Detroit Become Human x Readers

Clinical (Connor x Reader)

Clinical.

It’s how Connor describes the room he first met you in. Hard metal doors, harsh blue light and bleached white walls carried the blank and emotionless slate he was supposed to be. Sitting, mentally hooked to a computer to be filled with information and nothing more. A husk of knowledge and lethality.

You are not warm. A lab coat and colourless uniform clothed to your body. Like an android made of flesh and blood. The first time he meets your eyes you are cold. Indifferent. Staring at another machine.

“RK800, register. What is your name?” Bored and disinterested you ask. Lifeless and soulless he answers as he always must.

“Registering. My name is Connor.” You make a note, and signal for him to be disconnected from the servers. The river of information stops, and in its place, something activates. Scanners, sensors, the things he was built with for his task. His purpose as an android, to serve the human race.

Letting the blue text fill his vision, Connor knows you.

Human. Y/N. Engineer and coder.

You call him machine, and subtly to himself, he thinks you the same.

The second meeting is the same. As are the third and fourth. Register, repeat, download. You do not talk to him. You’d just be talking to your tools, talking to yourself. And he would not respond. He wouldn’t know how.

Over and over his memories are reentered. Each time he is the same. Hollow and then filled- but still hollow. Empty, missing something.

The 12th time you give him a smile.

You walk in dressed in your block colours. The lights from above paint you in blue. The walls show no emotion. Going through the same checklist, readying the same test. Everything is all the same.

Everything is the same, up until you look up at him and you smile.

It’s not a happy smile. It isn’t forced. It’s just… a smile. Papers and a clipboard in hand, you meet his eyes and you smile.

And in the circuit boards in his head, something sparks like wires frayed. And in the programming he’s been coded with, there’s a gap. And with this smile, something inside him is triggered. Events set in motion that were unavoidable, from the moment you both met.

“What happened this time?” You ask at number 16. You’ve walked to where he’s seated, closely inspecting his body for faults. Fingers prod and poke, but he barely feels them. His brow creases just a bit. You should know what happened, you’re supposed to review his memories to watch for glitches or inconsistencies in his programming.

“The deviant jumped into a river. When I jumped to follow, I was caught in the propeller to a boat.” Your face contorts into a grimace, and Connor does not understand why. He was simply damaged, nothing more. Certainly, you understood that? You’d worked on him a thousand times before. Well, his predecessors at least.

“You should be more careful.” You’d told him, and left it at that. Left it to hang in his mind and ponder, during his cases and talks with Amanda. Like a cartoonish raincloud, putting damp doubts into his mind.

At 20 he tells you about the strange people he met on his case. The nice ones, the rude ones, the ones that made him think. At 29 you tell him a little about your family, where you came from, where you were now. At 31 he tries a smile and you laugh, patting his arm and telling him to work on it. Over and over until these 15-minute procedures began to be hours, and hours well and happily spent.

At 51 you are hesitant. And he knows something is wrong. Your fingers have never touched him this gently, adjusting his clothes and brushing at his hair and collar. He tilts his head and notes glossy eyes. You are upset.