#yeah yeah it sounds stupid but i only flare up in the winter primarily on my hands and occasionally a couple other patches

[bipidin]

After having been diagnosed with eczema almost 20 years ago, I love the fact that my mom only tells me now, after my brother got diagnosed and I asked if mine was the same thing

[funkzpiel]

I Thought I Lost You In The Storm

Fandom: Detroit | Become Human Hank & Conor (Gen) Summary: Another winter, another snow, another murder. Nothing new in Detroit. But Connor suddenly going catatonic in the middle of the crime scene? Yeah. That's new; even if the fear in Hank's gut isn't.

Also available on AO3

Detroit was bellowing a cloud of white upon the city yet again, as it did every winter — although increasingly irregularly. Storms that should have blown over were dumping feet whereas storms that should have left them crippled resulted in nearly spring-like days. Fall and winter came later and later and lasted longer and longer. As Hank stared up at the falling flakes, blinking as they clung to his lashes, he couldn’t help but wonder what life had in store for them. If the inches already kissing at his ankles were anything to go by, nothing good.

He averted his attention back to the crime scene; to the bodies left in a frozen curl in the corner of some Detroit back alley — a human and an android, both frozen. Both dead.

“Sir?”

Hank startled, torn from his thoughts as an officer appeared at his side. Prickly from the sudden fright, however small, Hank scowled and gave the young looking officer a healthy dose of stink eye. A little curl of satisfaction bloomed in his gut at the way the officer cowered just a little.

“Well?” Hank growled, “What do ya want?”

That made the office jump and stand a little straighter.

“Ah, of course, sir. Sorry. It’s your an— It’s ah, your partner , sir. He appears to be malfunctioning.

“Malfunctioning,” Hank repeated back blandly, unimpressed. “If this about him licking something again, there’s nothing I can do about it. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

The officer paled a little at that but quickly shook their head.

“No, sir, he’s not— does he really lick stuff?,” The officer shook their head again, as though to focus, and continued, “He’s standing in the middle of the road unresponsive. We can’t figure out what’s wrong.”

Hank frowned.

“Lead the way,” he groused, any bite from his earlier scare chilled by the icy grip of dread that was slowly stealing its way into the detective’s gut. He didn’t believe it. He couldn’t fathom Connor still or unresponsive . That snarky, energetic little shit was anything but still or unresponsive.

But the curl of dread in his gut just kept tightening and tightening as he thought of Connor in the elevator all those months ago.

“Earth to Connor; you even listening to me, kid?”

Connor startled — well, as much as an android can startle. Minutely, primarily in the way his cheeks flinched and his eyes widened. He turned to look at him like a puppy caught in the kibble bag and said, “I was making a report to CyberLife.”

A pause as Hank raised his brows at him, then finally threw his hands at his sides and said, “Are you going to stay in the elevator all day?”

“No!”

It was a charming moment. Something that never failed to make Hank chuckle, usually. But today it didn’t. Today he just kept replaying the stale blankness that had been on Connor’s face as he just stood there. Stood there as if there was no light upstairs, as though he had never moved. Eyes dull, face slack and passive.

Like a blank doll.

Hank shook the look from his mind just as they rounded the corner on the block and say a handful of officers standing in the middle of the road, diverting traffic. Sure enough Connor was in the middle of the chaos standing stock still. Hank cursed under his breath and rushed forward, the officer that had brought him long forgotten.

“Kid,” Hank shouted, hoping that this was just some — fuck, he didn’t know — prank or anomaly.

But Connor didn’t answer. He merely remained standing, unmoving, unflinching as Gavin tried to wake him and shook him by the shoulders frustratedly. When he saw Hank coming they abandoned the effort with an annoyed huff and said, “Fucking finally. Your toy’s broke, lieutenant.”

“If I find out you did something,” Hank growled under his breath as they got nose to nose.

He expect Gavin to grin and leave ominously, but instead the younger detective merely spat, sniffed wetly, and sneered, “It’s too cold for this shit, Hank. My balls are freezing. Get robo-puppy back up and running so we can get the fuck out of here already.”

Hank snorted, surprised, as Gavin quickly stomped off after that with his hands shoved deep into his pocketed and his neck buried between two raised shoulders.

They might not agree on much but the shithead was right about one thing — it was too fucking cold for this. Hank drew his coat a little tighter around him and turned to look at Connor. The kid still hadn’t moved.

