Chapter Text
It takes eight days of Connor being inside The Lieutenant’s house for him to be able to fully process what has happened. It’s normal for him to take a while to fully process big actions, or having to sit with emotions for a while before he realizes exactly what he is feeling, and considering everything that had happened that day then eight days isn’t that crazy. Not really. Especially after he breaks it down step by step:
CONNOR’S GUIDE TO HAVING A NO-GOOD, SUPER AWFUL, TERRIBLE DAY:
- Start the day by getting screamed at by your father.
- Try and stop your brother from screaming at him back.
- Fail. Now it is a fight.
- Get loud enough that a well-meaning neighbor calls the police, which instigates it to the both of you getting physically hurt.
- Have your home be considered Unsafe For Minors and your dad considered A Danger To Himself And Others and be removed post-haste.
- Be forced to sit in a police station for six straight hours. A police station crawling with people, mostly loud chain-smoking men of the hypermasculine variety. Add the constant ringing of phones, tapping of pens, and bright overhead lights for best results.
- Best results being a public meltdown.
- Almost get in very serious trouble because your brother, who should probably be resting since you’re pretty sure his entire chest would be bruised and sore, is yelling at people to get the two of you to either be moved to a private room. After he gets consistently ignored he will use language that historically the police do not like.
(“What is it going to fucking take to be moved to a different room?” He says through gritted teeth and a busted lip. “Do we need to get arrested? I can make that fucking happen. I’ll light this whole goddamn building on fucking fire. Make some bacon. Is that enough?”)
- Have an older officer, burly and with a head of messy silver hair, walk in at that moment.
(“Jesus Christ, Johnson, they’re just kids. Stop treating them like fucking suspects. I’ll take them to a private room myself, God forbid you get off your ass for one thing.”)
(“Piss off, Anderson.”)
- Wait in the backroom for two more hours, bored and hungry and in pain, until Anderson from earlier is back and he says since there haven’t been arrangements for them to stay anywhere for the night then either they can sleep in the drunk tank or crash in his guest room overnight.
Drunk Tank : A separate cell specifically for intoxicated people or those who cannot safely be around others. This is the more vulgar name for it, with it sometimes having titles like Alcohol Recovery Centers or Sobering Up Supervision Sites. Whatever it is named, they are famously unpleasant to be in, especially overnight. The term likely originates from the Prohibition Era, which was active in America from 1920 until 1933, though the practice of having a separate holding cell for the intoxicated is documented long before then.
Nines turned to meet Connor’s eyes, silently trying to gauge what he thought was best and Connor tried to use the Twin Telepathy that non-twins are obsessed with and convey that he very much would like a bed and a shower and to not be somewhere surrounded by men who think yelling vulgarities makes them seem stronger.
“Yeah, okay,” Nines said. Connor looks over at the officer just in time to catch that his badge reads: Police Lieutenant Hank Anderson, 305, Detroit.
While they were being checked out to be placed under the Lieutenant’s care he caught wind of another officer, not one that Nines directly threatened, muttering to the Lieutenant directly, probably thinking that he was being quiet enough even though they were within a few feet. “Are you sure you want to do this, man?”
“Where else do they have to go? Tell me that.” He had repeated at a normal volume.
Lieutenant Anderson’s house was not clean, but it wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t made for teenage boys, or possibly even for the officer considering there is a dreary nature to everything, but it was quiet, safe, warm, and they were allowed to access the fridge whenever they were hungry. Neither of them were going to complain.
It even has a dog! He was very pleased to see the gigantic bundle of wrinkles and fur. He spends a lot of time with Sumo in those eight days. He was never allowed to have a dog of his own and yes, Sumo is not his. He does not live here. But he can borrow him as long as he’s here.
“If you let him think he’s a lap dog then you’ll never get rid of him.” He muttered like it was a bad thing.
“But he’s the perfect lap dog.” Connor’s voice was slightly muffled underneath Sumo, who had laid most of his body on his chest and face. As someone who likes restrictive clothing, weighted blankets, and (exclusively from people he trusts very much) tight hugs, it is a very pleasant experience.
