dualismail | (no subject)

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.

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.

Hank blinks at the sudden contact, starts because he wasn't expecting the image that came with it? Or the accuracy of it?

He tries to keep his mind off of it, but some of the words seep through. That he was doing Connor a disservice. That he was a bigger threat. Some of what was said to him when he went in to talk to him. And Hank? Really had wanted to save someone's life before he approached the wrong people and made stupid mistakes. Instead it went the way he it went.

"You met him?" Hank squints, nose crinkling up a little.

"Just once." Why didn't he tell Hank?... Because that was the night they told each other how they felt and some organic with a chip on his shoulder hadn't even been in the top ten most important things on Connor's mind.

"He was friendly right up until he realised what I was." He taps agitatedly on his thigh. "It turns out there's enough metal in my body that he Lehnsherr can hold me completely immobile if he wants.

"You have not done more harm to me than he has," and this he says quietly, but it's obvious now he's genuinely angry. It's the cruelly manipulative deflection of blame making him rankle - not even the hypocrisy, which Connor has to admit he's also a little guilty of in that moment: he himself has manipulated people to the grave, after all.

There's some mental shift in Hank then, less personally abusive to something stunned.

"Wait." Hank says out loud. "He did that to you? Why didn't you mention it?"

Because Hank wouldn't have even spoken to him then. He would have had someone else do it. He's not so inhumane that he would have left the guy to fend for himself, but he is personally invested enough that he wouldn't want to mess with someone who threatened Connor.

"If I'd been in professional mode I could have handled it better. I just... I just know what's at stake. And I didn't want to see you go through being treated like shit again. I guess I was too late, huh?"

"A couple reasons," he says, leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs. "It was at the axe-throwing place. I went to find you right after, I wanted to take my mind off it. I thought maybe I'd tell you later, but we went home...we danced, and...I told you I loved you instead."

These things happen.

"And after that..." He looks up, still thinking. "I guess it didn't occur to me to think it was very important. People hating androids isn't new to me. Sometimes I forget that here, it's a lot rarer.

"If somebody treats me badly, no matter what the reason is, it's not your fault, Hank." He reaches over to take Hank's hand, squeezing lightly. "Sometimes people are assholes. Or ignorant. Or both."

And if they can't go back home with Hank hating himself every time someone hates Connor for what he is. They just can't.

"I was also trying to tell the man something important."

Finally he takes Connor's hand, shares more thoroughly what happened, how Hank really wanted the guy to understand that the situation was in no way under his control.

Then he shares something he hasn't before. That he's fucking scared. He deals with it however he can, but he knows he's surrounded by people used to being powerful. But now they're all about as powerful as children in a Victorian orphanage, being set against an impossibly wealthy and absentee headmaster, beset by angry ruler wielding enforcement nuns.

Hank's always been normal This is easy for him to grasp. But others not taking it seriously, not reacting, disregarding him feels like shit, too.

Not to mention that arguing these points feels a little like how arguing that global warming exists was. Yeah, it's been proven. Even if volcanos exist, we can't do anything about them. This is what we can do something about.

He apologizes for the bullshit metaphors in his thoughts. He's not good at technical terms. It's what he's got. Just that he's worried that going home really might not be possible, even if he's struggling to make that option happen anyway.

The connection between them opens as soon as Hank touches his hand; Connor's mind opens the connection so automatically it's virtually like Hank's the one creating it. Hank often shares his thoughts in words, or in concrete images, but Connor's gotten good at feeling what Hank's telling him, picking out the idea of what his partner's telling him and the emotions, even if the words aren't always eloquent.

This skill came about mostly because Connor often doesn't get the metaphors and references in Hank's trains of thought. He had to work on it.

So he waves off the apology.

And he tries to mentally comfort Hank even as he lets through his anger at the way Erik treated him. In turn, he gives him a little of the memory Connor never mentioned: of being unable to move due to the tiny metal parts around his body being held in place, the terror of realising the person in front of him could probably kill him with a thought, the realisation he was being interrogated and had no idea how to cooperate.

But, and he tries to focus on this over their connection over their shared feeling of powerlessness, what they can do is keep fighting. There are people who like Hank, respect him - a lot of them, and it makes Connor happy whenever he sees it. It means there are a lot of people Hank could help in the future - if they just find a way forward.

If they can convince the Heart, or figure something out without them.

He can't help his own fear seeping through their connection like smoke, though, either.

He holds his hand a little tighter then. Fear is a bad echo chamber, but he's not really let himself be scared as much by this as he should be.

He doesn't really put it into words or articulated ideas. He just takes Connor's hand and wraps both of his around it, brings it up to his mouth and lets his bristly lips rest there, and he lingers like that. Just a quiet, unspoken admission that he's afraid, that he's shouting into the void.

Connor shifts one leg up underneath him on the bench so that he can face Hank properly. Watching Hank there, Connor's own hand in both of his, the brush of Hank's beard on him, he can't help feeling, just for a moment, utterly helpless.

Hank's his partner. Hank's his person. If Connor kept tasklists anymore, Make Hank happy would be sitting right at the top of his, all the time, forever. And he's failing at it miserably - this city is making him fail at it miserably.

In this very moment, Erik fucking Lehnsherr's made him fail.

