Your journey isn’t marked linear.
There are no chapters, no destinations in the end to be sought. You think Connor, and it simply looks like:
You, heart laid heavy and a tight smile stretching your lips. Your tongue long gone stale with lies, the greeting to your new partner merely another of many. (It’s nice to meet you.)
Him, a messenger of death wrapped up neatly in a pretty face. He speaks and his words are like silk spun out of shards of glass, eyes cold, disinterested and just that bit disdainful. (Likewise.)
Unfeeling, they all say. Heartless. Empty. A monster.
But you know better. There’s a spark hidden deep within that hard exterior, something smoldering his gaze when no one looks. It can’t hide from you - you would recognize that fire anywhere. After all, you bear the same flame.
Hours turn into days - into weeks, into months - and with time comes the unraveling of him onto you. Slow at first: steady and confusing. You refuse to acknowledge it.
Then suddenly there’s a click and you’re spiraling down headfirst with no way of stopping.
(Because denial can only stretch for so long, and Connor is anything but naive.)
One blink and the world tilts, blurs past you swift and featureless. Maybe you gasped, maybe you didn’t, but all you can particularly register is that you have been pushed up against the wall.
“What are you doing to me.” It should be a question, but it leaves him like a demand: sharp and unyielding. He looms over you, a strangled air to him that wasn’t there before.
“Is right now really the time for this?” You hiss. “Really?”
The sound of gunfire is steadily getting closer. Your job was to get in, grab the undercover informant and get out, but you hadn’t even gotten past step one yet because a certain android decided to stop and have a chat.
“You’re inside my head,” he growls. “Every moment.”
“That’s wonderful. It really is, but we have to-”
“It’s insufferable.”
A strangled scream echoes from somewhere just outside the door. Your heart drops into your stomach.
“Connor-!”
His LED flickers chaotically: a kaleidoscope of rapidly changing colours.
“It must be a malfunction,” He rasps.
Your racing mind comes screeching to a halt, everything blanking completely as his thumb presses to your bottom lip.
“Because I can’t think when you say my name like that.”
You shake.
The pressure of his finger on your bottom lip parts it slightly from the top. His gaze darkens further, turning molten. Breath hitching, your eyes flutter near shut as he leans down, tilts your chin up, up, to mee–
He sharply pushes your face to the right. A bullet whizzes by your ear, erupting the plaster in the space where your head just lay.
You freeze.
Connor runs his hand up your thigh, removing your gun from its holster so fast you barely feel it before he glances behind him and shoots. A body hits the floor.
He turns back to you, impossibly unfazed. “Jump.”
Your entire thought process has short circuited. Nevertheless, your body is trained to his voice, and your feet leave the floor without hesitation. Connor’s hand presses into your back. With nowhere to go your legs wrap frantically around his waist.
“Six more,” he says briskly, ducking to avoid another shot. You hold on tight, locking your weight in place so that you don’t interfere with his movement.
“What are you doing?!” Your brain finally catches up to the moment, the ringing from the earlier gunshot still painfully echoing through your head. “Let me go!”
“No,” he says. “You are currently defenseless.”
“And whose fault is that?!” You choke on the absurdity of it all. “Get your own gun!”
“Androids are prohibited to carry their own weapons,” his voice is blank, unconcerned as though he’s reciting from a script. “This is an open space, and along with your injury, you would have a very low chance of survival if I ‘let you go’. You need to stay close to the safest place.” The world spins as he slams the butt of the gun into someone’s skull. “Me.”
(Injury?) You promptly become aware of the thick, wet sensation clogging your left ear. Sticking to the curve of your neck.
Blood.
Your eardrum must have ruptured temporarily - it would explain the strange sound delay you experience.
“3 o’clock,” you snap, thoughts forgotten as your focus zeroes in on the immediate danger. Connor aims and fires. “Now left.”
You peer from over his shoulder, intently making out forms in the darkness. He is a well oiled machine, and with your voice whispering aid in his ear the two of you weave like a serpent through the shadows.
Connor steps back, merely two feet away from an unsuspecting figure behind him. Your eyes narrow. Unwrapping an arm from around his neck, you reach out, snag the back of their collar and pull. They stumble into your hold. Before the words are even out of your mouth Connor reaches behind himself and abruptly buries a bullet into their head. Blood sprays into the air.
You’re dropped on your feet. Connor pushes you back into the wall, delivering his last shot without looking. The final threat hits the ground just as he crushes his lips to yours.
You drown.
Hands scrambling to find purchase anywhere they can, you struggle to keep your head above the water, to think, but the insistence of his mouth renders you utterly incoherent. His hand tugs your hair back roughly, wrenching a desperate keen from the very center of your being, and you think you would have been embarrassed if there was remotely anything left of you to care.
Drawing you up against the firm plane of his chest, he bites down harshly on your bottom lip as though he’s trying to devour you whole. You gasp something that might have been his name onto his tongue.
It ends just as quickly as it started. Connor breaks away, your knees buckling the moment his pressure leaves. He grips your arm tight, forcing you steady. Your pulse roars in your ears as he shoves the gun into your empty palm.
“This isn’t over yet.”
There’s nothing to hold back the fire now. His eyes burn, the entire world set to ruin before him. You frantically gasp for air.
“Run.”