Thread by @FastHankconSmut

H🎃A🧪P🕸P🕷Y

H🧹A🔮L🛸L🌙O🦠W🌟E🐀E🦇N

✨Little senseless Halloween fluff of Lieutenant Connor Stern and Hk having a bunch of feels✨

“Well we’ve carved the pumpkin, we’ve stocked up on candy, we’ve decorated the place- which you did most of while you were intoxicated. And Princess has had her anal glands expressed.”

Connor almost swallowed his shot glass.

The little dog in question came marching through the kitchen to her food bowl, for once, not giving Hk the ‘evil eye’.

He turned away to watch Connor clear his second whiskey in one swallow, followed by a growl.

“Do you have to drink tonight, Lieutenant? What if kids come by?”

“Then they may get a lot more candy out of me. Besides,” Connor put the glass upside down in the sink. For once, he seemed like he was going to humor the big man.
“It’s celebratory. This is how grown ups celebrate the season.”

“Your twin is dressed as HarleyQuin.”

Connor turned away before Hk could see him purse his lips together in an obvious frown.

“Allen sent me pictures.” He added wryly, gaging him.

“‘K...well. I can’t speak for Silas.”

Hk turned his attention back on the little chihuahua slapping water from her bowl around.

She missed her mouth through most of it, the same way Connor did when he ate ice cream.

It was such s tiny thing to think about, and served literally no purpose.

In fact, it was a rather unsavory thought. But, it was these little things, like Connor’s clumsiness- or carelessness- that were unexplainably....endearing. Really, they should repulse Hk, a machine of the highest quality, but Connor’s imperfections were so....perfect. Charming.

The menial things that made them different were such an enchanting concept for the android cut godlike.

“I don’t understand some of these traditions of yours.” He said, taking a seat on Connor’s sofa.

He looked up at a particularly caddy decoration Connor’d thrown lopsided over a nail particularly too high for him to reach.

A big, fuzzy, black spider with white, plastic fangs, holding up a sign that said, ‘TRICK-or-TREAT’. The fucking thing was all kinds of levels of janky.

And tacky. But interestingly enough, it seemed to be one of Connor’s favorite pieces- securing it a spot above the tv in the most lived in room of the house.

“I don’t understand some of them, either...” Connor confessed, slapping a handful of cold water from the faucet over his mouth.
“Did you know Christmas is a bunch of pagan traditions?”

“Sounds like controversy.”

Connor, to HK’s surprise, didn’t clean out his shot glass for another round and left it in the sink.

He moved through the kitchen to where the other was sat in front of his coffee table and grabbed the bags of candy on top.

Connor shrugged.
“Yeah, I don’t know how true it is, and I’m too lazy to look it up.”
He shuffled over to the little table he kept at his door, and began pouring the bags out into two big bowls.

Hk noted the sizes of them.

“Do you get that many trick-or-treaters out here?”

“Nope! This one’s for us.” Connor grinned.

He took the bowl with purple spider webs, and the far more expensive candy, over to the coffee table. Hk raised an eyebrow but said nothing about it.

How could he when Connor was smiling like that?

“You *can* try some of these, right?” Connor asked as he took a seat beside him.

The android nodded. He could, yes. But, he wasn’t fond of stuffing his tank with so many sticky things. Connor provided enough of that on his own.

Hk would definitely have to clean it out tomorrow, before he put any evidence in there.

“Good.” Connor reached over to take out one of the harder pieces, strawberry flavored, and passed it over.
“You’ll *love* this one.”

Hk untwisted the wrapper ends, eyeing the smoothened lines where the candy appeared to be holding some kind of filling inside it.
“Do you?” He asked.

“No. But, I know *you* will.” Connor reached for a chocolate bar, nearly eating off the wrapper in his haste.

That was *not* the dinner Hk had in mind when Connor promised he’d eat more.

He moved the pinkish candy around his fingers, analyzing the components and assessing the sugar content.

Yes, it looked good enough, but what was interesting was that Connor seemed to think *he’d* like it. Having never tried anything more than the leftovers of a crime scene, he was curious to know how he’d come to that conclusion, and-

wanted to put to test how well Connor thought he *knew* him.

He popped it in his mouth, immediately bombarded with every ingredient, down to each gram of sodium, and the foreign, not unpleasant, feeling of the smooth little square in his mouth, sliding across his tongue-

elicited an unusual response in him. Completely involuntary.

His salivation increased, coating his tongue and the candy in extra lubricant. It helped to spread the strawberry ‘flavor’ through his mouth, his teeth turning a slight pink color.

And, Yes....Connor was right.

Hk looked down at his companion who had little smudges of chocolate at the corners of his mouth, and was already working on a third bar of chocolate.

He noticed Hk’s staring and looked over at him, surprised to see a little pull at the crease of his mouth.

“Sour?”

