December 12, 2038. 5:54pm.
He wasn't entirely sure how it happened, but somehow, he was always the one that ended up waiting around for a fucking android. No matter the situation or the urgency of time, his new mechanical partner always seemed to be somewhere that Hank wasn't – clearly, the deviancy had not impacted that obsessive need in Connor to scan absolute everything everywhere they fucking went. It wasn't like he generally minded; the few extra seconds or minutes it took Connor to scan every inch of a crime scene usually ended up being worth it. But did he have to act like this even outside of working hours? They were at the mall just so Connor could pick up something small to bring to a dinner party, and he'd been gone for over half an hour already. Hank had been waiting for so long that he was pretty sure that the people working at the Santa photo exhibit near his bench thought he was a weirdo loitering around for kids.
Okay, maybe not that long, but over the last six years, Hank had become accustomed to having no one to wait around for at all. Now everything had suddenly shifted, and he was still adjusting: in just a few days, he'd gained a friend, a partner and a roommate. Extending an invitation to Connor to live with him had just seemed like the right thing to do, especially considering they were partners permanently now. Much to Hank's surprise, Connor had been hired on by the precinct after the movement so that he wouldn't be taken back by CyberLife. Apparently Fowler liked that the kid brought out the best in Hank or some shit. But if Connor brought out the best in him, then why the hell were they being ordered to be bodyguards? Being a bodyguard was never as interesting or as dangerous as it was portrayed to be on TV. It just had the potential to be, and Hank knew a lot about wasted potential.
Still, asking Connor to live with him might be a contender for Hank's top "what the hell did you just do to yourself?" moment. It only took a few days of living with the kid for Hank to realize he hadn't exactly thought the cohabiting thing all the way through. First of all, with Connor around, he couldn't just let it all hang out in his own house anymore, no matter how much Connor insisted it didn't matter to an android if one saw him naked. ('No way in hell. If I ever see your naked ass on my couch, consider yourself evicted.') Second, androids don't sleep. Hank knew that, but it didn't make it any less freaky when he got up for his 3am piss and spotted Connor in the living room, reading a book in the dark, or watching TV or just staring at nothing. Then, finally, and Hank could not stress this enough: Connor was way too fucking pleasant. With his stupidly precise haircut and his newfound ability to have an existential crisis, Connor was this intensely friendly, infuriatingly intellectual and profound being that was just as confused as humans were about the fact that he had feelings and desires when he shouldn't. Hank had seen the change firsthand: Connor, originally a by-the-book authoritarian bot, had broken past the parameters that society had literally set for him and fought for the freedom to make his own decisions, and yet questioning every decision he made along the way. Hank considered that kind of experience nothing less than human, regardless of his biowhatever body parts and his blue blood. It was that flawed side of Connor that Hank found himself invested in. His programming had learned to feel fear, to care about others, to enjoy music, and to laugh at Hank's outdated impression of Mr. Krabs (which was, even after six years of neglect, still spot on, thank you very much). The more that Hank thought about it, the more he realized the 'how' of it all didn't really matter. All that mattered was that Connor was alive in his own way, and he experienced feelings and conflict just like the rest of them.
None of this, though, changed the fact that he fantasized about punching Connor in his symmetrical face whenever he chirped good morning, asked him about his sleep, and what his plans were for the day all before Hank had even reached his coffee machine or put on pants.
Yes, he should probably have more patience with Connor, but feelings in general made Hank uncomfortable. Sometimes, Connor would ask him questions about the "human experience", about feelings and what Hank did about them, but so far, Hank hadn't given him more than a gruff word or two in response. Even for a human, Hank knew that his version of having feelings was unorthodox, as he usually dealt with them by drowning them in the bottom of a bottle. Hank knew he was a bit rough around the edges; a shaggy result of some less-popular "riches to rags" story. He'd lost a wife (who he never let himself think about, let alone talk about), then his own fucking son. Cole had been this perfect miracle of a boy, somehow born out of the swamp of Hank's countless failings and imperfections. He had saved him from the abyss of despair after Elinore passed, so much of her in him shining through every day. And of course, Hank had managed to fuck that up too; Cole ended up following in his mother's footsteps six years later, leaving only him behind. It was only natural that the darkness came rushing back: his once-fierce passion for a job that he used to display so much potential for followed suit, spiraling down in a whirlpool of limitless liquors and Russian roulette. What did any of it matter if he was just left behind in this garbage dumpster of a world without them?
