dualislogs | Midnight, not a sound from the pavement

Midnight, not a sound from the pavement

WHO: All residents of Dualis + special guest stars
WHAT: Strap in, kiddos, it’s a ~memshare~
WHERE: In your head. Or, you know. Everywhere you go to escape that.
WHEN: August 15-24
WARNINGS: Don’t forget these if they’re applicable!

It’s been a few months, Dualis, how are you settling in? New arrivals, we know it’s sudden, but we hope you’re making new friends already and settling in well! You’re all gonna fit in juuuust fine around here.

Things have calmed down after the supposed terrorist attacks during the Dualis Days celebration, and there’s still no news about that strange network broadcast. But maybe that’s for the best, right? See, the Head really does have everything under control.

But speaking of heads…

Over the course of these next few days, yours might be feeling a little funny. Maybe you just aren’t quite feeling like yourself. Or there’s an ache that just won’t quite go away. Or maybe you’re perfectly fine! Which is completely optimal, honestly.

Except--that memory you suddenly have. Is that really yours? And what about those fainting spells that seem to come with premonitions...or are you perhaps remembering something you repressed long ago? You’d probably remember something like this, though, wouldn’t you?

It’s perfectly natural to be concerned. However, if you approach your friendly neighborhood MedBot or clinician, they’re going to be pretty stumped. It appears there's nothing really wrong with you, but hey, here's some mild painkillers if you want them. And if you try and consult the Head, all it’ll be able to do is give you it’s most sincere condolences. It seems that there may have been some complications with the transfer process, but these should definitely wear off soon! In the meantime, why not visit your local clinic for a sedative and some painkillers?

Good luck, denizens. Looks like you’re in for a bumpy week or two...

[[As a reminder, these memory shares can happen at any point in time during the span of the event, not just when your characters are sleeping! You're also welcome to have them experience no side effects at all, all the way up to fainting spells and headaches a la Cordelia circa season 2 of Angel. Feel free to reach out to your friendly neighborhood mods if you have any questions!]]

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Oh yeah, he can hear bitter.

"I'll make a note - carpet works better," he says dryly, trying to make it crystal clear he doesn't actually care about an apology. Hank apologised, he doesn't think Connor's a 'toaster' anymore, and people can change. Connor definitely did.

Niles is staring - it's weird, but Connor can tell without being able to even see him. So he beckons to Hank and leaves the room without a second glance at the other cop. Only when they're back out in the bullpen and Connor's leaning his forearms on one of the standing-height tables for quick meetings - he doesn't have his own desk - that he says anything else.

"I went to the evidence room - after you--distracted Perkins." He's not even going to conceal a grin - he definitely stayed a minute longer than he should have to watch - Fowler was doing the same thing anyway. "And Reed followed me. I thought I convinced him to leave, but he came back a minute or two later and tried to shoot me. I'm afraid I had to use force."

Connor - the very picture of remorse.

"I just wanted to make sure I didn't injure him too badly. That would be, uh..." He makes a face like he's thinking of the word. "Regretful?"

As Hank follows Connor out, it's very possible that he might overhear him whispering a- "I'm going to pour coffee on you," at their voyeur. Which surely everyone knows he wouldn't actually do except to people that he hated, but the threat is there as he trails after Connor until they get to the bullpen.

Not the break room, so he can at least pretend he's checking the maps.

"I distracted him pretty good," Hank chuckles, too. And somehow this fifty-three year old son-of-a-bitch manages to make that grin look a little impish. It's likely that tiny toothgap. That grin grows a little wider, even admiring, as he hears how he had to defend himself against Gavin Reed.

"I'm going to tell you a little department secret, Connor. The reason I got away with pulling shit on Reed as often as I did was that he was real good at turning off his body camera and had a keen eye for raised cell-phones. So maybe giving him a good lesson in appropriate force dispensed in a perfectly logical way is exactly what he needed. And what I needed, that's the best thing I've heard all day."