"We've been here before," he says out loud as well as trying to enforce the idea mentally. Hank needs to hear this and feel it from him. "We survived last time. Helpless or not."

And that was when Connor had fought tooth and nail for most of it to stop what was happening. This time? He's on the right side from the start.

"I hate that he fuckin' made the most advanced, incredible fucking perfect being from my world be trapped in that spot." To a drunk human, even one that had a fairly good past rep, Connor had been like superman. He was an alien from a different planet.

This was a place that could strip him of that.

One foolish, sad part of him hopes if they fuck this up they still get to be together, though. And that's the most dismal thought he's had since arriving. If he gets replaced, he doesn't want the alternate him to be dead anymore. He just wants him to be Not Alone.

He shakes it quickly, pulling his mouth away from his hand and just rubbing over his delicate knuckles with his thumb. "Alright. Well. Guess that clears up what went wrong there. If I'd known I just would have sent someone else." Because as much as he hates the fucker now, it's better that he's not under the Head's control.

Connor falters a little at being described thus, but only realises how he feels about it when the warm smile spreads on his face.

"But he couldn't do it to you," he points out gently. Hank needs to hear these things sometimes - that there are things he can do that Connor can't (several, in fact). "We're partners, right? We fit together. I can do things you can't. And vice versa.

"Hey, Hank." He reaches with his free hand to tug Hank's chin, making him look at Connor. "I'm sorry, I should have told you. I didn't realise he would use it against you like that."

He leans in to press his forehead to Hank's and nuzzle against him. He can feel and hear his partner's heartbeat like this; it's soothing.

"I'm fine. And you didn't do anything wrong. And whatever happens, we're going to stick together. Alright?"

The whisky bottle's still sitting behind him. He won't stop Hank if he wants it. He just hopes he won't

He doesn't think of it at first. Just hopes that he's right, and... fuck, he hopes that them sticking together will help him get through it. But he tries pretty damn hard to shove that tragic idea out.

"Well, I gotta admit, I'm glad that me insisting on a dance was enough to distract you from something that fucking bad. I'd have been pissed for a fucking year." Hell, he might be now.

Finally he does reach to grab the whiskey, but he doesn't open it. He props it on his knee and holds Connor against his side.

"We should get home. I feel that shitty part of me wanting to give up again. Maybe if I move, it'll be fuck off for a little while."

"It did," because somehow whatever Hank needs or whatever he asks has the power to push everything else out of Connor's mind completely. "I'm not happy about what he did. I haven't forgotten. I just didn't want to dwell on it. It hurts me more than him to do that."

He shifts again so he can lean against Hank's side for a moment, eyeing the whiskey with some unease, even though Hank doesn't seem to be about to open it and down the thing.

"Let's go for a walk." He stands and offers Hank a hand to pull him up - and then not let go as they start to walk. "Knowing this place, we'll end up back at the dorms sooner or later."

Hank takes his hand, slipping his gruff fingers between Connor's elegant long ones. In his spare hand his bottle, looking like a slob next to the well kept officer holding his hand but sort of resigned that this is the status quo between them much of the time.

Maggie gets up to go with them without being told, and he silently passes a message through their linked hands.

I need your help. Not just with me, with this. I can't do this alone. Most of what he's been doing all along is ask for help. Look into this. Find answers for that. See if something can be found here. Follow a clue there. Like he would have handled cops in the past. But Connor's eye for detail is so much more impeccable than Hank's. More than that? Connor has patience and an ability to compel, a heart that can cry out for morality.

There are people that want these clones dead or think nothing of them. I'm not the right guy to stand up for them. I'm too angry. I just got pissy old white guy rage. That's not nearly as convincing as the face of someone who's suffered at not being treated like a person.

He needs him for more than the mystery. He needs him for the compassion and conviction.

Connor's never minded how much different they look - it makes things interesting. He's comparatively tall - but Hank is taller. He's slim, but Hank is broad. He dresses neatly, Hank with a freedom Connor's never going to get. That's a nice way of saying he has terrible taste and Connor can only appreciate ironically.

Weird how he knows how to appreciate things ironically these days and doesn't even know when it began. About the moment he started wearing Hank's shirts over his own sometimes and listening to music he thinks is banal just because it's catchy.

His immediate willingness to help Hank with anything, including this, passes through their connection before he's even done making the request. He knows Hank can't do this alone - no one can, and they have different enough experiences and skill sets that the things Connor can't do, Hank can help him with. And vice versa. And the clones?

I know the clones aren't 'real', but people have said that about my people. I want them to be free to live however they want as well. They're the only memorial that exists to all the people who came before them.

And even without that aspect, they're still people. They deserve dignity. They deserve a life lived free.

Edited 2020-02-02 13:28 (UTC)

You have the heart to tolerate a discussion. Me? I just wanna start a fight. And he knows that his patience wears thin real damn quick. It's not an obligation that should fall on Connor's shoulders, but it's...

It's something that Hank's pretty sure he can't get right.

It's a good way to put the role of the clones, too. Some of them are the last of their kind, carry the last memories and traces of the culture of their original. Some are the lone witnesses to cruel acts in different worlds, some are someone's father or mother or child. Sibling? Lover? Even being left in a middling existence as someone's 'unanswered question' isn't fair.

That's not saying they shouldn't exist. They should reap any benefit of it.

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Dated to after talk at Rick's

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