He looked small like that. Frozen amongst the sea of white steadily creeping upon the city, swallowing it whole. He had some flimsy ass jacket on that made the lieutenant shiver just looking at it. Hank could still remember the way Connor had chuckled fondly when Hank had tried to shove a thick, old winter coat on him. It would have swamped the kid; probably would’ve looked like a dress. Connor had set it aside with that stupid dopey smile of his and explained that the cold didn’t affect him as easily as it did to humans.

Hank desperately wished he had insisted a little harder now.

The snow had settled upon Connor as though he were a statue. It was heavier on one shoulder than it was on the other due to the wind, and it gathered in his hair in clumps that melted slowly. It was eerie to see the normally energetic android so still. As though he had never been.

It made Hank feel crazy, as though he had made the kid up. He wanted to vomit.

“Kid,” he rasped, then when he didn’t respond, “Connor.”

Connor just continued to stare out into the white, totally unaware of the headlights that would occasionally pass over then as officers rerouted traffic around them. Drivers would have grumbled angrily at them out their windows if not for the bite of winter’s chill and the snow. Instead they glared as they passed, completely oblivious to the significance of the situation.

Hank grabbed Connor by either side of his face and sucked in a short, frustrated breath at the feel of how icy the kid’s cheeks were even through Hank’s thin gloves. Even at the contact Connor just continued to stare — a lost, distant look and, if Hank looked hard enough, perhaps even afraid.

He rubbed the pads of his thumbs over Connor’s cheeks as though that might warm him, wake him, and lowered his voice as he said, “Connor, kid, you’re scaring me. Cut this shit out.”

“Get that thing out of the fucking road, Lieutenant, we can’t do this all night,” one of the officers shouted from down the street, making Hank’s face curl into a disgusted sneer as he turned to snarl back, “Fuck off, I’m working on it!”

When he turned back there was moisture clinging to the ends of Connor’s lashes, steadily frosting.

“Kid?” Hank asked, alarmed, and pressed at his face again. He let his hands linger around Connor’s jaw as he tried to force him to make eye contact before leaning to look at the state of his status disc. It was flaring a rather steady, whirring yellow that occasionally would bleed out to a slow, heavy red and back again. He reached behind Connor to grasp him tight at the back of his neck — like a friend or family might — and tried again.

“Connor, what’s wrong? Connor?”

Beneath his fingers, Connor began to tremble. His disc went permanently red.

“No! No, no, no, don’t you dare do this to me, kid. Wake up! ”

He wasn’t a tech guy. He barely managed to make his computer function. He could remember a time when he was the one teaching old fogies how to use their phones but now he felt utterly lost in the face of such technological excellence, completely unable to help in any way. He didn’t even know where to start. Was his systems failing? Was it the cold? Did someone do something? Fuck, did androids update?

Hank didn’t know how to get Connor back. And the thought terrified him more than he figured it should, except…

Connor had told him once if anything ever happened to him that CyberLife would upload his systems into a new model. That he’d just come back. But CyberLife wasn’t sponsoring the kid anymore.

There would be no more Connors if this one died.

Connor took a sudden sharp, shivering breath. He sounded wounded, he sounded —

Connor looked at him with those fucking owlish eyes, so big and so brown and so normally in control, and stuttered through his realization. “I was afraid .”

With the hand still on the back of Connor’s neck Hank pulled the lithe android tight to him like he had after the peaceful marches Markus had led. He wrapped the android’s cold body into his own with one hand at the back of his neck and the other fisting tight at the flimsy jacket between his shoulder blades. He scratched lightly at the short hairs on the nape of the kid’s neck. He gathered the kid’s jacket in and out of his fingers over and over.

And for the first time in a long, long time, he considered praying to a god he didn’t believe in; just in case.

“Please come back, son,” Hank rasped into his hair. “Please… Please come home.”

Connor didn’t move.

Around them the snow fell harder, cloaking them from the traffic trying to make it home before the worst of the snow. Officers tried to handle the crime scene and the frozen victims and the traffic. But all snows bled away. There was only the snow, and the cold, and the frozen android in his arms.

He tried not to think about a life without Connor.

He tried not to think about the gun Connor had found him with.

He tried not to think about that last bullet still left in the chamber.

He tightened his grasp and wondered if it was just his imagination that heat was beginning to pool between them. Then, suddenly, Connor gasped in a large, synthetic lungful of air — a mimicry of humanity — and shook .

“H-Hank! Hank!” Connor called as though unaware that he was in Hank’s arms.

