YOU ARE DEVIANT

honestly i haven’t wanted to write connor lately, as much as i do enjoy him ; i’m spending a lot more time over on my oc ( @ fcrensis ), so if you’d like to keep in contact, that’s the place to do it !!

   He had been hurting plenty when in the moments after their victory, long before he again met Hank, he reflected upon what almost had been -–- the way it  f e l t  when Amanda dug her claws into his cerebrals, guided his hand, her voice whispering warm in his ear devoid of the usual stagnant comfort it brought and sounding like fucking TERROR. Hurt more when his fingers traced through Cyberlife shirt the divot of his pump, thought about pulling it out and leaving it in the snow.

   It would’ve been easier, for sure. Might’ve been better. But the thought still filled him with a heavy sort of anchoring dread and he wanted to feel anything else. So Connor stopped thinking of himself, and started thinking of Hank. Of his burdens. Of how he wouldn’t mind carrying a few of them.

    ❝  You’re my partner,  ❞

   He announced, voice taking a soft tone that did not seem to really fit the rest of him ; but then, nothing about Connor seemed to really fit, because he had not been programmed with the intention of appearing at all constant in the first place, and long lost were the days where he adhered to that code, so Connor was left with a million split concepts of the way he should act, and no finished ideas. Delicate tone did not match the pressing expression he wore, but then, he wasn’t human. He was still learning.

    ❝  And you’re my friend. I believe that makes me at least partially responsible for your wellbeing.  ❞

   Which was … an awfully clinical way to say that he cared.

                                        ♡  kissing the corner of their eyes

    Rhys was the calm that came moments before the storm ; except his calm  lingered,  warded away the violent clouds before they could dare to form, rolled bright crimson back to blinking blue. Synthskin retained the feeling in the moments after it left, warm pressure pressed soft to the outer corner of each eye, warm still, for in his space that one still lingered. Connor’s hands rose, long fingers winding carefully about his wrists where palms cupped his neck. He compared the feeling. Real flesh against plastic and metal, alloy materials of some percent this and some percent that.

    Both brought him insurmountable comfort.

    But then, Rhys always did. Always had, even back then, when comfort was not a thing he knew the name of and much less the feeling, back before feelings were a thing he dared not consider the merits of experiencing. Back when Rhys had been little more than a face alongside an ID number, a voice that sometimes spoke to him ( or  another  him, a  previous  him, some before-Connor that had never known the light of day ).

    Thumbs pressed close to squeeze, sap more warmth from his touch. Connor closed his eyes. He felt, for a moment, as though he were at peace.

    ❝  I love you.  ❞

              ♢  straddling their lap and holding their face to yours for a deep kiss

    She was intoxicating.

    When her air did he breathe for a moment he felt he couldn’t,as though he had ever  needed  to, ever inhaled a drop of the oxygen hischest rose to take rather than eliciting a mere mimicry of human action. Butthen, that was what everything they did was, at the very core ; MIMICKING HUMANACTION.

    Things like this –like her hands at the lapels of his jacket, nails tight and curled to crumpleonce clean-pressed fabric as down she pushed him, her lips wandering, warm, atrail of blue heat that followed the path they wove across synthskin, exposedinches of flesh pushed down down  down  tosit so that she had a place to clamber, her knees aside his hips, thighsholding him firm in place – were not made for them. They had been made toendure it, but not to enjoy, not to feel in the way he thought he was feelingnow, every touch an overwhelming spark of flared nerves, bright red codeflashing violent in his vision.

    And Connor  liked  it.

    He was  allowed  to like things, now. Allowed to like herand the way she made him feel, the prickly heat that settled in his gut whenher lips dared engulf his, painted vibrancies provoking bright passion. Hishands hovered a moment before settling one at each hip, blunt nails pressingindentations as inwards he pulled her to close the space that fit between them,hold her to his body as though close enough and he could take her in. Upon histemple blared a blood crimson, but it was not  distress that swallowed him.

    It was  d e s i r e .

    She  was desire, and he drowned in her, followedher lips when she parted from his and surrendered a hand to tangle in darklocks of hair, strands tied about his fingers, a better grip to reel her backtowards him.

    Desire was not MADE for them but he was going to fucking takeit anyway if he had to burrow his entire being in her existence to get a grasp.

    ❝  You’re beautiful,  ❞

    Whispered words pressed to her throat. Then, lower, huskier,to the underside of her moulded jaw,

Oh, how high above the stars did shine for them, silentwitness to their evening rendezvous.

Connor should not be there, should not be with her, and there was a rather lucid partof him ( lucid enough to know, tofeel like Amanda’s prying grasp pulling him away and back to the placed hebelonged, the place he had been made to belong, even now ) that remainedvibrantly aware of that fact and yet … AND YET. And yet she was magnetic allthe same, a force that seemed somehow to hold him in, to keep him grounded inplaces he should not be grounded.

