#(not specifically about the hankcon but it just kind of happened in the background while i was writing)

[mootmuse]

dbh fic, 2898 words. hankcon-ish. 

Set around a year post good ending, about a month after Hank has hit a (vague and not specified in this fic) particularly low point. Hank is starting to try and make some changes. He and Connor talk about it.

a03 link

Connor looks over and watches Hank as he crosses the living room and drops down onto the couch. He’d been wanting to watch Hank since he’d heard Hank’s car pull up in front of the house, to watch the direction of him, but he’d been conscious of how that would make Hank feel, conscious of Hank’s hatred of feeling vulnerable, of how much Hank’s likely already felt that way today.

Connor’d restrained himself, and now that Hank is moving close to him, he gets to look.

“How was it?” he asks, unable to help himself. It’s a pleasant surprise when Hank genuinely seems to consider the question.

“I don’t know,” Hank says finally, slowly, running his tongue across his teeth. “It was… I don’t know. Pretty different from the other time. You know-” Hank meets Connor’s eyes for a second, and then he looks away. -few years ago.”

Connor waits. He watches Hank think about it, in a silent moment where they both ignore the noise of the television.

“He didn’t make me talk about, uh… any of the shit,” Hank goes on, sounding thoughtful, a little baffled. “Said I could talk about it if I wanted to. Didn’t seem like he gave a shit when I didn’t. We talked about you instead.”

Hank rolls his head to the side to look at Connor, but Connor doesn’t let himself ask. This is about Hank, not Connor - not even about what Hank might truly think about him, desperately as Connor wishes he could ask.

“Is that not typical?” Connor asks instead, as questions about Hank are the priority. “Do they usually expect you to talk about your… experiences in the first appointment?”

Connor doesn’t call it ‘trauma’. He wants to, because trauma is what it is. The fact that humans have psychological reactions to certain stimuli should be a straightforward one, a simple thing to speak aloud.

But Hank, Connor’s learned, is anything but simple. Emotions themselves, he knows, are anything but simple, but Connor doesn’t like thinking about his own emotions even now, most of a year after technically embracing them. He likes thinking about Hank instead.

Perhaps he understands Hank’s behavior now a little bit better than he used to.

Perhaps he shouldn’t talk around it, shouldn’t call them ‘experiences’ in the stead of the truer word he wants to use. North certainly wouldn’t. But it’s a good time to placate Hank, to be gentle with him, to adapt to what Hank wants in order to avoid provoking him. Then again, it often seems like a good time for doing that.

Connor’d thought about that quite a bit after Hank had made the declaration that’d led to this therapy appointment in the first place, after he’d said if Connor was so fucking determined to bury himself under Hank’s bullshit at least one of them ought to know what enabling meant, at least one of them ought to fucking do something about it, and he’d sounded angry when he’d said it, a thin layer of anger fitting badly atop a great deal of fear.

It’s hard, Connor’s found. Hard to dig through the memory files of his past behavior with Hank, find the times he’d annoyed the man deliberately or refused his orders, and flag that behavior as not enough, as not having been employed when it’d truly counted. Enabling. He knows what that means, now, a little better than he used to. A little better than he wants to.

Connor hasn’t said aloud that he misses being only a machine, although he likes to think that Hank already knows. Things had been simpler, when adapting to Hank’s mood swings and bad habits had been the right thing simply because it’d been necessary to complete his mission. That’d changed at some point, the rightness of it, but Connor hadn’t noticed when it’d happened.

“I don’t know,” Hank says, and Connor rewinds his memory just far enough to remind himself where their conversation’d been going. What kind of behavior is normal for a psychologist to expect in their client’s first appointment.

“I don’t remember, uh,” Hank goes on and Connor, specifically designed to note the most minute unsteadiness in a voice’s tone, notes it here, “the first time I went to someone like that. I was kinda, kinda out of it. So I don’t know, maybe it’s normal. Still feels weird, though, I was expecting it to be this big… you know, a big thing. A big deal.”

Hank’s more talkative than Connor expected, and Connor wonders whether he should call the good doctor up himself and ask him for a few tips. For now, he doesn’t want to risk calling too much attention to Hank’s urge to share by saying anything himself. Instead he watches Hank, spends the seconds between speech studying the minute changes in Hank’s expression, the look in Hank’s eyes, the play of light flowing over the peaks and valleys in his face and the precise degree each shadow changes while Hank reorganizes all his thoughts.  

“It helped, you know,” Hank says, after eight-point-three-five seconds. “Drinking. I know it, it- But it helped. It still… It still hurt, I guess, but it made it easier to hurt. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I just… I miss it. Fuck, I miss it.”

Did Hank say this in his appointment too? Did he say these things out loud for the first time in a far away room where Connor couldn’t hear? Or was he quiet, sharing little, slowly losing the pressure that he’d felt to speak until he came home and shared these private truths first and foremost with Connor?

