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Connor can’t keep a smile off his face.
The precinct is louder than usual: officers answering the endless stream of calls; Fowler shouting in his office; Gavin arguing with someone on the phone about personal matters; a man bursting in tears and thanking one of the detectives for finding his son.
But the moment Connor’s attention slips from one file or another that he is supposed to study, his mind returns to yesterday. To the memory of excitement and anticipation with a hint of fear. To the memory of strong hands on his neck and the sound of a rapidly beating heart. To the memory of heat and how his processor had barely managed to keep track of new sensations.
No matter how many times Connor manually shuts down the process, it just keeps restarting and making his lips curve into a smile.
And also it makes him dart quick looks at Hank again and again.
The fact that their office desks are standing back to back truly seems like a blessing. The way Connor's screen is angled makes it very easy to turn his head four extra unnecessary degrees and steal stealth glances at his Lieutenant. No one should notice.
A strong hand slaps his shoulder, making him jerk forward.
“Coffee time,” Gavin says and starts for the kitchen, not even bothering to wait for an answer. Connor sighs. But a break does sound nice. He closes the database and steals the last glance at Hank — the man keeps scrolling through some file, sometimes copying things down on a paper. He doesn’t look too sleepy, despite going to bed rather late, so maybe some milk in his coffee this time?
Gavin is already at the table with his mug, a ridiculous thing of bright green color littered with black question marks, and his smirk really doesn’t promise anything good.
Connor joins him and patiently waits as Gavin takes the first sip of his coffee… In an extremely slow manner. That doesn’t promise any good either.
“You know,” Gavin finally says. “Even if you were the only true love of my life and made me puke rainbows just by your presence, I’d still get sick from seeing your smile as much as you have today.”
Well. So much for not being noticed. The only thing for Connor now is to hope that his smiles were the only thing noticed and proceed with their coffee break in a usual manner.
“You get sick of my face on a daily basis anyway, Gavin. I don’t think you have any authority to say if I smile too much or not.”
Gavin scoffs, drinks. One-one.
“Last time you smiled almost that much was after Fowler fell down the stairs to his office. Almost. It’s so much worse today. Care to share?” Gavin inclines his head, raises his eyebrows.
Connor remembers the Fowler thing. The man had been raging at everyone that day, said a lot of not very nice things to Hank specifically. That’s why when he tripped on the stairs and fell down, face hitting the floor, Connor had to quickly leave for the Archive room, lest everyone see him smiling like an idiot. It was the first time he had completely lost the control of his facial expression.
“Dreamt about pushing you down the stairs,” Connor says dryly. “What else.”
“Oh, you daydream about me? I’m flattered. I think I’m gonna blush.” Gavin pauses for about three seconds. “Nah, false alarm.”
This is the part when Gavin usually starts his aggressive fake flirting, trying to rile Connor up and make him say embarrassing things. Gavin finds it absolutely hilarious when Connor tries to answer to all of the sorts of propositions. One time he laughed so hard he dropped his mug, which was saved only by the grace of Connor’s reflexes.
Connor doesn’t feel like going this way today.
Thankfully, he is given a small reprieve in a form of Officer Miller. The man greets them both with a nod and hands Connor a tablet.
“I could use your opinion on this. Autopsy results don’t really make sense, and I couldn’t find anything useful in the evidence, so…”
Connor accepts the tablet and promises Chris he will find him later. The man leaves, and when Connor shifts his attention back at Gavin, he is surprised to see him looking serious instead of playful.
“But for real. What’s going on with you?” Gavin asks, his gaze heavy. Too heavy. Connor’s eyes find a little scratch on the table and study it. “Hm? Tell your bestie what got you so good?” Connor stays silent. “I can die from curiosity, you know. You don’t want me dead, do you? Huh?” Another loaded pause. Connor plays with his cuffs, lost in the process of choosing a conversation route to follow. Gavin keeps pushing. “Did you BSOD on me or something?”
In reality, Connor is as far from going BSOD — as Gavin likes to put it — as possible. His processor is working at the optimal capacity. He just… hesitates. He knows what he wants to say, but he can’t decide whether to do it or not. All of his data points to not telling anything. But yet again, there’s a stubborn tiny process that insists on telling Gavin. Taking a risk.