Hank drew him back at arms length, too relieved to care about the dopey smile that snuck onto his face, and said, “I’m here, son. I’m here. I’ve got you, I’m here.”

Connor looked at him as though it took a minute for him to recognize Hank. He looked around and Hank watched as facts slowly piled up in Connor’s head. Dot by dot he came back to the present until finally Connor looked back to him with those same owlish eyes from the roof of that tower — “I was afraid ” — and trembled.

Hank had never seen the kid tremble before.

“I was,” he licked his lips when his voice cracked, still so unfamiliar with how emotions conflicted with control, and tried again, “I was back there. Again. They, I — it wasn’t real and I know that, but it, it, it felt real, Hank , and I—”

“Whoa, whoa, hang on, back where?”

“In the snow,” Connor said ominously, eyes staring out over Hank’s shoulder again. “It was so cold. Everything was f-frozen and I… couldn’t…”

Connor’s voice began to drawl as his eyes focused on the snow. Hank quickly grabbed his face and made him look at him again, holding the gaze of those dull brown eyes until they brightened again.

“Focus on me,” Hank said. “Alright? Focus on me. You were in the snow?”

“I— yes. Where I used to make reports. They had pulled me there after we freed those androids at CyberLife. They had… She had tried to control me and I was so cold. It was so cold. I couldn’t move, it…” He paused in search of the words, then still dreadfully, moisture building at his bottom lashes again as he whispered, “It felt like dying.”

It made no sense, none of it. Too fresh, too much to explain. All Hank knew was that whatever had stolen Connor away had been triggered by the cold and the snow, and that Hank could work with. He stepped away to quickly tug off his coat and wrap it around the kid.

“Hank, what are you doing? It’s freezing out, you’ll—”

“It goes on , son. Now.”

Connor let his arms go loose like noodles as Hank forced him into the giant coat, even as he babbled wide-eyed at him.

“The cold doesn’t—”

Hank drew the coat on all the way and took it by either side of the collar in order to tug it tight around the android, jostling him with the moment. He looked like a child in the coat, utterly swamped in it. The sleeves swallowed up his hands and it hung down his thighs like a baggy dress. Hank drew the hood up over his snowy hair and growled, “Stop fighting me for once, would you? I’m not going to stay out here like this. We’re going home.”

“What?!” Connor squawked. “But the crime scene!”

“Is in good hands, as much as I hate to admit it,” Hank growled, eyes on Gavin as he ordered officers around.

“Lieutenant, I—” Connor started, no doubt ready to fight him regardless, only to blink. He looked from Hank to the coat he was swimming in and said, stunned, “This… is really warm.”

Hank snorted and grabbed Connor by the hand.

“That’s swell kid, but I’m freezing my balls off. Let’s get to the car. I want you to keep your eyes on me, okay? Got it, Connor? Eyes on me.”

Connor opened his mouth to argue, only to swallow when Hank said, “I’m not taking that coat back, so unless you want me to freeze to death, we’re going. Now.”

Connor frowned but nodded.

Hank keep Connor’s coat-thick wrist in his hand as he dragged the two of them through the snow to the car. He didn’t even bother explaining to Gavin. He just forced Connor into the driver’s side of the vehicle before quickly crossing to his side of the car and getting in. He tinted the side windows to minimize the view of the snow and quickly threw the heat on blast.

“Eyes closed, Connor.”

“Hank,” Connor sighed, still frowning that small, annoyed little frown he had been getting more and more comfortable with making in the months since the uprising.

Hank turned to him, all humor or snark gone from his voice, and said, “I just watched you lock up like a doll in the middle of an active street. If an officer hadn’t seen you and started rerouting traffic you could have been hit . So fucking humor me until we know what the fuck happened, alright?”

Connor stared at him for a long, long moment before — as though tired — finally melting into the seat. He closed his eyes and said, “Okay, Hank.”

“Okay,” Hank said back, the word unsteady. He cranked the car into gear and began to drive them to his home. To the fireplace he could light and to Sumo who was the best fucking blanket anyone could ask for.

Hank didn’t know a lot about androids. He didn’t know how they developed emotions, how they processed them. How their systems worked, what parts of them were most vital. He knew little to nothing about them aside from the fact that to label them as something as simple as a robot was as ignorant as it was an understatement of their existence. They were so much more.

Capable of fear, of the instinct to survive, of love.

And Hank might not know a thing about androids, but he did know trauma. He did know PTSD.

And that… that he could work with. He had Sumo for that. And a fire. And patience.

That he could work with.

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