Kitty

Occurs following the android revolution, the two of you are dating and have a cute apartment in Detroit together <3

"So!" You amble over to Connor, back fresh from the grocery store, slapping your hand onto the androids shoulder to capture his attention.

He tilts his head curiously, his LED whirring a discerning yellow. "Good afternoon to you too?" After a moment of hesitant observation, he reflects the smile you were beaming warmly, lip curving up on one end in a wry smirk. "You brought snacks?"

"I wanted to try something with you. I know you can't eat and all that, but I promise it's fun...!" Your hands clasp together in a plea matching the strain in your voice, head tilting in an urging manner. The conspicuous, white and blue box of chocolate pocky caught between your palms.

"If you want to, we can try it." He nods in affirmation, hand straying to stroke the skin of your arm in a lingering, fond contact.

"You won't regret it!" You grin triumphantly, stretching to peck a kiss to the android's cheek and taking his hand to lead him to the couch. Connor obliges you, following and listening keenly, head inclined to you. Exploring all these facets of human romance was a priority in his social evolution, he wants to know all about it, and navigate it with you. Even if it's just snack based affection. "It's called the pocky challenge. You put a stick between your lips and I put mine around the other end and then we chew it until our lips meet. It's like a kiss!"

"The logistics are... troublesome." Connor's eyebrows rise in fervent interest, standing over you, hands lingering near your waist for a moment before settling there. "I might possess deviancy, but my humanity doesn't extend to digesting food. I'm an advanced prototype, but still an android." His expression shifts to a dejected, distracted stare.

"I kinda forgot about that when I bought this..." You scratch the back of your head awkwardly, looking a little apologetic. It's easy to forget he's a robot, incapable of consumption, amongst other things, when deviancy made any android congruous with the likes of a human. The only indication of any difference between the two of you is the steady, blue cycling of his LED, pulsing in the low, intimate light of your shared space. "I'm sure there's a workaround!" You grasp his chin, trying to direct his gaze back onto you, in stalwart reassurance. The two of you are both lost in contemplation. How does one go about doing the pocky challenge with an android partner?

"How about this?" Connor begins, reclining back onto the couch. You lean in, making a gesture as if to spur him to elaborate. "I hold it between my teeth. And then you eat it from there."

"You're a genius! As usual..." You nod keenly in approval, handing him the box with an eagerly intense shove of your hand. He takes it, eyeing you as you clamber atop him, straddling his hips. You're practically vibrating as he turns the box in his hands, fingertips running along the surface of the cardboard, fastidious as he typically is when handling things. You, weapons, pocky sticks.

"I try, it's in my design philosophy. Optimising romantic confectionery eating isn't outside the breadth of my capabilities." He eases the packaging open, taking a single, thin stick between two fingers, slotting it between his lips. His eyes rove over your mouth with a meticulous, cerebral eye. One built for discerning the difference between deviant and android, for picking apart the most diminutive of details. He much prefers this purpose, dissecting every ridge and angle of your face, memorising it and elapsing hours worth of time and data just to devote his extensive neural links to your image.

Connor gazes up at you expectantly, using his tongue to flick the pocky stick up between his jaws like one might do to a cigarette. He eases off his tie with one hand, the black, textured fabric sent tumbling away. You lurch forwards, hands sinking onto his shoulders to anchor yourself against him as you bite the other end. The exchange of your eyes is wordless, drinking in eachother's irises. You descend onto him, whittling down the confection until you're centimetres from his parted lips. From your vantage point you can drink in the android's deep brown eyes that reflect your own image in their eternal depths. Silently, you utter a prayer of thanksgiving to whichever CyberLife engineer decided to adorn him with those eyes. Up close, you can see the intricate flecks of colour in his iris, like clusters of stars.

You pause, entranced, jaw working to chew down the pocky you'd already taken in. Connor eyes you fervidly, giving you a few moments of air despite his growing appetite. You can feel his bated, watchful, warm breaths fanning onto your face, mingling with your own hankering exhales. He leans in the moment your throat bobs, jamming your lips together. The inch or so of pocky is sent tumbling from his lips to favour a hungry, forthright movement against your mouth.

