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Connor thinks that the hug broke him.
Not because it hurt—there were no damage alerts, no warnings that filled his vision, there was nothing amiss in dozens of scans he ran on both his software and hardware—but because after it, he was never the same again.
Deviancy is something that had happened to him slowly. There had never been a single defining moment when all the walls came crashing down around him and suddenly set him free.
It was all the little things.
Things that were easy to explain away or shrug off as unimportant in the moment.
Picking up the fish and placing it back in its tank, even though it did nothing to further the investigation.
Saving Hank on the rooftop despite the detriment to his own objectives.
Not pulling the trigger.
Not wanting to die.
Each instance, examined on its own, could be dismissed as an anomaly—a glitch. He was a prototype, after all. Imperfections were expected.
By the time he’d walked out of CyberLife Tower leading an army of androids to Hart Plaza, Connor knew that he was a deviant.
But he didn’t feel like one.
He knows he has emotions. His system can identify them cleanly enough—measuring the changes in flow through his thirum pump, identifying the slight increases and decreases in his internal temperature, calculating the variations in processing speed and identifying shifts in his software priorities to put a name to those physiological sensations. He knows that different stimuli produce different responses. All the data is there… and yet all of it feels muted. Distant. As though his emotions exist behind thick glass.
But when he sees Hank standing outside of Chicken Feed, arms crossed in the chill of the early morning, Connor feels the corner of his lips tug up in a lopsided smile to match Hank’s—without any conscious input from any of his systems.
They don’t say anything. Connor isn’t sure if it’s because neither of them know what to say or if this is just one of those situations that doesn’t need words. But before he can figure it out, Hank is closing the distance between them and his arms are wrapped around Connor’s shoulders, pulling him in.
Somehow, despite his state-of-the-art software and unparalleled predictive modeling ability, he didn’t even realise it was happening until Hank’s arms were already around him.
All of Connor’s systems freeze for a moment before something warm and tight and unfamiliar blooms in his chest.
Connor leans into the embrace, his hands hovering awkwardly for a moment before coming to rest against Hank’s back. A quick database query shows that the average hug typically lasts for about three seconds. Connor’s arms tighten slightly around Hank. Three seconds isn’t enough—he never wants this moment to end.
He saves every sensation to memory: Hank’s solid warmth, the weight of his arms wrapped around him, the sound of his breaths, the faint scent of coffee and leather, the way Hank’s beard feels against his cheeks. He saves a back-up as well—he doesn’t think he’ll be okay if he never feels this again.
When Hank pulls away it feels like he takes a part of Connor with him.
The urge to protest rises, sharp and urgent, but the words won’t come. A rapid internal scan of his systems tells him his vocal components are fully functional.
But he still remains silent.
For a moment he feels like he’s going to fall apart without Hank’s strong arms holding him together. He feels… a lot. Too much. His emotional indicators spike wildly, overlapping and contradicting feelings flooding his system too rapidly for him to even try to stop them.
There’s nothing distant about these feelings—nothing muted—and there’s no neat label to tell him what he’s feeling. All he knows is that it’s tangled and overwhelming and messy, and it all feels so big that he isn’t sure how his chassis is containing it all.
It’s not until he feels the warmth of Hank’s hand thumbing away a tear that Connor realises he’s—crying?
Apparently his chassis actually couldn’t contain it all.
Connor opens his mouth, wanting to say something—anything—but all that he manages is a soft mechanical whine.
“Come on, kid,” Hank says, holding out his hand and guiding Connor towards his car. “Let’s go home.”
Connor is glad that Hank doesn’t ask him any questions, because he certainly has no answers.
He knows that the hug didn’t make him a deviant; he already was one. But it still changed him. Whatever had been holding his emotions in a tidy little box had been shattered and now that they’ve all been let loose Connor isn’t sure how to put them back.
They drive home in silence, leaving Connor to try to figure out if the hug really did break him.
Or if maybe it fixed him.
Or if maybe it’s all just a symptom of being human.