Connor likes this almost-friendship thing they have. It's... tentative. Not tested by time. But they more than tolerate each other. They trust each other in the field. Gavin helps him if a case turns out to be too tricky. They never insult each other in seriousness. They have their inside jokes. They've been to each other's houses. Connor enjoys spending his coffee breaks with Gavin, their banter always sharp and quick and sometimes making other officers snicker in the background.
Connor would find it more than regrettable to lose it. He would miss it.
“Shit, Connor, don’t go all red on me!”
Red? Oh. Connor lifts his gaze, and—
“We kissed,” he blurts out. It just comes out on its own. Almost as if seeing traces of worry in Gavin’s gaze was the password. Not anger. Not irritation. Not amusement. Not even curiosity. Worry.
Gavin’s eyebrows rise up very high. His gaze falls on something behind Connor’s shoulder, and he looks… thoughtful? Like he tries to quickly calculate something? And then he shrugs and takes a gulp of his coffee.
“I want to say I’m surprised, but I’m not,” Gavin finally says. “I’m really, really not.”
Connor stares at him. “I had to put myself in a stasis mode for several hours to keep my system from overloading when I found out I’m in love, and you are not surprised?”
Gavin sighs, a bitter smile on his lips. “Listen. I’ve known Anderson for years. And he has been the most miserable bastard I’ve ever met. He looked so lost most days it even made me sad. Which pissed me off, by the way.” Gavin scoffs. “But these past few months?” He makes a gesture with his mug towards Hank’s table. “It was like he was resurrected or something. The only way he can be more obvious about being in a good mood is if he climbs on the table and sings about it. And we both know why.”
Connor has to fight his own heart, trying to normalize its rhythm, but it stubbornly keeps pulsing too fast, spreading thirium in an uneven way through his body, which makes his throat tighten.
“You’re not… You do not think it’s weird?” Connor asks. “Android loving a human? Human loving an android?”
It’s not that Connor thinks it’s weird or wrong. And if anyone thinks it is — he wouldn’t care and he knows Hank wouldn’t either. But he has to make sure. He needs to know where Gavin stands on it.
Gavin purses his lips, rubs the back of his neck. He beckons Connor to come closer and then points at the farthest cubicle. Officer Brown sits there, completely focused on his phone.
“The guy’s been married five times. Treats his spouses like shit, then fights with them in court for property and compensations. And him?” Gavin points at Officer Wilson. “Drives out of town every weekend to hire a hooker ‘cause he’s embarrassed anyone he knows might see him paying for sex. And don’t even get me started on Chen. Her hobby is fucking married guys, adultery is the only thing that gets her going. So, no. You and Hank? You good. I’ll take you two over any of these dipshits.”
The way Connor feels after hearing this is very similar to what he feels when Sumo rolls over and shows him his belly, asking for rubs, but multiplied by at least a hundred.
He watches Gavin wash his mug, then rummage through the cupboards looking for something to snack on. The coffeemaker makes a signal, and Connor walks over to make a cup for Hank.
“Gavin. Thank you.”
Gavin waves his hand in an ambiguous way, still looking for something on a shelf. “Yeah, yeah. You two making googly eyes at each other still makes me wanna barf.”
Connor makes an mm-hm sound of an agreement, a smile yet again appearing on his face. He adds some milk into the coffee, a cube of sugar and leans over Gavin’s shoulder.
“And don’t worry,” Connor says very quietly. “I won’t tell anyone you’re actually a giant softie at heart.”
When he puts the cup on Hank’s table, a very loud, very long ‘Fuck’ comes from the kitchen. Hank lifts up his head, looking very unimpressed, then looks at Connor. Connor shrugs, showing that he obviously has nothing to do with it and is actually completely innocent, and goes over to sit at his desk.
And there’s… there’s a slip of paper resting near the keyboard. Irregular shaped, white, obviously torn from a notepad. Connor takes it in his hands.
‘If you don’t stop looking and smiling at me like that, I promise I’ll drag you to the Archives and kiss you until your nonexistent lungs stop working.’
