Work Text:
Hank paused in his fiddling with his phone, sniffing the air and looking toward the kitchen.
“Are you actually making popcorn?”
He was sitting in the dimly lit den of Penny’s living room, with the glow of the television’s blue screen blaring at him. The soft yellow light from the kitchen was casting a shadow as Penny moved around just out of view.
“You can’t watch a show without popcorn! How long have we known each other, and you still fail to grasp this fact?” Penny teased back at him, emerging from the kitchen with a comically large bowl of buttery yellow popcorn.
She had already been in full at-home leisure mode when Hank had stopped by unannounced. Her wavy blond hair hanging freely past her shoulders. The old stretched out yellow t-shirt, so faded that the logo on the front wasn’t even readable anymore. The dark purple leopard print pajama pants that matched no other clothing on this Earth. It was a Look, and one that Hank had abruptly realized that he’d missed.
More like, he missed the life that they had had together when he had last seen her in leisure mode. He was self-aware enough to admit that. What they’d lost was only emphasized by the wisps of grey blending into her blond hair now, the smile lines around her mouth and the crows’ feet at the corners of her eyes. That had been in the vows, hadn’t it? To grow old together?
Hell, they weren’t even old yet…and maybe now they weren’t growing old ‘together,’ but they were growing old around each other again now that they had Connor, Coda, and Calder connecting them.
Blinking free of such thoughts, Hank chuckled and sat forward on the couch, holding up his phone. “There’s not gonna be a show if we can’t get my phone to talk to your stupid TV.”
Penny snorted and sat down on the couch, placing the big popcorn bowl on the cushion between them. She made a grabby hand for his phone, and he deposited it in her palm.
“You and technology. I swear,” she teased, then gasped and tilted the screen of the phone toward him. “Awww!”
Hank didn’t need to see to know what she was ‘aw’-ing at. His phone background had been the same picture for months. He had yet to take another picture worth replacing it with. It was a simple selfie that he’d taken at Connor and Julia’s wedding, specifically at the reception party afterward.
Front and center were him and Julia. He’d only suggested taking a picture together. SHE had been the one to jump into his personal space, smooshing her cheek against his and smiling so wide that her eyes were nearly shut. He was smiling more out of surprise at her than anything else. She was a beautiful bride, of course, but the hidden gem of the picture was just over Hank’s shoulder, where in the background, Connor was holding Julia’s bridal bouquet in front of him as if HE was the bride and was politely smiling at someone hidden behind Hank and Julia’s big heads.
“She’s so cute,” Penny cooed.
“Yeah, she’s all right,” Hank said with a wink and a shrug. “Fix the phone connection, and you’ll get to see more.”
“Right, right,” Penny tutted, fiddling with his phone until it suddenly connected to the living room television.
The glaring blue flashed to a mirror of his phone background, and Penny smugly handed Hank his phone back.
“You’re a dark wizard,” Hank said, going to his saved pictures.
He navigated to the folder where he had downloaded and saved all of the pictures that Julia and Connor had been sending him for the past couple weeks, in a folder labeled “CJ Honeymoon.”
Connor and Julia had decided to finally go on their belated honeymoon after all the turmoil that had recently broken out in Detroit. No set destination, just going wherever the wind took them. Lord knew they deserved some fun after…everything.
If it wasn’t the car crash nearly killing Julia and resulting in the traumatic replacement of her legs, then it was the fact that the 3rd precinct had botched the handling of the crash so badly that androids had been largely left to die while human lives were prioritized. If it wasn’t Commissioner Jack Greer showing up to essentially bully Julia over her testimony, then it was Connor anguishing over not being there for her. If it wasn’t Connor then himself being abducted by Cyphon, aka Jason Rose, then it was Julia waking up alone after surgery. If it wasn’t Cyphon erasing Connor’s entire memory storage, then it was Julia learning that Gavin had been shot near fatally in the same building as her. If it wasn’t Connor being rescued and not recognizing any of his loved ones, then it was his memory only being restored by trusting Calder to go back inside his mind. And even then, Calder had only been able to salvage so much, leaving unavoidable and random gaps in approximately 20 percent of Connor’s memory.
