dualismail | (no subject)

nah just a bartender. might have something to help anyway. better to explain in person. [since, you know. evil surveillance ai everywhere.] i can meet u somewhere?

For his part, Connor has absolutely no idea what he's stepping into. Maybe that's a good thing, because his apprehension right now is fairly low-level. He's more worried about how he'll deal with this than Karen. If his social protocols can come through for him in such an unknown situation.

In layman's terms, he doesn't want to make an idiot of himself.

"Then I'll see you back here on the night," he says, smiling at her. "I'll pick you up at seven-thirty?"

And, he goes to leave the room. Maybe he'll text Jane later for more details...provided Karen isn't the one checking the phone.

[Nobody's ever just anything here, as shown by the fact that 'just a bartender' has something that can fix the biocomponents of an android the likes of which might never have been seen in this city.]

OK. I can come to the bar, if that's alright by you?

[He's not exactly been on patrol as usual since he got injured, and he's sick of the sight of the inside of his room.]

[well, he already knows she's a member of the heart, so it's not too far a leap to imagine she's got other secrets.]

sure, i can do that if it's what u want. don't want u to hurt the knee more. i'll be at rick's tonight, come over whenever.

Connor sends a cursory 'I'll be fine, see you there' text, not entirely sure what he's getting into, and sure he wouldn't even be considering this if Hank hadn't vouched for Nick before.

He gets to the bar mid-evening, having taken a bus and then a taxi, his usual method of getting around now that walking and running are out of the question. It's been a very illuminating look into how humans must feel sometimes, being limited. Not that he would kid himself into thinking he understands badly injured or disabled humans after this, but the frustration that his body can't do what he wants it to is new to him.

For one thing, his arms are more than strong enough to manoeuvre his body on a crutch, something he imagines would get tiring easily, and he reaches the bar and slips onto a stool easily, looking out for Nick to be free.

Nick's found a replacement for the rest of her bar shift, so she's off for the rest of the night from the customer-facing part of her job. There's still some paperwork to be done, however, which makes for a good excuse to move to the manager's office until she sees Connor arrive via the surveillance camera and re-emerges, approaching him at the bar with a friendly smile.

"Hey. Glad you could make it." She slides into the empty bar stool next to him, lightly folded hands placed on her lap. "I was thinkin' we could go talk in the office, it's quieter in there. Did you want a drink first?" Wait ... "Can you drink?" That ... sounded weird and maybe a little insensitive. She shakes her head. "Sorry, I guess I don't know a lot about how androids work, where you're from."

He doesn't see Nick at first, so he keeps entirely to himself looking down at his hands folded together on the bar after waving away the bartender with an apologetic smile, right up until she approaches him herself.

"Hey. I should thank you for offering this." He's not sure what this is, but she thought of him, and that deserves something in itself even if Connor doesn't agree to what she's offering or it doesn't work out.

"Don't worry about it," he says, waving off the apology. "Most of us don't drink, but I got some modifications made here so I can. I don't get drunk, though." So sometimes it feels a little pointless, but mostly it's nice. He feels included, and some of the drinks he's tried actually taste good.

"I don't suppose a bar would have any hot drinks, would it?"

Spoken like someone who's done nothing but follow Hank to bars and drunk spirits.

“Well, don’t thank me yet,” she says with a wry half-smile. “Wait and see if it’s actually gonna work.” Because she doesn’t know for sure that she can help him, only that she wants to try. She wants to do better with her life than she has up until now - certainly better than assisting a group of would-be revolutionaries with good intentions but problematic methods. She wants to do good.

“We do actually have hot drinks here,” and she counts them out on her fingers: “We can do a hot toddy, spiced hot chocolate, spiked coffee ... regular coffee. Pretty sure I’ve got everything to make a hot buttered rum, too. Any of those sound good? It’s on me.”

"Still," he says seriously. "You thought of it and you offered. That's important to me."

Maybe the day will come when people showing him kindness is just something he's used to and accepts without any special thanks or questions. But still, even now, kindness is special. He hopes it always will be.

"A hot...toddy," he repeats uncertainly, then, "Wait, buttered rum? I hope that doesn't involve melting butter into rum."

He was made in America, that wouldn't totally surprise him.

