Chapter Text
It’s been eight months since the Android Revolution, and Hank Anderson is fairly certain he’s losing his mind. Being tortured, continuously, subtly, unendingly, every day edging him a little closer to the edge of total, irrevocable oblivion.
And the worst part is, he’s pretty sure Connor doesn’t even know he’s doing it.
Of course, his torment is at least partially self inflicted, what with the bringing Connor home to live with him. Maybe that wasn’t a decision that should have been made on an impulse, but...fuck, what was the alternative? When he was standing in front of the closed down Chicken Feed, ears burning from the wind and eyes burning from...something else entirely, and feeling Connor shiver in his embrace even though androids didn’t feel cold. When he’d asked Connor where he was staying (hating that he’d never thought to ask before,) and Connor replied that he had a charging port at Cyberlife...what could he have possibly said, other than Fuck that. C’mon.
And so he’d set himself up with a front row seat for Connor’s slow, tentative exploration of his newfound freedom, and most of the time he wouldn’t trade it for the world. It’d been something of a relief to learn that this new Connor, Deviant Connor, the hero, the shepherd, the right hand of the Revolution...was still in many ways the same weird little thing he’d always been, the same raspy voiced, boggle-eyed puppy who had always seemed to think a little too long, tease just a little too much, feel just a little too hard, even when every other sentence out of his mouth had been quoting some sort of Cyberlife propaganda. Still the Connor who’d perch on the edge of his desk or the corner of a counter even when there were perfectly good chairs available, who ragged him about the sodium content of his meals and made vaguely horrified faces at his taste in shirts, and would dart across busy streets and hop fences to pet a dog. Still Connor...still, on the rare occasions he allowed the phrase to enter his mind...still his Connor.
He’d known. He’d known on some level what he was getting into. He wasn’t blind, even if his libido hadn’t had much to do in the last ten years. He knew what his new roommate looked like (and what his new roommate looked like was so much his type he’d had more th an a few half-crazy urges to go stomping up to Cyberlife and demanding to speak to someone in charge. Whoever that was these days.)
But what he’d learned since then was that there was just no way to brace himself for Connor being Connor. Built to handle the worst of the worst of humanity, equipped with entire libraries of forensic information at his beck and call. Intellectually, he knew everything there was to know about the human condition, but his odd inexperience, his innocence, and with it his growing humanity, showed itself in the strangest ways, ways that Hank could never be prepared for. For questions that spun out of his insatiable curiosity combined with a complete lack of boundaries (“Why is lipstick that color considered fashionable? Lips that color would be indicative of serious medical problems.” “I understand the purpose of testicles, but why do they look like that?” “Take it up with evolution, kid.”) For how he’d scan Hank at the end of a long day and frown at what he saw. For the long fingered hand pressing itself against a tense muscle, heated well past the human norm, for the way he’d smile when Hank relaxed into the touch, long lashes dipping low over his eyes...and the low electric buzz that built up under his skin at Connor’s touch, and lingered long after he took his hand away.
At least he’d acquiesced to changing clothes in the bathroom these days, with a vaguely condescending air of amusement for his human’s earthly hangups. It would’ve annoyed Hank more if he hadn’t been devoting every ounce of concentration to diverting blood flow northward again, okay so he was a state of the art investigative prototype - was it strictly necessary to give him an ass like that?
It’s coming to a head, Hank thinks as they slog across the city one particularly oppressive July night. He can’t avoid it forever; sooner or later they had to talk about it all. He should encourage Connor to branch out. Maybe find his own place. Meet new people. New androids. And then Connor would ask why, head tilted like a confused puppy, and Hank would have to either lie to him, which was basically impossible, or try to explain...try to explain his disgusting, dirty old man urges to someone still coming to terms with the human scrotum. Just the thought makes his head pulse with an incipient migraine.
Or maybe that was the 90% humidity and the 19 hours he’d been at work, he reflects, as their autocab pulls up to a cordon of red and blue lights. Maybe not the best time to wax all philosophical.
“Are you all right, Lieutenant?” Connor asks softly, as they approached the cordon. Even this far out of the city center, no one asked for their ID. Not since November. “You’ve been at work for a very long time.
Hank waves him off, trying to shake himself back into the present. “I’ll live. This one was too good to miss.”
