Work Text:
A sliver of light hits the bare porch, illuminating the powder-like snow that the wind has thrown against the walls of the house. The taxi whirrs quietly, its doors closing behind Connor; he steps onto the overgrown, snow-covered path leading up to the door, his steps calculated but tense, not quite as confident or unburdened as usual. He places his fingertips first upon the doorknob, pulling it ever so gently towards himself, and the sliver of gold spreads steady upon the porch, over his shoes, until he's already half-inside, half still out with his knuckles rapping against the door quietly.
"Lieutenant?"
A raw gruff passes the silence inside the house. With it, another sound rises; a flapping sound first, tinted with the metallic clink clink clink of a tag against its ring, and then the crisp tap tap tap of claws on floorboards. The shape of the Saint Bernard jogs sluggishly into view, the stance of the massive dog partially reserved until it catches Connor's scent. The gruff of the dog is much warmer than that of its owner, and the touch of its nose (slightly wet from a previous lick, yet dry enough for the rough texture of the thick skin to feel through) is welcoming yet a little headstrong about its will to know where the intruder's been. The door closes behind them; Connor's shoes leave barely a wet print upon the floor as he walks in with the dog still nudging his pantlegs, his ankles and his heels. Once out of the doorway, the android crouches down, lets his hand run over the big dog's bulky head and the bump of its mane up to its back, carefully looking into its eyes - neither too long nor too fast - and he greets it with a low voice, one that he knows carries just barely across the living room. He's hidden behind the couch, if Hank's looking towards him. It doesn't feel like the man is, however.
Sumo doesn't drop his company when he pulls himself back up, emerging from behind the furniture. Connor sheds a few dog hairs on his way to the kitchen's light, the scent lingering there a mixture of a pre-prepared meal and a whiff of dark roast coffee. Finally, Hank lifts his gaze to him, if only briefly - the man's dressed in a worn hooded sweater and a pair of loose fitting pants of the same steel grey colour, if only a shade darker. He looks just about ready for bed, but before him, the table's covered in a scattering of papers from work, one freshly decorated with the brown half-circle of a coffee mug's bottom. One look from Connor places the mug now on the counter, empty, although it's easy to distinguish the last still partially wet drop of coffee on its rim, where it drooped down just enough to slip past the edge but not quite heavy enough to make it down the cup's side. The coffee maker's empty, but based on its temperature, it hasn't been that way for long.
"Your door was open," Connor tells him, stopping beside the table.
"Mm-hm. Figured you were coming after the message you sent me, so I didn't bother closing it. Who knows what the fuck you'd end up doing if you found it that way. Probably break my damn window again."
"Only if I had found you in danger."
"Right."
The words drift to silence only broken by the sound of Hank shifting between the papers still piled in front of him; he pulls the corner of the top one aside, stares blankly at the one beneath it, and finally shifts it out of the way as carelessly as he's done for the rest of them. It slides over the table and stops in the middle, its movement halted by the texture of the other papers holding it back before it gets half as far as the one furthest away from Hank.
"You gonna sit down or what? Makes me nervous having you hover over me like that. It's unnatural," Hank grunts without lifting his gaze.
Connor takes a seat, his back towards the darkened living room. Sumo makes a couple rounds between the two of them before lying down; the big dog turns into a big curl, lets out a heavy sigh, and starts peering at them from underneath his brows, his focus bouncing from his owner to the android and back. Another paper breaks the silence; Connor's vision shifts from Hank to the kitchen counter and from there to the window reflecting their images against the dark of the November night.
"Is it just you?" Hank asks then, his voice deflecting from the table back at Connor. "I feel like CyberLife would have a hard time selling domestic models if they were known for breaking and entering."
"Domestic androids aren't programmed to respond to crisis situations like I am," Connor replies, his gaze moving back to Hank whose face is covered by a veil of silvery hair; "They would likely either wait outside or call the emergency services if necessary instead of trying to intervene themselves."
"Crisis situations..."
"You were unconscious, Lieutenant."
"Mm-hm."
Another paper. Connor watches it slide - this time almost to the edge of the table - and catches it before it falls off. He brings it under his gaze and scans it briefly, lifting a curious look towards Hank when the information sinks in.
"I didn't think you'd bring work home like this," he says, voice conversational to mask the cautious curiosity behind it.
"Well, someone's gotta work this job. I can't shake the feeling we're almost there, it's like I must be overlooking something but I can't just figure out what it is - it's like it's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't... put together the last piece."
"When have you last slept?"
"Does it matter?"
Connor tilts his head.