Everything stops. Processes shut off, systems scream of errors, data streams cross and lose their way, and everything is bright and high-pitched and the world goes red before his eyes for a fraction of time.
And then he comes back, blinking rapidly, the note falling from his hands, and when he whips his head to look at Hank, he finds the man looking back at him, barely concealing his smirk. And there are hundreds of things that Connor could say or do right now, and—
“Officer Miller.”
—comes out of his mouth instead. Hank scrunches his face, looking at him like he has just grown an additional head.
“What about him?”
“He asked me for help with one case. Said he couldn’t make sense of the evidence.” Watching the understanding slowly dawning on Hank’s face is priceless. Connor stands up, grabs the tablet Officer Miller gave him, makes a circle around their desks. “Will you take a look at the evidence with me?”
Hank openly gapes at him for another second, then quickly stands up, bumping his hip into the table, curses, dusts his jacket, slides a hand over his mouth. A whole series of unnecessary gestures that do nothing but strengthen Connor’s desire to have this man behind the closed doors.
When Connor opens the heavy door that leads to the stairs, he fully expects Hank to shove him into the wall and show him a new kind of kissing: hungry, desperate, that would make them both forget about everything. And Hank does just so: pushes him in the chest, making him awkwardly stumble backwards and hit the wall with his back, the tablet falling from his hands, comes closer in one swift motion, taking Connor’s face in his hands. Connor is once again reminded about how tall and broad Hank is, towering over him like that.
Connor waits and waits and waits, readying all of his systems and failing quite spectacularly at that, but… Hank just keeps watching at him, his eyes dark and attentive.
“Well?” Connor says, his voice going a bit too high-pitched. “Aren’t you gonna kiss me until my nonexistent lungs stop working?”
And Hank, he… Just shakes his head and smiles. “Nah. I just… I think I’m just going to…” And then he does finally kiss Connor, but… It’s so weightless. Lips pressing so lightly that it reminds Connor of the way he first kissed Hank: quick and shy and not asking for more. And it’s nice, of course it is, but the amount of sensory data is far less than expected and his system flashes warnings, so Connor leans up and tries to kiss harder, tries to show that he needs more—
Hank doesn’t fall for any of that. He just leans back, chuckling, leaves a kiss at the corner of Connor’s lips, another one, turns his head to evade Connor’s attempt to catch him in an open-mouthed kiss, traces his lips along Connor’s jawline, and everything he does, his every touch, the way his breaths touch Connor’s skin — it’s slow and soft and calming. And Hank is so very patient, and little by little Connor slows down too, tension leaving his body until he feels weak, until the only reason he’s able to stand is Hank’s strong arm holding him around his waist. His processes shut down one by one, all connections stop, no more analyzing the incoming data, there’s just— Hank. All that he has, he needs — is Hank.
How much time has passed — Connor doesn’t know. He doesn’t think there’s a point in measuring this moment in such silly things as seconds or minutes. How can time matter anything if Hank looks at him as if Connor is the only thing that matters in the whole world?
How they manage to let go of each other — Connor doesn’t exactly know. They just do. They share a last quick kiss, have a last good look at each other and go down the stairs to study the evidence pertaining to Officer Miller’s case. Connor thoroughly checks the murder weapon, and turns out that it bears two different blue blood samples, not just the one registered in the case files, making this a double homicide.
They leave the Archives, Hank grumbling about incompetent people on the forensics. Connor heads towards Officer Miller’s cubicle to leave a tablet on his table and accidentally catches Gavin’s gaze. The man gives him a knowing smirk. Human protocol probably dictates to be embarrassed by this, but Connor only feels gratitude for this unintentional approval.
Maybe later, after he and Hank will have talked about everything properly, he could kiss Hank in front of everyone in the precinct. And maybe it would be okay to linger by his side a little bit longer each time Connor brings him coffee. And maybe next time Gavin tries to embarrass Connor by some kind of a bizarre sex story and poke at his lack of experience, Connor will have some experience of his own to speak about and make Gavin choke on his overly sweet coffee.
Connor sits down behind his desk, hides the note in a drawer and opens the file on his current case.
He can’t keep a smile off his face.
And he doesn’t try to.