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“You’re looking good these days,” Ben says one morning as he slides around Hank to grab a coffee. The man smiles, the corner of his eyes pulling up. “What’s your secret?”
Hank scratches his beard, pretends like he’s got no earthly clue what he’s talking about.
“I don’t know,” he mutters, capping his cup. “Been cutting back on the cholesterol, I guess.”
That gets a laugh. “Ah, the missus ?”
He points across the office at the tall line of Connor’s back, where the android speaks to one of the receptionists. From someone else the joke would be toeing the line, but Ben always manages to be good-natured about everything, so Hank shrugs and takes a drink. It’s to be expected, ever since it came out that Connor moved in with him. The jokes practically write themselves, at this point.
“My actual wife never got on my case nearly as much, thanks,” he banters back. “Fucker’s got a checklist running in his head just for nagging me.”
“Oh I don’t know, Hank,” Ben takes his usual - two sugars, one cream. “Don’t act like you didn’t like it when Laurel gave you a hard time.”
Sure, it was a thing. Didn’t have to be watercooler conversation, though.
The two of them do the slow walk back toward their desks, Ben telling him about his daughter’s new boyfriend and all the headaches he’s had since the two of them got together. Hank only half pays attention, because a familiar brown coat comes skulking up behind him and an elbow knocks hard against his.
Hank turns, already exhausted, and says, “It’s early, Reed.”
Reed smirks, half chewing on a pretzel. “Sure is - and look at you ,” he gestures at Hank with a wide spread of his fingers. “Shouldn’t you be at home, face first in your toilet or something?”
At his side Hank can feel Ben shaking his head. Neither of them are up for retirement yet, and while Ben’s good at keeping his head in the clouds, Hank isn’t. Sometimes the thought that he’s going to be working with a jumped up little cockhead like Reed for a few more years is almost too much.
Hank doesn’t respond and drops into his seat, spinning around to face his desk and setting his coffee down by his terminal with pointed force. Ben shuffles away. He expects Reed to move on to his next target, as per routine.
Instead, he leans his hip against Hank’s desk and draws in close, “Hey Anderson, man to man - what’s goin’ on with that, huh?”
Slowly, Hank cranes his head up to look Reed in the eye. “What.”
“Y’know,” he gives a jaunty little wave with his pretzel. Then he jerks his head in Connor’s direction, smirking - a nasty little curl of his lips that’s all the warning Hank needs: “Plastic’s living with you - don’t fucking tell me it’s just charity, man.”
Years of dealing with guys like Reed in the academy taught him some tremendous fucking patience, as well as the tricks to deal with them. Make like a tree and let them bark - eventually they always wander off. Reed usually didn’t put in this much energy with Hank, sticking to making some tired comment about his drinking or his weight before moving onto someone else, someone more likely to rise to the bait and give him the attention he wants. Hank wonders what’s in the water, today.
Going by the hungry gleam in his eyes, Reed is just waiting for Hank to bite his head off.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hank responds, blandly, before switching his terminal on and ignoring him.
Reed tries to hover more, but then Fowler barks something from his office and he pushes himself off Hank’s desk with a roll of his eyes and a set of farewell finger guns.
*
Reed’s not wrong, though.
It’s just not anybody’s business, is all. Hank doesn’t particularly care what anyone thinks, but he’s also never been a fan of subjecting himself to office gossip. And some of those boys at the office would never let him live it down.
There’s also the part of him that sees Connor like this and feels like a dirty old man - perched on his lap with his clothes halfway off and beaming at him. He doesn’t need other people to know it, too.
“Hank,” Connor murmurs his name against his mouth and it sounds like prayer. It makes Hank’s hands squeeze where they’re cupping his ass. “I want to try to something new tonight.”
“...Yeah?”
He’s not really listening, distracted as he is by popping open the buttons of Connor’s shirt and circling his fingers around that trim waist. Watches his stomach jump and then push into his touch. He can feel the steady drum of the pump regulator like this, rhythmic like a human heartbeat; it even quickens when he’s excited.
Android flesh isn’t soft at all, and at it first it had been so strange. Strange enough to make things awkward: botched first kisses and fumbled necking. Hank, too distracted by the feel of it to get it up when Connor had finally persuaded him past first base and Connor, taking it personally and getting distressed at not being Hank’s type. Which wasn’t true at all - Connor is so much his type that sometimes he imagines storming up to CyberLife tower and demanding to speak to the manager.
It’s just that Connor had gotten him into bed and there was barely any give to him, anywhere. Not his stomach, his thighs, or his ass. All the fun, grabbable parts of the human body on Connor felt like grabbing at fucking statue. He doesn’t feel like plastic - thank God and thank the freaks that made him - but he’s hard and tough all over, a solid and immovable wall.
When asked about it, his partner had told him that companion androids were squishier - but Connor had been made to chase down criminals and maneuver crime scenes, and to last in a fight if it came down to it. More machine than most.
He’d been mildly upset about it, until Hank assured him that it wasn’t a problem. Not at all.
Hank strokes up the firm lines of Connor’s flanks, and the android’s thighs clench powerfully at his sides; strong enough to wrap around his chest and crush his ribs if he wanted to. Hank settles his hands on top of them, sliding up and down the stretched denim of his pants. No matter how hard he grips, they don’t budge. His fingers don’t sink into him at all.
A firm tug on his hair brings him back down to earth with a grunt. A needy throb jolts down from his scalp down to the pit of his gut and he clamps his teeth down on a whine.
“Hank, you need to focus.”
“Yeah, yeah sorry…”
That, too - they’d worked on that .
“Jesus, how strong are you?” he’d asked one night, breathless and flat on his back with Connor’s hands pinning him down by the shoulders. They’d been like two iron bars, and Hank had been curious enough to try to knock him off. He had twisted and jerked and bucked, but nothing. His partner - his kind, slender partner with the delicate mouth and big eyes, the voice built to soothe - hadn’t budged one bit, and wet dribble had twitched from Hank’s cock just from the feel of him.
“Strong enough to hurt you,” said Connor, as he watched Hank squirm. Cautious; reading the rise in his temperature, the spike in his pulse. Then - thank fuck - intrigued. “If we’re not careful…”
“Then be fucking careful,” Hank remembers with an embarrassed kind of clarity how desperate his voice had been, how harshly he’d barked the order. They’d stumbled onto something he liked, the kind of shit he hadn’t indulged in since before he’d met his beautiful but happily vanilla wife, and he had wanted it so badly he was going to bully the most earnest android in Detroit into giving it to him.