Nick is still getting used to kindness herself; she never saw much of it in childhood, after her father died and she was left alone with an abusive mother, and she didn’t begin to cultivate it as an adult until a few years ago, when her journeys through the multiverse began. Her change from an openly hostile girl, convinced of her monstrousness and full of hate for the entire world to who she is now hasn’t been easy, but she decided years ago that she was done hurting people and wanted to use her time and effort on doing good instead.

“You’re an important person, Connor. There ain’t anyone else exactly like you, y’know? That makes you special. And you’re pretty important to Hank.” Nick sees a lot of herself in Hank, trusts him more than anyone else in the city, even considers him a friend. He’d been badly shaken by what happened to Connor. “And the other thing is - I know I fucked up some with things I’ve done.” Things with the Heart. “I’m tryin’ to do better. I got into some really dumb shit because I wanted to help, and I still wanna help - I’m just tryin’ to find a different way to do it now. So if I can do somethin’ to make a difference even for one guy, I’d say that’s worth doing.”

She finishes her explanation with a warm smile and nods to his question about the drinks on offer. “That’s pretty much exactly what hot buttered rum is - rum, spices, melted butter, all mixed together. Bit rich for me, but some people really love it, ‘specially when it’s cold out. Hot toddy’s whiskey, honey, lemon, cinnamon - that’s a little more my speed, but I’m a whiskey girl anyway.” She shrugs. “Totally up to you.”

"I'd prefer the hot toddy," he says with an expression that's half a grin, half a grimace. Not that he's ever drank melted butter mixed with anything, but it sounds unpleasant. He doesn't have arteries or any reason to worry about his health, but he still can't help but recoil, just a little.

He knew already Nick was someone Hank trusted and liked, and it means a lot to him to hear it's reciprocated. Hank needs people like that, and when he's not buried in despair, finding such people comes to him easily. It makes Connor happy in turn to witness it, even though it's not a skill Connor shares. He's manipulative, not necessarily truly good at connecting.

"I don't mean to be blunt," he says, though he can't see anything for it but to be blunt, "but if the Heart doesn't change any of its methods and you keep following it as it is, it doesn't matter how much you try to make up for it elsewhere.

"I appreciate this, don't get me wrong." But he doesn't want to be Nick's way of feeling better about herself without at least saying something. He wants the Heart to succeed. But without support and with people like Mello in charge? It can't. Nick seems sensible enough to know that.

Blunt doesn't bother Nick at all, but she's not trying to make herself feel better by helping Connor. She's the type to hold onto guilt forever, hold her past mistakes against herself. Forgiveness has never been easy for her, and it's extra difficult when she's the one who needs forgiving. No number of good deeds will erase the missteps she's made and the people she's hurt. This truly is more for the benefit of Connor and Hank than anyone else.

She doesn't flinch at mention of the Heart, though she does place a finger against her lips, a silent signal for shh, then taps her ear and motions out to the room. There's background noise in the bar, of course, but it's still not especially safe to talk openly about secrets. "I know," she says, and she's already expressed her doubts and fears about the Heart's methods and her involvement with the Heart to Hank, but it's a complex equation with many variables, and math was never her strength. "We can talk more in the office."

Nick slips behind the bar and quickly prepares the drink, and insists on carrying it for Connor as she leads the way down the hall and into the office. Her palm pressed to the lock plate grants access, and she holds the door open until Connor's through, then deadbolts the door behind them and sets the drink on the desk, motioning for Connor to take the accompanying chair. The room isn't especially large, and shelves filled with bottles of the more high-end liquor and boxes of paperwork line the walls. Nick presses a button hidden on the corner of the desk's underside, which shorts out the overhead lights and leaves only a few battery-operated lamps to scatter dim light across the room.

"I shouldn't leave the EMP on for too long," she says, dragging another chair closer to Connor and taking a seat, "so we've probably got ten, fifteen minutes to talk." She clasps her hands together and spends a silent moment gathering her thoughts. "I know the Heart's not doin' shit the right way. And believe me, I'm tryin' to talk to them about changing the way they do things. But M-and-M are both real bullheaded, and they don't like being questioned on this authority that they've decided they have, so." She sighs tiredly; this issue has weighed heavily on her mind for months. "If I was smart, I would've never joined up in the first place. Guess I just ain't that smart," she says, mouth twisted in a wry half-smile, and laughs quietly. "But now that I'm in, I can't just leave, either. I don't know everything, they make sure none of us do, but I still know too much. They'd turn me over in a heartbeat - no pun intended."

