Long time no see. I've fallen into another fandom and I'm a sucker for platonic/familial stuff, so I figured I'd write some fluff that (as usual) turned into a character-study-ish thing. I hope you enjoy. :)
1. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
All humans had rituals. Hell, probably all thinking things had rituals. It kept things nice and orderly, gave a person some certainty in this chaotic pool of inconvenient surprises that was life. Or then they just made it easier to turn life into a series of mechanical tasks. Usually, the more interesting and important rituals were invented around celebrations and holidays. There was just something about putting a significant date in a nice little mould. Something to make those special moments just a bit easier and predictable too.
Lieutenant Hank Anderson was no different from all thinking things in that he had rituals. He also had holiday rituals, such as a Christmas ritual he had formed about three years ago. One where he would stay in bed until he absolutely had to get up to let his dog out. One where he'd keep the lights off and hope his insufferable neighbour, who always hung up an obnoxious amount of Christmas lights and plastic elves wouldn't decide that this was the year he would buy decorations that sang too.
And if that happened, Hank would probably just shoot the damn things.
But this year apparently wasn't going to be one where he'd get to land headshots on singing, neon-lit Santas. This year he also wouldn't be working the Christmas shift, because he was currently suspended as a formality for punching a douchebag FBI agent in the face. So this was going to be another year of darkness, silence and drowning out all of his worst thoughts. Letting the memories of ambulance sirens on an icy road and too much blood on a too young face be dulled by alcohol and peace-
"Good morning, Lieutenant! The current time is 08:04:39. The day is December 25. There is a light snowfall outside, and the temperature is 12.54 degrees Fahrenheit."
"Oh, f'cking h'll."
It was the snowiest, most postcard-worthy goddamn day in the entire year of 2038. That was the first thought that entered Hank Anderson's head when the blinds in his bedroom window were yanked open with a precisely calculated move and Hank was forced to blink sleep out of his eyes in the snow-intensified light of the rising sun. Someone actually knowledgeable about weather patterns would say that weather did in fact not have a sense of drama nor humour. But considering that the whole city of Detroit had descended into utter chaos barely more than a month ago, that most people were still out of town because of the evacuation that had been conducted as a result of a fucking android uprising and that nothing about the whole situation could be farther away from a nice, picturesque holiday time, Hank had to come to a conclusion that yes, weather was a cheeky son of a bitch determined to ruin the crushing mood he had planned to wake up in.
Not as determined, however, as the android now standing by the window, looking obnoxiously awake and perfectly groomed with his brown hair in its usual slicked back factory settings and his clothes dangerously approaching semi-formal even at this hour. His posture was too straight but his smile was easy and a bit crooked. The circular LED on his temple shone a calm, happy blue, flickering a little for who-knows-what reason. Probably because of the barely contained enthusiasm that was struggling to break through the dark brown puppy dog eyes some genius designer had decided to stick on the face of a prototype police detective model. That had been Connor in a nutshell lately; half-protocol, half barely-processed, intense new emotion.
It was still a bit too ironic to not be funny. Connor, who had been assigned as Hank's partner at the Detroit Police Department for the sole reason of hunting down those androids who developed sentience, had developed sentience himself. And had in the process managed to show Hank that the machines Hank had hated for being so emotionless had more humanity than most humans. Not that it was hard in this fucked up world.
The kid had probably saved his life several times over. And sure, he had also made Hank care. At least enough to let Connor stay when the kid had become a person and realised he had nowhere to go now that CyberLife was all but torn down and trying to shape up under new management. That didn't mean, however, that the bastard had the right to intrude upon Hank's depressing-as-hell Christmas routine. Hank tried to turn his head and bury himself in his pillow, but a plastic finger poked him in the shoulder insistently enough that he looked up again. He was again faced with a movie-worthy snowfall in the window that was partially blocked by Connor's face.
"You shouldn't go back to sleep now," Connor said, "By analysing your heartrate and eye movements I determined that this moment was the most beneficial for waking up when taking to account your natural sleep cycles. Also, there is breakfast waiting for you in the kitchen, and it will probably get cold or eaten by Sumo if you don't get up soon."