With an equally covetous, intelligible grunt, you jut your chocolate coated tongue between his lips, pressing it into his. His fingers card through the roots of your hair in a languid, laudatory move, curling in to grasp the tresses firmly, but not with the intensity to pull.

Shifting your position to bear down more avidly onto him, you grind in a slow, harsh action to gain friction against his crotch. He discards the pocky box, forgetting its existence just to hold you with both hands. The freed fist comes to grapple at the side of your neck, tilting your head to get the leverage needed for his tongue to sink just that little bit deeper into your mouth. He's grasping at you with the intention to close any kind of gulf between the two of you, to create a union so permanent the two of you could no longer scrutinize where your matter ends and his begins, trailing passionately after your very atoms, much like the way your tongues are chasing eachother now.

The only noises that escape the two of you for numerous, voracious minutes, are acquisitive, rapacious groans and expletives, whispered against eachother when you come up for air.

"You have some... On your lip." You perk up, straightening up to stare Connor in the face, his eyes zeroing in on a smear of chocolate in the corner of your mouth.

"Where?" Reaching up to your face, you prod blindly at your chin, trying to read from the location of his eyes where the stain is.

"Here." Connor's hand reaches up between the two of you, thumb swiping the mark off of your skin. A tender, doting smile spreads across his face, a fresh lustre in his features that was familiar, but illuminated.

"I am so glad we figured that out." You admit, mirroring Connor's own expression with a wry smile. "Thanks for saving my ass, I didn't think when I bought it."

"I should be thanking you for introducing it." Connor murmurs frankly, leaning in to press his face against the side of your neck, arms coiling around your middle to pull you into his mechanised warmth again. "It was... Stimulating."

You melt against him, breath steadied and even. Your head lolls down to rest your chin on his shoulder, dormant and satisfied. "You could say that again."

"Should we try another one?" Connor whispers into your hair, eyes also half shut, glazed with the heady afterglow of your contact. His palm drags soothingly against the back of your head, fingertips still half tangled into your hair there. There wasn't much of a doubt within his voice, he knows you too well to be ambiguous on your feelings towards this kind of thing. You're just as thirsty as him.

With Tanner, I have a lot of different ideas but primarily I'd say he reminds me of a Great Horned Owl!

They're ambush predators, like he is in his game mechanics.

They're both proficient hunters and utilise their stealth effectively. Owls are near silent fliers.

They match his hair colour.

They're native to Montana and most of North America.

They both operate at night.

They're comparatively quite large compared to most of the bird family. I'm not sure if I just completely missed it but he doesn't have a canon height thus far, but I personally interpret him as being quite tall/lanky. His legs look pretty long to me 🙏

Birds naturally preen their feathers and I think Tanner is quite a vain guy when it comes to things like his hair, based on absolutely no canon data aside from the fact he pushes his hair back in the menu screen sometimes 💔

Also, Tanner is literally heralded by an owl in the game, so I think that counts for something lol

It's also probably where I got this association from...

This is a reupload from a fic I posted here back in December. I can't remember why I deleted it but I wanted it out there again 😵‍💫

˚₊‧꒰ა ✦ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

You grunt, trying to stretch to reach back at your unruly mounds of feather. Having found some scrap in a box discarded in the hallway by your cell, you'd managed to fashion a comb with teeth hopefully adapted well enough to preen your wings. Though they were serving a monumental challenge. You hadn't the flexibility to tame them. It was nigh on impossible to lurch back to reach the base at your scapulas. Being cursed with wings by some anonymous force whilst being rocketed across a space rift was bad enough, not knowing how to keep them healthy was even worse. You're basing this preening thing off of assumptions. You've seen birds dig around in their feathers with their beaks. Perhaps it's a necessary step you must take, too?

"Struggling with that?" Comes a voice which was becoming regrettably familiar. You straighten up relinquishing the stray feathers you'd been gripping to try to pull your wing towards you.

"...no." what were you supposed to say? 'Oh yes, please help me! I implore you to touch my wings and put me in your debt!' Absolutely no chance.

"That's odd. It seems from where I stand that you require some assistance in maintaining your wings." Dottore folds his arms, sailing through the threshold of the doorway.

"Really?" You gape at him, laying the sarcasm on thick.

"Yes. It's apparent you do." He halts between your sagging, messy wings. They instinctively fold, much as you do, hunching uncomfortably.