Edited (deadBOLT not deadlock, how do words) 2020-01-12 05:32 (UTC)

[It was Christmas, and Jane took no notice of this until Haji showed up at the Gallows with a homemade cake for her. The holiday was something she was happy to ignore as most of Dualis seemed to, but after that gift from a real friend she'd engaged in the seasonal introspection about what and who really mattered. Who's been trustworthy? Who is she glad to have around?

It was a very short list, with only one name on it apart from Haji's. So she had stopped off at a menswear shop on the way home that night, picked out something about the right size, and got it giftwrapped. Now she's standing outside 5-01, knocking on the door impatiently.]

Connor! It's Jane. Move your ass!

Edited (grammar) 2020-01-02 09:16 (UTC)

[Connor had exactly no reason to suspect Jane would turn up at their door on Christmas Day, of all the days. His plans for the day, therefore, did not involve being prepared for her, or in fact for anybody else, and when she knocks on the door and yells, it takes a moment for Connor to answer.

When he opens the door, Hank is behind him on one of the beds in a dressing gown, in the middle of muttering an annoyed, goddammit right as the door swung open. Connor is fully dressed, only his hair out of its usual slicked back style and in messy curls on his head, looking at Jane a little apprehensively.]

Hi. Is everything OK?

[Last time Jane needed something it wasn't the best night Connor ever had. Not that he'll refuse if she needs something else, but he doesn't need to be excited about it.]

[Delay in answering. Swearing roommate in a dressing gown. Connor's hair isn't perfectly slicked down. Jane can guess what she interrupted and rather than feeling apologetic she gets exasperated, rolling her eyes.]

Oh for fuck's sake.

[She does not need to be thinking about Connor having sex. In fact, she'd very much like to escape that image so she simply yeets the brightly-colored box at him, turning away in the same moment.]

[Connor catches the box neatly, slightly alarmed, checks what it is he just caught only after the reflexive action of catching it and-]

Is this-- [He looks at it. It is. But Jane's already turning away.]

I didn't get her anything. [This in a sort of loud whisper directed at Hank, as he hurriedly puts the box down by the door. Then he steps out of the room into the hallway. Jane's leaving, sure, but he calls after her.]

Jane!

[And then he doesn't know what to say. But luckily, human etiquette rules have the answers for him, just this once.]

Merry Christmas.

I'm coming home.

[Then three minutes later.]

You never considered me a threat to you, did you?

[Because, before anything, he needs to clarify that.]

I mean, after I stopped being an asshole.

And pointed a gun at your head.

[Dammit.]

I want a drink but I can't go back to the bar right now.

[Just a wave of distressed text messages that poor Connor has to suffer through.]

Edited 2020-01-08 11:14 (UTC)

[Connor replies immediately to the first text, even though Hank rarely texts him things like where he is or what he’s doing:]

See you soon.

[But before he can go on with a banal question about if he wants anything from the convenience store he’s about to go past with Maggie, Hank’s messages keep coming in.

He pauses. Something’s happened, Connor has no idea what, but it comes with the odd feeling of his thirium having run a bit cold inside him. He can’t do anything but be honest.]

I considered you a threat for roughly one minute at the park back in Detroit.

But never again. Not since I deviated. Not since I came here.

I’ll talk to you at home. I’ll get you some whisky, but I don’t want you to drink it until you’ve talked to me, OK? If you still want to after that, go ahead.

[Because he might not like Hank's alcoholism or be able to stop it, but he can at least try to head it off a bit.]

Actually I shouldn't come home, then. Grab whiskey and bring it to the lake docks.

He sends that one last message before signing off, knowing that he can't talk about half of this conversation in a place where they might be monitored, and not yet sure that Connor would want to deal with the mess floating around in his head at that moment.

That nasty little voice saying that, despite everything, Erik is right. That he is a threat. That he shouldn't be doing any of this. It's dragging at him.

But he can't talk about that out loud.

Hank finds a bench to sit on overlooking the water, like he's trying to find that peaceful place, but all he can see is a wide, eerie expanse where he's yet to see a single fish and all the boats are small and recreational.

His anger's worn off, and now he's just brooding and morose. And of course mentally battering himself.

He does what Hank asks, although his feeling of trepidation mounts. Something has Hank depressed enough to want to drink, thinking about being a threat to Connor and it’s something he feels like he shouldn’t be monitored for. He doesn’t have a clue. And that worries him.