He grabs the sides of Connor's face and pulls him closer, gently touching foreheads long enough to go, "Give me that memory. I want that one. No? Goddammit."

He lets go then with feigned disappointment. Sometimes even grumpy old fucks have their playful moments.

There's something he's not getting, but whatever it is, it isn't that important.

He automatically grins back when Hank does, eyes crinkling, the motion lighting up his face. There's even teeth - genuinely this time, not the sarcastic half-snarl he offered Reed himself the last time the two of them met.

"Then I take it back. I don't regret anything."

But then Hank pulls their heads together - and for an alarming second Connor has the distinct image of one of the memories he saw earlier in the day: the face of the Patrinot, cast in yellow, leaning in for their mouths to touch - the feeling of warm lips on his own, and the moment when Tommy, returned from wherever he had been, pulls away from him.

But Hank just makes a joke and withdraws, leaving Connor to blink away that sudden association.

"If you see it, let me know," he's in the middle of telling Hank when Niles passes them, and he distinctly hears the words, "get a room".

Connor opens his mouth immediately. Reconsiders. Closes it until nobody can overhear them.

"He isn't talking about being roommates, is he?" Because that's exactly what Connor was so very close to saying. And maybe a week or two ago, he just would have automatically.

Not that he expected any less, but holy shit, Connor has perfect teeth. His smile is also a little lop-sided, and he can't tell if that's intentional to make him acutely roguishly charming in design, if it's a deviant inspired tick, or if Hank's fuckin' increasingly rose-tinted glasses are making his goofy shit look cute. Either way, when Niles passes by with his throwaway comment Hank has a quick 'Fuck off' waiting for him.

And once he's passed, Hank just shakes his head and checks his routes one more time. "No, he doesn't mean roommates," idly, like a passing confirmation, before tacking on a, "Speaking of which, I'm thinking about getting a pet of some kind."

Just to give him a little something extra. Something. He doesn't know what.

"I'd get something that I could successfully rehome if we can't bring it home with us when it's time. You have any problems with that?"

Which is easier to talk about than the tension that just passed. Or what feels like tension. He's probably imagining shit.

He's about to ask for details, but he's successfully distracted for the moment with the mention of a pet. Not that he's going to forget this.

"What were you thinking about getting?" he asks, flipping through a brochure for some construction project left on the table - a new combination housing project and shopping centre, all bright colours and smiling people handling construction equipment and pretending to be experts. He's not actually paying attention, he's just giving his hands something to do.

Although it brings his attention to the little LED display at the head of the table showing the day's date. That does pull his attention for a second. His internal clock's still set to November - he's hesitated in changing it, so he just had an extraordinarily human moment of having forgotten the date.

"I dunno. Not a fuckin' giant roach or anything." His standards are easy. "No birds." That goes without saying. "Somethin' calm, I guess."

There are a few things that Hank's been enjoying about Connor being a deviant. It's little things, really. He's never seen an android do a double-take, but that's exactly what Connor just does. Not for reasons he understands, but the gesture is great nontheless. I makes another smile creep in, if closed-lipped and more muted than the previous one.

Hank's probably smiled more today than he has in a fuckin' year and that's annoying because he keeps remembering shit he shouldn't. Even some tragic shit. Even a-

His smile becomes a thin line.

Some guy building a light-saber??? He jostles his head. Alright, what???

"A cat?" he suggests, slowly putting the brochure down and dragging his gaze from the clock. "I think I've already been adopted by one of the cats in that cafe."

Yes, he's been back there since just to sit with his phone or people-watch with his two-tailed, blind little shadow trying to make him pay attention to it all the while. No, he doesn't care about your judgement, Hank.

"Or there's always..." He trails off, frowning at Hank. "What's wrong?"

He can guess what it is, though.

He regains his thoughts roughly.

"Fuckin'... Another memory. Another one that doesn't make fuckin' sense." Fake stuff again, hard to wrap his head around. These 'fake' thoughts are going to be the death of him. But he switches gears. Cat. Right.