"I know personal space isn't your thing but..." You sigh. Was there really any point? It was just rather poignant to have some guy who's in charge of the institute which has imprisoned you to assume you'd spread your wings and thus make yourself vulnerable to him. Whilst you're wearing pajamas if that wasn't already bad enough. You donned a pair of pale pink bottoms and a lace trimmed camisole. It's what you wore when you descended, they let you hold onto it, graciously.

"Hm?" He tilts his head, presumably not in earnest. You lament that he either wasn't listening, or he's trying to dismiss you on purpose.

"Give me that pick, or whatever you fumbled together." Dottore hoped you'd have little avenue to protest if he was pointed. He notes how you skirt around topics rather than being direct. Though he isn't entirely aghast when you continue to clutch the makeshift comb to yourself.

It didn't seem logical for him to be so eager to help. As far as you could gather, the doctor was solely interested in ventures which expanded his horizon of knowledge or exhilarated him. He was a feared figure all over this world and felt above most human fancies.

"Why are you interested in this? Just get your crony to do it." You had a hypothesis that he could be insisting himself into you in a bid to learn more about you. You assume it'd be fascinating to be around the only figure from another world, who wouldn't want to form a connection to you in order to learn more? It seemed the only logical explanation.

"Why would I delegate to a subordinate when an opportunity of this nature presents itself to me?" Dottore seems chagrined at your proposal. "It's a unique chance to view the complexities of a celestial intervention up close. Who am I to dismiss such an uncommon chance to do so? Would you expect much less from me?"

It'd be opportune for him to voice his intentions and thoughts out loud, he supposes. Predictability wasn't an attribute he'd willingly brand himself with but it would, even if just a fleeting guise, earn him faith, which he could exercise as leeway into probing you further. As far as young mortal women went you could be the most extraordinary he's seen, despite your reluctance to share the spectacular abnormalities which made you so interesting.

Running a thumb along the ramshackle comb you still enveloped with your nimble fingers, you brew quietly on his questions. "You tell me. It's not like I know you." Unless it was his intention to establish familiarity and coax you into recognising patterns, thus perieving him as less of a threat.

The doctor catches your gaze as you look back, knees still to your chest. "I'm sure we'll get to know eachother. It is my intention to know you and your machinations learned from being raised and exposed to a world foreign to this one." Even if he's donning a mask, you note his peculiarly piercing stare, your own eyes are reluctant to tear away their contact.

"So I'm just an interesting slab of knowledge for you to cut into?" You raise the pick to your eyes, closer, jabbing a fingertip into one of the teeth.

"You make it sound crude." Dottore titillates. "The pursuit of knowledge is anything but. It's an art, in its own way." You stiffen when a cold glove plants itself firmly onto your traps, goosebumps swell beneath the surface of your skin. It scoots you a little more towards the edge of the mattress you're perched on.

The doctor still stood tall beside you, looming in a less than hospitable way. You gauge that he is quite noticeably loftier than you, the difference was more apparent in this position.

You swivel to confront him, fidgeting endlessly with your dismal construction of a comb which could ameliorate your pitiful wings. Dottore lurches down to pluck it from your hands with a firm finger and thumb. His lip twitches as he turns it every which way in his hands. "What a poor attempt at assembling something." As someone well suited to masterful mechanical projects forged from veteran minds in the field, it was a steep contrast to hold this in his palm. To actually behold something of this nature was almost satisfyingly different to the mundane craftsmanship he recognised to a tedious point. The Harbingers shakes his head, now was not the time for stray thoughts to dance.

"I digress, it may be adequate, just this once. I suppose."

"I didn't even...-" you cut yourself off with a groan. There wasn't much of a point, you discern. His resolutions seem steelier than ships.

Instead, you comply. Maneuvering to kneel with your back to him. Your head dips as your eyes zero in on the pallid wall.

The first, clinical contact feels like an electric shock, a soft jolt to the system. Your wings, originally scrunched, begin to relent their defensive gesture. They instead ease their white mass, standing high enough for Dottore to reach without bending down at all.

"Birds and feathered creatures perform preening in order to pick out build ups of oil. If one didn't, the consequences could be dire. It may affect waterproofing, thermal regulation and cause general itching."