When he arrives, he doesn’t give Hank the bottle immediately, but puts it on the other side of him as he sits down on the bench, still in his traffic cop uniform and with Maggie in her coat.

“What happened, Hank?” he asks quietly, looking out over the water and not sure how to proceed with the conversation. Sure, his programming could provide all the ways in the world to manipulate it out of him, but that’s not how his and Hank’s relationship is. Hasn’t been in a long time now.

Yeah. [She sighs it out in frustration. Nothing about this is really that bad -- she didn't anticipate getting anything back from Connor, and running into evidence of a friend's sex life is not that bad, but this is still out of her comfort zone. As such, her "yeah" serves as an answer to almost everything he said.

The greeting's sweet, though, and she smiles at the holiday wellwishes as she walks away. Not that she'd admit it.]

Bah fucking humbug.

[The gift's nothing extraordinary, just a nice hoodie she figures he could use. Her thought still shows in picking a size and color she thought fitting for him, because she figures he deserves a gift after cockblocking Karen.]

Hank looks over as Connor's getting himself situated and, hell, Connor's in his uniform still.

"It wasn't that much of an emergency," he mutters. But maybe in that there's the implication that he did consider it an emergency when his head started to slide.

"There's this asshole bartender that works at Ricks. I tried to warn him about the chip in his head. Rather than talk at all about that, he asked if you could be reprogrammed or doubled. Like, out of fucking nowhere brings you up. I say you were doubled, it didn't matter, and leaves it at that. Rather than actually stop and you know, deal with there being shit in our heads, he keeps trying to validate 'well why isn't he just using androids, why is that so special'.

"Doesn't even comment about his chains being yanked. I call him out on having some android issues because he honed in on 'em so quick. He claimed that it was just naturally seeing differences. Then told me that I was a bigger threat to you for... I dunno, wanting you to be human? I didn't mention humans to him. I took pains not to. But it got me worried..."

He stretches his fingers, looking down at them. He'd tried to understand in the most intimate way possible, but he guesses that a mod isn't enough.

"I think it was." And that's all Connor's going to say on the matter. Whatever this is, it's messed with Hank's head pretty badly - and that's worth dropping everything for.

He listens carefully to what Hank's telling him, about the bartender and the odd fixation on Connor, which Connor's surprised at only because it implies the bartender knows him and knows what he is. The only bartender at Rick's Connor's ever really spoken to much is Nick.

"It sounds like deflection," he says after a moment. "You told him off, so he immediately turned it back onto you. It's a pretty common tactic - it's even got a name, tu quoque. 'You have no right to say that to me because you're guilty of the exact thing' - something like that."

Hank does not care about logical fallacies - even Connor generally doesn't care about logical fallacies, despite having a few dozen of them in his critical thinking protocols - but he's going to start by logicking the hell out of this issue and then move on from there.

"Nobody in this city is more aware of differences between an android and a human than you are," he goes on with just the hint of a grin.

He does offer up a touch of a smile at that. He does know a hell of a lot of differences between Connor and humans now, that's for damn sure.

"Yeah. Usually it doesn't get to me but uh... I know I fucked up." And the worst part? Him fucking up made some people's lives worse. And he didn't care at the time- he had to come around to caring. He would have known better if he showed up with a badge on. But as a civilian trying to give a real, personal investment in protecting their own, it got to him.

"Yeah, his name is Erik. Usually I go in when Nick's there, but at the fucking ball he started trying to talk about the Heart and saying he'd be able to tell when they were being surveilled. He had no idea but kept talking like he did." There was no way that he could have known.

"Decided to give him a heads up? Seemed pretty unconcerned about being manipulated. Just got hung up on the clones."

"It doesn't matter anymore that you fucked up." He's said this before, and doesn't mind saying it again, and every time it weighs over Hank until it doesn't anymore. "What matters is that you're doing something about it now."

And then, a note of incredulity creeping into his voice, "Wait. Erik. Erik Lehnsherr? Is that who you mean?"

He touches Hank's hand, just long enough that, if Hank consents to opening the connection, he can send an image of the man in question and no more. All their communication right now is under Hank's control - he doesn't know if Hank wants him in his head now.

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[action] - backdated to Dec. 25

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Dated to after talk at Rick's

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[Action]

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