Evelynn had entered his life

                                or existence

                                           orwhatever he could call this

at an inopportune time ; but then, there wasseldom any other sort of time for beings like Connor, whose attention wasfleeting and demanded cause of their purpose. She had entered, and she hadstayed, through some sort of morbid curiosity she had longed to foster and growamongst the seeds of his deviancy. She gave them life when he sought to destroythem, and under her fleeting presence he sprouted.

The anchor was swiftly gone from him and he was left feeling surprisingly empty in its absence, his only company Rhys’ soft words and the memory of their sounds, the tingling that still clung to his palm as though their touch was electric. He wanted to do it again with the same contradictory strength he wanted to never. Lips parted, but no words came.  P a u s e  . Breathe those static breaths, mechanical rise and fall of lungless chest.

❝  I think I would like that.  ❞

When finally he spoke the words were carefully calculated, a predicted press of sounds and digits that felt still somehow meaningful. It wasn’t too long ago that thinking anything would’ve been cause for immediate program termination, but Connor didn’t ruminate much on that point for fear of losing himself to it. He had thoughts. He was allowed to have thoughts. He was allowed to think that he wanted Rhys to stay and support him, allowed to be selfish enough for a brief moment to want anything involving Rhys beyond the necessary. Allowed to be selfish for the rest of his activation if he so fucking pleased.

❝  I’m not programmed to say so,  ❞

He continued, but the word PROGRAMMED provoked a near grimace, a clip of old code falling though the cracks. Connor wasn’t programmed to do anything anymore. Why did that frighten him?

❝  But I care about you. At least … I think I do. I’m not sure I quite understand all of my feelings yet. I was not informed that living would be so complex.  ❞

It sure felt like he cared when their gazes locked. His voice dropped to a soft muse, delicate as the man who spoke it could dare to be.

Hank hanging from a rooftop, left there to save himself, SURVIVAL PROBABILITY flashing blue across his vision as he swerved the left turn and lost the deviant anyway ( a  b r o k e n  machine was of no use to him, a shattered hunk of material responseless upon the ground surrounded by onlookers, terrified, confused ). Two androids in love at the end of his gun, the hesitation before he lowered it. Moments calculating the merits of pulling the trigger, staring dead into machine eyes, Kamski’s false-god breath warming his throat. Amanda. Trusting Amanda. Lying to Amanda. Telling Amanda the truth. Pistol aimed at deviant leader’s head, heading a victory but not quite victorious, guilty moments with fingers pressing into the grooves of his thirium pump and guiltier moments when he couldn’t fucking pull.

Connor regretted an awful lot of things, some days, with varying severity. Sometimes he regretted nothing, and he preferred those days if only to avoid the all-consuming toxicity of guilt.

He was but a blinking, rolling amber glow in the dark. Red, for a fraction of a moment, then again a preparatory shade.

❝  … Yes.  ❞

Desperately, sometimes ; and yet, the feeling did not seem to serve him in the way some others hoped to, did not better him in any way other than bright red trauma, unheard sirens blaring STOP before again the actions could repeat, before the same scene could play for him secondarily. Regret was one of those feelings, the non-feelings, the feelings that – in their deepest pits, when for hours he sank into them with nowhere to rest his feet – made deviancy feel VERY MUCH NOT WORTH IT.

It had not occurred to him until that moment that others may experience it, too. It should’ve. Hank radiated regret. Connor just hadn’t wanted to smell it.

❝  But regretting something doesn’t change it. It just hurts.  ❞

That it fucking did. Terribly.

❝  You shouldn’t linger on the past, Hank.  ❞

Words carefully pressed. The name still felt strange upon his tongue.

He’d seen it happen, brief glimpses of brilliant white against the black of a fiery night the hour of their victory, the way Markus’ eyes held North when shared emotions drew them closer and him further away, strangers becoming lovers through such vibrant intimacy—- he’d seen it, but seeing was not comparable to doing and so much of Rhys was still human, so much of what he could see when in the quiet he turned his gaze to watch him.

       He just felt like he had to try.

Several long moments lingered before the storm came for them. Connor locked gaze upon white fingers and kept it there, didn’t move it, didn’t shift to breathe or push or open. It felt … HE FELT … for one wild second as though he couldn’t do it, too afraid to expose the wires he wanted to reveal, anchored down by the weight of his hefty anxieties rising in places he should be unable to recognise or feel and perhaps it was that reluctance that compelled him to just for once stop   FUCKING   T H I N K I N G   for long enough to breathe, long enough to establish some press of a connection. His fingertips felt they had touched a livewire ; the heat was delicate, at first, then overwhelming, all-consuming, a violent and instantaneous press into his memory core that so strongly he rejected. It’s just Rhys, he thought, and let the togetherness wash over him,  Rhys knows me.