His hands glide over the feathers, nimbly tending to them. The feeling is oddly satisfying, scratching an itch you haven't been able to quite get to.

Your wings jitter faintly at the gossamer touch and your eyes threaten to flutter shut. Though you cannot let yourself become too malleable in his palms. There was no way you could trust him enough to do so. Despite the serenity his droning seems to bring like a gentle haze on a spring morning, the white lights in the cell are a troubling reminder of your circumstances.

"I'm not a bird. I just have wings." You fold over your knees, bringing them to your chest having shuffled to find a more agreeable position than kneeling.

"Of course." Dottore continues to sift through your feathers almost fervently. The teeth of the makeshift comb card through, taking some of the less savoury patches of feather.

"The craftsmanship of this is... An undesirable. It's a security risk that you even got into a container of metal scrap."

"Thanks..." You retort dryly. Someone was probably getting an earful, judging by his tone.

"This will happen every few weeks or so. I'll update my schedule. Perhaps I'll find time to do it myself." Regular intervals of connection were imperative to formulating the bond needed. He would have to enable various channels of communication.

You spread sluggishly your wings. They felt remarkably lighter. Dottore notes the cautiousness at which you exercise them. It was no surprise to him, there's little avenue for you to practise operating them in this area.

He slips out of the room with little fanfare. The quiet click of the door heralds your solitude.

I like writing him but haven't had the energy to flesh out full plots, please just enjoy them as random snippets 💔

WC 2522

In which you wake up in his residence following an experimental hepatectomy. You've encountered him a couple times and are sort of, cautiously familiar.

"There you are. I've been waiting for you to metabolise the drugs in your system."

You groan, rolling your neck as it protests the movement. A sharp pain tells you to quit stretching the area.

"I ran you a bath. As a little reward for all your hard work." You lean forwards, feeling your skin become further submerged into the tub. It was deep and warm, steam hazing the mirror and dappled windows.

"What hard work again...?" You were still placid, Tanner observes. The drugs were still holding your brain.

"You're still groggy." He hums, fingertips dipping into the water idly, disturbing the surface. The ripples reverberating from the point of contact sail gently to nudge your sodden hair. "I was practicing surgical techniques. I haven't touched some of the organs enough. I'm no established master of the trade." He stretches, arms soaring far above his head. "Rome wasn't built in a day, you know?"

You pause. He didn't place nearly enough importance onto the fact he was doing procedures on you and now you're in the bath.

"You haven't put me in an ice bath, right? Like some living sack of organs." You couldn't trust yourself now, your eyes were still half open.

"That is a remarkable idea!" He beams. You lament the way he acknowledges it. The vehemence was a worrying sign he was getting an idea.

"I don't want to be, if that's what you're thinking."

"You're in my bathroom if you're so concerned." Tanner murmurs with an air of nonchalance, eyes tracing the patterned tiles. His eyes narrow, shifting to spread his knees a little more, getting comfortable in the wooden chair you can only assume he dragged to the foot of the bath.

You, too, glance away, averting your gaze uncomfortably. You were beginning to sober up, more alert than you were just a minute ago. "That's good." You purse your lips, troubled. At the very least, you weren't still in his makeshift theatre. Though... The idea of being in his home wasn't much better.

"Did you cut me or anything? Like, inside, I mean." The water, whilst tepid, was thankfully clear, unmarred by any bodily fluids or soaps. It gave you enough clarity to observe your own bare abdomen. There was a square dressing clinging to your skin, immune to the adversity of the water.

"I took a little liver, not much." Tanner makes a pinching motion, the space between his fingertips an estimate of what he took. His head tilts incisively as a scalpel, lapping up the horror which masses your face, jaw slack. "Don't worry." He waves a dismissive hand. "It grows back. I'm not looking to kill you for now." Whilst his attempt at amelioration was somewhat stunted by his last words. Placated, yet worried by the stark reminder of his turpitude, you sit back against the porcelain. It was staggering how he could employ such a dulcet tone to such crudely implicated words. "For now." You parrot, frowning. "Preferably never."

Tanner exhales a short laugh from his nose, though the speed at which he recovers tells you he was merely bridging the void. "I'm sure I'll never feel the need to dispose of you. It's not like you're boring."