"He can have it," Hank muttered, "'N' don't scan me while I'm asleep. 'S creepy."
There was a short but heavy silence. Hank could almost sense the disappointment in Connor. Shit. Reluctantly, Hank pushed himself up from the bed and stood, trying his best to ignore the cracks in his over fifty-year-old knees.
"Fine," he sighed, "I'll be there in a minute."
He got dressed in one of his favourite, horribly retro shirts and dark pants and almost made it into the bathroom before he realised just how easily he'd been dragged up this morning. So much for rituals and not intruding on them. He shook his head at the thought, not sure whether to be amused, annoyed, or realising something profound about his life. Before Connor, Hank had pretty much embraced the idea of dying depressed and alone, either to a bullet or to an unhealthy lifestyle. With some luck, he might have even died on the job. But in the wake of the android revolution, Hank had found himself embracing a homeless, goofy android instead. An android who had at some point managed to become his friend, worm his way into his heart in a way very few had. Especially after Cole…
No. Don't go there.
He forced himself to empty his head while he washed up and trudged into the kitchen. Sumo lumbered to greet him halfway there. Hank patted the huge St. Bernard on his way to the table, where there was indeed an assortment of… well, Hank wasn't always sure what all the things Connor cooked for him were. The kid seemed to pull them out of the internet under search terms like "wholefood", "plant-based", and "undoing the damage a sad piece of shit has done to himself by consuming mostly fast food and microwave dinners for the last three years". Whatever it was, Hank had to grudgingly admit that it was usually good. Hank kept telling Connor that he didn't need to bother, that he was his roommate, not his maid. But Connor always gave him an easy shrug and a variation of: "I know, but I want to" as a response. Hank couldn't possibly say no to that; the android still had a shaky grasp on the whole concept of wanting anything, so hearing him say it with such certainty was enough to crash down all of Hank's defences.
Now Connor sat where he usually sat when Hank was eating, across from Hank at the table. It had been a bit weird at first, to have him just sit there. Hank had had to keep reminding himself that it wasn't rude of him to eat when Connor didn't, because androids didn't eat anyway. Well, unless licking biohazardous substances counted – and it didn't, thank you very much. Though that was apparently not an android thing, but mostly just a Connor thing. Not every android was a walking forensics lab – thank fuck for that.
"So…" Hank said in-between bites, "Any particular reason you're dragging me up at this hour?"
Connor tilted his head, uncertainty crossing his face before he managed another smile.
"It's Christmas Day. I know that you've expressed your distaste for the holiday, but you did tell me I could do what I wanted to celebrate it."
"I did?"
"Yes. Two days ago, you said: I don't give a shit about Christmas, but you do you, Connor."
Hank jumped in his seat when he heard his own voice coming out of the android's mouth. A gruff baritone and a twenty-something-looking pretty-boy face did not go together.
"Jesus! What the fuck?!"
"Oh, sorry," Connor said and from the look on his face, Hank could tell that the son of a bitch wasn't the least bit sorry, "I thought you knew that mimicking voices is one of my features. It's detailed in my manual, which I gave you to read when I moved in."
"The fucking thing's longer than the Harry Potter series and full of technobabble! You think I can get anything out of it?"
"You can always ask me if you run into difficult words."
"Little shit."
"You're trying to distract from the subject."
"Yeah, yeah, fine. I did say that. So, you actually want to do something today?"
"Yes. Well, nothing too intrusive, I hope. I found some of your old lights and put them up in the living room…"
Hank glanced to over his shoulder and saw that the old, silvery lights had indeed been strung to the window, all perfectly lined up, ruler-straight and at even intervals.
"…I also downloaded some recipes for a proper Christmas dinner and got all the necessary ingredients yesterday. I used this morning to cook, and-"
"Jesus, Connor, how early did you get up?"
"I exited standby mode at 05:30:00," Connor said in a chipper tone, "It gave me plenty of time to prepare."
Hank stared at him blankly.
"You got up at the ass crack of dawn to cook for me?"
"Yes. Because I wanted to spend the holiday with you."
