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[VIDEO]

[Hank's looking a little more haggard than usual when he makes this post. He's tired and fucking wore out from a long stretch of just being perpetually pissed and sad. And goddammit, he wants his hope back, but it's been sliding.]

[He's still fuckin' trying, though.]

[He positions the phone so it's showing an old-timeyish looking Detective's office. We're talking he went for the Sam Spade aesthetic. He plants himself in a desk seat.]

So, I know I just fuckin' talked about getting a promotion. But I had some things go wrong with my last case. [Some big things. People kept going missing, for one.] Connor got assaulted by a decorated officer. And while he's getting what's due uh... I don't know. I figured it'd be better if I got him out of there while he was recovering emotionally. And this fuckin' job would require less walking.

[Those are his excuses? Real reason number one? Connor can't understand all those extra languages at the moment. Real reason number two? Being in the middle of the police station when his year runs up doesn't sound like the best plan. And for some people? Seems like it's not taking a year.]

[He sure as shit would like to stop losing fucking friends. Thanks.]

[Hank turns himself in his chair.] This is my new private detective's office. So now I get to take pictures for paranoid fuckin' people looking for reasons for divorce. I'm really goddamn excited about that. [He smears his hand down his face, then scratches his beard.]

But uh. It was time I said good-bye to the job. [He'd always said this was his last chance to be a cop, and here it is. But damn if the heaviness of that loss isn't weighing on him too.]

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"Maybe..." he murmurs. "If he wasn't planning to deal with them some other way."

There are a few other ways he can think of to deal with people who can't die, and that's supposing their immortality still works for them in the same way. They've established here many times that what works in one way in one world doesn't work that way here. Maybe the Head has his ways.

He distractedly strokes Hank's palm under his thumb as he analyses the signals from the implant, and they're strong now. It used to be fainter, vaguer, like some kind of odd interference was stopping him picking up the specifics. Now everything is clear and crisp, and with very little effort Connor can feel his own hand stroking Hank's palm as if it were his own palm too.

He wonders how much Hank can feel from him, too - if the background processes keeping his systems working, his sense of time running at the right rate, his temperature within a tenth of a degree of standard, if those are all tangible.

...If Hank can feel and understand the sensory data Connor's picking up from the environment around them. Ambient temperature, noises from outside that Hank himself can't hear, the little electrical frequencies of their phones and the bug Connor just pulled out of the vent in the bathroom, sitting harmlessly on the desk.

(He even for a second finds himself wondering if Hank could use Connor's processing power to think or react faster, in a crisis, say.)

There are so many possibilities to explore with something like this.

It comes to him not in numbers, but exacts. He hears the buzzing, sure. The small hum that would tell him where to find the bugs. But he feels the heat in the room, closer to him, further from them, on Connor's hands in precise areas of 'warmer than this thing" "cooler than this thing". No numbers. Just an exact sense of where that boundary of comparison lies.

He lacks any statistical control, his mind unable to settle on particular numbers, but if Connor were to use his mind palace, he'd be able to see it.

He knows that Connor is feeling himself back, and Hank grumbles a soft 'sorry' for not being in better control of that.

There are little unique things Hank feels, too. The ache of old bones, like a discomfort in his knees due to his tendency to sit oddly in chairs. A permenant crick in his back. Things that might not translate precisely to an android mind, but still come through that feedback loop.

While he's calm, though, he doesn't otherwise interfere with any of Connor's systems. The contented mood is settling.

"Holy shit." There's a sense of wonder creeping into his voice. He's never wanted Hank to be an android - Hank is Hank and anything else is irrelevant - but this, being able to interface on such a deep level he can feel Hank's very bones - strange and a little distorted, the data not quite complete - that Hank can feel Connor's android senses extending out from them... It's beyond anything he could have imagined.