"Why thank you..." You squint, tone lathered in sarcasm. How did you even end up here? This relationship was never wise, you should know better.

"It's my pleasure!" He smiles back at you. The two of you both knew the malevolent undertones of his activities. What worried you was his unpredictability, it's not like he can be scrutinized after he's given you horse tranquilizer.

"Anyway, more importantly, you need a bath!" He springs up from his chair, meandering to a cabinet fixed above his sink.

"I'm already in a bath." You interject, tilting your head owlishly. "I thought you can't get surgical wounds wet immediately after surgery."

"Which is why your dressings are waterproof." Tanner chimes in pointedly. He wanders to the side of the bath, producing shampoo, body wash and conditioner. Your own, in fact. Is that really what he'd been rummaging through that cabinet for? "I considered saran wrapping them because I couldn't find the ones I bought a while ago. Luckily for you I decided to be nice and drove to the pharmacy nearby." He pulls his chair to a more favourable position for him to sit and wash your hair, now sat behind you.

Tanner's presence behind you made your neck prickle, haunches raised. "You bought my exact shower routine when you bought the dressings, did you?" You point out matter-of-factly. You didn't put it past him, but it was bemusing to think he'd do such a thing. "I expected dollar store 10 in 1 shower gel, honestly."

"Your words wound me." He rolls his eyes, planting an almost glacial hand on your shoulder as he coaxes you backwards. Reluctantly, you comply, back hitting the porcelain, head almost in his lap. "Let's try not to get my trousers wet." He brings a palm to rest atop your skull, gripping it faintly.

"Sorry." You mutter. It's not like you truly meant it but it was a mundane formality. A grunt escapes your lips as he probes lathered fingers into your scalp, distributing the soap dutifully. You reluctantly shut your eyes. Not fully trusting the process.

It's a repetitive one, the dunking is nerve-wracking but it gets done within ten minutes.

"Should we wash your body? The soap from the shampoo in the bathwater will be fine, I'm assuming." Tanner twirls your sodden hair in his hands, coating the tresses in conditioner. You thank your lucky stars for the opportunity not to get touched too intimately.

The time had come for you to get out the bath. Youre still a little woozy from the procedure. Tanner rises, standing tall beside your meeker form. "Do your legs work? Id imagine you haven't fully metabolised the drugs." He grins, as usual. You watch intently as he slips off his white coat and rolls up his sleeves. This was a leap. You rarely see him without the white coat and now he was without it sleeves fully rolled? Scandalous.

"I'm dizzy already." You groan. You want out of the bath but the idea of standing was disorienting to say the least.

He squats down, arms coming to encircle your middle. "Could you try to be a little less of a dead weight? You'll get my floors wet if I drag you." The threat of carpet burn wasn't pleasant. You try to help, leaning into him and griping at his shoulders.

He tosses you up and over his shoulder. You're still entirely bare. Something Tanner revels in, even delivering a quick smack to your ass as he strides through the apartment.

"Well, I suppose this means it's time for post surgical aftercare." Tanner pushes his hair strands back. Having dropped you on a pristine white queen sized bed, he rummages behind a cushion for a remote for the television.

To you, the concept of Tanner even saying the word aftercare was unheard of. You've always thought he was a date and ditch guy. But with surgery, it's probably different. "I don't often do this with the people I operate on," he muses airily. "You ought to go back to sleep. You're going to be sore. Recovery is key post hepatectomy. Otherwise it'll take even longer for me to use you as my practice dummy again." He doesn't seem sorry that he took part of your liver, you observe. But he seems to be serious about watching you, even if it's so he can operate on you again faster.

You shuffle to lay down, struggling with the incision and deeper wounds, which were sore, like he said they'd be. "How long do I have to 'recover' like this...?" Whilst his apartment is pretty nice, bordering on luxurious, it was Tanner's. You aren't sure you want to be cohabiting with him for too long.

"Id recommend patients, if they're coming through my clinic, to have supervised bedrest for at least a week and a half, and then very slowly integrate into ordinary activity again." He folds his arms, watching you pull blankets over yourself with some difficulty. The idea of a hypothetical Grayton clinic makes him chuckle to himself.

Before you could even ask, he pipes up. "And don't worry, I called your internship. They were extremely understanding about your donation."

