.”
The android glanced down, and while he was indeed doing just that, he was still skeptical about Hank’s professed concern for his floors. “Not like they’re particularly clean to begin with,” Connor muttered under his breath even as he turned to do as he was told.
“Well they don’t need the help either, smart ass,” Hank called after him with a snort, though he was smiling. Just before Connor closed the bathroom door, he added, “Throw your wet things out in the hall, I’ll wash ‘em!”
“Alright,” Connor replied, and after stripping down in the bathroom, did just that before closing the door and immediately making a beeline for the tub. He shivered a little as he turned on the faucet, then glanced down at his body while he waited for the water to warm. He was indeed quite dirty, though he could tell it wasn’t all his doing; some of the grime looked as though it had been there for some time.
It was a sad moment as Connor found himself wondering what sort of life his new body’s previous occupant had lead, and how they had been captured by traffickers. Had they been happy? Had they had a family, or were they alone in the world? The android sighed heavily and put the thoughts aside for the moment, fruitless as they were, then checked the water temperature and stepped in under the spray.
He lingered longer than he normally would, but he justified it by telling himself that his internal temperature had been on the low side, plus, you know, he had died earlier that day. Surely he deserved a few extra minutes in the shower. Hank stuck his head in and left him a fresh towel and one of his shirts to wear while Connor washed his hair, which the android made use of once he was warmed through by the water, and clean to boot.
The t-shirt was soft, gray cotton with a detroit logo stamped on the front in faded black ink, and it swam on Connor like a nightgown. The android shrugged, figuring it was better than nothing until the things he’d arrived in where clean and dried, then turned his attention to the mirror over the sink with the intent of combing his hair.
When he’d wiped the glass clear of condensation, however, the face staring back at him was not the one he’d anticipated, and not just because he’d gone to work that morning in a different body.
Wide-eyed with shock, the LED on his brow flickering between yellow and red as he struggled to process what he was looking at, Connor lifted his hands to run them over his face. Cheeks, brow, nose, mouth… none of them were the same as before.
A knock at the door made Connor start and jerk around as Hank called, “You alright in there, Connor?”
“Yeah,” the android answered, then opened the door, his hair left uncombed in his distraction.
His discomfiture must have been obvious as Hank immediately frowned and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Connor looked up at him, his own brown furrowed as he debated on how to communicate his discovery before deciding to just come out and say it plain. “My face changed. This body’s face, I mean, obviously it’s not the same one I woke up in this morning,” he said with a sigh. “This body, before I took it, it looked completely different. Red hair, brown eyes-” he stopped when he realized that, rather than become more confused or alarmed, Hank’s expression had actually relaxed.
“Yeah, I had a suspicion,” he said, then offered Connor his phone. “Give that a read while I shower,” he said, then shooed the android out of the bathroom and closed the door behind him.
Connor blinked and examined the screen, which displayed a pre-revolution article proclaiming ‘New YK600 Revolutionizes the American Family!’ in bold text. Behind the door at his back, the android heard the shower start up again, and he wandered over to the sofa as he scrolled through the article.
It had been published just a week before the revolution and raved about all the features of the newest in the YK line by Cyberlife. Most pertinent to his interests, however, was the ‘genetic customization’ feature that essentially allowed the YK600 to ‘imprint’ on its new human parents and take on their own physical traits so it actually looked like it could be their flesh and blood child. Not just hair and eye color, or skin tone… but their actual facial structures. The hardware behind it was vaunted as the most advanced to date out of cyberlife, but all Connor could think of was the look of naked fear on Hank’s face when he’d first confronted him in the graveyard.
He’d thought he’d just startled the man, a random pale child showing up in the rain… superstitious as humans could be, he’d assumed he’d understood. In retrospect, however, Connor realized that Hank’s reaction had been less because a child had confronted him, and more because a child that looked uncannily like his own son had appeared to him in front of the same son’s grave.
Connor sighed and put Hank’s phone aside as he turned his gaze to the ceiling. A quick examination of his system details revealed that the detective’s theory had been correct; his new body wasn’t a YK500 at all, it was a YK600.
And apparently he’d imprinted on Hank.
The revelation wasn’t entirely surprising, though maybe a little embarrassing. The cat had been let out of the bag regarding the fact that he regarded Hank as a father figure, and he wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that. Embarrassed, obviously, but mostly nervous. Hank hadn’t seemed upset or put off when he’d given him the article to read, but maybe after the initial relief of Connor’s still being among the living wore off, that would change. The lieutenant had referred to the android as ‘son’ on more than one occasion, not just earlier that evening, but how literally did he mean it? Considering he’d already had and lost one actual son, it could be that Connor’s pretentions as being a second might be distasteful to the man…
In an attempt to distract himself, Connor ran a brief system diagnostic and found that his new body’s thirium levels were quite low. Glad to have something to keep himself occupied for at least a minute, the android got up off the couch and headed into the kitchen, pausing to pat Sumo on the head along the way.
