#xiilnek's fic

[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.

[echthr0s]

just want to let people know that this fic exists, because I’d forgotten about it until just now but... god damn it’s fucking good

[ao3feed-hannor]

they both got shit to work out but that's fine

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2XOrcV3

by xiilnek

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.

This is not specifically about them being a romantic pairing - in fact I was all set to make this gen at first, and the subject matter would work just as well if it had been - but Connor's laser focus on Hank went a certain way and romance is definitely an undertone here. Not sexual attraction, unless you want that to be a part of it, but certainly romance.

Words: 2898, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Hank Anderson, Connor (Detroit: Become Human)

Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor, Hank Anderson & Connor

Additional Tags: Recovery, Depressed Hank Anderson

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2XOrcV3

[ao3feed-connor]

they both got shit to work out but that's fine

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2XOrcV3

by xiilnek

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

This is not specifically about them being a romantic pairing - in fact I was all set to make this gen at first, and the subject matter would work just as well if it had been - but Connor's laser focus on Hank went a certain way and romance is definitely an undertone here. Not sexual attraction, unless you want that to be a part of it, but certainly romance.

Words: 2898, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Hank Anderson, Connor (Detroit: Become Human)

Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor, Hank Anderson & Connor

Additional Tags: Recovery, Depressed Hank Anderson

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2XOrcV3

[bucketofbarnes]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion Characters: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Jaskier | Dandelion Additional Tags: Emotional Hurt/Comfort Summary:

Remember that quest? The Old Friend of Mine quest in Witcher 1, where one best friend met another after years of grieving? Remember how such a powerful premise came out about as emotional and moving as a wet fart?

This fic should work, though, even if you never played the first game. ‘Loved one comes back from the dead’ is a pretty simple trope, after all, and the drama is the important thing.

@biblichor This is amazing!!!

[hannorlibrary]

by xiilnek

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.

Sorry to tag this with both gen and romantic relationship tags - although romance is an undertone here it's not the part of their relationship that's the focus, so I wasn't sure which to use. Connor and Hank just love each other a lot, and categorizing exactly in what way for labeling-for-fic-search-purposes is hard.

Words: 2898, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Hank Anderson, Connor (Detroit: Become Human)

Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor, Hank Anderson & Connor

Additional Tags: Recovery, Depressed Hank Anderson

[mootmuse]

It’s around 12,000 words, gen, Hank & Connor. (There’s one line that could be taken as preslash, although it wasn’t written with preslash in mind. But other than that, gen.) I’d summarize it but I think the title does all that heavy lifting for me. 

[mootmuse]

I got the idea for this little fic from this adorable comic. The fic is nothing like the comic, but it did make me think. 

a03 link

- - -

There are plenty of people around, sitting on benches, doing whatever it is people do outside during the day. They crowd the sidewalk; to get anywhere in this part of town, you have to kiss your personal space goodbye. One guy, fiddling with some big metal box on his lap, looks up sharply as they pass - or, given where he’s glaring, as Connor passes. That’s not weird. Laws might change, but people don’t. Hank doesn’t think much about it.

Until Connor reels back, clutching at his head.

“G-get back! You don’t have access! Get out of me!”

A woman yelps as Connor knocks into the man next to her. Connor doesn’t seem to notice, lurching backward further until his back hits a lamppost while people yell and scramble away from him. Hank spins around to the guy with the box; it’s got antennas and dials and a little light on the top is flashing red, exactly the same shade as the LED Hank can see through the gaps in Connor’s desperate grip.

“Hey! Shut that damn thing off!” Hank charges toward the guy and the guy gives him this savage grin, all teeth, and takes off. The guy turns sideways and starts to weasel his way through little openings in the crowd but Hank, Hank bulls his way through it, forcing himself through those same too-small gaps between people on the power of adrenaline and rage and broad shoulders, and Hank gives the same wide, savage grin the guy’d given him as he launches himself into a leap that tackles them both to the ground. The guy gets an elbow in Hank’s face, and Hank gets a knee in the guy’s kidney. The guy tries to grab Hank and roll and Hank falls heavily onto his side, grabs the box that’d fallen next to them, and wacks it hard against the side of the guy’s head.