You sigh at his beaming. He'd really framed it like you voluntarily gave your liver for transplant or something and they took it readily? How great.

Tanner could tell plainly what you were thinking. It amused him greatly.

"What did you even do with the liver...?" You mumble, pulling a fur blanket to your nose, head buried amidst pillows.

"Lunch!" He exclaims, eerily brightly. Your head whips to look directly at him, horrified.

"Are you-"

"Of course not. Humans are full of disease. It's probably going off to an associate of mine. I'll have to think."

"Don't scare me like that!" Whilst the latter explanation wasn't lovely, at least he wasn't admitting to being a cannibal. That'd be mortifying. It wasn't the least bit great for him to joke about something like that so freely, though. You're snapped out of your reverie by him lifting the covers and slipping beneath them, sitting up against the headboard, your head by his hip.

"It was too perfect not to. Your face was hilarious." He looks down at you, the difference in position a little more metaphorical than you'd like it to be.

You peer at him, furrowing your eyebrows in bafflement when you realise he's wearing the same clothes. "I could never wear outdoor clothes in bed. It's either pajamas or nothing." You pick at the white fabric of his shirt. "Is that even comfortable?"

"It's not uncomfortable per se, no." Tanner lolls his head to the side, splaying out his arms so one finds it with your head in the crook of his elbow. His fingers pluck the blanket and lift it to peer beneath it at your nude form, just for a moment, but the sentiment is clear. "You're one to talk about being comfortable right now." You give him a perplexed glance. Nude was far more amicable than fully clothed in bed. "It's not like I can get naked with a patient, this is a supervised bedrest." He turns his head to the other side, propping it up on spread fingertips.

"Yea right." You scoff. "Talking all professional now... I know what you are." The distrustful look in your eye evoked a guffaw from Tanner. He couldn't deny how right you were, though. Ravishing you was a strong temptation at the current moment. But the lust was a gossamer compared to the mountain high necessity to ensure you recover properly.

"I think we both know the truth, but, the risk of leaving you out of commission for longer than is needed is a pretty good motivator for me not to savage you." You choose not to further stoke that alley of conversation. His eyes move languidly from you to the television. He'd be satisfied to stare at the wall for a few hours like it had a thousand details, or read a book on human anatomy and surgical practices. But he's acutely aware that your mind is more hyperactive. It isn't satiated being dormant. The television glints sheepishly. He could tell the moment you zeroed in on it. You have many shows he's seen you watching. Typically, he has never heard of them. He's nowhere near as chronically online as you. Something Tanner prides himself on. Though maybe he could save himself the trouble of sitting through one of your absurd shows more artificially.

Moving on autopilot, his hand slips away, soundlessly into the bedside table's drawer, retrieving a preloaded syringe he keeps there. It finds a station beside the pillow, obscured from your view by his body.

"Watch what you want." He tosses you the remote unprompted. You raise an eyebrow, skeptical, but indulge either way.

"You still have netflix, right?" Whilst his ears process you prattling on, preoccupied on streaming services, Tanner is thousands of miles away. He poises the syringe in his hand, the other one coming to root into your hair. He inhales the peony scent from your wet tresses, leaning down somewhat. He brushes it with faux tenderness, sweeping it upwards and away from your silky neck, twirling a hair around his finger. He could hear you yammering on, though he's drowned out that commentary, this always required absolute concentration.

"Wait...-" you mutter, clutching your nape. You knows he's up to no good. It's palpable the intention he'd been moving with. Your tear your eyes off the screen to peer up at him. The syringe immediately noticeable, bared to be used in his right hand.

"What ever is the matter, hm?" He offers a discerning, farcical smirk. What a coincidence. "I have to admit. You're getting better at noticing things. How opportune of you."

The moment you falter, freezing up, stunned, Tanner takes it as an ample opportunity to sink the needle straight down into your skin, the weight of the plunger familiar and almost reassuring.