The bigger man sucked the candy towards the back to his mouth, sorely tempted to just swallow it and be done.

But...he *liked* it.

Connor was grinning, again.
“Yeah, it takes a second to kick in, but it’s sour as shit...I hate sour things.”

Hk talked around his ‘speech box’, as his tongue was quite preoccupied.
“Why? They’re good...albeit, a challenge.”

There was a little twitch of his lips as he sucked harder, stifled a glitch in his processors.

The young lieutenant snorted, ceasing his chocolate massacre long enough to enjoy the full view of his partner struggling to work through the flux of sensation, and savor the candy. A challenge indeed.

But, fuck did he look cute like that.

Hk liked it *very* much, despite the intensity. He liked what it did to his sensors, how it made his finely tuned analyzers scatter, and Connor was right.

Connor *did* know him. Which made what Hk needed to ask him tonight a little bit easier.

“Want another?” Connor teased, picking up another square with similar wrapping, but this one blue.

Hk knew he was pushing him, indulging himself in watching Hk react so strongly. He usually didn’t, a bit more on the side of the strong and silent type.

But, this was actually...fun. The candy, Connor’s attention, the spirit of the holiday. *Connor*.

The atmosphere was much more lax than it had been. Connor hadn’t been this mellow in some time-which no surprise there.

The kid worked himself to death daily and made it worse with the diet of a pre-teen boy with no idea how to work an oven top. But, tonight, he seemed to have put all of that on hold- save for eating chocolate for dinner.

Tonight, all the stress from their latest homicide case, all the irrational amounts of consumed coffee that only *sleep* could atone for, weren’t weighing on him.

Tonight was different. Connor’d been talking about this night for *weeks*, preparing for it every day since the 1st.

Hk had caught him cracking jokes with his *brothers*, who each rarely suffered through a cordial ‘good morning’ to one another as he’d seen it.

Connor’d been waiting, excited for tonight, and Hk was a little surprised to find he felt so strongly.

Hk swallowed the candy, cringing at the way it slid and stuck to his tubing on the way down, so he could focus his attention to talking. He’d refrained from asking before, but now, he wanted to know what the big deal was.

“Lieutenant?”

“Mm?” Connor hummed, already feeling sick.

“Can I ask you something? It’s kinda personal.”

Connor made a face.

The air shifted suddenly in a very strange way, as the young man bowed his head.

“You’ve seen me naked, Hank.” He mumbled, cutting his eyes over to the candy bowl.

There was no mistaking the tinge of red flushing his cheeks.

Now, it was Hk’s turn to grin.

“Yeah. I guess there’s no boundaries between us, anymore.” He said slowly.

Connor bit his bottom lip, turning a touch darker, and shifted to sit on top of his hands, hunching in on himself. Hk watched through precision sharp lenses, capturing every little move and shiver Connor made.

There were *plenty* of boundaries between them still, but Hk thrived off of seeing Connor like this. *Flustered*.

Hk couldn’t help himself.

He moved close enough to press their shoulders together, his cool chassis warming instantly where they connected.

“I just get the feeling that this could be a sensitive topic for you.”

“Yeah?” Connor murmured, increasingly aware of where they were touching, and how *solid* Hank was.

He licked his lips as he felt the heat travel from his face, *down*.

There was another little twist in Hk’s smile.

“Yep.”

Connor swallowed.
“Well, it won’t break me, so, go ahead.”
It almost sounded like a dare, but it was merely to encourage himself. Give himself the strength necessary to keep his voice from breaking.

Anything organic that could withstand the amount of morphine and glucose Hk had witnessed Connor consume, was anything but fragile. That, they agreed on. But, his light still spun yellow, if only for a second faster than Connor could see. He was nervous to ask.

“This holiday,” Hk said carefully, looking off to where Princess was snuggled soundly in her cookie pillow.
“It means a lot to you doesn’t it?”

The room went quiet.

Connor clearly looking taken aback, judging by his shocked staring.

“Am I wrong?” Hk tried to control his tone.

But, he was worried.

Connor was pretty open with him about, well, everything.

To a fault, even, when they’d first started working together.

Hk wished he’d bother filing away some of the things Connor’d said back then, if only to have the files on hand of Connor getting worked up in that strip club. Muttering awkwardly and flushing red when that man offered him a position.

That *big*, hairier man.

God it all made sense, now. Why hadn’t Hk noticed those things, before?

And, maybe, he also just enjoyed the visual of Stern, the ass he was then, so horribly embarrassed. And, *maybe* Hk liked *that* for unconventional reasons.

But, now, he didn’t. Connor’s shock had taken form to something more akin to embarrassment, and not that sweet, little flustered kind. The painful sort.

Hk was quick to make amends.
“Hey, you don’t have to say. I think I was just looking too deep-“

“No, I just didn’t know I....What makes you think that?”