Connor shoots him a quick, sidelong smile, red light sliding across his teeth. The light shaves some of the softness off his face, throwing sharp shadows across his features and giving him an edge, one that fits the leather jacket and the white t-shirt he’s taken to wearing these days, because the universe hates Hank and wants him to suffer. “Who can resist a locked room mystery?”
Definitely a detective, build for it or not, Hank thinks with a smile, wincing as he ducked under the tape. Who could resist a call like this one? Welfare check called in by worried neighbors, windows locked, deadbolt closed, and the lone occupant of the little semi-D dead in a pool of blood in the middle of the kitchen.
The two of them split up in the crime scene, like they had since the beginning. Connor freezes solid in the doorway, for a fraction of a second, so fast you’d never notice if you weren’t looking for it, and then wanders off in pursuit of whatever prompts his scan kicked up. Hank just follows his nose, meandering aimlessly through the scene. He exchanges nods with a few techs still wrapping up, but no words - they knew his process. The little house has the feel of a bachelor pad. Not squalid, but messy...the bland, utilitarian mess of someone with no time or inclination for housekeeping.
“Victim was unconscious when he was stabbed,” Connor calls out from the other side of the room. Hank nods absently.
“Yup, or at least sedated.” The lack of visible wounds and the location of the blood pool said he’d been stabbed in the back, probably in the kidneys. Fast, but not painless, and no sign that he’d struggled after he fell.
“Did he ever own an android?” Connor asks one of the uniforms. He’s standing next to an open refrigerator, surveying several bottles of Thirium in the door.
“You scanned for blue blood, right?” Hank asks, meandering over. Connor rolls his eyes at him, and Hank raises his hands with a chuckle. “Okay, okay, just asking.”
Something catches his eye: an ashtray on the counter, empty but for the butt of an old fashioned paper cigarette stubbed out in it. The smell still lingers in the air, oddly sweet - one of those new flavored tobaccos, maybe, but something’s off about it, something pinging his intuition. Hank frowns, dragging his finger through the gray fluff...it’s oddly coarse, gritty against his skin.
“Connor?”
Connor’s next to him in an instant, eyes locked on the ashtray. “Interesting,” he says, eyelashes fluttering out of synch for a second as he watches Hank rub the gritty, fruity-smelling ash between his fingers. “There’s a nonstandard chemical component in there…”
And then he grabs Hank’s wrist, and pops his index finger into his mouth.
Hank sees stars. It...it’s been a long time since...since he’s had anyone’s mouth on him, let alone a mouth that has haunted more than a few guilty, sweat soaked dreams. Connor’s tongue, soft and slick and a little cooler than a human’s, curls around the pad of his finger, and Hank honest to god sways into him, before desperate survival instincts kick in and lock his knees to keep him upright. And...okay, so Hank had always had a…little bit of a...a hand thing, maybe, it’s sending tingles up his arm and down his spine, Connor’s fingertips cool against the soft skin inside his wrist, and--
And Connor releases his hand, LED blinking red as he analyzes. Hank steadies himself against the counter, his own metaphorical LED also spinning frantically. The uniform next to the fridge is definitely hiding a smile.
“Was that entirely necessary?”
Connor gives him an affronted look. “You contaminated the ashtray. I needed your skin chemistry to compare.”
Hank pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to make his head stop swimming. “Of course. How unprofessional of me.”
“This cigarette was contaminated,” Connor announces. “Crystalline acetonitrile. Highly concentrated.”
Hank blinks, and the analytical side of his brain manages to get his libido in a headlock and let him start thinking like a detective again. It’s been a long-ass time since organic chemistry, but when you’re a homicide detective there’s some names that jump out at you.
“Wait. Nitrile? Doesn’t heating nitriles --”
“Produce cyanide? Why yes it does. And acetonitrile is a solvent used in several common android biocomponents.”
The two detectives exchange a long look, and then they both move in different directions. No words needed; Hank heads for a jacket draped over the back of a kitchen chair and starts digging through the pockets, and Connor drops to his knees, running his fingers along the baseboards of the counter.
“Paydirt.” Hank reaches into the inner pocket of the cheap blazer and comes up with a rumpled packet of cigarettes. He tosses it to Connor, who immediately tears one open and sprinkles the tobacco on his tongue.
“More nitrile. More than enough to produce a fatal dose of cyanide.”
