Chapter Text
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.
Her instinct was to laugh at him. Nobody had ever asked, let alone so uncoolly. Of course, in the Eden Club they just took whatever they wanted from her, and there was nothing particularly laughable about that actually. In Jericho she was safe but still people touched her easily, in brotherly camaraderie and affection, and she'd gotten used to the way her circuits sometimes sparked at that, her shoulders tensing on instinct. She'd learned to smile through it.
(Unless it was a bad day. On bad days she'd learned to be a bitch--an easy way to be left alone without having to give an explanation.)
Connor, however, never touched her because Connor never touched anyone. He walked around with walls up even higher than hers, never interfacing or sharing the deviants’ mind link if he could help it. Nobody asked why.
And yet here he was, looking at her so unreadably. Waiting for a response.
She didn't laugh, for his sake, but she did smirk a little and just... shake her head.
“Why do you want to?” she asked. Not really accusingly, just interested.
They were outside, at night, in the emptiness of a Detroit abandoned by humans for the time being. Even after the revolution, there was still so much work to be done. They were on a timetable, making sure to gather all their people together and barricade themselves into the city before the humans’ inevitable counterattack. Markus was keen on preparing for peaceful negotiations, but North still felt in a hollow place in her chest that they’d be spilling blood again soon enough. Blue or red. Your choice, Markus.
It made her appreciate more the beauty of quiet nights like this. With the humans gone, and so much of Detroit’s power cut off by the military, the light pollution of the city had dimmed enough for an unusual number of stars to show. She mapped them with every glance, her programming connecting the lines of constellations in her vision. She and Connor had developed a habit of meeting in a park late at night, after their respective duties were finished.
They were perched on a bench in front of a fountain whose water had stopped running long ago. Connor was dressed in a black peacoat, and big fat snowflakes were stuck in his hair. It wasn’t a bad look for him. The snow floated down all around, illuminated like moths in the blue glow from his LED.
“I don’t like the snow,” he’d told her once, as one of his first clumsy attempts at conversation.
“What’s wrong with it?” She was always trying to be contrary with him, just to see if she could get a rise out of him.
“It’s too quiet, I guess.”
Unexpectedly, she found she agreed.
The deviant hunter had somehow become her friend in Markus’ absence. Markus was almost untouchable now, becoming less and less the man she was starting to know, and more the icon of his people. Somebody had to. That was his sacrifice.
In the meantime, Connor and North were the ones who did his dirty work. Together.
The whites of Connor’s eyes shone as he watched her unwaveringly, making the brown all the darker.
“You’re beautiful,” he said simply. “And I like you. That’s why I want to kiss you.”
“A lot of people are beautiful,” she said, just to be contrary again.
“I don’t like a lot of people,” he admitted.
It was surprising coming from him, but then again maybe it wasn’t. He was kind, sometimes annoyingly polite even, but that didn’t necessarily mean he got along well with others.
Maybe they had that in common.
“Have you ever been with someone?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “You’d be the first.”
“And you’d want it to be me?” she asked again.
The hollow in her chest felt increasingly empty, like a black hole sucking the feeling out of her extremities.
He shrugged and finally looked away from her, up through the trees at the stars and the sliver of moon above, the silently falling snow.
“You seem to be overthinking it more than me,” he said. He had the gall to smile then, small and lopsided.
Well. Fuck him.
She took both sides of his face in her hands and turned him to look at her again. Only her. His eyes met hers immediately--one might even say obediently if not for the sureness in the set of his shoulders, the tired understanding in the shapes of his face.
You turned into a real boy, Pinocchio.
A snow-clumped tuft of his hair hung over his forehead, brushing her fingers.
“You can kiss me,” she said.
His face actually lit up, eyebrows raising, the corners of his mouth digging in slightly, and she was again tempted to laugh at him except he kissed her before she could.
It was simply his lips against hers. Her hands on his jaw. The cool touch of synthetic skin.
The hollow in her chest stayed empty, but she found herself smiling. Clumsily, so that her teeth interrupted their kiss, and she did laugh then.
In her internal database of acquaintances, Connor’s entry updated.
It changed from Connor (Friend) to just Connor .
That’s what he was. Just Connor. All the things that meant and didn’t mean.