That night had ended for Hank with an immovable hand wrapped around his neck as he was held down and jerked off like it was a punishment, Connor grinding against the cleft of his ass all the while, and he’d come so hard he almost sobbed.
He still recalls the soft drag of Connor’s tie against his belly whenever his partner had leaned over to peer into his face. Analyzing. Cataloguing. His LED burning a bright hole into the black of his bedroom; yellow when Hank had strained against his palm, blue when his eyes had rolled into the back of his head as he came in streaks all over Connor’s fist. So blue they’d left an afterimage when Hank shut his eyes.
He’d fumbled some excuses for the bruising, later at work. Wore higher collars when they fell flat.
Connor insisted on having a talk after that, even though all Hank wanted to do steamroll over the whole thing and move on like it was business as usual. So they talked, in varying degrees of heated to calm: about the choking, about the strength, about the hair...working it all in, little by little, over the next few weeks.
Like they were training Connor up to be Hank’s perfect sexual partner, and it’s hard not to feel sick with guilt about something like that. It’s hypocritical in the worst way, considering how often he used to moralize about people buying androids to fuck them, because it was easy and their slavish devotion to attending to human wants was sickening to take advantage of.
No matter how much Connor insists that it isn’t like that between them, Hank still feels like a wretch about it, sometimes.
And now they’re back here again, and talking about it even more.
“All right,” Hank murmurs, pulling the shirt off all the way and chucking it to the ground. He gets to work on the belt, next. “Let’s have it.”
Connor runs his fingers through Hank’s beard and tips his head back to catch his eyes, and holding them, he says, “I would like to try it with you as the receiving partner, this time.”
Hank stops, hands freezing on the buckle. He stares in disbelief as his jaw starts to fall open so wide that he feels air on his tongue. “You want to what ?”
“You heard me perfectly well, Hank,” quips Connor. Fond exasperation colours his voice; he shakes his head and the LED streams like a firefly in the dark. “Playing dumb won’t delay the conversation like you imagine it will.”
Hank leans back, runs a hand through his hair, and takes a breath. “Fuckin’ A…”
A hard drag of want scrapes across his insides so harshly at the thought of it that his shoulders twitch, preemptively trying to curl into himself, protecting himself from it. Or maybe just trying to throw himself at Connor’s mercies right then and there.
Not that he says anything, mouth still agape. It feels like his brain is stuck looping the request over and over and won’t settle enough to let him answer.
Connor takes in his stunned silence and frowns, “Is this a particularly unusual request?”
Hank swallows, getting back to work on the belt. His hands need the distraction more than his head does. “It is for me .”
“How do you mean?”
“Listen kid,” Hank gestures down at himself. “I might be kind of tough to look at now, but back in my prime days I had guys who looked like you coming onto me on the regular.”
“I don’t think you’re tough to look at,” says Connor, brightly. His voice turns sweet, and Hank’s battered old heart throbs painfully in affection. “I enjoy looking at you. I do it often, too.”
“Uh...sure,” Hank skirts by the compliment. Gives it a wide berth. “Point is - no one ever approached me asking me to play bottom, is the thing. You see what I’m getting at?”
“But you’ve wanted to?” It’s asked without judgement. And of course it is, because it’s not like Connor’s all that familiar with all the nonsense complexes humans place around sex. That Hank sometimes places around sex.
His question is normal - benign and curious. Gentle . Still, Hank finds it a tough one to answer.
“Well, shit…” he shifts and fidgets. Strokes his thumbs on the ridges of Connor’s kneecaps. “I don’t know - I guess? Wouldn’t have been against it if the right guy came along. Or girl. Whatever.”
“Am I not the right guy?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“So I am the right guy.”
“Would you shut up,” he snaps, and reaches up to pinch the android’s nose. The little weirdo is smiling, as though talking about Hank taking it up the ass was something cute and interesting.
They let a moment of quiet descend on them, Hank thinking and Connor watching him do it.
He’d meant what he said - people knew what they had wanted when they hooked up with him; it came with being big and tall. Sometimes that was all it took for someone to buy him a drink at a bar. People came to him because they took one look at him and imagined getting hauled up against a wall and fucked blind. And it’s not as though he ever complained - picking up squealing girls or railing a moaning closet-case from behind were old favourites from his playbook.
Or, they used to be. It’s been a long time since he’s gotten up to any of that, put out to pasture as he was by age and baggage. By becoming an unlikeable asshole with a foul temper and a drinking problem. No one was looking to take him for a spin, nowadays.
Except Connor, whose hand pats down his front, rubbing through the wiry hair on his chest and tracing the lines of his tattoo. Old and faded like the rest of him. “If it makes you uncomfortable, we don’t have to,” he murmurs. “There are a lot of things we haven’t done yet; I’d happily explore them with you.”
“Why do you want to?” Hank asks. He pulls the belt from its loops and tosses that on the ground, too. It thuds on the carpet like a gavel.
“We haven’t done much, since instigating the sexual side of our relationship,” Connor says. “So my data may be too incomplete to make this claim, but…”
He pauses, LED yellowing as he thinks. He looks hesitant, as though whatever he wants to say might hurt Hank’s feelings.
“Spit it out.”
Connor holds his gaze again. “You’ve consistently demonstrated submissive tendencies across all of our sexual activity together,” then he tilts his head back, looking down his nose at Hank almost in challenge. “I’m developing an interest in seeing this through to its logical conclusion.”
It’s a whole lot of words at once, and Connor seems to pick up on the sudden stuttering of Hank’s brain because he leans close and says, loud and clear like a shot: “I want to fuck you because I think you’d like it.”
Hank has been kicked in the solar plexus before - this feels, just a little bit, like that.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Connor,” Hank croaks, hands dropping off him and bracing themselves behind him on the bed. A faint tremble overtakes his muscles.
It makes his stomach shake too, and Connor’s hand moves to touch the skin there, in wide strokes - with the whole of his palm and using the entire spread of his fingers. He traverses over the bumps of old scars and whorls of greying hair, down past the dip of his navel before reaching around to settle gently at the small of his back.