Hank pulls out another cigarette and squints at it, examining it closely. He can’t see any obvious signs of tampering: if the entire packet is poisoned, it was done with a lot of care. Which means…
“This was premeditated,” Connor says. “That took planning.”
“Which makes the stabbing overkill,” Hank says, handing the cigarette pack over to one of the techs. The murder was planned, but the violence wasn’t. The violence was impulsive. Angry. Emotional. “Which…” he trails off, meeting Connor’s eyes across the room.
Which makes this case very familiar. It gives it all the hallmarks of an abused deviant pushed too far. Which means...
Hank’s hand goes to his sidearm at the same moment that Connor drops into a crouch, his LED pulsing red. He’s pleased to see the other officers react immediately to the two detectives’ change in mood. He catches the eye of the closest forensic tech and nods towards the door. She nods, face tight, and starts rounding up her crew, quickly and quietly.
Which means the locked doors aren’t a mystery any more. They’re part of a familiar pattern for this kind of domestic violence. Human attackers tend to run. But androids tend to hide.
“Where haven’t you been yet?” Connor asks the officer in an urgent whisper. “Basement? Attic? Closets?”
“No attic,” she says in the same tone. She doesn’t know where he’s going with it yet, but she’s following his lead. “Laundry room in the basement, cleared it before you got here. Only two closets, we checked both--”
Connor’s on the move before she finishes the sentence. Hank manages to follow a beat faster than the other cops, but the android’s through the living room and darting down a hallway while the words “Connor Goddammit” are still forming on his tongue. Hank lumbers after him, mind racing in his partner’s wake. Hiding places. Laundry room in the basement.
Connor pivots into a musty bedroom, sweeping left to right with a fluid motion of his head, and Hank sees him lock onto a little square door set in one wall, not much wider than a foot across. A laundry chute.
Hank can’t run fast enough, it feels like he’s trapped in place, like he’s fighting the air around him. It feels like a nightmare, and a nightmare he’s already lived once before: phantom bullets zip past Hank’s ears with the too-vivid whine of a flashback, and for a second it’s not a laundry chute, it’s a shipping container on a frozen rooftop--
And it flies open all the same, gouging chips out of the wall, the android boiling out of their hiding place driven by fury and terror and desperation, the flash of a long kitchen knife dark with drying blood clutched in one hand.
It all happens too fast for Hank to react, too fast for him to even follow. The slam of the little trapdoor, Connor falling back on his heels as the android flings themself at him, knife raised. Connor gasps, a thick, harsh sound punched out of his artificial lungs, louder in Hank’s ears than anything else. So loud it echos. His hands fly out and the other android drops with a loud electric crackle, head bouncing as it hits the ground.
And Connor collapses to his knees, fingers curled loosely around the handle of the knife buried in his neck.
“ Connor!”
There’s a million things he should be doing. Secure the scene, call for backup call for help, check the perp check for evidence, and Hank ignores it all to sprint to Connor’s side. It’s not his first rodeo, not anywhere near the worst one but all his instincts are coming up blank. He’s got a hundred different protocols to follow and they’ve all been overwritten by the one thought that’s seared itself across his mind as he gets his hands on Connor’s shoulders, blue blood slipping under his fingers.
I never told him.
“Connor! Connor, fuck, okay, look at me sweetheart, stay with me, we’re gonna get you help--”
“I’m fine, Hank.” Connor sits back on his heels. There’s an odd, electric crackle to his voice, but he doesn’t sound hurt...he sounds...annoyed? His shirt ripped open in the struggle, Thirium drawing glutinous streaks down his pale skin. Connor takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes, and tugs the knife out of his neck with a wince. Hank yells something, wordless and panicked, reaching out to press a hand over the wound...which has already closed itself, with a last little trickle of Thirium.
“I’m fine,” Connor repeats, although his LED is whirling red. He puts his hand over Hank’s on the curve of his neck. “My vital components are in rather different places than a human’s.” He tips his head experimentally side to side with a wince. “Much deeper places, to start with.”
