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WHO: Hank Anderson | Connor
WHAT: Hank discovers he has a new roommate
WHERE: The Noobie Chicken Coop
WHEN: Connor's arrival
WARNINGS: 🎜🎝 General warnings for Hank's possible suicidal ideation. Will come back and add anything else.

Hank's shift goes on per usual. Today's grind isn't any different from the usual. He's occupied at the intersection next to a school during a science fair type of event, constantly directing the flow of traffic and both entitled parents and sweet old ladies bearing baked goods for the kids braving the sidewalk. By the end of it he's gained three muffins, a large chocolate chip cookie, two cupcakes, and lost four points of sanity.

He fuels himself up with two cups of coffee for a round of ticketing in downtown. He's relatively sure that, at some point, he sees someone that looks just like him buying fruit from a stand. Besides the bizarreness of Hank Anderson buying fresh fruit very well it being a doppelganger, a double-take proves it a false alarm. Though he's so busy staring and trying to fathom what he wasn't actually seeing (he thinks?) that the man who's car he was about to ticket is able to run out of the store and jump into his vehicle and rush away before Hank can scan in his plate number.

Figures.

As he's back at the station clocking out he passes by detectives discussing their cases and is surprised by how much he misses it, considering his willingness to throw it away back home. He really wanted to help people, but he also didn't want to play the games associated with the job.

When he gets home he nearly falls over when he comes through the door. The entire room's changed. Two beds. More drawers. More closets. Still a shower, though, that's good.

He reaches up and pulls the tie out of his hair that keeps about half of it up at work, letting it fall loose and into its usual aesthetic of crimped sheepdog shaggy. He's just standing there, in his uniform, staring in a state of confusion at changes he just fuckin' doesn't understand. That whole "matrix bullshit" theory is gaining ground in his head again.

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"No no I mean... there are a fuckload of cyborgs nearly to the point of being androids. There are actual androids. These are just what's made locally. Not anyone brought in from somewhere else," Hank reassures him.

He notices that Connor's still plucking at the bedsheet. And, awkardly, so awkwardly, put's his hand over Connor's to still it. Just leaves it for a heartbeat or two, then turns it to face palm up. His keys are pulled out from his pocket then (including those from Detroit on the ring), and he disentangles a very old, weathered, round dogtag that says 'Rocky' on it, with a long irrelevant phone number.

"All the currency is digital here. No coins. This'll have to do."

He puts that in Connor's hand.

"That work for ya?"

It's annoying as fuck but just from the words coming out of Connor's face, he knows the entire situation is overwhelming. From the worrying color of that red light, it's gotta be a bit much.

Some of the tension almost visibly leaves him at that. He hasn't seen any-- "Cyborgs?"--so it's good information to have. People here will know what he is. He's not taking a step backwards.

He glances down sharply at the touch to his hand, stilling his fingers against the bed. He blinks down at their hands - at first he assumes he's annoying Hank with the fidgeting and his other hand stops as well accordingly. But no, what Hank presses into his hand is...

"Rocky?" he asks, lifting the tag to examine it more closely. Then, tentatively, wondering if Hank realises what he just enabled, he flicks the tag up, spins it from fingertip to fingertip and catches it by the edges between two fingers.

"Rocky was a dog I had a long time ago. I put his tag on my keys after I had to put him down. He was a good dog. Just got old. Dogs do that." He worries about Sumo. He's actually pretty old for a dog.

He doesn't complain about the coin this time. Hank fidgets in his own ways, drumming his hands or pacing. He's got no place to judge Connor. He lets it happen because Connor needs it.

"Yeah, you can actually have mods added? Stuff you can pay for to make you better. The people that don't have their magic have been getting these magical tattoo things. Sort of a 'self-improvement enabled' thing. Pretty sure if I put enough money into it I could do some of the stuff you do."

And there was the stupid idea. The one he'd shamefully considered but also felt like such a waste. He puts it to the back of his mind again. No, don't think about that.

"But also I've had sorta this worry it's gonna be a pomegranate seed. You do somethin' like get a mod and you're stuck, some Persephone bullshit. I don't wanna take the risk."

Edited 2019-08-13 21:58 (UTC)

He downloaded a lot of information about dogs trying to look after Sumo while Hank was gone - and one thing he does know is that big dogs just don't live very long. In that moment, he finds himself thinking about Sumo as well. He fidgets with the tag for just a couple more seconds: he already knows it annoys Hank when he does it, so the gesture of Hank giving him a coin replacement doesn't pass him by. He settles for just rubbing it with his thumb, reading the letters and numbers on the face by touch alone.