Christ, and there was so much more to be unpacked about Calder’s whole situation. Coda had been running interference, keeping spirits up among Penny, Calder, Hank, Connor, and Julia as they all struggled to adjust in the aftermath of that paradigm shift. Genuinely, the kid was a saint.
Long, traumatizing story short, Connor and Julia deserved some time away. Connor was still a way out from even thinking about coming back to active duty at work, or coming back to work at all, and Julia was on leave pending her own psychological evaluation after what she’d been through.
Frankly, Hank had been getting a kick out of the pictures that they had been sending him during their adventures. And after the round of pictures that he’d gotten today, he’d felt compelled to share them with Penny. After all, Connor was just as much Penny’s boy as he was Hank’s at this point. Even if Hank and Penny weren’t—whatever, Hank just wanted to share this with her. Was that so suspicious? Fuck off.
“Wait.” Penny wiggled back in her seat, pulling her legs up and hauling the popcorn bowl into her lap. “Okay, I’m ready. Let the show begin!”
Hank looked at her flatly, snorted, shook his head, and managed to set the photo album to a slideshow. The television perfectly mirrored his phone, and the first picture kicked things off.
The pictures weren’t in order; Hank had downloaded them from their text messages and saved them randomly. So the first picture seemed to drop Hank and Penny right into the middle of things.
There was Connor standing on a pier, the ocean laid out behind him. He was grinning a little self consciously as the wind whipped at his clothes and his hair, and he had both hands conservatively jammed into his coat pockets. He looked good. Unburdened. More at ease than Hank had seen in months.
The second picture was the same pier, but this time with Julia and Connor together. The picture had to have been taken by some member of the public, and it had Julia with her arms looped around Connor’s waist, and one of his arms around her shoulders. They had identical smiles for the camera.
“Oh my heart!” Penny crooned.
Hank chuckled, but he couldn’t deny the warm bubbly feeling in his chest, seeing Connor happy and relaxed like this.
The third picture was of Connor at the zoo. An animal handler was instructing him on how to interact with an elephant, and Connor had reached out a hand and rested his palm on the large animal’s trunk. Connor was looking with wide eyes at Julia—the picture taker—and his mouth was curved into both a delighted smile and an “Oh!”
Next was Julia standing at a railing overlooking an enclosure of black bears, pointing a finger and with her mouth in the process of speaking excitedly.
“They probably spent an entire day just in that zoo,” Hank said fondly. “Connor being the big animal lover that he is.”
Penny hummed at that, crunching on some popcorn.
The next several pictures confirmed Hank’s hypothesis.
The group of pictures after that had the pair on the beach. Connor modestly dressed in a white t-shirt and blue swimming trunks, with Julia dressed in a more revealing sunflower yellow bikini. There they were just hanging out in some beach chairs, finding some shells and sand dollars.
The next chunk of pictures was clearly taken earlier in the trip. Connor looked less rested and more tense. Julia looked tired but managing to smile when Connor couldn’t.
They were at the train station, wearing the same clothes that they’d been wearing when Hank had dropped them off. This picture seemed to be the springboard to officially start their honeymoon, as Julia was holding her train ticket with barely restrained glee.
The next picture was actually a short video, close up on Julia’s face as she and Connor shuffled their way toward their seats.
“So the lady who scanned my ticket called me ma’am, which, okay fine whatever, but then, as I was walking away, she said ‘enjoy your trip, Mrs. Anderson’.” The smile on her face widened impossibly far as her eyes lit up, and she looked just off camera. “That’s the first time I’ve been called Mrs. Anderson.”
“Hank called us Mr. and Mrs. Anderson before we left,” Connor’s voice came in, where he was just out of view.