Then he tries something else, something he doesn't really expect to work but - he activates his mind palace, ramps up his processing speed so that time seems to slow to a stop. He has full awareness of the room, a monochromatic graphical interface laid over it, sensors picking brighter trails of their footprints, an even brighter sense of the bug on the table between them. The vague notion of a task list dancing on the edge of his vision that even Connor rarely pays attention to anymore. Their bodies can't move fast enough to keep up with this, only Connor's mind, and maybe, just maybe--

Hank?

--maybe Hank can see this, one of the most advanced things his mind is capable of. Maybe the most personal thing Connor can show him.

What the fuck is what Hank wants to say. It is, however, not what he says as the world slows and crawls and his muffled "w" sound extends out for an eternity. In reality, it's just a surprised noise.

That's when he goes quiet and looks around. It's Connor's job to change focus, but yeah, when connected to him like this, he's suddenly very aware of the particulars of his surroundings.

It's his own sense of wonder kicking in, at the world devolving into Raw Data, separated into points of highlighted importance.

"Wow."

Oh that felt way too long to say. He needs to be quiet when he does this, because suddenly he's aware of his human limits at communicating.

It must be a little hard to get used to. The movements of the body, including the voice, are totally useless when he's using the mind palace - it's as natural to Connor as breathing, but for Hank it must be a strange thing. (Actually, Hank isn't breathing right now either)

He lets Hank look around, take control of Connor's focus to shift it where he wants. Though it might be strange if he focuses on himself. There's nothing visually different, not exactly. But there's a large amount of processing power dedicated to Hank that becomes especially clear in Connor's mind palace.

Impulses - to look at Hank, to touch him, to taste him, to hear his voice and hear his opinion on the things important to Connor. Awareness - a constant background awareness that Hank's there, close to him, and the comfort that brings him, the little occasional flickers of wanting more, wanting him closer. Emotion - Connor's feelings are cascades of programming that, with Hank, are in constant ebb and flow. In some moments it becomes so intense it takes up more space in his memory than it rightly should, little hitches in his system that Connor marvels at sometimes. He feels so strongly it affects the very core of his being.

If he looks at the tasklist still present there, the top item on it is just one word, with a series of collapsed subtasks: HANK

Connor's not sure how other androids experience love, or any other emotion. But his very nature means he understands very well what they mean for him.

Nothing like looking at yourself through someone else's eyes. He can see what he had for lunch, that his heart is currently steady instead of being tainted by an alcoholic arrhythmia, that he's managed to forget to do up one of his buttons.

That's what breaks it. That he tears himself away from the wash of wonderful emotion and saves Connor a look at his subtask folder because he fuckin' forgot to do up a shirt button. But he actually looks a little sheepish as he does it.

"That's uh... that's a lot. So you can do that whenever you want?"

He rubs the back of his neck, ducking his head so his hair hangs in his face and he collects himself. Having someone say they care is one thing. Have it hit him so fully and forcefully is another.

Hank breaks away and immediately fixes his shirt, something Connor hadn't been going to mention, and he feels a little embarrassed - and it looks like Hank does too. About the shirt, sure, but maybe about just how much of Connor's attention he takes up. A moment later, he seems to hide himself, shrinking away a little.

"Sorry if that was too much," he says, making himself smile comfortingly as he forces back his own feeling that he overstepped a boundary of some kind. "I didn't think it was... It was a lot."

He hadn't stopped to consider what Hank would see about how Connor saw Hank himself.

"I don't have to do it again, I just wanted to know if it was possible. My processors speed up so much that a human couldn't usually keep up. But you can." He leans forward, putting a hand on Hank's knee and trying to look at his face. "That's all I was trying to show you."

"No, it was alright. I just uh... Thank you for letting me see it."

He gives Connor an appreciative look. "It's amazing. It's more than any mod would be able to see, and I don't know. I've never had anyone look at me like that?"

In so much detail. Appreciating parts of him he'd never looked at. Prioritized his happiness with his own thorough folder.