Connor and Nines were placed in the same bedroom out of necessity. What used to be the guest room for a man that hasn’t had guests over in at least six years judging by the amount of dust over the surfaces in there. The first night they had to fight over who gets the air mattress (using rock, paper, scissors. Connor won) but the Lieutenant bought Nines his own the very next morning so now they are on opposite sides of the room. If it were a sitcom then they could have put a strip of painter's tape right down the middle, splitting it in half, and fight over who gets the side with the door.
“This is my side” : A trope where two characters who either don’t like or are mad at each other, have to share a room and come across the compromise of splitting it directly down the middle and forbidding the other from ever crossing into their area. The origin of it as a joke is unknown, but there is a real-life case of the Emperors of Rome, brothers Caracalla and Geta, doing so in the year 211.
It was eight days after Connor’s birthday that he finally processed everything.
They were eating dinner together. ‘Together’. Not at the table but all in the living room, plates in their laps, watching TV silently. The kitchen table is used as a catch-all for various odds and ends of the Lieutenant’s and hasn’t had a spot cleared off of it to eat there in a long time. They are sitting on the couch in the living room. Connor and Nines are at least, with the officer in an armchair separated from them. The TV is playing a basketball game. It got Connor thinking about being back home, a topic designed just to make him sad, and how they never sat in the living room. The two of them resorted to being locked in their rooms if they were at home at all. The TV was always on and sometimes it was sports but sometimes trash reality TV and sometimes home shopping network but always something noisy and if he said anything then there would be Hell to pay. And the house is so gross and there’s frequently strangers walking around and Connor is going to have to leave here at some point and probably go back there and -
Then he, very suddenly, surprising even himself, chokes back a sob.
“There we go,” Nines says as if he were waiting for the shoe to drop.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop : It is an idiom that means ‘to anticipate something that you know/fully expect to come.’ It is possible that it originated from people living in the Great Depression in New York Tenements hearing their upstairs neighbor come home, take one shoe off and drop it noisily on the floor, and then sit in anticipation for the next. Connor remembers the first time he heard the phrase: as a kid watching a comedy movie that was objectively too old for him and one of the punchlines was “Shoe: Dropped”. A partial component of the idiom, he had no idea what it meant at the time so he got up to research it on the laptop he shared with Nines.
When they were taken they were given twelve minutes exactly to pack what they needed. Somehow between the two of them, they had both forgotten the laptop. They also deliberately had their phones taken away from them well before the wellness check turned into a They Need To Get Out Of Here trip so they don’t have those either.
ITEMS FOUND IN CONNOR’S ‘WE ARE FINALLY LEAVING’ RUCKSACK
- Four T-shirts (plain solid colors), three jeans. One pair of shoes: blue Converse lace-ups.
- His copy of ‘Vagabonds’ by Hao Jingfang, translated into English.
- His toothbrush and toothpaste.
- His glasses cleaning and repair kit, which he always keeps on his person.
ITEMS FOUND IN NINES’ ‘GET THE HELL OUT OF DODGE’ RUCKSACK
- Two T-shirts (band shirts from Hot Topic), three jeans (all ripped), his vans and his favorite boots.
- His favorite jacket. A fake leather one he got thrifting. Looks deceptively real.
- His toothbrush.
His sobs just got stronger as Nines gently took the plate of food out of his lap and the utensils from his hand. Sumo was startled awake by the noise but hadn’t clambered over, still watching the situation.
“Is everything okay, kid?” Lieutenant Anderson asks, shocked and concerned out of his mind. That makes it acceptable for him to have asked such a dumb question, since people who are okay rarely break into sobs. He mutes the TV, the colors of the basketball game still flickering on everyone’s faces, but stays in his armchair.
“He’ll be fine.” Nines isn’t trying to sound dismissive of the Lieutenant’s concerns but it is clear that he intends to not have him be involved in. . . any of this. Nines, who has cried quietly for several nights that they have been here and hasn’t been letting it build into a pressurized canister ready to explode like, apparently, Connor has.