“Your body is giving me the usual signs that you want to say yes,” he whispers. Warm and intimate. “...and yet you hesitate. Hank,”
His expression is serene, but there’s something a little wild in the way his eyes chase Hank’s every move. “Tell me what I can do, what I can say , to get you there.”
Maybe all of his analytical prowess is coming up short in the presence of some bona fide human stubbornness - and it’s this first sighting of Connor’s anxiousness that sets him at ease. Maybe Hank’s wired screwy somewhere too, to like that as much as he does.
He breathes harshly, through his nose.
“...All right, okay,” he caves, finally. He’s almost dizzy with the release. “I’ll think about it. Just...not tonight.”
Even if he felt up for it tonight, that kind of thing takes prep-work. He’d had a close call once with a girl who’d been too new at it to do it properly, and Hank isn’t up for that kind of trauma. So he gives the android a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder along with a wobbly smile and promises another night.
Connor smiles back, slow and delicate, before leaning in to set a grateful kiss on his mouth. Closed-lipped and quick. Not erotic, just to convey what words can’t. He’s gotten good at that, too.
“Thank you,” he says, rubbing at his back.
“Don’t get too excited,” he mutters, reaching up to sweep back that stray tuft of hair, watching as it bounces back onto his forehead. “It might not be all that, y’know.”
“We’ll see about that,” says Connor, in a determined murmur. He’s got that look - like he’s on a case, calculating and analyzing and intuiting. Hank feels a cautious interest bubbling up when thinking about it; but mostly, he just hopes it’ll be good enough, for Connor’s sake.
“For tonight then, I’d like to stay in your lap if I could,” says Connor, changing gears. The android brings up his arms and wraps them around his shoulders, and he scoots up to press their fronts flush up against each other. He soaks up Hank’s heat like a leech.
Hank chuckles, giving his ass a squeeze, “Shit, you don’t waste any time, do you?”
He gets an amused smile and a crinkling of the eyes, good humour and affection writ all over the contours of that perfect face, “Not when it comes to you, no.”
*
Hank throws in the towel four nights later. He scrubs up real thorough and takes care of business while Connor is out running errands for the day, not due back until the evening. He has a moment, in the shower with his arms contorted around to wash where the sun don’t shine, where he wonders if he’d taken a wrong turn and gotten lost somewhere on the great big roadmap of his life.
You were supposed to be in the grave by now , he thinks to himself, in tones equal parts sour and stupefied. Not soaping up your taint because you’re getting your cherry popped by a fucking android at 53 .
After that, he walks Sumo and fills his bowl. He catches himself automatically reaching into his fridge for a beer, but then an image of Connor’s pinched, upset expression flashes through his head and he puts it back. One of the android’s few stipulations is that they don’t fuck when Hank’s had something to drink. When he’d asked why, he’d gotten an earful about consent and such - but Hank’s got the feeling that it all really boils down to trying to get him to cut back.
So instead of drinking away his nerves, like he desperately wants to, he parks himself on the couch in his t-shirt and boxers and watches a rerun episode of the Golden Girls 2028 reboot. There’s a hundred other things he could be watching instead, but maybe he’s looking to bunker down on feeling sorry and old. Too old to be getting into knots over something like this.
Eventually he hears the car pull onto the driveway.
The sound of the key slotting into the lock and turning it open rings across his whole house, it feels like. Hank sucks in a steadying breath.
Connor comes in with two bags of groceries clutched effortlessly in one hand. He spots Hank eyeing him from the couch, and smiles in greeting as he tugs off his rain covered shoes and shrugs off his jacket to hang on the rack.
“Have fun?” Hank asks, and thankfully it doesn’t sound as awkward as he feels.
“Certainly,” the android strides to the kitchen and drops the bags onto the table, pausing to bend down and pat Sumo on the head when the dog comes round watch him. He starts to unpack and Hank spies a whole lot of fresh produce.
He shifts in his seat, watching as Connor unloads everything into his fridge and onto his shelves. Under his care, the kitchen is better stocked than it has been in years - with real food, not just old takeout boxes and the canned or instant stuff. And it’s all for Hank, because Connor needs none of it.
Sometimes the weight of his ungratefulness shuts him down, another thing among a hundred that leads to his bad days - the ones where he slams the bathroom door shut and hides in his bathtub with a bottle of Black Lamb while Connor tries to talk sense to him from the other side of the door. Not that he couldn’t break it down, if he wanted to, but Connor respected his boundaries more than Hank himself did.
Other times, like right now, he thinks about giving in to his partner every way he can just to make him happy.
“Is there any particular meal you would like for dinner tonight, Hank?”
Hank chews the inside of his cheek, looking at the spots on Connor’s white shirt where the rain had left its mark. So pristine and put-together. Just lovely to look at, and somehow he’s here, of all places.
“I, uh…” he leans back against the couch and clears his throat. Connor halts and his eyes snap to Hank’s face - alert. He places the jar of pasta sauce he’d been about to put away gently on the kitchen table. Sumo slouches away to his usual spot by the tv.
“If you’re still interested,” Hank says, clasping his hands together on his lap and trying to sound calm and dignified. He stares down at his knees, at the paleness of his thighs and the sunspots on his hands. “I’m good to go for, y’know - what we talked about the other night.”
He hasn’t been this awkward over sex in well over thirty years, yet the sight of Connor standing in his kitchen with the sleeves of his crisp white shirt rolled up to his elbows and that little tuft of hair sticking wetly to his forehead makes him feel like he’s new at it all over again. Fumbling and unpractised; learning a whole new language. He’s a sluggish old man talking to a pretty young thing with perfect posture about plowing him into the mattress.
He hears the sound of Connor’s footfalls on the floor as he steps softly into the living room, and then the stretch and rustle of his jeans as he kneels down next to the arm of the couch.
“I would like that very much,” he says, and he tilts his head to bear that LED to Hank’s gaze. Bright, attentive blue. His eyes stay on him, though, under the suddenly sultry hood of his eyelids.
