2:42 am
For #dbhcolorsofdeviancy, prompt:
June 1st: Watching a human sleep. @connor-sent-by-cyberlife
Rating: Teen
Characters: Connor, Hank Anderson, Sumo, Amanda
Relationships: Connor & Hank Anderson
Additional Tags: Fluff, then, Angst, Nightmares, Hurt, Panic attack, sort of, Swearing
Summary: Connor comes back home with Hank after the Revolution. His first night after everything that happened, including the mind control by Amanda, would be fine, right?
Alternatively: Connor finds himself in Hank’s room at 2:42 in the morning.
Story below! Or, read it on AO3
The sun was setting on the day the revolution had succeeded. Rays of light glinted off the rusted metal truck that was Chicken Feed, as Hank and Connor, human and android, embraced. In that moment, none of their differences had mattered, not the disagreements from before, nor the variations in their biology. The hug was warm and loving, metal encased in artificial skin just as squishy, just as human.
They couldn’t stay there forever, of course. Chicken Feed wasn’t even currently open to serve food, and the day was drawing on. In silent agreement, the two stepped back before making their way over to the car.
The door shut. The hula girl on the dashboard bobbed back and forth, back and forth.
“You got someplace to stay, Connor?”
“No, Lieutenant.”
“Hank.”
Connor raised a brow, blue LED swirling in thought, before coming to realisation that Hank wanted him to call him that.
“Of course, Lieutenant.”
“Little shit.” The man breathed, slotting keys into the ignition of the car, no real heat behind his tone. “I was going to offer for you to stay at my place. But maybe with that snark, you don’t want to come back and meet Sumo again—”
“I wouldn’t wish to intrude, but… I think it would be beneficial to have a safe place to stay.” He fiddled with his tie, head twitching briefly to the side. Wearing a suit after being in the more comfortable deviant clothes definitely wasn’t pleasant. He’d much rather shed the tie and jacket for the beanie and baggy clothes, but he was still on the fence about such matters.
“You just want to pet the damn dog again.”
Connor couldn’t help it, he snorted. When Hank glanced over, he covered it up with clearing his throat. If he’d still been a machine, maybe he would have retaliated something about probabilities or how he could not ‘want’ anything. Instead, he pulled off the tie and remarked,
“I like dogs.”
___________________
It wasn’t a lie at all. As they arrived home—back at Hank’s home, of course—Connor couldn’t help but feel eager to see the Saint Bernard again. His fingers itched, somewhat remembering the silky feel of the dog’s fur under his fingertips from their brief encounter that one night.
And it seemed Sumo was just as eager to meet the android again, because, as the two walked through the house, as soon as the dog saw Connor, he let out a deep bark, paws padding along the floor. He smiled and leant down to pet him.
Hank cleared his throat dramatically, after a few minutes of belly rubs and ear scratches.
“Sumo? Hello to your master?”
The dog whined and nuzzled his head closer into Connor’s touch.
“Traitor dog.”
Sumo barked in response, tail wagging, sweeping on the floor and almost tripping Hank up as he attempted to step around the pair.
“Jesus Christ.”
Connor glanced up. “No, it’s me, Connor.”
“I changed my mind, get out of my house.”
The android looked up swiftly, processing, almost taking it seriously as his cue to leave before detecting sarcasm. He chuckled, making no effort to get up until he’d deemed enough attention given to the canine. Okay, nevermind, there was never enough attention to give to Sumo, but he had to stop at some point.
As he got up, he looked up the time briefly. 8.54pm. It was getting fairly late into the evening, but he knew Hank hadn’t eaten at Chicken Feed.
“Would you like me to cook you a meal, Lieu- Hank?”
The main raised a brow at him in question.
“I haven’t observed you eating yet, and it is not healthy to skip meals—”
“I’ll order some takeout.” Hank waved a hand in dismissal.
Connor narrowed his eyes. It was something he could recall feeling distantly before he deviated, whenever he saw Hank eating something incredibly unhealthy, such as that time with the burger. The levels of lipids and—it was annoyance, he realised. No, was it? The android tilted his head to the side in thought. He wasn’t sure if he could pin the correct emotion on it, being new to deviancy, but he definitely felt as if he should stop the man from ordering out.
“I insist.”
“Yeah? Well, I insist.”