All this to say that Hank didn't want to be saved. The last thing he wanted was some boy wonder showing up and forcing him to give a shit about what was left of his life. He had never expected to like the android, let alone care about him this much; it had been quite the turnaround for Hank to realize that he may not care about his own life, but after everything they went through, he would sure as hell fight for Connor's right to have one. After all, Cole had his right to live robbed from him; he would no longer stand idly by and watch it happen to anybody else, even androids. But how the hell had it all ended up with Hank here, in the middle of a crowded mall on a Saturday in December? The holiday season, Jesus Christ. Probably his least favourite time of the year.
"Hank!"
Oh, thank fuck. That dopey voice was like music to his ears; it meant Hank was that much closer to getting away from the old guy in the red velvet suit being paid to have kids sit in his lap. Connor ran up to him with an unabashed grin on his perpetually youthful face, looking entirely human save for the LED spinning around the disc on his temple. Even though it had already been a month since the androids won their civil movement, Hank was still getting used to seeing Connor wear something other than his RK800 cybersuit. He had a few outfits in his otherwise sparse closet, but he normally alternated between his new detective uniform and the clothes he had worn when he'd first became a deviant. Today, following Fowler's orders, Connor was dressed up for the Morrows' dinner party. Now that he was getting paid for his work, he could afford a decent outfit, although it had taken a hell of a lot of willpower on Hank's part to stop Connor from attending the party in a tuxedo that he had originally picked out for himself. Instead, the android was wearing a fitted sports jacket and pair of slim-cut dark denim pants, with his usual (ridiculously neat) collared shirt and tie. Hank gave negative shits about this party, so he had just thrown on whatever Connor picked out for him. Apparently, that meant he was attending the dinner party dressed as a sad hippy.
"What the hell, Connor," Hank snapped. "What kept you? They're about to close!"
As usual, Connor's realization that he had annoyed Hank resulted in guilty puppy-dog eyes, which just made Hank feel bad for being so hard on him. It was a vicious cycle of Hank being a total sucker.
"I'm sorry," said Connor sincerely, and Hank felt his hostility begin to subside. Damn. "I was in the new pastry shop on the second floor. I picked up some desserts to bring to the party, but there was a long line because of the holiday sales."
Hank sighed, and he abandoned his curt impatience in favour of walking alongside Connor towards the exit. "But you don't eat. You waited forty minutes in line for food you can't eat?"
"I can eat, technically speaking, though I generally choose not to. But this isn't for me, anyway. This is for Mr. Morrow and his daughter." The doors of the shopping centre beeped as they slid open, revealing the icy path to his salvation in the form of his beat-up car. Connor produced his toque from the pocket of his jacket, pulling it over his hair to protect it from the falling snow.
"Wait, you can eat?" Hank flashed him his trademark skeptical side-glance, and his gaze briefly swept over Connor as he approached the car and grabbed the ice scraper from the back seat. Where the hell would any food go? Had his prototype been potty-trained or something?
"The RK800 has a scanner on the tongue," Connor explained as he began to clear the snow from the car. "I have taste buds to help detect oddities in a substance, and ancillary biocomponents to permit digestion. They were originally installed to give unusable material somewhere to go, rather than for the conventional dietary-related reasons."
The image of Connor licking blue blood off his fingers flashed through Hank's unfortunate mind.
"Huh. Imagine that. I've suddenly lost my appetite."
"More for the Morrows then," Connor said pleasantly as he moved to start removing the snow from the rear windshield next. "It's rude to show up to a party empty-handed."
How many social conventions had CyberLife programmed into a bot meant to handle detective work?
"This again," Hank scoffed, shaking his head. "We're glorified babysitters who prepare to take a bullet for someone but never do. We've been assigned to them. We're not visiting their home as dinner party guests; we're visiting to introduce ourselves, learn about them and their home so we can offer better security."
"Except there's a party and we're their guests, so–"
"Shut up."
"Now, Lieutenant, don't be grumpy because we utilized the precinct's fitness facility this morning," he chided, his tone brimming with upbeat condescension. The comment was seemingly off-hand, and yet it had correctly identified the beginnings of Hank's frustrations that day, which really only served to start aggravating him again. Somehow, it had been easier to just go to the damned gym with Connor than try to argue with him. "Both your cholesterol and job performance will greatly benefit from exercise," he added matter-of-factly.
"But you don't need to exercise. Why the hell do you care about going to the gym?"
"Moral support. Humans have a higher success rate in weight loss when they have a gym buddy to hold them accountable."
Hank's eye twitched.
Gym buddy?
"Just get in the fucking car, will ya?"
Then, quick enough to escape the sharp notice of even his scanners, it happened: a chain reaction of inconsequential events that would (unbeknownst to either of them) become something all too important.