The first time Connor had broached the topic of them becoming sexually intimate, Hank had recoiled in disbelief that he’d want such a thing. Disbelief had spiralled into anger, and the resultant screaming match had sent Sumo shuffling from the room. That night Hank had stormed out of the house and slept in the car, rage and doubt and self-hatred burning a hole in his guts. Eventually, they’d gotten around to talking about it, calmly. Patching things up. Connor had told him that his LED didn’t lie, even if Connor could lie (and he was very good at it, something that Hank fixates on against his better judgement, sometimes). He’d said that if Hank was ever concerned that Connor was doing something he didn’t like just for Hank’s benefit, he could just peer at the little ring and find the truth.
Hank leans down and grazes a kiss to it, nosing at his partner’s hairline. He smells like rainwater.
“Dinner after?” Connor asks, pleasure threading the comforting tones of his voice. “I don’t intend to let you forget to eat.”
Hank rolls his eyes, but a grin tugs at his mouth. “Yeah, sure.”
The android moves to kiss him, but Hanks stops him with a hand on his shoulder, “Let’s head to the bedroom, first. The couch is a shit place to do this.”
An eager nod, and Connor takes his hand as he stands. His fluidity of motion makes Hank’s back ache just looking at him.
They make their way into his bedroom, Connor looking perfectly at ease and Hank thinking so hard that his head buzzes.
Hank steps in first, shuffling to the foot of the bed as Connor gently clicks the door shut behind him. The only light in the room is from the streetlamps streaming faintly through the slats of his blinds. Rain pelts the glass of the window, and Hank stares at the way the streaks of water bends and warps the light.
His pulse is racing; how did he not notice it before?
Connor doesn’t jump right into the action. Instead, he puts his hands on Hank’s arms, turns him around, and talks.
“Your heart rate,” he says, glancing down at his chest. “Are you nervous?”
I’m not a scared animal , he thinks, defensive. Stop tiptoeing.
He doesn’t say it, instead he just reaches up to scratch at his stomach and shrugs, “I’d be less nervous if we got a damn move on.”
Connor hums, thinking. Taking his time.
“Based on my research, common protocol for this sort of encounter sometimes necessitates a safeword,” he declares. “We should choose one, before continuing.”
The way he says it is matter-of-fact, like they were discussing a news report or going over the talking points of a DPD meeting. It hammers home the weirdness of the whole thing, the complete absurdity of the image they make together.
Hank scowls, “I’m not gonna need a fucking safeword , Connor.”
The thought makes him rankle, somehow. He’s not sure why. Maybe he just doesn’t want to think of this as the sort of thing that has to have safewords. Hank’s never gotten himself into the kind of crazy shit that needed them even when he was in his 20s - why the hell is it coming up now? What the hell was Connor planning to do to him that he’d have to consider it? Was he going to wheel out a cart of chains and blindfolds or something?
“Hank…” the disapproval is clear in Connor’s voice. As is the concern. His LED signals yellow like an accusation.
“What, you gonna whip me?” he snorts, crawling back into derisiveness where he’s comfortable and not out of his depth. “Not to bring down your skills, kid, but taking it up the ass isn’t exactly up there with some high grade BDSM shit.”
Not that he’s ever gotten involved in any high grade BDSM shit himself. As far as he knew, it was for weird folks who liked leather and gimp masks and all that corny stuff - and while a lady barking orders in heels and PVC was nice to think about, Hank was a simple fucking guy who liked simple fucking. Getting strung up and smacked around just didn’t really seem like his cup of tea.
The closest he’d ever gotten was a girlfriend who liked fuzzy handcuffs and that had kind of been a turnoff, honestly.
Connor turns and moves toward the nightstand, flicking on the lamp. He turns back to Hank with a calm, patient expression, and hands clasped behind his back.
“It’s just a precaution,” he says evenly. “And an effective one, whether the activity itself is extreme or not.”
Hank stares him down, until his frown feels gummy and forced on his own face. He knows he’s been a stubborn jackass for no real reason, but his pride refuses to let up. His partner lets him have it out like that for what feels like an age, before rolling his eyes.
Frustration is a good look on him. Frustration at Hank is even better, less like he’s an approval-seeking android and more like person. It’s petty, but sometimes Hank fantasizes a little about getting him angry.
“If you don’t want a safeword,” Connor says. “Then I’ll request that you indulge me in something similar.”
Hank eyes him, flinty and suspicious. “No promises.”
Connor fishes around in his pocket, pulling out that coin of his. He holds it up between in his thumb and forefinger, like he’s looking at Hank through a microscope. “I will place this on the nightstand,” he says and though his voice is calm, his brows drop down into a severe expression. Completely serious, and he wants Hank to know it. “If you become uncomfortable or unwilling to continue on with something that I’m doing to you - reach for my coin. You won’t have to say a word, and I will take that as my signal to stop or change tactics.”
Hank stares at the coin, baffled, and then at the grave expression on Connor’s face.
It’s just anal, Connor , he thinks, willing the android to take it easy. Not life or death.
Hank always keeps his room dim, even chose that particular lamp for its low light output, and right now his partner’s LED is blinking yellow like a canary in a coal mine. Warning him of dangers he can’t see - Hank himself. As if there were some risk of Hank running from the room screaming.
Hank thinks it all sounds a little paranoid, but his partner seems to be dead set on it.
So he nods anyway. “All right, you win,” he grunts, reaching out and stroking his thumb along the kid’s cheek. Connor leans into it, eyelashes fluttering as he smiles, demure. “If it’ll make you happy.”
“It’ll make me very happy,” he says, moving back so he can drop a kiss on Hank’s rough palm. “ You make me very happy.”
The coin drops onto the nightstand with a ring. Hank watches it spin like a wobbly vinyl record before it settles down into a heavy, silver spot against the red of his table. It gleams under the lamplight and the sight of it makes his hands start to sweat.
So it’s really happening; this isn’t all just a weird fever dream.
“Still don’t know why you’re so gung ho for this, though,” Hanks mutters. Then clears his throat to grind away the tremors in his voice. “Unless you’re actually planning to whip me? If you are, I gotta disappoint you ‘cause I’m tapping out.”
“No,” Connor shakes his head. “Nothing out of the ordinary, in fact. I’m just accounting for the possibility that your emotional and mental state might experience abrupt and unwanted change, since you’ve never done this before - I’m given to understand that for some, this is a vulnerable act.”
Vulnerable. Damn, no one’s ever called him that before. It hits his ears badly, like jamming a square peg into a circle.