Julia puffed out her cheeks. “Yeah, but I think he was teasing us. He doesn’t count.” She winked at the camera. “Sorry, Hank…I think this is us.” She pointed to a row of seats.
“Yep,” Connor hummed.
The video stopped.
The next picture was Connor, asleep on the train, squished between Julia and the window, head tilted against the glass. Julia’s message with this picture had been something along the lines of “every good adventure starts with a hearty nap!”
“I remember the first time someone called me Mrs. Anderson,” Penny murmured.
Hank stiffened slightly, not looking over at her immediately, staring instead at the next picture: Julia wearing a straw cowboy hat and striking a pose amidst a pile of large rocks.
It wasn’t until Penny shifted, probably feeling awkward about saying that, that Hank glanced at her.
“You were never Mrs. Anderson though. Remember, you didn’t take my name.”
Penny looked uncomfortable until Hank smirked and winked at her. Then she relaxed and scoffed, throwing a piece of popcorn at him.
“God, I thought your grandmother was going to actually hit the roof when we told her that.”
“Ah, she was an old traditionalist that way,” Hank said, waving off the history. “Literally no one else cared. I sure didn’t. It’s not like I was trading you for a goat and six chickens.”
“I was worth AT LEAST three goats back in my prime.”
Hank laughed at that, looking at her. “Oh yeah? What about me? If I was to become Mr. Nichols, what would my livestock worth be?”
Penny pouted her lips for a thoughtful moment, then extended her foot and tapped him playfully on the knee. “One goat…four chickens…and the prize winning cow.”
Hank sat up, preening slightly, and he took a handful of popcorn from her bowl. “Flatterer.”
The atmosphere of the room warmed with mutual affection, and it was furthered when the pictures on the television shifted again.
There was Julia in what looked like a forest, feet planted wide, hands in her pockets, leaning very far back in order to look straight up at the massive redwood tree in front of her.
There was another picture of both Julia and Connor together, this time standing in front of one of the large trees. Connor was pressing a kiss to her forehead, and Julia’s eyes were closed and her mouth open with a giggle. The next picture was probably taken a few seconds after, with the two of them looking into each other’s eyes lovingly.
“I’m glad we have the house to ourselves tonight,” Hank remarked. “Every time I’ve shown these pictures to Calder, he makes gagging noises, and Coda just clutches his heart and looks on the verge of tears over it.”
He chuckled and glanced at Penny…only to see her hands clutched over her heart and her eyes on the verge of tears as she was moved by the pictures.
“Ohhh,” Hank crooned at her. “Don’t be doing that.”
“I can’t help it!” Penny said, wiping at her eyes and then gesturing to the television. “He’s been through so much. They both have. To see them finally happy and…”
Alive.
“…peaceful and getting to enjoy themselves like this! I’m allowed to be emotional about it!”
The next picture interrupted, as it was also a video, this time with Connor directing.
“We’ve started this thing,” he explained, glancing up and away from the camera before back into the lens. “I don’t know how or why we started doing this, but…Watch.”
The camera shifted to look across a crowded shopping mall. Julia was standing in front of a clothing store, casually looking at the mannequin displays in the window.
Connor suddenly emitted a noise like a bird call: a unique and very specific sound. A few passersby glanced around, looking up at the ceiling as if to spot a bird.
Julia, however, went ramrod straight where she was standing, and she began to swivel like a periscope in search of Connor. As soon as her eyes locked onto him, the video captured Connor’s little snicker of amusement. Julia smiled and shook her head, gesturing for him to come look at something.
The camera bobbed slightly as Connor walked closer to her, and he spoke again.
“I could just as easily call her cybernetically. I don’t know why this is more amusing.”
The video stopped, and Hank laughed at Connor’s bemused words.
“What?” Penny laughed. “I don’t get it.”
The next image was also a video, this time with no explanation.
There was Connor, standing at a sunglasses kiosk in the mall and seriously contemplating his options. Julia held the camera where she stood several storefronts down.