"Stuff I do? Like making reports with my eyes closed?" he asks, teasing a little, but also genuinely curious about what Hank would get if he had the power to get...magical tattoo things.

A second later, he frowns.

"I think I found a limitation..." He pauses for a second, LED going yellow, then goes on, "I tried to look up Persephone and pomegranate seeds, but all I'm getting is pictures of cats with writing on them."

But is that his ability to search being limited, or is it just that he's just been put on a network where the only information is cat pictures?

"No, um... I just..." He trails off with an awkward gesture in the air, and then rubs his mouth. He thinks again of Connor's hand wrapping around an arm, of something happening there. And fuck, it would be so much easier to talk sometimes without having to fucking actually talk. To just do what those other androids do and hold their hands together- "Nothin'."

He trails off, going to a different subject.

"Cat pictures? Like fuckin' 2005 memes? Shit. I thought this was the future. I guess everything runs in cycles."

It's not the future. He doesn't know what it is, but he's going to poke fun at it.

"There was a king of the underworld in Greek myth. It's not really hell. It's where everyone goes when they're dead. And he got very smitten with the daughter of a goddess, the woman who controlled seasons. Demeter. So he kidnaps the daughter- more like a bride-stealing, which was this thing where people 'stole' their wives so they didn't have to negotiate to marry 'em. Dowrys and shit were a thing. Apparently if you eat something in the underworld, you gotta stay forever. And he talked Persephone into eating a seed.

"Sorta goes hit or miss on whether she knew what she was doing or not. Anyway, Demeter gets pissed, like mama with a shotgun pissed. Dips the world into an ice age. In order to get her to shut the fuck up Hades has to get off his high horse and actually let her share time with her daughter. He gets Persephone a fourth of the year. During winter.

"Point being, if we do something to ourselves here? I wonder if it'll bind us."

Edited 2019-08-14 08:58 (UTC)

He stares at Hank. It's clearly not nothing. But he'll have to file it away for later - maybe Hank just really wants to know the chemical content of everything he puts in his mouth. Weirder things have happened. Hank has done weirder, as far as Connor's concerned about it.

Cat memes are a part of history also not part of Connor's memory, but sure. He silently loads one onto his phone screen and shows it to Hank, eyebrow raised. "This is what I get if I look up Persephone."

His search function just presents that to him like it's exactly what he's looking for and not a result of it picking up something totally random that has nothing to do with what he was trying to look up. He tries again with a couple of search terms and gets much the same thing...then realises with a slight sinking feeling that he's just been hobbled - he has a decent knowledge base - general and specialised to his programming - but a lot of it's supplemented by being able to automatically search unknown terms and concepts.

"Right." For now, he has Hank to explain his own references. "Is there anybody here who's done it already that you can ask?"

Hank actually smiles, showing that small gap in his teeth as he chuckles. Not that the meme is funny, but he's just never seen someone so thoroughly thwarted by one. He can acknowledge, though, this will very much be a pain in the ass later when they actually need to investigate things. But right now it's kind of funny.

Well. That gives them an answere there.

"The internet here's strictly monitored so I wouldn't count it having anything helpful about... I don't know... 75% of the time. Lots of censoring. One guy tried to bitch about his job and the name of the store was blocked out."

He thinks the algorithms are some sort of shit, though. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But yeah, it looks like Connor has had his own limitations implimented. He's going to have to learn some things himself.

"Nope. Honestly as far as I fuckin' know, for the ones who go they could just brain 'em and throw 'em in a pit and nobody'd know any better." He shrugs. Great, huh? A lot of fucking mysteries he didn't want but he has, at least, been chipping away at them.

He's just confused, he doesn't find any part of the picture or the situation funny - but Hank does, and Connor's gaze flickers automatically to him as he laughs, then away again just as quickly.

"Not having a useful internet limits me in a lot of ways," he points out. "I can't use facial recognition or take proper scans now either. If I pick up an unknown substance, I can't identify it."

He then thinks of something else and pauses.

"And if I'm destroyed here, my memories won't be uploaded... Not that there's another body here to put them into anyway."

His LED is yellow again. This should have occurred to him before - after all, CyberLife almost certainly weren't going to replace his body if it was destroyed, not after what happened.

And that's something he needs to process, right now.

"Yeah, you only got one life. Just like one of us. I mean, I could get you a thumb drive but I uh... I like havin' you around. Think I'll just have to make sure nothing happens to you."