“You’re not giving me a whole lot of credit here, are you?” Hank snipes. He’s a middle-aged cop who works in homicide , not some virginal teenage girl for Christ’s sake.
“It’s not about undermining your strength, Hank,” says Connor, pitching his voice to that soothing tone that works every single time. Hank’s shoulders drop from their steady climb to his ears, and he relaxes. “It’s about taking care of you. I want to take care of you - and I want you to give me the tools to do it well .”
Connor steps close and cradles his jaw, looking up at him with naked longing. Hank spies the gleam of his teeth peaking through the lush, dewy part of his mouth. The lamplight casts a golden glow on the warm brown of his eyes, and Hank sighs. A guttural release.
It’s like someone made a composite image of all of Hank’s weaknesses and sent it right to his doorstep to cause problems . “Won’t you let me, please?” Connor murmurs, reaching up to run his thumbs along the shells of Hank’s ears.
A shiver chases down his back and he bites out, “That’s a dirty trick.”
He’s still watching, though, waiting for the words. Not letting up one bit. So Hank throws up his hands, says, “Fuck, fine - I surrender. I’ll grab the damn coin if I don’t like it.”
The android smiles cheerfully.
Hank steps back and starts pulling off his shirt, while Connor bends down to dig around in the drawer of the nightstand. Which is curious, considering what the game plan is. Hank stops to stare at him with his brow climbing up his forehead, shirt dangling from his slack fingers.
“...What’re you doing?” he asks, as the android rights himself with a condom packet in his hand.
Connor can reach orgasm, or whatever the android equivalent was, but he doesn’t ejaculate. That was also something saved for the companion models, apparently. It hadn’t been one of the weirder things about him anyway, so Hank quickly got used to it and treated it like another odd quirk. It’s convenient, clean-up wise, even if Hank sometimes wishes for the mess; it used to be one of his favourite parts of hooking up with men.
“‘S not like you can come in me,” he continues, dropping the shirt.
Now, Connor finally looks awkward.
“I...may have gotten a modification earlier today,” he starts, flicking the edge of the little square packet with a restless thumb. Hank half expects him to start doing a bunch of tricks with it. “Just a small upgrade to include that particular feature, too.”
“...I thought you just went grocery shopping.”
Connor gives him a look dry enough to suck the moisture out of a lake, “It doesn’t take five and a half hours to buy groceries, Hank.”
A faint ringing has picked up in his ears - maybe his tinnitus, or more likely, his brain commencing shut down in his head. His eyes drop and zero in on Connor’s clothed crotch.
“Why?”
The android shifts, hips cocking and feet shuffling. Cornered. “Please don’t make me say it out loud,” he grits through his teeth, clearly embarrassed. If he could blush, Hank imagines he’d be doing it now.
“Hell no,” he jabs a finger into the kid’s shoulder. “You’re asking to stick your cock in my ass, I think I deserve to know why you went and kitted yourself up with a spunk dispenser.”
Connor wrinkles his nose, “Are you this crass on purpose, Hank?”
“Out with it, Connor.”
He sighs, crossing and uncrossing his arms in a surprising display of awkwardness. “I like the mess you leave behind, sometimes,” he says, in a strained voice. “Cleaning it out after is inconvenient, so logic would dictate that I shouldn’t . But I do anyway.”
He looks down at the packet and sure enough, makes it dance through the slots of his fingers like a dirtied-up version of his coin. The gold foil even shines under the lamplight, and Hank watches it with bated breath.
“Should tonight be successful,” Connor continues. Switches it to his other hand. “My hope is that eventually you’ll...permit me to do the same to you.”
A weak, aborted sort of noise creeps from Hank’s gaping mouth before he clamps his jaw shut on it. And for good measure, he swallows it down, throat feeling thick as he does.
Connor watches him do it, adds, “You’re always touching at the places I bruise you, after the fact. Even at work. Is it because it’s uncomfortable?”
Fathomless brown eyes narrow onto his, and the condom stops rolling. Comes to a stop between the index and middle fingers of his left hand. “Or do you just enjoy the reminder?”
Hank’s cock starts to feel heavy in his boxers. Connor’s voice rolls over him like a landslide, burying him alive: “Do you relive our time together - being put on your back by something stronger than you?”
He feels naked already. He should have waited to take off his shirt, because it feels like Connor is flaying him open and Hank’s got nothing to protect himself.
But some remaining presence of mind forces his mouth open to speak. “Someone.”
Connor’s brows draw together, “Pardon?”
“Someone stronger than me,” he clarifies, scraping it out from the bottom of his throat, it feels like. But it’s worth the breathlessness, for the way the android’s eyes widen. The way that amazed little grin swoops his lips up at the corners, just for a sweet little moment.
Connor tosses the packet onto the bed and comes close.
Kissing was one of the things he struggled the most with learning. He’d either been too still or moved too much. He hadn’t known how to navigate their noses, and came up short when it came to what to do with his hands. But he’d been so desperate to learn and threw himself into working on it, and Hank couldn’t have done anything other than meet him halfway.
They’ve got it down to a science now. Hank feels his toes curling into the carpet from the way Connor’s tongue glides into his mouth - textureless and slick, rocking against his in a familiar glide. It’s always a little strange, to feel the inside of a mouth that isn’t blazing with heat, to feel it warm up from his own.
They pull apart, and Connor rubs his cheek against Hank’s beard, slipping his eyes closed as he does. He looks about a step away from purring right now, and Hank’s head swims thinking about how much he really, really loves this one.
Connor reaches up and pulls his tie loose. He doesn’t take his sights off Hank’s face, and while Hank is good with eye contact, he finds he can’t quite do it right now. Instead he watches the android’s hands, those deft fingers making quick work of the tie, as Hank circles around him and plants himself heavily onto the bed, back against the cushioned headboard.
Hank shucks off his boxers and tosses them over the side of the bed just as Connor carefully places his tie over the back of the armchair.
“Get over here,” he murmurs, reaching out with his arms for his partner to fall into them. And he does, perching himself on the edge of the bed and twisting around to wrap his arms around Hank’s middle. He lays his cheek on Hank’s chest, looking owlishly up at him in adoration.
Reaching up to ruffle his hair, Hank chuckles: “Fuckin’ puppy.”
Gentle brown eyes crinkle at the edges, “Well, I do like it when you pet me.”