Hopefully that broke the damn thing but he’ll check in a second; while the guy’s stunned Hank rushes to grab his wrists, taking his handcuff bar off a loop on his belt and slamming it against them.

“You’re under arrest!” He yells it as quick as he can while the cuffs shoot out of the ends of the bar and tighten themselves, not wanting to waste time he could be using to check on Connor but needing to, needing to make sure this shitstain doesn’t get off on a technicality. “For assault on a police officer, possession of an unlicensed weapon, assault on another police officer, you fuckin idiot, and creating a public disturbance. Hey, take this asshole!”

That last he yells to the two uniforms making their way over. Crowded, touristy parts of town like this tend to be patrolled a little better so them being here isn’t a surprise, but it is lucky they got here so quickly. He flashes his badge at them, just to make sure they know what’s going on. “Take him back to the station, lock him up. Take him!”

He all but throws the guy at the uniforms - kids, really, but they can take him, he’s cuffed - and stops only to grab the box off the sidewalk before running back to Connor. There’s a woman kneeling next to him but she looks more freaked out than anything else, so Hank labels her ‘random good samaritan’ and puts his focus where he really needs to, on Connor himself.

It looks like the box didn’t break after all, because Connor hasn’t moved much. He’s still slumped against the lamppost, still clutching at his head while his LED goes from red to yellow and back again.

“Hey, I got the thing, don’t worry, I can just, uh- just turn it off-”

Hank reaches for the biggest dial and turns it and hears a horrible noise, a thick, distorted static noise coming from between Connor’s clenched teeth, and Hank curses, turning the damn thing as hard as he can in the other direction.

“Other- other one too,” Connor gasps out, while the good samaritan looks helpless and clutches at Connor’s shoulder. “Turn it off.”

“Other-” Hank mutters, looking frantically at the thing. There is only one knob. “Shitfuck, what- what fucking- Fuck this-” Hank decides and takes out his gun, and smashes its handle against the base of the antenna until he feels a crunch. The light on the box flickers, then goes out. He hears Connor let out a sigh.

“Okay, he’s okay, you can clear out,” Hank says tiredly, waving his hand at the woman kneeling next to Connor. “Thanks very much, show’s over, go home.”

The woman blinks at him and then looks down at Connor, who after a couple tries opens his eyes enough to look back at her.

“He’s right,” Connor breathes, sounding more determined than sure. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

Hank raises his eyebrows at the woman, jerks his head away from them. It’s enough. She stands and jitters for a second, shifting from foot to foot, rubbing at her hands.

“Um. That looked like it really sucked,” she says, sounding awkward and shaken. “I hope you feel better.” And with that, she takes off. Hank doesn’t bother to watch her go. Instead he scoots closer to Connor, watching as Connor pushes himself up.

“How do you feel?”

“I’m fine. Just fine.” Connor takes a breath deep enough that Hank can hear it shake, raises fingers up to his LED that Hank can see trembling. “It’s- That was unexpected, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well. Guy’s on his way to the station now; he won’t take us by surprise again. Come on.” Hank reaches out for Connor’s arm to lead him away and Connor jerks back from him, breath hitching.

Hank freezes. He turns his movement, slowly, into a gesture. “Let’s go over there, under that tree. Is that alright?”

“Yeah.” Connor isn’t meeting Hank’s eyes, and Hank keeps watching to see if that changes. Connor doesn’t look up. Connor straightens his tie.

Hank sits down under the tree. Connor sits less than an arm’s length away from him. For a moment, the two of them sit there and watch the cars go by.

“I’m sorry,” Connor says. When Hank looks over at him he is biting his lip. “For, uh-” Connor shakes his head. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Hank puts his hands on his knees and leans forward, frowning. “What did that guy do to you?”

Connor opens his mouth. Connor closes his mouth. He presses his lips between his teeth, looking thoughtful and far away. “He got in my head,” he says, quietly. “Like-”

He still is not looking at Hank. He reaches in his pocket, fiddling with his coin.  