It might not be that reassuring, but he would gladly keep Connor behind him in a firefight. Hank can heal from bullet wounds. Connor can't. That's the logic he'll use. But it's not as if traffic cops get into a lot of firefights.

(Traffic cops that do independent investigations into totalitarian organizations might but you know, you do what you've gotta do.)

That LED has his attention, though. It's a lot to go through. He decides to sit there for the moment, to let him work it all out with his improvised coin. He's happy to just sit here at his side, taking up some of his newly bestowed personal space until Connor's had a little more time to think about that.

He's in the midst of throwing Hank a long-suffering sort of look at the words 'thumb drive', but then the rest brings it to a halt.

"I don't know if you remember," he says slowly, "But when we went to the apartment where Rupert was staying, we didn't know what we would find. You told me to get behind you."

In the moment, Connor had been completely unfazed by this. Machine-like. But later, as his software destabilised further, that moment - and then another like it in the Eden Club - came back to him and stuck in his mind.

"It was the first time anybody treated me like an equal, not an expendable tool," he goes on, every word carefully chosen because this isn't something he's used to talking about. Or something he expected to really talk about.

"Actually, you're still the only human who's ever really treated me that way." Maybe a couple of the other cops - the one who thanked him for saving his life comes to mind - but he was still just a piece of equipment to them, forever having to prove he was worth the basic dignity of even looking in the eye.

"I want you to know how much I appreciate it. I couldn't say it before, but I can now."

He couldn't feel it before, but he can now.

Thumb drive. He mouths, holding up his thumb and making a motion like that's where you'd plug it in. That long-suffering look isn't wrong.

Hank doesn't know how to respond to that. Not really. But Connor can probably see how the feeling swells in his chest, how it shows up in his eyes.

"You'll be amazed by how much nicer people will be to you than I've been." He promises. "But I swear that I'll always treat you like you're a little bit of a shit. Not because you're an android. But because you're a little bit of a shit.

"You're my partner. I only knew you a little while. Two months later it's been eatin' me up that I couldn't reach you."

Edited 2019-08-14 22:14 (UTC)

"If you can find one that holds several exabytes of information, let me know," he says, shaking his head.

Hank gives him a look then, one that Connor doesn't want to disrupt - wants it to stay there as long as it can because he's never seen it on Hank's face before. It suits him, he thinks - better than the anger and resignation. Better than the look of a man giving up.

"I'd argue with you," he says, still watching that look, "but you're the expert on what a little bit of a shit looks like."

But then he grins.

"I'm sorry you had to wait that long."

Especially since, for Connor, it was barely a day. A stressful day, sure, but not a stressful two months.

He figures if he did find one that held that much, he would tell him. But he holds that look for as long as he doesn't realize he's making it. Or as long as it is until he realizes Connor's been staring back at him.

"Won't argue with that." He knows he's a prick. And he finds some other place to look at as he finishes off his bottle.

"Don't be sorry. I might be glad to know you're alright, but I wish you weren't in this fucking mess, too. Still, wish I knew how the room did this while I was out. It doesn't even look like it messed with my stuff. Fuckin' most disturbing shit I've run into since getting here."

He stands up, finally, and gives Connor his space on his own brand new bed. And now that there's someone else here, he starts making a half-ass attempt to clean up. He burps impressively, tosses away the bottle, and starts plucking up items to either generally put back where they go, put them in the inevitable 'odds and ends' drawer, or put clothing items in the hamper.

It's barely an effort. But with Connor here, it's something to prove some motivation.

Connor only remembers humans don't particularly like being stared at when Hank looks away, and hurriedly looks back at the dog tag in his lap as well as Hank finishes off the drink.

"It can't have expanded without there already being room for it to expand in the building," he says, trying be sensible about this as he leans back a little on the bed to look at the ceiling for any kind of mechanism, even a hint of some way of it having expanded or stretched.

Meanwhile, Hank seems to nervously buzz around the room picking up after himself. Connor barely noticed the mess and isn't bothered by it now that he is seeing it - besides, it's all concentrated in one half of the room, lending to what Hank said about it having simply expanded by itself.

"You don't need to do that for me," he says, nonplussed. Hank never exactly cleaned up his house on Connor's account - he knows what it looks like. Somehow, having seen rooms cluttered up with bodies, blood, police markers...he can't bring himself to care much about a few bits and pieces. Not even in what's suddenly the first room of his own he's ever had.

"Yeah, I know... I know. You've seen worse. But it's sorta for yourself and the people around you. You pick up at least a little so make room. Making things less cluttered makes you a little more stable.