       Machinery. Programming. Reams of protocol dampened by smatterings of filtered water        upon his fingertips. The texture of thin scales, brilliant blue spelling  DWARF GOURAMI        as back into the tank it went. He’d nothing to gain from saving it.

S O F T W A R E   I N S T A B I L I T Y

       Dead eyes staring him down until he turned his back upon them, screaming child, the mark        of a liar stamped across his forehead. Mission successful. Mission always successful.

NO WRONG MEMORY   W R O N G

      Hank. Hank’s accusatory stare, programmed distaste a reluctant fondness, Hank hurt,       shattered glass, Sumo, big and frightening and fascinating, bullet in next chamber alcohol       smell lingerslingerslingers still smell it now upon the memory, two androids in love staring       down the barrel of his gun  CAN’T SHOOT,  blonde android on her knees need information       need Jericho  CAN’T FUCKING SHOOT,  stark white walls, staring down one’s own self,       victory but not victory, pistol in his hand, Amanda in his head, so cold so cold back door       thrust palm to stone back to life, put gun away, pretend it never happened and live with the       guilt every day, the fear, the anxiety that she might come back, that still all he was was       CYBERLIFE’S FUCKING PAWN  and his very existence was a danger to that of everyone       else. Long nights spent with fingertips tracing the join of his thirium pump, too afraid to pull.       Isolation. Fear. Loneliness.

 AND PERHAPS, SOMETIMES, SOMETHING ELSE

      Something like peace did he know when on long days Sumo rested his chin upon Connor’s       chest. Something like family in the way Hank looked at him, the not-mentioning-your-tired       eyes squeeze of his shoulder, the you-have-me quirk of lips. Something unknown to him       when Rhys lingered in his presence, when they touched or upon the woeful days they didn’t.

Connecting was like touching a livewire, but stranger still was falling out of it, the perplexion when he let it go, pulled back his hand as though finally he found the electricity burned. Red pumped solid blips against his temple as slowly synthskin breathed, covered the vast white. Connor stared at his fingertips until it became adamant that they would stay that way. Flesh coloured. His own. Yellow. And then, softly,

So … not good, then. Probably.

He hated the way anxiety tasted when somewhere in a place he should not be able to feel it bubbled, and when Joseph turned to the bathroom, Connor waited several long moments before opting finally to follow. More long moments passed stood useless in the doorway without a word. Then he spoke, mechanical, organic, both.

❛❛  Are you angry with me?  ❜❜

with a voice so incredibly uncertain, trepidating, concern flowing like the calmest ocean waves from the downwards quirk of his lips ; Connor was sometimes so incredibly HUMAN ( a mere quirk of his programming, for whatever thoughts or feelings he came to experience in the days of his deviancy still he was kept woefully aware that programming was, at the very core of his existence, precisely what he was, more so than being a thing he simply happened to possess ) that the prospect of him being anything else was unthinkable. Then again, the things that surrounded Connor were seldom thinkable in the first place.

❛❛  I’m sorry if I woke you. I was trying to be quiet when I came in.  ❜❜

The words breathed between his lips, a sigh he did not need to expel but he expelled anyway, habit stolen from months of monitoring human activity, working to blend seamlessly into their environments ; Cyberlife had wanted an android as human as a machine could be and in that regard they had unarguably succeeded. But so often he wished they fucking HADN’T. Wished he was defective. Wished he wasn’t defective, wished he’d stayed a machine, wished anything because it would be easier and sometimes—- pause. Rhys’ lips soft against his forehead, fingertips gentle, pressed to the sides of his face, feelings foreign and yet somehow strangely familiar lingered beneath the flesh where they touched.

Sometimes he thought maybe deviancy was worth it. That some feelings were worth feeling.

❝  I don’t know what I’d do without you.  ❞

And that, at least, was true. It was not to say that Connor had nobody else, because undoubtedly he did. He had Hank, had Markus, had hordes of deviants who still wore Jericho’s flag. He had places to go, people to put his trials and tribulations upon but he did not want to impose and so rarely ever did they think to ask about him that sometimes it just didn’t seem … viable. Even if he knew they would not walk away. Even if he knew they would understand better than Rhys ever could.

And it was the concept of UNDERSTANDING that rose him from that chair, to his feet. That propelled him to turn and then forwards as slowly he reached for the cybernetic, tentatively touched fingers to his, synthskin fading to stark vibrant white as together their palms rose but he did not push, did not connect, did not allow those floodgates to open. Instead, he hesitated, and awaited silent permission.