“Shuddup,” he pecks his brow, beard rasping at the bridge of the kid’s nose. “And get to work, will ya?”
“On it,” he says softly.
Connor moves back, face and posture all business now, and taps twice against the softness of his inner thigh. Hank jumps from the way it stings on his skin. His fingers, too, have no give to them. Firm like rebar.
“Turn, please.” He says, casual like they’re at the office or working a case: “Would you pass me that evidence container, Lieutenant,” or “I would like to go over these case files with you, Lieutenant.”
Hank turns, shuffling onto his knees with a grunt and leveraging himself on his elbows, keeping a good amount of space between his head and the headboard, just in case. His back pops a little as he moves, embarrassing evidence of his age. A hot flush marches up the back of his neck as Connor’s fingers snap against his thighs again, both of them this time, unexpected enough that he twitches them apart.
Already obedient. He hates how right Connor is, sometimes.
He feels the way his stomach hangs under him this way, and thinks that it must look as sad as it feels. His chest, too, which used to be tight when he was young - firmed up from working out, from taking on the occasional furniture haul job with his buddies. Now Hank feels the flesh there droop under gravity, and wants to grit his teeth.
Nice fucking tits, old man, he thinks to himself, jagged and bitter, in a voice that takes on the tones of Gavin Reed in his imagination.
He hangs his head and hair falls into his face. His mouth parts, breathing heavy, and it’s only when he’s wondering why that he realises it’s because he’s tense.
He hears Connor come around to his side, and sees a hand come into his vision to glide against the tight clench of his fists. Connor’s skin is smooth. Clear and young. Perfect.
It rubs at his wrinkled fingers and then at his gnarled knuckles. Moves to spread Hank’s hands flat against the bed, left first, then right. When he’s satisfied, it falls away and Hank is left looking at the ropes of his own veins and the dips in the mattress under his sweating palms.
They haven’t even started, and Hank’s already wound tight enough to creak. Maybe there was something to the safeword thing after all, he thinks, chancing a glance at the coin. He doesn’t reach for it though - just reminds himself that it’s there.
Hank takes a breath, shifting on his elbows and knees to get more comfortable. Relaxing his spine and hanging his head lower to take the pressure off his neck.
Connor finally moves. He sits on the bed at Hank’s side, sliding arm around the big expanse of his back. His hands get back onto him, this time dragging hard across his chest and squeezing. He’s grabbing at the flesh of Hank’s chest by the handful, groping him like he’s some chick at a bar. A ruddy blush streaks across Hank’s cheeks and he has half a mind to snarl at him to cut it out, but then a sudden and harsh pinch on his nipple makes him jump, shoulder blades twitching.
Connor pulls on them, both of them, just forceful enough to make his vision swim, and says, “The coin is on the table, Hank.”
The voice is right in his ear, calm and patient. The android knows he’s not going to go grabbing for it, because instead he’s pushing his chest into the hold like he can’t decide if he wants to ease the pressure or go scrambling for more.
Hank’s mouth drops open on a wet gasp.
“You always lead when we’re together,” Connor murmurs. He’s using that gentle tone, the one he employs when playing nice during interrogations; kind and calming. Hank struggles to tell if he’s putting on a show or if he’s genuinely just talking out loud, taking a moment to muse. “And I enjoy it very much. It’s wonderful being lead by you. But sometimes it feels like I barely get to do anything for you.”
The android leans down to kiss his shoulder. “And I want to - I think about it all the time. Things like this,” another rough little tug, then a soothing pass of fingertips through the chest hair, and Hank hisses through his teeth. “Thank you for finally letting me.”
Hank spreads his thighs wide enough to let his bottom half hit the bed, hips twitching against the sheets. He’s hard already - a quicker draw tonight than usual, and it stings his pride because of how little it took to get here.
A ragged breath stutters out of Hank’s mouth and he turns his head to scowl over his shoulder.
“You gonna stop feeling me up and get a fucking move on already?” he snaps. Hank doesn’t want to think about how he must look right now, desperately humping his bed and demanding to get his ass fucked. Having his hairy old tits felt up and enjoying it.
“Please stop that,” says Connor, gesturing with a point of his chin toward Hank’s grinding and clicking his tongue. “Or you might not last very long.”
To hell with that.
Hank bears down even harder to make his point, cock pulsing and already starting to make a little wet patch on his sheets. He’s not going to plead for it, no matter how raring to go he gets. He’ll get petty and spoil it for the both of them if it means Connor will hurry his ass up.
A hand leaves his chest to gather a fistful of his hair - and it doesn’t matter that he felt it coming, the pull still draws out a groan so desperate it threatens to shred his vocal chords. His eyes fall shut from it, and he pants through his open mouth like a fucking dog.
“Fine, we’ll do it your way,” murmurs Connor, sounding almost exasperated. A little condescending too, and Hank will never admit how much he likes that. He hopes there’s no scanners for that, he might just die if Connor ever utilized it on purpose. “I’ll be keeping this in mind for further study, though.”
He pointedly pinches again at an abused nipple, and Hank reaches up to slap him on the forearm.
“Enough fucking around and get your goddamn cock out.” He barks, pulling against the grip in his hair, greedy for the sting. He can feel how bulged his arms are from the tension, how they shake, and he thinks if they don’t get to it soon he’s just going to collapse and probably throw a tantrum.
“Play nice, Hank,” Connor admonishes, pulling away from his chest to clamp his hand under Hank’s chin, thumb and index digging into his cheeks to force open his mouth even more. Immovable - he could break Hank’s jaw with ease, if he felt like it. “Your voice is a favourite feature of mine, please use it better than that.”
Connor’s face comes into his vision at his left, blocking out the light of the lamp but for the glow it casts on the sharp edge of his cheekbones, his jawline. His LED blooms a lulling, pale blue. The way he watches Hank’s flushed face, locked tight into the vice of his own hands, is rapt. Fingers tighten in his hair, at the the sight of drool beginning to creep down from the edge of his lips and into his beard.
Hank’s eyes squeeze shut hard to enough to see stars, and a pitiful whine escapes the cavern of his mouth.
“Just like that, thank you,” breathes Connor, so close that the tip of his nose nudges at his temple. Hank’s cock drags wetly on the bed when his hips stutter.