Connor knows which option he prefers. Little as he likes thinking on emotion, he knows the sharp, selfish pleasure that drives that thought to be pride.

Connor watches Hank. Connor has a way of watching people, listening - an expectant way of doing it that seldom fails to crack a subject sitting across the interview table. Not that Connor needs it now, he supposes - Hank seems like he’d go on talking all on his own.

“I told him I didn’t stop for me. Thought he’d get on my ass for that too, but he didn’t.”

It takes Connor a moment to judge just how to respond. “Thank you,” he decides, and Hank’s expression twists in distaste.

“Don’t fucking thank me, jesus. After what I put you through. I should of given it up the moment you first moved in with me, I should of fucking known better.” Hank leans an elbow on the arm of the couch and leans away from Connor, looking at the floor. “I don’t want to get better,” he goes on, in a flat voice. “I still don’t. You’ve got a right to know that. You both oughta know it.”

Connor watches him. He wants to touch, to soothe, but Hank’s vulnerable underbelly is a maze of sore spots, of pain and sensitive things, and reaching out too far too quickly might tread on one of them, snapping this honest vulnerability shut up into anger in an instant. Connor, he decides, wants to be present for this moment more than he wants the risk of ending it.

“But you’re trying anyway,” Connor says, cautious and quiet.

“Yeah,” Hank says, gaze distant. “Yeah. I’m not doing it for me.” He looks over back at Connor, the drooping slant of his eyes looking intense, intent in the low light. “I really thought that’d be it, y’know. Thought he’d kick me out when I told him that. Don’t know why. I guess, uh- I guess it’d be easier than quitting, if he did that. Then I could just stop going, come back, tell you I tried, and then… I don’t know.” Hank takes a deep breath and runs a hand over the lines of his face, the gesture as slow and heavy as the tone of his voice. “I don’t fucking know.”

A moment passes.

“What did he say?” Connor asks, adding a clarification off the inquisitive noise Hank makes in the back of his throat, off Hank’s expression, his look of a man surprised away from some deep, dark undertow of thought. “When you told him you weren’t going for your own sake? What did he tell you?”

“He said that was a start,” Hank says simply, and his lips tilt up into a wry and doubtful smile. “Something to build on or, you know, some kinda shit like that.”

“You don’t believe it is?”

Hank shrugs and looks away, his lips pressing tight together. “I don’t know, I just…  I guess... I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Okay? Just don’t, don’t-”

Hank purses his lips, hand wrapping around the edge of the couch. He swallows.

Connor weighs the risks. The weight of the expression on Hank’s face, the misery in him, tips the scale of Connor’s risk assessment over. He leans, and his hand finds the back of Hank’s neck as Hank’s hand has always found the back of his, those times when Connor is scared, or lost, or struggling with emotions which are too much, too painful to try and name. His voice is gentle, and firm, and very sure.

“If there’s one thing I”ve had to learn,” Connor says, “It’s that I can’t map out what’s going to happen tomorrow. I can’t plan out every little aspect of my future until I suck the fun right out of everything.”

Not that that last part’s particularly relevant but Connor changes the tone and shape of his words there just enough to echo protests Hank’s made in the past, to reference exasperated, argumentative moments which seem warm now in Connor’s memory. “You made sure that I learned that,” Connor adds, and sees the memories are warm for Hank, too, and he mirrors the faint, tired smile the memory sends drifting up over Hank’s face.

“I don’t expect anything, Hank. I’m just proud of you.” Connor’s eyes move over Hank’s face for a moment, and he decides to reinforce the statement. “I’m proud of you,” he says firmly, emphasizing every word to better etch them in against the biased cruelties of human memory. He wants Hank to remember, to understand.

And Hank does. He swallows again and his eyes move away, and Connor keeps watching instead of following the track of his gaze. He watches Hank’s nostrils flare as his breathing goes rough.

Connor holds the moment, until Hank starts to lean away. Then he leans back, hand sliding down safe back to his side again. He gives Hank a moment more, silent.

“You must be hungry,” Connor says, in a tone so casual that Hank’s eyes flicker back up to him, the difference between this statement and the last feeling like a weight lifted. Connor raises his eyebrows, looks attentive. “Would you like me to make you a meal?”

“Uh…” Hank’s voice is rough and he’s slow to answer, but he does answer. Connor observes Hank’s posture, watches him start to pull back together all his splayed out edges.

“Yeah, sure,” Hank says. “I guess.”

“Make it yourself.” Connor says it bluntly, his eyes warm, the corners of his lips turned up in a calculated percentage, just close enough to and just far enough away from a smile.

Hank’s surprised into a breathy snicker, the struggle on his face curled into humor, and Connor’s carefully calculated smile grows wide before he tries to tell it to.