“You are human," he reminds the man gently, "It is fundamental that you rest."
Hank gives him a sharp look, the corner of his mouth twitching dissatisfiedly into a crooked snarl before falling back to a pout as he turns for his work.
"Well, I don't feel like resting."
It's harder to read people - Connor's not programmed for that the way he's programmed to read androids, not quite as keen-eyed for the smallest of shifts in their faces, the small details that make up the crucial complexity of the full picture. But he knows enough; enough to tell that he's lying, and that there's something else than just this investigation eating away at his ability to let go of the papers. The next one reveals another coffee stain, and Connor realises he's been doing this for much longer than a single read-through. With something of a sigh, he reaches across the table, his fingertips pressing over the man's arm.
Hank responds fast; his eyes have that angry look in them that Connor's more than used to seeing, that defiance that seems to have its root in something much more powerful and much harder to define than just the frustration of being denied the right to the last word. It eases out fast, however; it doesn't have the strength behind it to burn harder, brighter and longer anymore.
He's tired. Worn out. Exhausted.
"Lieutenant," Connor says again, his voice now gentle, convincing; "I need you to sleep. We can look into these files tomorrow if you feel like there's something we've missed. I can read through them while you're asleep, if that's what you want. But you need to rest, or you won't be in any condition to do your job. I'm counting on you. This investigation depends on us, but you can't give it your best like this."
The detective lifts his hand, shaking down Connor's fingers from his sleeve. He brushes it over his neck, the gesture implying indecisiveness as much as simple muscle tension, and lets out a sigh. His fingertips, however, catch Connor's eyes; they've got oil on them, the index and the middle fingers, the thumb and the very tips of the ring and little fingers. Gun oil; it makes the android look around, his eyes only tracing the surroundings for a fleeting moment but it's enough to determine that the gun itself is not there. While Hank turns for the same window that works like a double-sided mirror, Connor moves the papers on the table; there's another trace there, barely visible even to his eyes, but it implies the gun was there. Not now, but not long ago.
Not longer than a few hours ago.
He lifts his gaze again and gives Hank a small smile.
"I promise I will wake you if I find anything we've overlooked, Lieutenant," he tells him, his voice untouched by the presence and implication of the gun oil over the man's hands and on his table. "And tomorrow we will work twice as hard to crack this case, but only if you've had some sleep first."
"Fucking hell, Connor."
"I'm afraid I won't be backing out on this," Connor says, some firmness leaking back into his voice.
The huff that escapes Hank, sharp and forceful, only covers that much of the chuckle that it started out as. The man leans back and stretches, arms pulling back behind his head, and his eyes closing; he covers a yawn with the back of his palm, then clears his throat and pushes his chair back.
"Fine. You win, but only because you're a damn nuisance and I can't concentrate anyway. I'll get to bed and I'm leaving you on your own on one condition; don't do anything a human wouldn't do. Alright? No creeping, no standing around doing nothing for hours, no turning off all the lights and scaring the shit out of me when I get up to piss or grab a glass of water in three hours."
"I promise I won't do anything that would alarm you unnecessarily."
"Good. Alright. I'll be off then."
Hank sounds a little uncertain as he stands up, his hand trailing over the chair's back as he moves to the side. Sumo lifts his head, watching him carefully, but chooses not to get up and instead stay by Connor's feet when Hank finally moves for the bedroom.
He stops again soon enough to look at the dog and lets out a dry laugh.
"Seems that I've fallen out of favour," he says in the warm tone he reserves for the dog only, but the playful light in his eyes doesn't go out when his gaze meets Connor's. "Anyway, I guess this is where I should say good night to you."
"Good night, Lieutenant."
"Alright. Read the papers and... whatever you need to do. I'll get up when I get up and don't wake me unless it's a goddamn breakthrough."
"I understand."
Connor watches him turn and disappear from sight; he closes the door behind him almost soundlessly, leaving the android and the Saint Bernard in the kitchen together. Connor's gaze turns for the dog, whose eyes are still on the trail of its owner; it lets out a high-pitched whimper, then yawns wide and settles back down on the floor. One deep, long sigh later, it seems settled once more. Out of some strange urge - an irrational impulse more than anything - Connor pulls his feet out of his shoes, leaving those under the table, and tucks his toes between the dog and the floor. He sits there for some time, head tilted and focus on the large animal, simply experiencing the texture of its fur, the whole of its weight and the sensation of its warmth over his feet, before he finally shakes himself out of it and starts gathering the papers on the table.