The hands fall away, gently releasing the grip on his face and letting go of his hair. Hank’s arms give and he sags down onto the bed, jamming his face into the pillow, ears ringing like a fire alarm.
“God...just get a move on,” he says, like he’s dragging his voice across gravel, but there’s no bite - as requested.
“Okay,” Connor stokes a comforting line down his back. A hand taps at his hip bone. “Prop yourself up like before.”
It’s an effort but he manages it, because his arms are still shaking and his legs are tense. He’s so hard he’s almost tempted to call off the whole thing and go on in their usual way, throwing Connor down onto his front and reaming him until his LED nearly verges on a desperate red. His partner would agree to it too, would drop everything if Hank gave even a slight hint that he wanted to stop.
And then he would never bring this up again, and Hank is starting to think he might die if he doesn’t get to have it. He just wants to have it now , so that he doesn’t have to focus on how desperate and exposed he feels - because it feels good at the same time it feels fucking awful.
There’s the sound of the drawer opening and closing again - Connor fetching the lube - and then the bottle cap being clicked upon. It’s the high quality stuff, not a quick pick up at the pharmacy, but the specialty kind they stock at those fancy sex shops that pretty young college girls go to, looking for toys to rock their worlds. Hank hadn’t purchased it, ego too fragile to set foot in a place like that, where he’d look and feel like a sleazy old man. Connor had chosen it - probably fit right in amongst the displays of frilly lingerie and magazines of beautiful young people having picture-perfect sex. Probably turned every eye in the place, handsome as he is.
Buying expensive lube to bring home to a mean, washed-up son of a bitch.
“I can’t warm it up with my own heat,” murmurs Connor. “It’ll be cold.”
Hank lets his head hang again, hair grazing the little wet spot on his pillowcase from his spit. Something bitter seeps into his voice when he responds: “Just do it.”
A pause. Then Connor asks, sharply: “Where’s the coin, Hank?”
“Huh?”
He repeats the question. It cuts keenly into in the spiral his thoughts are starting to take, the self-hating, the self-doubts.
So - that’s what it is. His hands, which had curled themselves into fists again, loosen.
“It’s on the table,” Hank grunts, aching. Everywhere. His arms, his fucking cock and balls, his chest.
“Thank you, Hank.” Hank, Hank, Hank - his name sounds like something sacred coming from that mouth; breathy, grateful, awed.
The thunder in his head subsides, just a little, and he breathes easier.
Where would I be without you, kid , he thinks, fond and a little afraid, squeezing his eyes against the sudden sting of them. Where the hell would I be.
Taking the first finger isn’t that bad, but the second feels weird. An awkward stretch that makes his nose wrinkle. He’s tried it himself before, but never really got anything from it.
Connor has longer fingers than his, for all that his hands are smaller. They’re more dexterous too, and the way they work him open isn’t nearly as blunt and lumbering as when Hank does it to him.
He moves with easy, gentle strokes; massaging and soothing up and down Hank’s back with his other hand. Hank doesn’t know where he’s picked that up from, because that’s not how it goes when they’re doing this the other way around.
Connor’s pace starts to pick up the more relaxed Hank gets, and soon enough Hank is breathing hard through his nose, and his mouth hinges open on something vulnerable but soundless. He squirms into those fingers - three of them now, or maybe four? - little heedless movements trying to chase something.
He wants to reach for his cock, but he doesn’t want to take his attention off what Connor feels like stroking his insides.
He’s swimming so deeply in it that he doesn’t register the hand settling at the nape of his neck at first. It’s when Connor is pushing insistently that he does - so, so strong - and Hank goes down again like a sack of bricks, arms collapsing underneath him, chest flush with the bed. He moans, open mouthed and drooling, right into his pillows with his eyes squeezed tight. He bucks his hips back and upward, muscles in his legs tensing as he works his ass onto Connor’s hand.
The android shifts, pulling out his fingers with a sloppy, wet noise and Hank feels the solid lines of Connor’s thighs slotting up behind his own. Firm hands cup at his hips, kneading at his soft flesh, and he feels the hard ridge of Connor’s cock behind the zipper of his jeans as he presses right up against Hank’s ass. The buckle of his belt is cool where it brushes up against his tailbone.
Fitfully, he twists back into it a little, grinding up against Connor’s front without thinking, because his head feels fogged up with steam. His fingers ache, where they are clamped tight onto his sheets.
Connor’s hands on his hips pull and guide, helping him writhe on his clothed crotch like a fucking stripper.
“You move well, Hank,” says Connor, fascination threading his voice. Underneath that, interest in the form of a faint tremor. Those fingers tighten on him, and Hank spares a thought that he hasn’t had bruises there yet. “Your body knows what it’s doing already.”
Hank huffs, “Callin’ me a slut, or something?”
“Would you like me to?”
Through the fog, he barks a laugh. And past the roaring in his ears, he thinks it’s verging on hysterical. “Don’t think you can pull that kind of talk off, pal.”
“No, probably not,” Hank glances through the grey curtain of his hair, over his shoulder, and at Connor’s face. Likes the content little smile he sees there, as well as the spellbound look in his eyes. “I’ll leave that kind of talk to you.”
Not that they’ve ever done that, and Hank wonders if it’s some kind of hint for next time. He doesn’t get much of a chance to think about it, because Connor asks, “Are you ready?”
“Been ready since I marched into the room,” he slurs, rocking back into him almost mindlessly. The denim is high quality, just the right amount of coarse against the skin of his thighs and ass.
“I’m glad,” says Connor. “I’m beginning to feel impatient, myself.”
A gratified little shiver prickles down his back at that; the android is the most patient person he knows. Getting him riled up is the best part, sometimes.
“I would prefer you on your back for this,” Connor murmurs, hands leaving his hips to knead and squeeze at his ass. “Does that sound all right with you?”
Hank’s pretty into the idea of getting it from behind, but his face is getting all wet against the pillow from his own breath and he wants to actually see Connor at some point, way more than spending the whole time staring at the print of his pillowcase, at any rate.
So he nods, and the kid moves back so that Hank can turn and flop onto his back.
Connor looms, like this. Tall and lean, still fully-clothed between the naked cradle of Hank’s legs. At some point, he’d undone the top buttons of his shirt. The lamp lights up his left side, and the LED beams an attentive and pleased blue in the shadow of his right.