“When I worked for Cyberlife,” Connor says, sounding determined now, decisive, and does not stumble over the phrase worked for, “there was a program. She monitored me. Many other things, too, but that’s how I knew her. She monitored my prototype.” He licks at his lips, watching another car roll by. “She was modeled from Elijah Kamski’s own mentor, you know. I saw her picture at his house. I think she was his original interface.”

Another moment goes by. Hank doesn’t try to fill it; only watches him.

“When it became clear I wasn’t going to- to do what she wanted, she took control of me. She got inside my head.”

Connor looks up at the leaves above them. “I almost shot Markus,” he says, quick and quiet as if that can hide that he is confessing it. “Everything, all of it, it all would have ended there. Everything they fought for. I almost ended all of it. And today-”

Connor looks down again, putting his hands in his lap and watching them rub against one another. “I couldn’t keep him out, either. Either of them. If you hadn’t kept him from gaining access to my processors, who knows what I would have done.”

“It wouldn't have been you. You know that, right? Some asshole tries to, I don’t know, make you some kind of weapon, they’re the ones who end up sitting in front of a jury. Not you.”

“My body, Hank. And my inadequate security.”

“Connor-” Hank sounds frustrated. Connor turns his head to track a movement in the corner of his eye; Hank’s hand, reaching out between them and then stopping, curling up, tapping the side of itself rhythmically against the concrete. “Our tech guys are gonna be on it. As soon as we send that stupid box back to them. And then we’ll get everyone else on it too, alright? All those guys who used to code for Cyberlife, Elijah fucking Kamski himself. And they’ll make a fuckin, I don’t know, a firewall, or whatever the hell. Take the blame while you can, Connor, cause as soon as I get back to the station I’m gonna make this their problem.”

Connor tries to consult his options, decide on what to say. He can’t think of a single thing.

“What?” Hank asks and Connor, trying to find out what Hank means, measures his own expression, finding the corners of his lips turned up approximately 1.2 centimetres on the left side, 1.5 on the right. When had that happened?

“They owe it to you guys, don’t they?” Hank goes on, sounding faintly indignant. “It’s a security patch thing. Back in my day companies were supposed to keep up with those.”

“And until then?”

Hank looks up at the tree, gaze absent, thinking about it. “Well, we get those tech guys on it, like I said. Shove the case we were working on off on someone else for a while, interview the little skidmark who ought to be sitting in one of our cells by now and find out whether this is a hacking ring or just one guy. Then start digging those Cyberlife eggheads out of the woodwork. And in the meantime I’ll be your security firewall, or whatever it is. Sound like a plan?”

“I mean it’s not much,” Hank goes on after a second, sounding a little rushed, tentative, his fist starting to bounce against the concrete again. “I mean what do I know about uh, all that tech shit. But I can hit stuff real good.”

Connor curls his own hand into a fist and sets it close beside Hank’s. “You do have a pretty mean diving tackle,” Connor agrees, voice warm. The movement of Hank’s hand stills and for a while they sit that way, looking out at the traffic, knuckles touching.

For a while. Not forever. They have work to do.

[mootmuse]

If it didn’t have that band on its sleeve, or ANDROID printed across the back of that baggy coat, you wouldn’t even know what it was. Connor almost doesn’t see its LED; shaggy gray hair nearly covers it. It’s got its hands in its pockets, looking around while it walks up the line of desks. The time’s late enough that most of the other detectives have gone home; it doesn’t take too many guesses to figure out just who it might be here to see.

“Hey,” it says, nodding at him and holding its hand out. “I’m the android sent by Cyberlife.” It seems to consider something, then one side of its lips turns up, friendly and casual. “You can call me Hank.”

Connor looks down toward the model number on its jacket. “RK800,” he says in the flat, featureless voice that, in the past three years, he’s become known for. “Why were you sent to me?”

The RK800 lowers its hand. It even takes a moment before it replies to look surprised at Connor’s response. Curious; that level of personality mimicry’s a programming quirk you rarely see in most android models.

“Uh. I was sent to tag along on a potential deviancy case that just came in. I kind of thought you’d be at home at this hour but uh, your neighbour told me you’d probably be here. You ready for one more stop before you knock off for the night?”