This time she made the specific little bird call noise. Again, a few passersby glanced around. This time, it was Connor who straightened up, periscoped around, and then spotted Julia with a pleased grin. Julia’s giggling at Connor’s grin was less subtle than Connor’s earlier snickering.
More pictures of their meandering around local shops and businesses followed, punctuated by short videos of them taking turns bird-calling at each other across crowded areas.
“What a couple of dorks,” Hank chuckled.
“It’s adorable!” Penny argued. “Remember we used to have stupid jokes like that!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Hank shook his head, thinking back to one of their old stupid jokes. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “But Colonel Mustard won’t be happy about this.”
Penny howled as he resurrected that old inside joke from their own honeymoon. “Oh my GOD, I’d almost forgotten the Colonel Mustard thing!”
The next picture was Connor and Julia wearing matching cowboy hats as they stood outside a large meteor crater tourist spot surrounded by what looked like miles of desert.
There was their hotel room, with Julia fixing her hair. Connor was standing beside her, holding the camera for a mirror selfie. Julia had bobby pins between her teeth and had her hands in her hair, staring at the camera’s reflection, as though Connor had snuck up on her to take the picture. He did look awfully smug about his success.
There was another video, this time in a moving car. The car was driving autonomously, which allowed Connor to film himself with his hand firmly over his mouth, stifling a laugh. Why he was laughing wasn’t immediately apparent, until a long, wobbly snore rattled the inside of the car.
Connor screwed his eyes shut against a laugh, turning the camera to catch Julia in the act. She was curled up in the seat beside him, her head flopped back against the head rest. Mouth open, sucking in air loudly.
“I told you,” Connor managed to whisper at the camera. “Let this be admissible evidence that I’m not the only one who snores in this marriage!”
The video cut off, immediately moving on to the next picture. This one was of Connor and Julia at the Grand Canyon.
Many. Many pictures of them at the Grand Canyon. Enough so that Hank could clearly see the sun going from high in the sky to setting on the horizon as the slideshow progressed.
The last group of pictures was less adventurous. Connor had sheepishly admitted in his texts to Hank that they’d overdone it a little bit and needed a day of doing nothing to recuperate. So these latest pictures were few and mostly set in the same modest hotel room.
There was morning sunlight coming in through the windows and landing on Connor, curled up around a pillow, his cheek bunched up and his eyes closed…deeply asleep. Peaceful.
The next picture was Julia sitting cross legged in bed and eating a bowl of spaghetti. Her eyebrows were raised, and she was giving a thumb up gesture. Hank remembered them both being so excited that their hotel had thirium-based room service food options.
The last picture was taken by Julia, where she was sitting up against the headboard with her legs stretched out in front of her. Beside her on the bed, Connor was lying on his stomach with his feet at the headboard and his top half down by her legs. He was propped up on his elbows, hugging a pillow and rapturously watching some kind of dog competition show on the hotel room television mounted to the wall.
Most of Julia’s messages accompanying previous pictures had been riddled with puns and corny humor or lighthearted quips, but Hank remembered the genuine text she’d sent with this one.
“My best friend and the love of my life are the same person. How cool is that?”
The slideshow cycled back to the beginning pictures, and Penny gave a contented sigh, slumping back into the couch cushions.
“They seem happy,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” Hank sighed as he reclined back in his seat as well, mirroring her.
She looked away from the screen to put her eyes on him. A thick beat passed, and she nudged the popcorn bowl at him. He snorted and took a handful of it.
“You seem happy too,” she murmured.
Hank found a particularly butter-coated piece of popcorn and tossed it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing before winking at her.
“I am,” he confessed, then, “You?”
Penny’s smile was slow and warm, and she propped her elbow on the cushion behind her, propping her cheek in her hand as she turned to face him more.
“I am,” she said quietly.
A simple question, answered with simple words, but God they felt heavy and meaningful in the air that floated between them now. There’d been nothing simple about the Hell that either of them had individually gone through to get to ‘happy,’ but look at them now.