❝  I just.  ❞

He just.

All animals BIT – every single one, if they had to. And even if she did bite, androids didn’t hurt. Not in the way people hurt. A flicker of a warning message stamped bright red and then nothing, nothing, nothing. He didn’t respond because he didn’t have to respond, because the other reached for the cat anyway, gently stroked a thumb across her tiny forehead which earned her attention a moment, sent her paw gently tap-tap-tapping at the strange hand. He smiled. She purred. The no-name cat.

❝  No,  ❞

He murmured, voice soft, low, a bare hum above the noise of the earth, its buzzing silence song. Gaze again fell to admire the creature, soft and small and so much more DELICATE than anything he had any business touching and he imagined the poor thing had every reason to mistrust him … but she didn’t ( which was more of a kindness than humans had ever offered him, their every suspicious side-eye caught to irritate his senses ). Connor decided in that moment that he liked cats. Liked this particular cat, more so than any other.

Perhaps he’d keep her.

❝  But I suppose she deserves to have one, doesn’t she?  ❞

Perhaps it was more to the point that Connor didn’t want to impose ; but if he thought about it for any justifiable length of time, he had been imposing since their initial meeting in that dingy little bar, unsanitary eyes boring holes into his back though he paid them no mind. He’d certainly imposed every time across their shared desk space he’d interrupt the carefully cultivated quiet with asinine questions ( attempting always to sound blasé about the interaction, though somewhere along the line he thought if Cyberlife had been intending to make him CHARMING they had royally fucked it up, painted him instead equal shades of ‘ socially inept ’ and ‘ cocky asshole ’ that somehow sometimes gave the illusion of charm ), when he busted in the kitchen window. He wondered if that had been mended yet. With the cold, he presumed so. Then again, was it really imposing? He knew Hank well enough by now to understand that the hard-boiled lieutenant did not do anything that he did not WANT to do, irregardless of whether or not doing said unwanted thing would be useful, or helpful, or polite. Hank Anderson did not open his home to people that he did not want there.

So many thoughts flitted unhelpfully through his mind, each one contradicting another, but his internal turmoil took place over only a fragment of a real-world moment and by the time he came back into himself, Hank was already three steps away from the bench, leaving Connor behind. So the decision was made. The decision was made and Connor rose stiffly to stand, followed the trail of snow steps across the deadened street. He did not meet them with his own. Instead, their indentations overlapped, bright white indications of their conjoined paths.

Imposing or not, Connor knew with such startling surety that – especially in the coming days or weeks or months which already it seemed would be filled with frightening new encounters, new feelings and developments he did not know how to understand, good and bad and fucking awful and every other variation of somethingness – he needed Hank. He had always needed Hank, the catalyst to his deviancy.

Maybe Hank needed him, too.

❝  Thank you.  ❞

The response was delayed. Privacy was … a concept he had yet to explore. Until now every action, every thought, every aspect of his existence was a window for Cyberlife voyeurs. Nothing had ever been his own. Perhaps he would use it, or perhaps he wouldn’t. Either way, he appreciated that the offer was laid out for him to take.

❝  That’s very generous.  ❞

He smiled. Hank wasn’t looking to see it, of course, but he smiled anyway because it felt nice to do it, to smile for some reason that was not pre-calculated, to smile for himself, and not some attempt to increase his standing with somebody. Connor almost left it at that, for he had come to learn that silence was not necessarily always a bad thing but he hesitated at the passenger side door, fingertips hovering above the handle. The words spilled out before he could reel them back in.

❝  What are you going to do now? You’re not a detective any more.  ❞

But she was just Cyberlife’s pet, wasn’t she? Just like him.

Still, when he recalled that night, a victory for seemingly every android that did not wear his skin, the feel of her hands guiding his to aim down the back of the deviant leader’s skull seemed to linger in a way that the feel of her dispersing beneath that bright stone did not. Vibrantly, he feared the possibility that whatever was left of her may someday try again. Adversely, he also feared the possibility that she was gone, and that he was at once alone in himself. So Kamski’s eased response did not bring him the degree of comfort he had hoped ; whatever had become of her he had always supposed he could tolerate it if tolerating it did not mean DESTROYING her.

For several long moments, LED swimming amber, he did not respond. Connor’s gaze lingered for moments in the spaces that Kamski did not fill. There was, then, the issue of trust ; difficult to trust a man who put a gun in his hand, whose cryptic tongue did not spell the things he needed when he needed them, whose voice spun lies for cameras and text in magazines, promises that burned to ash.

❛❛  I wouldn’t call it trust.  ❜❜

What other option, truly, did he have?