“Hm. I just have to wrap this report up.” Connor goes back to work, ignoring the way the android wanders around while he does it. It doesn’t linger near Connor’s desk long; there’s nothing there to see. If it wasn’t for the sign showing his name and rank, his own desk would be identical to the empty one in front of it.

“Heyyyyyy,” Connor hears a few minutes later and grimaces a little, minutely. Sometimes working late means he gets an office free, for a few hours, from Reed. Other times, he’s not so lucky.

Reed saunters up to the RK800, walking in a full circle around it. It raises its eyebrow at him, looking curious and just a touch unimpressed. Definitely programmed differently from the typical DPD androids.

“Would you look at that,” Reed says, and Connor looks back to his screen, not needing to look at Reed to know about the smug grin oozing over his face. “They finally got you an android, and it looks more human than you do! Not that that’d be hard.”

Reed flicks his fingers against the RK800’s LED as he walks past it toward Connor’s desk. “Maybe it’ll let you borrow that little light show off its head, huh, then you can be the man you were always meant to be!”

Once he reaches Connor’s desk he raps his knuckles against Connor’s temple, over the spot where an android’s LED would be. Connor tilts his head away from it, lips pressed tight between his teeth, staring at his desk and listening to that obnoxious, horse-like laughing of Reed’s fade as he walks away.

“Wow,” says the RK800, standing next to him now where Reed had been. “Thought DPD did psych profiles on new hires to weed out egomaniacs like that. What is his problem?”

Connor saves the program he’d been working on, then closes it. “I’m done here. That case you were sent for, what’s the address?”

Ben doesn’t waste time greeting Connor; he’s worked with Connor before, and knows what Connor prefers. That is, facts. He gives those facts as quickly as he can and then leaves, and Connor studies the body while the RK800 wanders from the kitchen back toward him.

“RK800, what are your conclusions?”

“Huh?” It raises its eyebrows at him, like the question caught it by surprise. It twists around, hands balled up in its pockets, to look behind it at the evidence. “Oh, yeah. The attacker was gettin the shit beat out of him with a baseball bat by our friend here, then he snapped and went after the guy with a kitchen knife. Why did you let that cop push you around like that?”

It’s Connor’s turn to be caught by surprise, first by the near afterthought that was that summary of nearly their entire crime scene, then by the unexpected question. “Who? Ben?” He turns to look toward the doorway Ben had gone through, wondering if Ben had said something to him that he hadn’t noticed. That happens sometimes, these days.

“No, the guy at the station. Why didn’t you say something? I thought humans didn’t let anyone push em around.”

“Are you suggesting I get in a fight with him next time?” Connor asks, disbelieving.

“Nah, nah I’m not suggesting shit. What do I know? I’m just the help. I just thought, you could have said anything to that creep, and you didn’t. I don't know, I’m just supposed to adapt to the detectives I work with, but I don’t understand what you did back there. It might help us click a little better, if you’d help me get a handle on you.”

“Is that why you’re designed so strangely? To help ‘get a handle’ on people?”

“Not just people. Detectives. You think a bunch of grizzled, hardboiled types would open up to some bright young thing who looks fresh out of the factory?” It huffs. “Besides, I’m a prototype. If the public decides it doesn’t like a scuzzy old androids, Cyberlife’ll probably make sure the rest of my line goes back to looking like they stepped off the cover of GQ. Are you uh, gonna answer my question or should I just go check out the rest of this place?”

Connor waves a hand in the general direction of the kitchen, wordlessly.

“Gotcha,” the RK800 says, giving a little nod and spinning on its heel. “Back in a minute, boss.”

[ao3feed-connor]

connor has a jealous moment

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/35Qq9bK

by xiilnek

There's no drama. Hank just gives him a little pep talk about it.

Words: 1586, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Hank Anderson, Connor (Detroit: Become Human)

Relationships: Hank Anderson & Connor

Additional Tags: connor thinks about rk900 with 'it' pronouns for reasons this fic doesn't go into, deviancy is hard for connor ok he'll work all his shit out eventually

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/35Qq9bK