It took a moment for him to determine Connor was more surprised than angry, but Hk didn’t know what he‘d been expecting. Connor wouldn’t get mad about something like this- But, he did look pretty uncomfortable.

HK’s intentions were innocent enough, and Connor knew it.

Yet, he wondered how he must have been acting lately. Had he been weird? Had he been projecting, maybe, without even knowing it?

“Nothing serious,” Hk tried to assure him.
“Just little things.”

He knew for all his talk, Connor could be a bit insecure. He squeezed his knee.

“It’s just that you’ve cut back your caffeine consumption to two coffees a day.” A stark contrast to his usual intake.

“And, you’ve been more ‘lively’ in the past few weeks.” He grimaced at his implications, but Connor would appreciate his honesty.

“Lively?” He echoed.

Connor really hadn’t noticed- But, no. He wasn’t surprised.

Halloween *was*, in fact, very important to him-

more than any other holiday.

And, he was always a bit ‘lighter’ feeling when it came around.

“Yeah, I guess I have been.” He muttered.

Hk got the distinct feeling that he’d definitely crossed a line somewhere, but he could see that this was an issue Connor had with himself.

“Suffice it to say,” He started again, trying for a bit of humor.
“Lively is very unlike you. You look like a zombie most days.”

“Is that a Halloween pun of some kind?” The smaller man wrinkled his nose, a gentle tug at the corners of his lips.

“That’s a *reference* to how little sleep you get.”

Connor snorted, a lot less tense than before.
“I still perform, well. Amanda’s never written me up for *that*.”

“I suspect you were the kind of kid that pretended to be asleep when your mother came to check on you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Connor glared.

“That you’re a whole other person when she’s around, and I bet she doesn’t even know you barely sleep once a week.”

“Good. She doesn’t *need* to.” Connor was back reaching for the candy bowl again.

“So, you want to know why I like Halloween so much?” He said while unwrapping a cube of caramel.

Hk hadn’t fully expected him to continue.
“Only if you’re inclined to share.”

“It’s a good reason.” Connor said softly.
“So, yeah.”

There was this strange waver in Connor’s voice, one Hk rarely ever heard, and was usually reserved for him when he did.

A tone of affection.

He moved his body to face Connor, slinging an arm over the sofa top and twisting at the waist. Connor naturally moved into the open arc.

“You know Niles and Silas.” Connor said carefully.
“You know what they’re like.”

In a vague sense, yeah.

“You know what *we’re* like...when it’s all of us together.”

In an even vaguer, blurrier sense, yes.

Not very close.

Hk nodded.

“Well, Halloween used to be our thing. Kind of. It may not seem like it, now, with the way we act around each other. But, it was the only time of the year we could all be together and just be *kids*.“

“Not that Silas ever grew up...” He frowned.

Connor tended to hide his feelings in sarcasm, since they were easier for him to manage that way.

Hk wanted to ask about the other family oriented holidays, but knew that’d be way too much in one sitting.

He’d never heard Connor utter more than a single sentence about his brothers, and clearly this had already reached some kind of threshold.

He shrugged, staring at his fingers as they crushed the plastic wrapper and rolled it into a little ball.

“I guess I’m just holding on to the good old days. Kinda pathetic.” He swallowed, watching the ball roll between his palms. Focusing on the crinkling sound it made.
“And yet, it’s still special to me.”

Hk took a moment before answering.

He’d never had a family before and couldn’t actually relate to having a childhood. The right words eluded him.

But, he’d give what he could, because Connor needed to hear it.

“Humans are sentimental. Of course, it’s important to you, and it should be. It’s *not* pathetic, Connor.”

Connor turned his face away, but he could see a little smile spreading his lips.

Not great, but Hk hadn’t done bad, either.

“It’s ok to miss those days, when you were happier.”

“Yeah?” Connor pulled his knees up and tucked his feet under a loose pillow, crossing his arms over his legs.

It was getting colder outside, and it was his own fault he hadn’t gotten a space heater, yet.

Hk had warned him they couldn’t stay glued together all the time when it got colder.

“Do you ever have times like that? Happier times you miss?” Connor‘s big, brown eyes looked up at him, with this little glint inside them.

They sparkled in the orange and green light of a witch ornament he decorated his mantle with.

Hk swallowed, wiling himself not to be overcome with too much sentiment of his own- Though, Connor was worth every bit of it. HK’s affection was bountiful for the little Lieutenant.

“I do.” Hk said in a voice too heavy.
“I miss the days before I deviated and didn’t have to worry about your shitty health, so much.”

Connor managed to ‘pout’ and look completely charmed at the same time.

“You need to move on, Hank. Those days are old news.”

“Hm, maybe. But, if I may,” Hk wrapped an arm over Connor’s waist, and pulled him into the warmth of his side, pushing his temperature up by 10 degrees, and completely voiding his threat to refrain from being Connor’s personal heater.

“I’ll think I’ll hold on a little longer.”