“You fucker,” Hank says appreciatively and leans forward to swing himself up from the couch, stepping over Sumo and making a point of kicking at Connor’s legs as he goes. Connor smiles after him, at the way he lumbers across the room and into the kitchen, at the way he leans on the door of the refrigerator while he stares down into it. Hank’s seeing the beers that used to be in there, Connor knows, cold and waiting for him.

“On second thought, let’s order something,” Connor decides. “My treat.”

“Your treat,” Hank echoes derisively, straightening up and leaning back against the counter. “What’s the treat, you getting to lecture me about calories and how much grease I’m pumping into my arteries the whole time I try to eat?”

Connor hesitates, his eyebrows pulling together with a hint of a frown, and Hank’s gaze focuses on him. Connor pulls up the relevant files, a preplanned apology, an explanation that’s taken him over a week to puzzle through.

“I… regret that behavior,” he starts, slowly. “When I learned doing that didn’t change your eating habits I should have stopped. Instead I put more pressure on you, and only ended up making your… troubles… worse.”

“Don’t you fuckin blame yourself for my shit,” Hank says, his arms crossed over his chest. “That’s my responsibility, not yours. It’s not up to you to fuckin manage me.”

“No, I know that,” Connor says, because telling the truth would likely derail the conversation into a place that Connor doesn’t want it to go. He has a plan here, an apology that he’s decided it’s the right time to make, and he doesn’t mean to see that sidetracked.

“I only meant that… I was trying to exert control over a situation that couldn’t be controlled. Your other habits were too… important to you, but I wanted to change something. I wanted to help.”

Hank’s arms tense around himself and he looks away, expression tightening. Connor goes on, hurrying to get in front of the guilt settling over Hank’s face.

“But I don’t need to any more.”

“What?” Hank frowns, confused.

“I don’t feel the need to change your habits any more, Hank. You’re doing that yourself.”

“Connor I told you, don’t get your fuckin hopes up, okay? Just cause I spent an hour getting stared at by some asshole with a psych degree doesn’t mean everything’s gonna change. I’m still-”

He stops, looking away with a slow, unhappy breath, lips pursed.

“That’s not what I mean either, Hank.” Connor leans forward, looking at Hank as intently as Hank is looking away. “You told me all of....” He pauses, skimming his memory files. “All of twenty three times just last week some variation on the same concept: that I should go easier on myself, that nobody’s perfect, that I can’t be expected to solve every problem. Why does that apply to me but not to you?”

Hank breathes a laugh. Connor doesn’t know if it’s an honest laugh or a dangerous one, but when Hank looks at him again his expression’s wry. “You should join some kinda debate club, you know that?”

Connor finds himself smiling a little, pleased at both the compliment and the success implied within it. “I’ll order from the place you mentioned last month,” he says, leaning back into the couch. “The one that just opened. They have some desserts on their menu I think you’ll like to try.”

Hank stares at him for a moment. He huffs down at himself and then ambles back over, leaning a hip on side of the couch. “You might wanna take that whole apology thing back before I decide to hold you to it. You let me eat like this all the time and I’m gonna gain like, a million pounds.”

“I don’t expect that to be a problem. Your typical nutrient intake hasn’t affected your level of fitness yet, especially now you’ve cut alcohol out of your diet. In fact you perform the physical aspects of your job remarkably well, considering your age and lack of exercise.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Besides, the treat for me is that I get to watch you eat.” Connor expected that to get him exactly the expression that Hank is giving him right now and so he bears it, unperturbed. “I like to catalogue what your expression looks like when you’re enjoying yourself.”

“I don’t even know what to say to that.”

“You don’t need to say anything. I’ve already ordered the food.”

Hank makes a brief, amused noise and slips past Connor to settle back onto the couch. “You’re kind of a weird little shit, you know that?”

“You did encourage me to take up hobbies.”

“My face is not a hobby.”

“All you told me was to find something that made me happy and do it. I’m only following your recommendation, lieutenant.”

Hank’s eyebrows rise and he looks at Connor, amused and incredulous, and after a couple seconds he turns to the television and turns its volume up, shaking his head. After a couple seconds more he glances over at Connor again and then snorts, picking up the nearest throwable thing - a clump of Sumo’s shed hairs - and tosses it, watching it float in the air toward Connor’s general direction.

“Cut it out, you’re makin me feel like I got something in my teeth,” he says, and sprawls out, and nudges the side of Connor’s shoe with the side of his own, and doesn’t move it back afterward. Connor leans a little toward him and looks toward the television, feeling more settled than he has all day - more than he has for months. More settled, more relieved, more proud. He settles back into the couch, following Hank’s gaze toward the television, and watches the room out of the corners of his eyes, happy to try and name his own emotion, just this once.