“But I can cook—”
“It’s been a long day. Hell, you’ve been busy today fighting in an android revolution. I think I can order a burger.”
Connor couldn’t help but shake his head.
“No burger? Fine, pizza time it is.”
Exasperation. That was what it was, he decided, watching in defeat as the man took a leaflet out from the kitchen draw and mumbled the number of the pizza place under his breath. But maybe the man was right. He wasn’t sure if this was what humans called tiredness, but the revolution had certainly taken a toll on his systems. And maybe it was okay for Hank to indulge in less optimal food choices once in a while. His diet would certainly grow to be healthier in the future if Connor had a choice in it.
___________________
The pizza arrived, Connor snuck Sumo a small piece of it, got scolded by Hank for being a hypocrite- all in all, it was an eventful evening. Definitely not the sort of thing machine Connor would have imagined himself doing. But something the real Connor surely did, and he loved every moment of it. Apart from the scolding, of course.
It was drawing on 9.29pm, an unusual time to be finishing a full meal, when Hank switched off the TV, stretching. They’d whiled away the time watching the news after the revolution, seeing the androids celebrating in the streets. Connor felt tired looking at them. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with them- on the contrary, but the day had indeed been exhausting enough. Perhaps he would attend the parties he knew Jericho might throw in the coming weeks, once all the politics and such things had settled down.
Pointing Sumo to his bed, Hank got up from the couch, stretching. “I’m gonna call it a day. You—” he paused, glancing to Connor, expression shifting as he seemed deep in thought about something. “You can, uh, stay on the couch and… rest? I don’t know what you do. But you can, you know, do it on the couch.” He cringed at his choice of wording.
“Thank you, Hank. Androids don’t rest, but I can go into a mode of stasis in order to recharge and perform system updates—”
“Sounds like sleeping to me.”
Connor pursed his lips, looking displeased. “In a crude manner of speaking… yes. The couch will be fine, thank you.”
Hank nodded. “Great. Well, have a nice stasis. Don’t let the… android bed bugs bite.”
As he walked out the room, Connor blinked, thinking over the statement. “Bed bugs…” He murmured, LED circling yellow. “But this is a couch.”
He shrugged off the quandary eventually, storing it in his mind for later to think over, before adjusting his seating position on the couch. It would be easier to lay down, in case he startled the Lieutenant, finding him sleeping sitting up. Of course, androids used to stand up in stations built around the city to go into stasis, but that was before. It was funny to think of it like that, when before was simply yesterday and all the time before the success of the revolution.
Connor pushed aside the cushions before laying down on the couch, eyes flicking shut. He took a few breaths, which were usually unnecessary but helped to calm his systems and it was in a few moments that he fell into stasis.
But strangely, sometimes, stasis could produce images in his mind. He was a detective model, perhaps it was a way of thinking of possibilities and probabilities of things happening in the world. One would assume, then, that these images would be realistic.
Tonight, however, something seemed fantastical about them. His inner eyes snapped open, and he was in a swirling snowstorm. His arms clutched around his middle, sensors picking up the frigid temperatures. It wasn’t dissimilar to the scene he’d experienced earlier that day in his Zen Garden, when he’d been standing up on that stage, Markus giving his speech, and Amanda had pulled him out of reality.
But there were changes. The way out… Kamski’s secret way out of this control over his systems… it wasn’t there. The paths were all different, winding and winding on, not leading to the stone platform where he could place his hand and resume control over his own body. He followed the winding paths, Amanda’s voice whispering in his ears, feeling as if he’d never reach anywhere, not in time.
You’ve failed, Connor.
The paths stopped. He could see the trellis in the distance, roses snaking up it, choking it, further and further into the sky. Suddenly, he could see the glint of the escape he was meant to reach, somewhere up there in the heavens.
Connor picked up his pace, pulling his hands away from his sides, ignoring the ice creeping over his fingers, and grasped at the trellis. Pulling himself up, he managed to find a foothold.
Cyberlife always planned for you to become compromised.
He grit his teeth as the thorns dug into his hands but ignored the flares of pain and the red warnings flashing in his vision. He had to get to the top. Had to get away, had to…
We just had to wait for the right moment to resume control of your program…
Somewhere in his mind, as if he could see what his body was doing, out of his control, an image flashed. Connor wasn’t on the couch anymore; he wasn’t in Hank’s house. No… it couldn’t be… had he never hugged Hank outside Chicken Feed? Had the revolution never ended?