He couldn't tell what it had been, or who it had been, but a blur of red suddenly lost its footing on the icy path and collided with Connor – hard – taking him both by surprise and down with them onto the slippery pavement. Connor let out a startled noise, not even a grunt but something sounding similar to 'nghooof!' before he hit the ground, tangled up with whatever moron had tried to run across a parking lot in the snow. Hank watched uselessly as the box of pastries slipped from his partner's grasp, scattering tarts and cookies across the parking lot. His black toque flew off his head, revealing that his LED was cycling red.
"Holy shit."
He'd actually been caught off guard – Hank had never seen anything like it. Connor was the epitome of perfectly engineered efficiency and grace, even though his unintimidating and lanky exterior might make others assume the opposite. He had tried to explain that his appearance was meant to put humans at ease, but there was nothing at all calming in how Hank had seen him dodge bullets, somersault beneath closing doors and sprint between vehicles on a major highway. But today the android, who was already built to be all limbs, ended up twisted on the ground in a humanly imperfect fashion, his shoulder touching his foot somehow and his elbows scraping against the rock beneath him. As the collision-prone stranger popped back up onto their feet with impressive speed, Connor took a moment to stretch himself out and brace for his surroundings. His hand shot above his eyes and he squinted up at the figure, clearly just as confused as Hank, the disc on his temple still spinning quickly.
"Oh God, I'm so sorry!" The stranger was already there, offering her hand to the fallen android. It wasn't until Connor was standing again, brushing the snow off of his jacket, that Hank realized how petite she was, especially next to them. He bit back a grin. It kind of made it all the more impressive that she had unexpectedly taken down CyberLife's most advanced android and recovered more quickly than him. She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties, but she barely reached five feet tall; her small size was emphasized by the thick, red winter coat and scarf she was not so much wearing as drowning in. Her eyes were large, round with concern, and brown, but not dark like Connor's – they were more of a bright honey colour that stood out against her other dark features. Her hair fell in thick, black waves, mussed by the fallen hood of her coat and frizzing due to the snow.
"Are you all right?" she was antsy as she posed the question, practically bouncing on the tips of her toes and apparently in some sort of rush. It occurred to Hank then that Connor hadn't actually said anything to her yet, which was strange. It wasn't every day that Hank got to witness him speechless; usually around pretty girls, Hank was the one with the least to say. This time it was Connor, his LED stuck on red as he stared at her with an indecipherable expression on his face. She had picked up his fallen toque for him, which he accepted, but his hand lingered, brushing against hers. It didn't appear to be a tender moment, however, as his eyes were narrowed and focused.
"I'm fine," Connor finally answered, sounding distracted and unlike himself. Hank remained quiet as he watched the yellow start to fight back and attempt to de-stabilize the red. What about this chick was freaking him out so badly? Connor eventually caught the stern glance Hank had sent him, and that seemed like enough to shake him out of it. His expression finally softened, though his LED continued to flicker between colours. "Sorry. Something must be off with my programming – I can normally hear people coming from a great distance."
While her concern for Connor did seem genuine, her attention had been stolen by the time displayed on her watch. She was already walking away as she answered, "Shit, I've got to run. Sorry again!" She broke out into a run across the salted parking lot, offering an awkward, "Glad you're okay!" to Connor over her shoulder. Clearly, she had learnt absolutely nothing after everything that had just happened.
"Well, that was fun," Hank said, smug, as Connor stared after her. "Don't get me wrong, I always enjoy seeing you get beat down – but it's a special treat to see it done by someone a foot shorter than you." The playful hazing soared right over Connor's head, and he turned to face Hank with a serious expression.
"I'm the most advanced android that CyberLife has ever created. I don't understand. How was I not even aware that a human was there?" He seemed genuinely distressed, and Hank felt that discomfort once again, still not entirely familiar with the best way to reassure a robot going through an emotional crisis. "How did my scans fail to retrieve any relevant information on her in my databases? When I saw her, I had no idea what to say or what to think. Could the deviancy really be affecting my software this much in the short-term?"
Oh, jeez. Hank did his best to be sensitive, but it came out in the form of a casual shrug as he got into the car.
"Hey, you guys fought to be equal. It's only fair that you get to be as miserable as the rest of us when it comes to figuring out why we become idiots the second we see a pretty girl."
A/N: Thank you all so much for your follows and reviews, and for bearing with me through Chapter 1 – it had to lay out some of the ground work, but that means next chapter we'll be able to start diving into the character dynamics. Yay! Plus, we got to see some of Hank's depth, and that's always fun. If you have the time, please leave a review – they really keep me going!
Disclaimer: Usual disclaimer applies.