As he reads through them, once and then twice and then thrice over within the span of the next couple minutes, he never pulls his feet out from the trap he's created for himself. He feels every breath that Sumo takes, every exhale that slowly deflates the dog over his foot, and something about that experience is so calming, so comforting that he understands why people keep these animals in their houses rather than just knowing the reasons; for the time it takes for him to go over their files until the dog finally stands up, stretches and leaves him to curl up in a different place, Connor's quite aware of how soothing the presence of this familiar, trusted animal must be for its owner. Once the weight and the warmth and the softness is gone, however, he's left with nothing new.
As far as he can see, they haven't overlooked anything. The files are, it seems, what they've always been; despite the underlines, the ink pen circles around words and sentences, the full picture is still lacking. He stands up before he knows what he's doing, his feet still bare, and steps aside from the table. His fingertips move up to the knot of his tie and he straightens it, watching his reflection in the window; in the far distance, there's a light on in a window, but no movement. The street is empty, the lamps lining it cold against the flurry of snow coming down for the second day now. The silence of the house, of the city around him, if not for the incessant hum of the wind, is almost unnerving.
It takes another whimper from Sumo for Connor to realise he's breaking one of the conditions laid down by Hank; he's standing there doing nothing, weight shifting slowly from one foot to the other, for what to a human eye would likely be an unnerving amount of time. So he turns, seeking out the dog who now stands still next to the bedroom door, tail wagging cautiously and eyes fixed upon the doorknob. Connor watches it for a moment, the sad look in the dog's eyes as it keeps wagging quietly and whimpering occasionally nagging at him. He looks around, and a strange hollowness settles inside him; the separation of not only the wall and the door keeping him and the dog apart from the man inside the room on his own, but of the silence, that unnatural stillness - it makes him nervous, fidgety, uneasy.
Sumo looks at him; he looks at the dog, his palm pressing against his chest around where, if he were a human being, his heart would be, in the warmth between his shirt and his jacket. Another whimper, this one longer, louder, more demanding, and the dog's gaze is fixed on him, then swiftly glances at the door before returning to him again. Another wag. One more whimper that turns into three, a quiet cry, as the dog places its paw against the door and scratches.
"I'm sorry," Connor tells the animal quietly, "I don't speak dog."
He feels like he does, however. There's something quite universal about the misery, the nervousness of the animal in front of him. He casts a look around him, lets his vision linger over the now even further smudged oil stain - the absence of the gun - and his auditory system maps out this void of sound around him, and he feels what the dog feels - a deep-settled, dreadful sense of unease that finally pushes him to move. He crosses the room, kneels beside the animal and takes a hold around its neck with his arm; it's so big that it truly takes about the whole length of his arm to contain it. It presses its cold nose against his cheek, nudges him, and cries quietly. He feels like he's breaking the rules again, this time the unspoken but uncrossable kind, the no androids allowed laws of their partnership, of his assignment as a companion to this man, as a creation of man, as an android that's hard-coded into separating himself from man. It shakes him to open the door, and perhaps that's why he's crouching in front of it, holding the dog as he peers in. The room's dark. The unease of the quiet shifts for the unease of the red alert blaring inside him telling him to not go in, to not intervene, to respect and separate but he's already made up his mind, hasn't he?
Sumo slips out of his grip, tap taps into the room and disappears. Somewhat stiffly, Connor stands up after the dog's gone. His hand reaches for his chest again, the open front of his jacket, and he sheds it from his shoulder, then from his arm, and then from over his back and his other shoulder, his other arm. He places it on the couch; the blue glow of it illuminates the back of the couch and gives the ceiling above an eerie glow, but he doesn't want to take it inside the dark bedroom.
Don't wake me, Hank said.
Connor slips inside the room, wishing his body wasn't illuminating it. He's like a bioluminescent fish in the depths of the ocean, just as blind to where he's going, what he's about to do; all he wants is just to hear the man breathing, as if he could miss a gunshot in this forsaken silence.
The bed's wide. Sumo's dark shape has vanished to its other side, beyond the dark mass of Hank's body on the other end. He's not in the middle, not even close to it, but almost at the very edge on the farthest side from the door, back turned towards where Connor now stands. The android's more than uncomfortably aware of his own presence there, the halo of blue light he brings with him, and some sense of panic seems to brew within him as he stands there, frozen, not sure why he's there to begin with but just as equally unable to exit the room again now that he's there. The gun - he knows it's in this room, but he can't seem to find it. In the drawer, maybe... or under the pillows.