He was up on that stage again. Markus was speaking, and Amanda was twisting his limbs to her will.
Don’t have any regrets. You did what you were designed to do.
The escape was too far away. His hands slipped, the snow making the trellis slick with moisture, and he lost his footing. The escape was getting further and further out of reach, and there was nothing he could do, except fall down and down and—
You accomplished your mission.
Connor awoke with a start.
He shot up off the couch as if it had wounded him, breaths stuttering in and out. Sumo looked up at him from where he sat in his bed, whining and looking at the android with concern in his honey brown eyes.
“I’m…” Connor breathed, hand hovering over his LED. It was flashing a jarring red. “I’m…”
He didn’t understand. Out of all the times he’d experienced those sorts of images during stasis, he’d never had any like that… never had any that left his thirium pump beating heavily in his chest, his hands trembling, never…
Cautiously, he made his way back onto the couch, perching on the edge of it. Hands resting on his knees, willing his LED to circle back to yellow, then back to blue—
This trepidation, this fear, was this what came with being human?
Connor closed his eyes. Saw Amanda, saw the gun in his hands, saw the trellis with its blood red roses. Opened his eyes.
He brought his arms around himself, in a sort of self-soothing. It wasn’t real. It was okay. It was just imaging. Just his overzealous detective software figuring out what could happen- no, what could have happened. The revolution had happened. And they’d won. He hadn’t shot Markus, he’d reached the escape and he was free. Finally free. If he went into his Zen Garden now, the roses would be withered and dead, but the waters still and calm, no sign of Amanda anywhere.
Knowing the truth and hard facts made him feel a little more tethered to reality. Lines of yellow cut through the red of his LED. Maybe none of it was true. But… why wasn’t he completely back to normal? He glanced to his jittering hands, and then to the Hank’s bedroom door.
Right. Hank. For some reason, that thought that had lodged itself in his mind during the dream—whatever it was. The thought that none of it had ever happened, that Hank had never brought him into his home, and it had come to stay.
He groaned. He was in the man’s house right now, sitting on his couch and staring at his dog. It didn’t make any sense.
Then again, not a lot of being human had made sense to him that evening. All he wanted in that moment was to dispel the rumours his mind was conjuring, and the solution appeared to be behind that bedroom door.
With a sigh, he got back off the couch, glancing around the room briefly before quietly making his way to Hank’s bedroom door. He raised his hand to knock, before changing his mind. It was 2:42am, not an optimal time to wake the man. So instead, he pushed open the door silently, having learned the last time he’d been in this room where to push it to so that it didn’t creak.
One glance over the room told him it was dark. Well, no shit, Connor, his inner voice muttered, sounding a lot like Hank. Blinking, eyes adjusting to the change, he managed to make out the shape of Hank sleeping on his bed, one leg hanging off the edge, face half pressed against the pillow, cheek squished.
He nodded. Hank was there, he was alive, and he’d certainly let Connor into his house, so therefore none of the bad stuff in his… nightmare… was true. He could just leave and go back into stasis on the couch.
Except, he found he didn’t want to leave the room. Feet planted stubbornly on the floor, carrying out their own form of deviancy to his logical thinking. He sighed. He then caught sight of a chair in the corner of the room.
Connor shrugged. Sitting down in the chair, he found it wasn’t too uncomfortable. In fact, he found sitting up like this a better and more familiar position than lying down on the couch had been. And from this viewpoint, he could see Hank wherever he looked, chest rising and falling. The minutes ticked on. The android found a sense of peace in watching Hank sleep, LED going yellow, yellow, yellow, before finally back to ocean blue. Hank was safe. Hank was sleeping, just like he’d said he was going to earlier. This was the reality. He was in control of his own body, and he would do as he pleased with it, which meant in this moment, watching Hank sleep.
Maybe being human didn’t make much sense to him, but in that moment… it was pleasant.
Eventually, with serenity falling back over him and his mind focused on rest, it wasn’t long before he slipped back into a dreamless stasis.
___________________
Hank awoke later that morning, the sun shining through the blinds, to find his bedroom door wide open, Sumo laying over his legs, and Connor sitting on the chair across from his bed, eyes fallen shut.
“Fuckin’ android.” He mumbled, affectionately.