"I figured... well, I was gonna die anyway, so why the fuck clean back in Detroit. Before Cole died I was at least pretty neat. Not fuckin' academy neat, but neat. So you pick up after yourself to get rid of minor inconveniences."

And after having seen how androids live? He knows the explanation is necessary.

"Sometimes you just pick up after yourself. That's all."

Connor's jaw works a little at the at the mention of Hank thinking he would die anyway. And then at Cole's death. The last time they talked about that wasn't really talking, it was having to desperately hash it out in front of a CyberLife doppelganger. He doesn't know if he really expected Hank to ever mention it to him again.

Pre-deviant Connor would just have asked the immediate question: does this mean you're no longer trying to kill yourself? Deviant Connor doesn't want to ask a question he doesn't know the answer to. And besides - he doesn't even want to see Hank considering the question. Why should Hank have to tap into something painful just because Connor asked? Sometimes empathy means killing curiosity.

"In that case... I think I can manage that," he says, slightly ironically considering they both know Connor didn't come with any possessions, didn't have any in Detroit anyway and he can't think of anything he immediately wants here.

Actually. There is something he decides to ask.

"What about Cole, was he particularly neat?"

He'd like to know more about Cole - the good things. Not just as bad memories buried away and festering. And maybe Hank would like thinking of him that way as well.

Hank is silent for a few hard moments. Puffing out a pillow for something to do with his hands, even if he doesn't give that much of a fuck about it. He actually starts smoothing out his sheets and making the bed. Something he'd long given up on.

It's out of a sense of trust that he eventually speaks. Even in their short time together, Connor earned it. And Hank's tendency to ruminate has, in this case, worked to Connor's benefit. Absence made the heart grow fonder.

"Not really. Kids don't tend to be neat. He uh... He'd do this thing where he'd just empty out his whole Crayon box to get to all the crayons. And I mean, he had one of those big, big boxes. With the sixty four colors. So I'd have to tell him to put his crayons away. He'd pull out all the cardboard sleeves and then dump 'em in there. He started realizing they'd break and he complained about it and I told him if he put them in there neatly, they wouldn't break. He said, 'Daddy that's how you store your tools!'."

And at that, Hank chuckles a little. Another beat of silence.

"I told him crayons aren't made of metal. He had a lot of trouble cleaning his room but he learned to not leave toys out when Sumo would chew them up. He had this chewie phase for the first four or so years of his life. If Cole left out something that he took a liking to, there'd be dismembered tiny people all over the floor. He'd get so mad."

Hank clears his throat then, having smoothed out and evened out the comforter to near perfection.

"After what happened-" 'what happened', leaving it to remain some ambiguous unnamed incident "-a couple of days later, Sumo chewed up the last little action figure person he found digging under the couch. Hardest damn thing to clean up."

And Hank sits then, having somewhat successfully cleared all the hard feelings out of his throat, and having found some sort of even face.

Hank starts making his bed, and the motions are so familiar Connor finds himself looking down at the dog tag he's still rubbing with his thumb. There's a moment where he's not sure Hank's going to answer, and it'll be fair if he doesn't, but it would be sad all the same - but then he speaks.

Connor doesn't know anything about children - if he did, he definitely wouldn't have asked that exact question, and he's already making note that human children are even messier than adults before Hank really starts talking about Cole. And talk he does - longer than he thinks Hank might have talked about Cole in a very long time, and there's an odd, fragile sort of privilege in realising that as Connor sits quietly and listens to it. He huffs softly in laughter himself hearing about Hank's tools, and doesn't even realise he's still smiling through hearing about Sumo chewing everything and teaching Cole a valuable lesson.

But he stops smiling soon enough.

It's hard to hear even for him - this little boy who was a full-fledged living being of his own, snuffed out before getting to really live his life. Memories of Cole still live in Hank's memory - and Connor's now by extension, which he's suddenly profoundly grateful for - but that shouldn't be all Cole.

"I'm..." He frowns more deeply. Sorry doesn't mean anything, why should it? Instead, he tells the truth. "Thanks - for telling me about him. I'm glad you did.

"And you're lucky Sumo stopped chewing everything eventually," he adds evenly. "Or you wouldn't have anything left."

"Yeah. Yeah..." Hank agrees softly. "Rocky was worse, though. Sumo's just a big dog that needed to clean his teeth every once in a while."

Hank needs to change out of his work uniform but he's not in any rush to. He's realized he can't just walk naked around his room before changing. Well, he could. But it would be, you know...

Awkward.