Hank’s wet, ruddy cock pulses against his belly at the sight of him, dribbling onto his skin. On instinct, his knees twitch a little farther apart, heels digging into the mattress, even though his partner already has plenty of room.
“I want to fuck you because I think you’d like it.”
His head feels so very, very light.
Connor reaches down between them to unbuckle his belt and pull down the zip of his fly, though he doesn’t watch his own hands as he does it. Instead he’s watching Hank’s face, as he often does, mouth parted, giving Hank a glimpse of that sleek, wet tongue. From down here, it looks like he’s looking down his nose at him, high and mighty and so strong that he could make Hank do whatever he wanted.
He hears the opening of the condom packet and feels his slick little hole try and clutch at something that isn’t even there yet.
“Please fuck me before I lose my goddamn mind,” Hank rasps. Fuck not begging, how could he do anything else?
Choking desire and terror scramble for purchase in his brain, makes the breath clog up in his throat as he feels the blunt head of Connor’s cock nudge against his hole, and on instinct he glances to the nightstand, at the gleaming surface of the coin, shiny like a big stop button.
It’s just a quick shift of the eyes, but Connor sees it and freezes against him, gaze trained Hank’s face. Intense. Watching his every move like a fucking hawk. The LED spins in a fast circuit of blue - on high alert, taking in everything and processing faster than Hank could ever conceive.
Hank would rather saw off his own arm than stop now, but his stomach still flutters with his ragged breathing. The tensing of his muscles. Nerves he can’t control.
No going back after this, back to pretending like he’s got himself all figured out. Pretending like nothing could uproot him anymore.
Heart thundering rabbit-fast, he catches Connor’s eye and nods.
“Coin’s on the table,” he grits out, and Connor relaxes with a flutter of his eyelashes. And a smile.
And then starts the slow push into Hank’s body.
Hank lets his head fall back onto the pillow, hair fanning out at the sides. He’d never appreciated the weirdness of his, and mentally sends out an apology to his previous partners. He’d been as considerate as he could, but no amount of that could fully chase away the feeling of intrusiveness . It takes several long, long moments until Connor’s seated inside of him as far as he can go.
“Okay?” asks Connor, in a tight whisper. He hadn’t asked him what he had set his sensitivities to, but Hank hopes it’s high. Hopes he can feel the taut clench of Hank’s body, the way Hank feels his when it’s Connor down here.
“Y-yeah…” Hank nods, rocking a little into it. “How about you, kid?”
“You’re hot inside,” he says, voice shaking. “Soft too - so much softer than you are outside.”
He shuts his eyes and the LED streams from blue to yellow, his hands come up and stroke hard at his thighs, his hips, his stomach: “I like the way you feel very much.”
Hank grunts, bucking up into it.
“Get moving,” he says through his teeth, hands reaching back to brace on the headboard. “And jack that sensitivity up for me, will you?”
Connor nods, opening his eyes and light flaring back to blue - he smiles, impish: “On it.”
He settles in and gets to work, drawing his cock out and then in with a sharp, precise snap of his hips. And then again, and again. Strong hands hold harshly on his thighs, bending them back so that his knees nearly reach his ears to get at the right angle. The metal of Connor’s buckle snaps against his ass, but he’s so lost in it that he doesn’t care .
Hank feels like the breath is being punched out him, and soon enough he’s panting with it. It’s good - it’s way better than he’d ever thought it could be, and he’s understanding with a furious sort of clarity why some people go nuts for this.
Connor doesn’t tire, and doesn’t need to adjust his legs or body to keep from getting stiff. He just goes and goes, pounding into Hank’s twitching mess of a body with that unbreakable rhythm. That single-minded drive to fuck Hank stupid.
The panting devolves into a drawn-out moan, stuttering at the impact of Connor’s hips. Hank’s eyes squeeze themselves closed as he throws his head back and pushes frantically at the headboard to keep from braining himself.
He feels Connor’s head dropping into the crook of his neck, mouth open as he keens into Hank’s sweating skin. Different from his usual sounds, pitching up at the ends like he’s surprised .
Not long now, for either of them. Not long until they crash , it feels like.
“Are you close, Hank?”
“Y-yeah fuck, yeah I am - Jesus shit ,” Hank is going to be hoarse tomorrow and thank fuck they don’t have work because there’s just no way, no way people wouldn’t figure it out.
Connor rears back up and says, hurried: “You first - I’ll follow.”
His partner always takes care to synch up his sensitivity levels to match Hank’s patterns, making it fair between them, in deference to just how badly android stamina outclasses humans’.
Connor quickens his already brutal pace and Hank only takes a few more of those hard, desperate thrusts before he’s coming, body locking up and groaning so loud he’s pretty sure he’s blown out his throat completely. He tucks his face into the crook of his arm and his groan tapers off into stuttered breathing, and he trembles with his knees as his cock streams onto his twitching stomach. He can’t budge Connor’s vice grip, so he just shakes apart, spread open and exposed to the fucking world.
Connor follows suit soon after, with a shudder and a bitten off gasp, bowing his head against the force of it. Hips stuttering, trying to keep the up the drag of his cock as though his body wants to keep going. Hank rides the wave with him, even if he’s already boneless and sore. Something in his hindbrain remembers that his partner is coming into the condom, and he regrets that they didn’t stop somewhere in the middle to yank the stupid barrier off.
He draws back and reaches down to slowly pull his flagging cock from Hank’s body, and drops Hank's legs so that he can sink into a proper sprawl.
Hank hasn’t felt this boneless in a long, long time. Completely fucked dumb. Like his insides have been hollowed out and replaced with honey.
He hears the snap of the condom and the sound of it hitting the little bin by the bed, and opens his eyes to Connor peering down at him, not ruffled at all - looking for all the world like he didn’t just give Hank the best pounding of his life. Damn androids.
A smile forms on Connor’s face at Hank’s bleary-eyed stare, “You enjoyed that.”
A laugh, almost hysterical, bubbles up Hank’s raw throat and he gives in to it, shoulders shaking. The android’s eyes twinkle at the display, happy and relaxed. Hank drags a hand down his face, before reaching up to bring Connor down to his chest, murmuring into his hair, “Yeah, gold fucking star, stud.”
They do eventually get up, because Connor won’t back down on his promise to make Hank eat, but the sleep that night is among the best Hank has ever had.