Another thing he knows is that he's doing it again, the still-standing, the idling that Hank specifically forbid him from. The knowledge makes him throw his head to the side in discomfort, a twitch of movement in the absence of any other. The room's still awfully quiet, but Sumo's not crying anymore. Now it's just him there, trapped in his own inability to path his way out or in.
Finally, he sits down on the other end of the bed, stiff and slow and with his hands on his lap, back turned to Hank, and simply gives in to the circumstances. He'd rather be here than out there. Rather here, to know if the man reaches for the gun. Rather here, over the other options. Rather here, even if there's no danger.
Away from, if not the silence, then at least the isolation.
Some time passes; he can make apart the breathing of the man not too far away from him, but not quite as well as the breathing of the dog further away. It takes him minutes to realise that it might not be better to sit there doing nothing than it is to stand in the corner doing nothing; that if, indeed, Hank gets up to get a drink, he'll likely end up grabbing the gun to shoot Connor just because he's sitting there like some kind of a mannequin, glowing dully in the room that the man expects to be dark. His palm flits over the glow of his arm, and he closes his eyes, focusing on it; it dims down, withers away, leaving the room a little bit more undisturbed than before. And then, without knowing what else to do, he leans back on the bed until his body's lying still on the edge of the mattress, his eyes facing the ceiling above.
"So you don't like being left alone," Hank's voice carries over the darkness.
Connor turns his head, eyes seeking out the man's back, the blanket cast over his shape. In a moment, Hank's turned on his back as well, but he's not looking at Connor and before long, they're both looking at the ceiling instead.
"What else don't you like?"
"Silence," Connor says, finding that the answer surprised even him; "I didn't like the silence. I didn't like not knowing what you're doing. I didn't -"
"Like me locking myself up with a weapon?" Hank finishes for him with surprising accuracy.
Connor nods slowly.
"I know you're suicidal. Although it didn't seem like you were planning to die tonight, I felt uneasy with the odds."
He looks at Hank, listens to the sigh he lets out, watches the glow of his own LED in the clearness of the man's eyes.
"I'm worried about you, Lieutenant."
Hank lets out a short laugh.
"You know, I think we're clear on that. It's funny, that out of everyone I know, it's this piece of plastic that just won't leave me alone with it, not the flesh and blood people that claim to care about me. Everyone knows it, Connor, but you're the only goddamn thing to follow me in my own bedroom to make sure I'm not eating a bullet tonight. And - I gotta hand it to you. It's working. It's hard to feel that insignificant when you're making a machine go mad by just leaving the fucking room."
Connor feels a small smile on him, and Hank returns his gaze, at first observant and then, cautiously, breaking into something of a smile to mirror the android's. He sighs and shakes his head, finishing with a small chuckle as his eyes shy away from Connor again.
"So, what are you now? Some kind of a cuddly toy to help me sleep? I'm a bit too old for that, Connor, and you're a bit too man-shaped for it to not get awkward."
"I don't know. I don't know why I'm here or what I could possibly do for you. I just - didn't want to leave you alone. That's all."
"I've got my dog, Connor. I'm fine; I won't do anything rash. All I want is some damn sleep, like you said, so I can work my job tomorrow. But if you won't stay out there then fine, stay here instead. I don't really care either way."
"Where's the gun, Lieutenant?"
"In the drawer. I trust you not to go all deviant on me with it."
"I wouldn't hurt you; I have no reason to. You know that. I just want to be sure."
"Whatever. Is there, like, a power down mode in you?" Hank asks, turning another look for Connor.
"I can power down. I don't need to, but I can."
"So shut up and do that."
Connor nods. Then, swiftly, he pulls up from the bed and crosses it; he feels Hank watching him as he opens the drawer, takes out the gun and empties the bullets from it. Their eyes meet as he tucks them in his pocket, one by one until none remain in his palm, and only after does he replace the gun in the drawer and close it again.
"Good night, Lieutenant," he says once more after crossing the bed and settling back down on it, quite out of his comfort zone but prepared to, at least, follow this one instruction given to him.
"Night."
He closes his eyes. The world fades - the distant, barely audible rumbling of Detroit goes first, then the wind, the room's interior and then, little by little, even his awareness of his immediate surroundings. The glow of his LED flickers, then vanishes, leaving the room quiet and dark once more. The only thing, the only interference with the perfect stillness and void of his existence, becomes the slight tilt of the mattress under him and the warmth and presence of another closer to him; the faintest touch of fingers over his, the grasp of a hand around his hand, and the security, the safety of certainty replacing the unknown.
His fingers intertwine with the other's, and after that, what's left is a better silence.