"Yet you still have a lot to learn." He snickers, turning the syringe in his hand with a lazy, satisfied movement. His gaze then flickers to your now subdued form, triumph exudes from his dead eyes. He leans in, nose brushing against the cartilage of yours for a short moment, inhaling the expanse of skin on your face as if it was fragranced with the very nectar of the gods. He breath fans hot and stark against the expanse of your face for a few contemplative moments, eyes rooted onto your profile like he was counting every pore that exists in the sea of your skin. His hand juts out in an entitled manner to clutch your jaw, tilting your head for you. His thumb prods the skin over your jugular, testing the elasticity of your skin laid taut over the area. He savours the facility of your skin, brave and rushing with blood, yet still sickly and chilled. "Aren't you so unfortunate? So easily mollified." His tone is one of musing, mirthful mockery.

Tanner's sharp titter ghosts over your skin, close enough to provoke beads of condensation to form on your nose. He swipes his pointer finger over that area, leaning back to truly gauge your heedless, quelled form. The boat of consciousness has long unmoored itself from your tantalising shores.

(This is my first time writing a DBH fic since I discovered this game so I'm still figuring Connor out. The idea of the garden post deviancy becoming a place in his mind he goes to at his own volition where he investigates and figures out different emotions as they come has been eating away at me. I also really like the boat and I'm not sure why)

-`♡´-

Just like every time an unfamiliar feeling has crept up upon him, this notion was nebulous as the mist that permeates Detroit on a crisp morning. It came in conspicuous pangs. Sometimes tepid, like a flowering of heat, but often also stewing, queasy dread. You were the core of the curious phenomenon. It felt only right to confront these odd motions with the heart of them, within the orchard of his mind.

The garden has bloomed anew. His own to visit, to wander and probe new aspects of humanity that occur to him as he wanders the world with a new brain, enlightened. The trellis of roses now burgeons with sprays of lush colour like splatters of paint. Prolific, unrestrained flowers were dotted like jewels on leafy tangles which climbed structures. Sharp, angular lines in dull colours were contrasted by poignant blossoms, cultivated by an eternal sunlight.

He dips the wooden oars into the lake, dormant and pliant as your tender skin. The ripples flow like silk over the cerulean surface. A gossamer of wind cards its airy fingers through the trees, whispering supplications.

You're sat opposite of him, watching him like he hung the stars in the sky, hands tucked on your lap. You were just a manifestation. Not real. Unable to respond to his probing. This was merely exploratory, just an interrogative examination of the emotion he'd been yet to tackle incisively. Yet you still made his mouth feel like sand. Silence lulls between you two. It only makes the sound of the boat cutting through the water more vivid. Your distorted reflection was hazy amidst the pulsing water, as ambiguous as your nonbeing here.

Connor glances at you tentatively, lurching forwards to heave the oars, propelling the boat in arduous motion. The last time he did this it was in servitude to a woman made of code, to confine his mind. When the garden manifested with new purpose, the boat had been missing, as if swept away with the storm. Perhaps now it was the labour of love it was reserved for, an exchange as equal as the push and pull of oars.

"Your eyes make my processor stutter." He tries the sentiment, testing it on his tongue, each and every syllable. Feeling his fingers curl around the oars at the weight of the comment. He parts his lips, sheepishly gazing towards a row of gnarled oak trees lining the embankment with their verdant flourishes. "I wonder if you get butterflies looking at me."

"I've never been captivated like this before. I've had focuses and fixations on cases, but it's like you're taking up my mind." Connor narrates immediately what comes to his head. His eyes squint as the water stares back at him, a mirror as deep and eternally flowing as his mind. "I want to spend my time around you. It's like hearing your voice puts me at ease."

"I think I love you." He breathes out the admission with a steady push of the oars. It feels more natural than he imagined, a treasure in the sand that was ready to be uncovered, left specifically to be wiped off by inquisitive hands, turned this way and that and scrutinized with the weight of a man learning what each twinge in his face means. He had love, he supposes cautiously, for Hank, and Sumo, and the feeling that fills his chest cavity when he solves a case or comes to a clever conclusion. This was uncharted territory. A thrum in his biocomponents prompts him to thrust the oars again, as if to alleviate the tingling in his chest with movement. "Never would've thought I'd say that, in this context."

Connor chuckles wryly. Joy, compassion, distress, anguish. They seemed trivial up to this monument of a feeling that has been plaguing the confines of his mind, prodding at him to ascertain it, to look at it dead in the eyes and exactly why he couldn't articulate when you asked him a menial question.