He said it like it was an obvious thing. It wasn't, not for Hank. How long had it been since anyone had volunteered to spend time with him, let alone during the holidays? Why did he even ask himself that? He knew the answer to most of those kinds of questions. How long ago had anything happy happened to him? The answer was always the same.
He sighed.
"I appreciate it, but I was kinda planning on not getting up today."
He supposed he should at least try to feel a bit more positive about today, but it was… difficult. Christmas was just a time for people to use a mostly forgotten religious excuse to take days off, decorate trees with plastic crap, cook too much food, and hand out material goods in place of actual affection, all wrapped nicely in snowflake patterns and denial.
God, his cynicism was through the roof today. And he wasn't a Christmas person even in a good year.
He had been, once. He had been many things once.
"I know," Connor said, and Hank wasn't sure what exactly he knew, "You told me that too. I was still hoping you'd join me. It is my first Christmas, so I might need some assistance with figuring everything out."
Shit. He was doing it again. Suckering Hank into something he hadn't thought he'd ever bother with again. Things like living. Damn that negotiator program or whatever it was that made the kid so… manipulative.
"What do you usually do around this time of the year?" Connor asked, as if he hadn't already looked up a shit ton of holiday traditions online.
"Guess," Hank said gruffly.
"Get drunk?"
Ouch. Truth hurts.
"Yup."
Hank knew, just knew that the kid had calculated in some corner of his super-computer brain that Hank was prone to especially crushing bouts of depression around this time. That not getting up at all wasn't his only routine. In the last few years, the hours he spent awake during Christmases had been at home alone, with only a dog, bottles of whiskey, and a gun with a single bullet for company. A ritual not only reserved for the holidays. He'd watched holiday shows on TV for as long as he could stomach it, and then he had either switched off all the lights, hoping he'd never have to get up from the couch he had slumped into, or spun the cylinder of the revolver a few times, finger ghosting over the trigger.
He sighed.
"Before… you know, we used to be at home. Eat some damn good food, watch TV, open presents. The usual shit. Cole liked to go outside… make snow angels and all that good stuff."
"That sounds nice."
"It was."
There was an awkward silence after that. Connor's perfect posture slumped just a little bit, and Hank felt even shittier. Crap, the kid was trying, and Hank was being an ass about it, wallowing in self-pity when Connor was trying to live his life. A life that had so far been too short to really experience much. Hank struggled to finish his breakfast and tried not to think about the depressing things. Or the good things before them because that made the depressing things feel even worse. He was fairly sure one part of the meal was an admittedly delicious omelette, but it was made of something that wasn't eggs because Connor had taken one look at eggs and declared them a source of way too much cholesterol. It was… strange to know someone cared about his health. God knows he hadn't for a while.
He should probably speak up, say something before the android across the table sunk into holiday blues too just because Hank was being a stubborn, sad sack of shit.
Hank opened his mouth and might have thought up something to say, but right at that moment an obnoxiously happy tune blasted its way through the windows, and a choir of pre-recorded, nasally voices started singing:
"It's the most wonderful time of the year…"
It was so sudden that it gave Hank whiplash. Almost literally, because his head automatically snapped towards the sound, his fork clattering on his now empty plate.
"What the shit is that?!" he growled.
"The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," Connor said automatically, posture straight again and hands folded on his lap, "A Christmas song composed in 1963 by Edward Pola and George Wyle and first performed by Andy Williams."
"Well, yeah, but who the hell is- oh, hell no!"
Before he knew what he was doing, he was marching into the snow and cold outside, only taking the bare minimum time to step into his winter boots and throw on his jacket.
When he got outside, it seemed that his not-serious prediction about his neighbour, Maurice Jenkins, finally getting singing décor for his gaudy holiday display had finally come true.
He had known Jenkins had put up some of his Christmas crap this year too, but he wasn't prepared to find the guy's entire frickin' yard decked out in lights, rainbow-coloured reindeer, animatronic Santas from thirty years ago, and – yes – a fucking row of singing, lit-up snowmen that were currently butchering a holiday classic with outdated bot-voices. It was surreal; the whole city had barely recovered from the android protests and the subsequent evacuation, most people were still out of town, tensions were high and people were trying to figure out how to deal with the new world order that had to account for sentient robots, and Jenkins was still spending hours putting up his lights and plastic elves? Priorities, apparently.