God, he had missed this. Missed her. He still missed this and her, really. This was their old house where they had lived as a family of three: Hank, Penny, and Cole. Now the house was solely in Penny’s name, and it held a different family of three: Penny, Coda, and Calder. Hank had his apartment across town with Sumo. He’d gifted his previous house to Connor and Julia, to start their married life together in the house that Connor had always known as home. Their android dog Oscar was waiting at home for them. Hank and Lisa Person had been tagteaming dog-sitting duties while they were out of town.
Hell, the five of them—Hank, Penny, Connor, Coda, and Calder—had even had what could only be described as a ‘family dinner night’ not long before Connor and Jules started their honeymoon.
Looking back at where they’d started, Hank couldn’t have said he ever predicted things working out this way. Him, Penny…their three android boys bringing the best kind of chaos back into their lives. Hank and Penny’s…whatever this was…it was never going to be the same as it used to be. But damn if things weren’t good right now.
“What’s Coda up to tonight?” he asked, feeling the air getting too honest.
Penny seemed to silently agree, as she plucked up a piece of popcorn and munched on it.
“Over at Ember and Polly’s place tonight. The three of them and I think Gwen too are having a game night.”
Hank felt a swell of pride in his chest at Coda’s widening social circle. Coda was so timid and reserved sometimes; Hank could admit to worrying that he’d have trouble making friends. But Coda was also impossibly endearing and sweet though. He’d won over grumpy, cynical Ember in ten seconds flat; no one else stood a chance.
“Good. I’m glad he’s happy too,” he tutted. “What about Calder?”
Penny chuckled and shook her head. “Calder’s never happy.”
Hank snorted. Penny sighed and looked at the ceiling.
“There was…some mighty big talk about him and North going to an…art exhibit?”
Hank blinked, trying to picture those two knuckleheads anywhere that had any kind of sophistication like an art museum. “Huh?”
“Well, I think the artist only uses knives and blowtorches in her work. Supposedly she’s creating art live in-house tonight, wherever it is.”
“Ah. That makes more sense now.” He smirked. “Talk about a match made in Hell.”
“I think they’re just friends, Hank.”
“Well, a friendship match made in Hell then.”
Penny laughed and didn’t argue with that, and for a moment, Hank’s head was purely empty, letting the sound of her laughter ricochet inside his skull pleasantly. He just sat there stupidly until his senses came back.
“Hey,” he started. “I’ve got to swing by and check on Connor and Julia’s dog later. You want to join me? I mean, unless you have some other plans,” he teased, gesturing to her leisure mode fashion.
Penny glanced down at herself, smirked, and looked at him again. “I’d be happy to join you, but I’m not changing clothes.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” Hank grinned at her.
Penny’s smile widened, then turned shy, and then she was sitting up and fiddling with the empty popcorn bowl.
“All right,” she agreed softly. “Let me, uh, let me grab a jacket, and we can go, yeah?”
“Sure.” Hank bobbed his head, watching her stand up from the couch.
He looked away before she could catch him staring at her with too much longing, and she toted the bowl back into the kitchen, leaving him alone in the living room.
He pursed his lips and let a few seconds tick by, and then grinned and folded his fingers in front of his mouth, blowing through them.
It was a weak approximation of the birdcall that Connor and Julia had used on each other in their videos, but in the enclosed space of the house, the sound carried with all of its intentions.
A short bark of a laugh came from the kitchen, along with a haughty: “Oh, Colonel Mustard won’t be happy about that!”
Hank slumped back in his seat with a laugh. God, it felt good to laugh with her again. Julia was right; your best friend and the love of your life being the same person was pretty fucking cool. But fuck, when that person was out of your reach for years, it was worse than Hell.
He was in too good of a mood tonight to pick apart what it all meant and what it all could mean, where things stood between him and Penny after all they’d gone through. All the ifs, ifs, ifs of it all. Instead, he let the laughter roll through him in this moment, and he found himself hoping for more days like this and more laughter with her.