So he just backs up until his back is against the wall and lazily drums on his stomach, patting it lightly. Now that the euphoria of realizing Connor's okay has worn off. "Nobody really asked me how I was doing, you know? After it happened? It was easy to strike up a normal conversation but not to talk to me about anything personal. I know I got a problem with dwelling on it, but nobody asked.

"So I figured it was just mine to keep. All this..."

He motions around his own head.

"Shit."

He can feel the letter R under his thumb, and nods slowly.

Connor doesn't consider himself to have trauma. He has bad memories - the things he did as a machine. To Daniel, to Carlos Ortiz's android, who never even had a name. But he doesn't get to centre himself in what happened to those two androids, who did nothing wrong except defend themselves the only way they knew how. All he gets to do is be better.

What Hank went through is different. Real. And maybe he needs help that he never got. Someone to pull him over the edge of a roof once in a while. If he wants it.

"It doesn't have to be," he says, watching Hank closely. "Just yours to keep, I mean.

"I'm here if you need."

"I know... You're that type of man. Not many of you in the world. Enough to restore my faith you still exist, but it's really fuckin' hard to be that kind of caring, you know? Wears you thin, eventually.

"Then sometimes when you find yourself there, you end up in my place. So just keep in mind that if somethin' ever hits you hard, I'm there for you, too."

The expression that he gives Connor is about as soft as a face like Hank's can muster. Grisly, bearded, with a deep brow and sharp cheekbones. But there's something definitely tender in those blue eyes, a real appreciation he'd failed at before.

There's now, instead of the weight of getting back, the weight of making sure he can get them both home and make their family whole again.

...Connor's not used to being called a man. He hears the rest of what Hank's saying, of course he does, but he's never been described with that simple word before, and he has to take a second to adapt to it. When he does, though, he finds he's already satisfied with it, with this new sign of personhood.

Another sign of personhood - relying on others. Androids as machines kept their own counsel - if they even had personal issues, which the vast majority of them weren't capable of. Even Connor wouldn't have dreamed of talking to someone about the things he was going through with his software destabilising. Mostly because it would have meant his immediate deactivation. But humans can talk to one another (so can androids, now). He doesn't really understand why they don't do it more, it would fix a lot of problems.

He finds himself wondering a little too just what Hank's been through in the two months he's been here - what it is that made him miss Connor so much. What Hank knew of Connor was mostly him as a machine, albeit an increasingly unstable one. But the look on Hank's face now, reserved for him, it's...a lot. In a good way.

"I've never..." He doesn't know how to explain it, so he settles with, "Thanks, Hank."

He looks at Hank's uniform - black, LED lighting only it's orange, not like his blue lighting - and looks thoughtful.

"I should try to find a job as well, right?"

Not that rent's an issue, but...people work. Hank's working. That's seems to be the logical next step for him here.

The sad, miserable fact is that Hank just didn't have any friends left. He'd had casual friends, sure, but close ones? Ones that cared whether or not Hank was making it to work on time or even not spending his nights at a table playing Russian Roulette. Connor didn't necessarily care, but he was at the very base level interested in his welfare.

And Hank had just rediscovered how to be a good man himself. A good man would never have abandoned someone who needed him. Not when he knew his partner could end up as content waiting on a bench as he could be in a nice warm house or on a car ride to certain freedom.

But he leaves the sentiment there, because he doesn't know his own expression and also he's still of a manly stereotype that sharing emotions is difficult.

"You don't have to. They give you a base allowance here. You want anything special, though, you gotta get a job. I just... I didn't need anything special, I just didn't like fuckin' sitting around all the time."

That's a lie. He did want something special. But he won't admit to the revolver in the bottom of one of his clothing drawers, buried under slacks. He's got a feeling Connor wouldn't be happy knowing it was there.

He shakes his head. Sitting around waiting to do something is definitely what he would do as a machine. Being what he is now, a living being who actually makes his own choices? No, if other people are getting jobs, then he's going to get one as well. It's a start.

"I'll get a job. I want one. And besides," he says, shrugging, "I might need the money for something. You never know."

Maybe he'll decide at some point there's something incredibly expensive that he needs right now in that very second.

... No, he can't picture what. But you never know.

"You said you were a traffic cop?"

"I want to be a cop so I have to start at fuckin' patrol level again. It's shit. But since I have experience I might be able to work my way up."

Hank honestly can't think of another life that he'd like to live. This is what he trained for, believed in, and even if he has to start by issuing tickets and helping little old ladies cross the street? He'll take it

He's doing his own side investigations, sure, but he's being sure not to throttle any other investigators in the process.

"People aren't too bad there, but I'd feel better with you around."

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CW: Suicidal ideation

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