Connor had been keeping an extra supply of blue blood at Hank’s house since the early days of their partnership, but as he stood barefoot on the linoleum and stared up at its lofty position on top of the refrigerator, it was his first time regretting not keeping it in the low cabinet the lieutenant had initially suggested.
Being small had so many disadvantages, the android thought, it was no wonder human children were always in such a rush to grow up, no matter how much their parents lamented the fact.
Ever a problem solver, Connor dragged one of the chairs from the kitchen table over to the refrigerator and climbed up onto the seat. He still wasn’t quite tall enough to reach the bottles where they stood at the back, so he put one foot up onto the counter in a bid for some extra height, fingers just brushing against his prize.
“‘The hell are you doing?” Hank asked, expression one of alarm as he rounded the corner into the kitchen from the hall. Connor turned and looked at him, frozen mid-reach as he started to answer, but before he could the chair on which he still had one foot began to slide treacherously out from under him. With more agility than the android thought he’d ever seen out of the man in the almost year he’d known him, Hank jumped forward and grabbed him one armed before he could even properly start to fall. “Jesus Christ, kid, you’re gonna break your damn neck!”
“Hank, I’m still much sturdier than a human despite being two feet shorter than I was yesterday,” Connor chided him.
The lieutenant looked discomfited by the statement, true thought it might have been. “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled as he shifted his hold on Connor reflexively so the android straddled his right hip. “Says the guy that literally died earlier today.”
Connor opened his mouth to argue, but rethought the impulse, knowing it wasn’t an argument he’d ever be able to win, especially in Hank’s eyes. Instead, he pointed at the bottles of blue blood, still untouched on top of the refrigerator, and said, “My thirium levels are low.”
Rather than put Connor down, Hank reached up and snagged one of the bottles in question, then opened a cabinet and fetched down a mug. He put it down on the counter then proceeded to open the bottle of thirium one handed and poured the android an ample serving. An almost impressive dance ensued as Hank picked up the drink with his free hand, then hooked a foot around the leg of the chair Connor had nearly fallen from and pushed it back into place at the table, all while maintaining his hold on Connor himself. It had the feeling of something the man had done a thousand times before, though it was the android’s first time witnessing it, and he was left blinking as Hank plopped him down on the chair and placed the mug in front of him.
“All you had to do was ask,” the lieutenant remarked dryly, seeming oblivious to the oddness of what had just transpired.
Connor stared at the shimmering blue surface of the cup of thirium for a long moment as he debated the merits of commenting on Hank’s actions, but again decided against it. Instead, he picked up the mug two handed and took a long sip.
Hank didn’t give what he’d done a second thought until he was halfway through re-capping the bottle of blue blood, at which point he froze in place. God, he’d just grabbed Connor the way he used to do Cole whenever he’d climbed on the chairs despite how many times he’d damn well told him not to. Granted, he’d generally been going for the snack cabinet, but still…
The lieutenant glanced back towards Connor as he forced himself to finish screwing the bottle cap back on before returning it to the top of the refrigerator. As he watched, the android finished off his ‘drink’, tilting his head back to get everything he could out of the cup before placing it down on the kitchen table with a soft tap.
“Hey, Connor,” Hank began, feeling suddenly awkward. The sensation only increased as Connor looked around at him, silent question on his face. The lieutenant hesitated, uncertain of what he’d even been about to say. Should he apologize for treating the android like he was a child? Like he was his own son? That was weird, wasn’t it? He’d called Connor ‘son’ on more than one occasion and the android had never objected, but that didn’t mean he wanted anything to do with Hank as a father figure. For one, he was an android; did they even look for that kind of relationship with other people? For another, what would a person as competent, if sometimes socially naive, as Connor want with someone like Hank when it came to role models? He didn’t drink like he used to, but he was still a human garbage bag full of trauma and regret at the end of the day.
Better to keep his thoughts to himself and just pretend it hadn’t happened.
Hank ran his fingers through his tangled curls and jerked his thumb towards the living room. “Tell me what happened?”
Connor smiled and slid off his chair. “Okay,” he said, and followed the lieutenant into the living room.
The man dropped into his favorite spot on the left side of the sofa, then kicked his feet up onto the coffee table, though not before Connor squeezed past and took him off guard by settling next to him on the cushions. He’d expected the android to take the armchair like he usually did any time they weren’t watching television, but then, considering the topic of conversation, Hank couldn’t blame Connor for wanting to stick close.
The android sat straight on the couch at first, but frowned when his legs proved nowhere near long enough to touch the ground; in fact, his ankles barely cleared the edge of the cushion. With a sigh, he pulled his feet in so he sat cross-legged instead and tugged his oversized shirt down into a tent over his knees. Something soft settled around his shoulders and he looked around to see Hank dragging the blanket off the back of the couch to wrap around him.
“Thanks,” he said with a flash of a smile as he pulled it more firmly around him to ward off the chill in the air.
The corner of Hank’s mouth quirked up in answer and the man settled himself more comfortably in the corner of the couch before finally asking, “Alright, who do we need to kill?”
“ Arrest, Hank. Arrest,” Connor said with a rueful smile that wasn’t unappreciative of his humor. “And I don’t know.”