"So one of the cats really like you, huh?" Hank doesn't hold it against him. He picked up a big forest cat and rubbed his face on it. He petted a giant naked bald cat that creepily could tell if people were lying. He doesn't sound judgemental, he sounds interested. "I wouldn't be upset with a cat."

Though he does hate when they try kneading through his pants. That's why he's always been a 'pet a cat at a friend's house' guy and not a 'keep a cat' guy. That and litterboxes.

"A lot of them don't," Connor says quietly. He goes to say something else, but reconsiders it. It's probably too heavy right now to talk about how he's feeling pain for the first time in some of these, and it's a pretty terrible experience all round.

He doesn't ask. If Hank wants to tell him about it, he will.

"I don't mind what kind of animal," he says more normally. "I'd like anything - even a giant roach. You choose."

Otherwise Connor might bring back something Hank wouldn't forgive him for.

"I just updated my internal clock," he says then. "Back to the 15th of August." Rubbing his hands together, he adds on thoughtfully, "That was the date I was activated in Detroit."

"Your first birthday three months later, huh?" Fuckin' time being fucked up. He hates it. "Well, I can get you a cake and candles if you want it. But uh... don't think you'd appreciate it."

His birthday is on the sixth of next month. As it's only been a short while since that birthday, and he doesn't celebrate them anymore, and Connor already should know the damn thing, he decides to just let it slide.

"I'll pick something. And if you decide you want that cat? We can get that, too... if you change the litterbox." Hard rule there. He's not going to do an archeological expedition for catshit.

Edited 2019-08-31 09:11 (UTC)

"If I get a cat, I'll look after it," he says, though... It's a strange thought - an android looking after a living creature. It's not a new idea to him: deviants were known for liking animals. Rupert had his birds and even Connor felt drawn to them long before he really deviated. Keeping one alive, though, is a big responsibility. Hank's there to help him, but could he do something like that? He's not sure.

"If you buy a cake, it's just for you," he points out. "And it'd be less than half a candle."

A quarter of one almost exactly. That also reminds him Hank's birthday's less than a month later - information he got just from having Hank's public record.

"Do you want to go somewhere after work?" he finds himself saying out of nowhere. "Just a bar or something, nothing big."

It might not really be his, but it's either this or change the date to what works out to June 9th - 365 days after his activation, counting the three months and one day. Then he'd have to recalculate when he goes back based on how much time had passed at home, and... No, he's going to do this the simple way. After spending way too much time thinking about the complicated way.

"Yeah," Hank says, without even a beat of thought. That same sort of earnestness with him replying to Connor's questions at the Chicken Feed. "I think I know a good place."

The same bar where he'd been getting information from, yeah. But the bar has live shows, and the options for decent booze (for him), and honestly he wants to help Connor have as many 'normal' experiences as possible. As normal as anyone can get in a fucking cyberpunk dystopia. He owes him that. He owes androids that.

But mostly Connor.

"I think I could spare you a whole candle, though." He winks subtly. Then pulls back.

"Meet me down at the boardwalk." He gives him an address. "Change out of your uniform before you get there. I'm getting out a little earlier than you, so I'll go save a seat at the bar." And there he could listen to music in its truest, most unpredictable form.

"One whole candle," he says, the grin back on his face. "I'm touched."

He takes the address - he's walked down there before already, so he knows the area a little - and, as they go their separate ways back to work, it's several more hours before he can clock out and get back to their dorm room at all, let alone to the boardwalk. But he's...looking forward to it. A lot. His favourite parts of the time he's been here so far has actually been the normal stuff - the extraordinary stuff keeps everything interesting, sure, but the really normal, human things like having a bank account and living in his own space and having a job are all things he'll ultimately probably deal with back home, whenever he goes back.

And now he's going to a bar after work with a friend. That's pretty damn normal.

He's down at the boardwalk about as soon as he can get there, and having kept his expectations low - at around the Jimmy's Bar level - means that when he walks in, he's probably going to be pleasantly surprised.