God. He’s such a shit older brother. He should have his shit together, or at least have realized his emotions outside of dinner. Now it’s a whole thing and everyone is looking at him and he’s probably going to remember this embarrassment every time he eats pizza for the next long while.
It doesn’t seem to bother Nines at all though and he just sits next to Connor, on his right, one arm swung around his shoulder and squeezing tightly. Being a comforting and grounding presence for Connor but not entirely constricting, a tough tightrope to balance. This is one of those moments where he is glad they are twins and not just brothers since he has never had to voice a lot of his (as he has taken to calling them in his head) Quirks to Nines. He doesn’t like telling people that he doesn’t like hugs from strangers, or that he has Quirks about textures, and he doesn’t have a problem with telling Nines anything like this but it’s still nice that he hasn’t ever had to. The way that Nines is holding him makes it easy for him to put himself in a reassuring position: each arm crossed over his chest and a palm tucked into the neck of his shirt so it is resting on his collarbone.
It’s hard to rationalize why it makes him comfortable. But it just does.
The Lieutenant isn’t content to just sit there and watch, or grunt and turn the game back on, or even quietly escort himself to his bedroom. Instead, he gets up with an Old Man Groan and goes into the kitchen. Connor continues to sob with no signs of stopping anytime soon and he starts to rock slightly in his seat.
He feels a lot like he’s on the outside watching himself freak out like this. He’s still somehow able to think so logically even though he’s feeling panicked and scared and too hot at his core but freezing in his hands and he’s sweating and he wants to be alone but also not and he misses his old bedroom but he never, ever wants to go back -
The Lieutenant is back with a wet paper towel. Maybe he isn’t as detached as he thought because he hadn’t heard the sink turn on or even the footsteps as he approached them. Nines, thankfully, took it from the officer so Connor wouldn’t have to. He placed it on the back of Connor’s neck. It was cold.
And nice.
“Cry all you need to, kid.” He says and it sounds so truly nonjudgemental. Neither of them say anything, Connor because he can’t and Nines because -
Well, he can’t speak for him. There are a lot of reasons why Nines had decidedly ignored the Lieutenant.
Sumo finally walked over and placed his big head in Connor’s lap and after a few more minutes of this: the presence by his side, the cold paper towel, and the soft fur tickling his skin, he had calmed down enough to pet Sumo’s head in a repetitive motion. Starting from the top of the eyes and traveling down the neck, eyes to neck, repetitive. Comforting.
“I’m sorry,” he eventually says. His eyes are still too cloudy to look at the clock so he cannot tell how long it has been. Possibly ten minutes, possibly an hour, both feel just as likely. His voice is all wet and croaky sounding, and he can still feel the salty tracks on his face from when he hasn’t wiped them away.
He takes the wet paper towel, now very warm, to clean the tears away.
“Psh,” He waves a hand in the air as if what he said was completely ridiculous. It sounded like he had more to say but Nines had spoken over him.
“Don’t ever fucking apologize for crying after going through the shit we just did.” He points a finger directly in Connor’s face, right between the eyes. If he had tried looking at it then he would have had to cross his eyes. Nines turns slightly to the Lieuetnant. “Sorry.”
He laughs gently. As gently as you could with his gruff voice. “I think it’d be a little hypocritical of me to say no cursing in this house. Just don’t say anything I wouldn’t, I guess. Which is still not a whole fucking lot.”
Nines does a sarcastic little salute. “Aye-aye, Captain.”
“Lieutenant,” Connor corrects and they laugh. He laughs too, softly and a few milliseconds late, unsure of what was funny about his comment.
The Lieutenant unmutes the basketball game. Sumo pushes his head further into Connor’s lap. The game ends, they go to bed. Nines cries quietly on the other side of the room and Connor doesn’t know what to say. Eventually, he gets up to squeeze his shoulder in what he hopes is a normal human response and reassuring. Nines grips his hand back tightly for a second then releases it, cries almost completely stopped. He goes back to bed.