Thread by @CeilingKiwi

There’s so much about being human that Connor will never understand.

He doesn’t understand hunger. He doesn’t understand physical pain. He thinks he might understand exhaustion, but he suspects it’s something different than what happens to humans. A feeling of drowning.

Like he’s so overwhelmed with how busy he is that his processes begin to stutter in infinitesimal attacks that only he will ever notice.

Hank finds him sitting on the stoop outside their crime scene. Raises a brow at Connor and doesn’t comment when Connor says he just needed some air. Hank just sits down next to him, letting his shoulder shove into Connor’s in a way that Connor suspects is meant to be comforting.

Connor resets himself. It takes less than two seconds, and he doubts Hank notices /that,/ either. Connor feels safe with Hank.

He doesn’t understand grief. He knows he almost certainly will one day, and the thought unnerves him.

He takes to reading obituaries. It becomes a morning tradition; Hank will stand bleary-eyed at the stove and cook himself breakfast while Connor sits at the kitchen table waiting for him and scouring the internet for the day’s new obituaries.

He always makes himself stop when Hank sits down to eat. He doesn’t want this morbid fascination to become too consuming.

(He doesn’t understand taste either, or why Hank stubbornly insists on eating things that will shorten his life. Connor stares at him eating his grease-soaked eggs and hash browns and wonder why he isn’t enough to make Hank stop.)

He reads countless obituaries. Elderly people. Middle-aged people. Young adults. Children. Even babies. Connor has the vague notion that he should be sad. That he should find some of the deaths sadder than others. But he doesn’t understand.

He was built to process crime scenes and manage unfolding tragedies. He sees this every day. It doesn’t move him.

He doesn’t tell Hank about his research. He doesn’t think Hank would understand. He worries he’s deficient in something. He worries he and Hank are incompatible.

One morning, Connor watches Hank stand at the stove. Hank is quieter than he usually is, slightly hungover. Connor is quiet too in his disappointment, and he focuses on his obituaries. Watching the names and the faces and the short biographies flash before his eyes.

This one enjoyed fishing and tennis during their retirement. That one single-handedly saved a beloved neighborhood pizzeria from going out of business.

One obituary gives Connor pause. A 91 year old man who died of heart failure. No children or grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, please send donations to a charity that provides temporary housing to families with hospitalized children.

It’s curious. Connor has seen requests for donations to this charity before, but usually only in children’s obituaries. This man never had children.

Connor does a cursory search into this man’s background and finds that the man had a small family. One sister, who had one daughter. 67 years ago, the man’s niece died of a brain tumor. She was four years old.

It isn’t the young age at which the girl died that shocks Connor. It’s the fact that even now, decades after her death, he was so deeply affected to be thinking of her when he was on his own deathbed that tugs at Connor.

It happened well over half his lifetime ago, and yet…

Connor looks at Hank’s back. His head is tilted forward as though he wants to fall asleep on his feet, his tangled hair hanging on either side of his face. He pokes at his oatmeal as it cooks.

Connor rises and moves to Hank. He wraps him up from behind in a gentle hug.

Hank grunts inquisitively.

“I just,” Connor says quietly, “need you to know that I’ll be here for you. Whenever you need me. However long you need me.”

Hank sighs and lets his head droop further. “…Thanks.”

Connor isn’t sure if Hank means to be so cool to him or whether he’s just tired. Tired and aching. Aching in a way that he’ll never fully recover from.

But then Hank pours his oatmeal into a bowl, and as he turns back toward the table, he plants a quick kiss on Connor’s ear.

Connor can still smell the beer on his mouth, and Connor—

He turns Hank’s head so he can kiss him on the lips and taste stale beer. So he can taste Hank’s pain and his loneliness. The void Connor will never be able to fill and the sorrow Connor will never be able to erase.

Hank doesn’t seem to be thinking about any of that. He gives Connor a small, tired smile.

Maybe one day they’ll be happy. Or maybe this is the best he can hope for for Hank. Connor will take what comes until it’s his turn to live with the grief that Hank endures every day.