And he did listen to Hank and change out of his uniform; it's basic - light-coloured pants and blazer over a t-shirt - but the assistant pretty much insisted he have everything tailored when he went shopping and... Sure. The lines of it look better that way, though he can't exactly say how.

When Hank's leaving before Connor, it might be possible for Connor to catch Niles saying something to Hank, and for Hank to flip him off again. And in the gap they're not together, Hank goes home, changes into something casual (clothes that are, unfortunately, right up his usual alley), and goes to that bar to wait.

He has time to order whiskey and watch the band setting up for a while before Connor shows up. It's not exactly a classy place, but it's larger than Jimmy's, and the patrons seem to be less dead on their feet. Most people seem to be here to unwind after work and get away from the youngsters on the boardwalk.

He has a stool saved for Connor when he gets there.

He almost makes a catty comment like, Probably a lot homier without a 'No Androids' sign, huh? but he doesn't. Not just because he wants Connor to not have to think about it, but because he's torn between a, 'He looks good in that' thought and a 'God I'm fuckin' fat' thought.

"Nice clothes. You look good." He offers, gesturing to the seat.

He actually did catch himself looking for a No Androids sign on the way in; not that he was bound to pay attention to it - he was one of the few models that didn't have to pay attention to such things - but the signs told him what kind of atmosphere he was about to walk into.

And the atmosphere is lighter than Jimmy's, and doesn't change in the slightest for Connor walking in. Not a single person notices him. It's mostly the band setting up that holds his attention when he walks in initially, since he's never seen one. He's still looking at it as he takes the seat Hank offers him.

"Thanks," he says, looking down at some of the first clothes he's ever chosen himself to put on - not for any particular reason or because he was told to, just because. "There are a lot more rules to dressing than I realised so I thought I'd just start simple."

And, looking at Hank, "And you finally look normal."

Actually not in uniform, is what he means, but then he scrunches his face a little and half winks.

"Sort of." Because nobody in that bar is wearing a shirt quite like Hank's.

He gets the bartender's attention and orders a whiskey on the rocks - then looks at Hank. "That's OK for you, right?"

"You called it," Hank jokes, as if he's not at all predictable. But his turn to make an unusual request of the bartender himself. Luckily he's been here often enough, and has tipped well enough, that he's not terribly appalling for asking this.

"I want nine shot glasses with just a tiny, I'm talkin' a fuckin' thimbleful of these in each, alright?" He pulls out a notepad from his back pocket. That old standard of real paper, and starts writing a variety of things off the top of his head.

PORT
WHITE WINE
RED WINE
BAILEYS
KAHLUA
CINNAMON WHISKEY
RAKIA
VODKA
TRIPLE SEC

He passes the note over to the bartender, who gives it the most flummoxed of looks, and Hank's compelled to add. "My partner here can taste but he shouldn't swallow."

"Sucks to be you," the bartender announces, before going off on his merry way to do fulfill this fucked up order. A confused jostle of his head and Hank settles in.

"I've been writing down whatever I've been rememberin'. Figured we can reference it later if we need to."

Connor's plan had been to order a whiskey, then switch glasses with Hank as soon as he was done - that way Connor would have something to mess around with in his hands, and wouldn't look like he stood out. He thought of it on the way there while he was - for what seems like the dozenth time in as many days - thinking about how he was spending a lot of time in places that sold food and drink considering he didn't need either, just because humans do all their socialising around them.

So he's peering in bemusement at Hank as well as he goes through this complicated process with nine shot glasses and nine drinks scribbled on a piece of paper. (And as he assumes the bartender's comment is directed at Connor himself, he thinks nothing of it)

"You really thought this out, didn't you?" he says, genuinely surprised and more than a little pleased about it. Connor had pictured just...Hank having a drink. Maybe they'd walk home, stop at a food place. His idea of this had been really simple - just Hank's company was more than good enough.

[Continued here.]

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Midnight, not a sound from the pavement

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