He heard his door open and close, and Connor walked up to him, blinking wildly as he processed the overflow of stimuli in front of them.
The singing got louder. Jenkins was standing right next to those goddamn snowmen, dressed in a bright red sweater and old-ass boots and looking proud of himself for wrecking the peace in the neighbourhood.
"Jenkins!" Hank roared, "Turn those fucking things off!"
Jenkins was a tall, skinny man in his late forties. He turned to look at Hank with a somewhat haughty look on his face. Like Hank was being culturally illiterate for not appreciating the finer points of singing, plastic snowmen.
"Merry Christmas, Hank!" he chirped – yes, chirped, "Good to see you too! I see you still need some time to get into the holiday spirit."
"Yeah, yeah," Hank waved his hand, "I'll get into the spirit when you turn off that racket. Not everyone wants to listen to that for the whole fucking day!"
"Ehh, maybe not the whole day, but you know, for a while at least," Jenkins said jovially, "This neighbourhood feels even less… festive this year than usually, you know? I was thinking that this might help!"
"You do know there was an evacuation and a city-wide crisis just a few weeks ago, right?" Hank deadpanned, "So yeah, I wonder why no one's in the mood for Christmas."
"I know that!" Jenkins waved his arms, almost looking like he was trying to shoo away the snowflakes that gathered on his shoulders, "But that's just it, you know? When crisis strikes, everyone needs some escapism even more than usual! We're rebuilding, man! We can be happy about that! The dust has settled, the worst is over, and sure, shit might hit the fan soon again, but right now, we're a-okay! At least okay enough to hang up some lights! Be nice! Love thy neighbour, all that!"
"He does have a point," Connor spoke up, and then gave Jenkins a small nod and an almost-there smile, "Happy Christmas, Mr. Jenkins."
"See, he gets it!" Jenkins smiled, "Of course he does. He and my snowmen are basically kin!"
The tentative smile on Connor's face died.
"Ha-ha, Jenkins," Hank said in an ice cold voice. He stood dead still and didn't dare move, because the alternative would be punching the guy in the face, "Hilarious. You know that counts as racism nowadays, right? I could fine you for hate speech."
Jenkins went very quiet, then, and mumbled a last "happy holidays" before slinking back into his house. The snowmen continued singing. Hank's eye twitched.
"You wanna shoot those damn things as much as I do?"
"I think you should go inside before it gets too cold."
"Fine," Hank said, searching through his pockets, "You got the keys? Because I don't."
There was a long, heavy, keyless silence.
"You always keep your keys in your jacket pocket," Connor finally said, "I assumed-"
"Shit!" Hank cursed, patting his pockets again and only finding his phone and his wallet, "I used them yesterday when I took out the trash and put them… somewhere."
Another silence.
"I could always-" Connor started, but Hank raised a hand to stop him.
"No! You're not breaking any of my windows again! We're getting a locksmith."
"No locksmiths are working in Detroit today because of the evacuation and the holidays."
"Shit!"
"I'm sorry, Hank."
Hank rubbed his eyes. It was going to be a loooong day.
"Nah, it's not your fault," he muttered.
They stood in the snow for a long moment. Finally, Connor spoke hesitantly:
"Do you still have your wallet with you? We could perhaps… go to a mall, or a café… or anyplace that wouldn't do bad things to your blood pressure."
Hank looked at the shiny yard of his neighbour and then at the house that was now locked and whose kitchen window Hank had just recently replaced because a certain android had broken through it to sober him up that one time…
"I fed Sumo and took him for a walk before I woke you," Connor added, "So he should be fine for a few hours."
Hank sighed again. It was a long-suffering sigh that expelled not only this but many other shitty Christmases from his system as well.
"Alright, let's go. There's bound to be some place in this city that's not depressing or annoying."
He didn't miss the way Connor's eyes lit up.