After that, it’s all a little bit of a blurr. More squad cars arrive, and so do the coroners, and a couple of serious faced DPD androids who gather up the unconscious perp and fit a restraining collar to the port in the back of their neck. Dawn begins to gather along the eastern horizon, casting them all in that eerie blue-gray half light that precedes the sunrise. An android EMT looks over Connor and prescribes thirium and a visit to a repair facility to get the tear in his neck glued up. She looks at Hank, leaning against the trunk of a squad car and staring into space as the techs and the coroners close up the scene, and tells him to go the fuck to bed.
“I called us a cab,” Connor says softly, and Hank startles: he hadn’t even noticed him approach, too busy rubbing his hands together, feeling the clear film of drying Thirium pull against his skin. “We can debrief the Captain in the morning.” There’s still a crackle in his voice, like a badly tuned radio: apparently the knife had clipped something important in there.
Hank stares at him for a wordless second, shirt torn and hair ruffled and bloodstains still blue on his skin where it had pooled the thickest, in the dip of his collarbone and the curve of his shoulder. He looks beat up, and tired, and so, so beautiful.
Hank mumbles a heartfelt curse, grabs the little android by the back of the neck, and tugs him into his chest.
Connor stumbles into his arms with a shocked little static squeak, half-human and half-electric and quickly cut off. It takes him a second to remember how to relax, skeletal components unlocking one by one under Hank’s hands as Connor hesitantly wraps his arms around him and leans his head on his shoulder. There’s not much to hide them but the shadows outside the headlights, and Hank could not possibly care less.
“Thought I’d lost you for a second there,” he says, letting his cheek settle against Connor’s hair.
“I’m fine, Hank,” Connor repeats. He leans back enough to look up into Hank’s face, but Hank doesn’t let him go entirely, and Connor doesn’t try to pull away. “I was built for physical altercations. This is such a silly place to put something so vulnerable…” he touches his fingertips to Hank’s neck, the soft spot over his pulse, and Hank can’t hide the shiver that runs through him at the touch. Connor frowns, and his LED turns yellow: scanning as Hank’s pulse jumps under his fingers.
“Are you alright? Your heart rate is very elevated. And you’re warm.” He steps back a little, searching Hank’s face. “Are you sick? Injured? My scans didn’t detect anything -- has the house been scanned for residual cyanide?” His voice pitches up, the little crackle getting stronger.” You could be--”
“You really don’t know, do you?” Hank says softly. Wonderingly. Connor breaks off, blinking up at him. “You don’t know what you do to me.”
Connor’s mouth ticks up at one corner, the way he does when he’s teasing. “Well, in any other circumstances I’d say you were exhibiting signs of arousal.” His eyes crinkle. “But since it’s me, you’re obviously not--”
Hank’s hands have settled near Connor’s waist, and they tighten, half-involuntary. Connor breaks off, staring up into Hank’s face, and his eyes go very still and very wide.
“H-hank? You’re--”
“When have your scans ever been wrong, Connor?”
Connor buzzes in the back of his throat, his gaze skipping across Hank’s face, ruffled hair falling in his eyes. His LED is blinking between agitated red...and a bright, deep blue.
“But you’re a human,” he says, slowly, like he’s trying to tell a child that the sky is blue. “And I’m...I-I’m--”
“Beautiful,” Hank says. He gives into the itching need to brush that stray lock of hair back from Connor’s forehead. Connor shivers, his eyelashes fluttering. “What you are is beautiful.”
The first rays of the sun break over the horizon, catching in Connor’s eyes and painting the curves of his face in lines of bright, deep gold. His lips part, and he leans into Hank’s touch, so smoothly it almost looks instinctual.
An autocab pulls up to the curb beside them and opens its rear door with a merry little jingle. Connor blinks, and Hank squeezes him quick around the waist before he nudges him back towards the van. “C’mon,let’s get out of here. We have a lot to talk about.”
As soon as Connor approaches the door, the autocab beeps a warning, interior lights going red. “Unaccompanied androids must ride in the designated compartment,” its cheerful AI voice announces, “unless otherwise authorized by a registered owner.” It flicks a little handprint scanner out of a slot in the door. “Please present authorization now.”
Hank draws back a fist and punches the scanner clean off its hinge. The lights go white again. Connor looks scandalized.
“Save ‘em the upgrade costs,” he mutters, climbing onto the wide bench seat. He tells the cab his address as Connor settles in beside him.
“Please be advised, heavy traffic is expected,” the cab chirps. “Estimated time, one hour and twelve minutes. Expect delays.”
“Whatever.”