A/N: I posted this to my tumblr over a week ago, but since FFN's finally gone ahead and put up a DBH category, I'm cross-posting this here too. This can be considered to exist in the same timeline as Hitting the Wall, another of my DBH fanfics, but no prior reading needed.

Snowmen and Murder

Eirian Erisdar

As Christmas approached, the Anderson household gained a few…embellishments.

Hank hadn't done anything for the house that first Christmas after the liberation of the androids - it had been barely a month and a half after the actual event, and although Connor had settled into Hank's house by then, there was still too much to do and not enough fully spoken.

That changed the next year.

Really, Hank wouldn't have bothered - he hadn't bothered for four years by the time the first Christmas since the liberation of the androids rolled around - but then Connor had passed the Christmas section during a shopping trip one weekend and his eyes had just…lit up.

Connor hadn't said anything, of course. Hank, though, had noticed - the way Connor slid his ever-present coin back into his pocket and looked back over his shoulder at the glitter explosion that was the Christmas decorations section, that spark of innocent curiosity in his eyes - the same expression he had when he passed a goldfish shop, once.

The expression that Hank could never quite say no to, though he doubted Connor even knew he was doing it.

There was a goldfish tank in Connor's room beside his charge-point now, with a beautiful blue-white, fan-tailed fish flitting in its clear water.

That year, they had returned from what was supposed to be a routine shopping trip with armfuls of tinsel and a plastic Christmas tree - Hank had insisted on that, because he knewwhat a shedding fir was like - but Connor's smile, hidden under a mound of purple and silver tinsel, was worth it.

They'd done the whole Christmas dinner shebang that year. Flaming pudding and all. A picture of Connor, looking maniacally adorable (was that a thing?) with the pudding's flames reflected in his smiling eyes, a flimsy santa hat slipping off his head, and Sumo enthusiastically licking his face - found its place in a frame on Hank's desk, after.

If anyone asked, Hank always barked a laugh and said he took his chances to laugh at his partner when he could.

This year, Hank sat before the fire with a mug of cocoa in his hand (with a generous splash of brandy, of course) and reviewed a couple of recent case files while taking periodic glances through the window. Beyond the snow-frosted pane, Connor was valiantly trying to build a snowman in the front yard, his efforts thwarted repeatedly by two hundred pounds of excited Saint Bernard.

Laughter, muffled by the window panes. "Sumo, stop!"

Hank did not smile much, as a rule. But he felt himself grinning nonetheless as he took another sip of his drink and flicked through his case files again. This particular suspect continually evaded capture - there were enough good-quality pictures of him and the lizard-shaped tattoo on his collarbone to send out an all-points-bulletein with good chances, but two months after his disappearance there was still no trace of him.

Well, even so, it wasn't enough to bother Hank too much, given the season.

A gust of icy wind, as the front door opened and shut again with a careful creak - to avoid it slamming shut with the wind.

Hank sighed into his cocoa. That was Connor for you - careful and detailed and ever-observant.

Quiet footsteps entered the room, followed shortly by the pad-pad of paws.

Sumo entered Hank's field of vision and flopped down over Hank's feet.

"Oof," Hank muttered. He wiggled his toes so that the blood would get to them better, and looked to his left, where Connor had sat down on the sofa, flicking frost out of his dark hair.

Hank frowned. "Connor, you're shivering."

Connor paused with an hand still atop his head. "Oh," he said, glancing down at his thin, knitted jumper. "It's an automatic reaction when my thermal sensors register a temperature below a certain threshold."

Hank resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "But is it not nice?" he added.

The circle at Connor's temple flickered yellow. "Oh," he repeated, blinking.

A pause, in which Hank waited, despite itching to speak again.

Connor lowered his hand. "It is…not unpleasant, exactly," he amended. "But I was originally programmed to feel a level of discomfort when exposed to extreme cold. It does not affect my functions, but it would be enough to activate aspects of social programming pertaining to temperature and weather."

"So in short, yes, it's not nice," Hank said. He remembered - with the blurred detachment of a memory associated with being punch-out drunk at the time - sitting on a bench by the river in the days leading up to the android revolution, and Connor standing with shoulders hunched and arms around himself in the snow, thin, Cyberlife-issued uniform jacket flapping in the icy wind.

Hank grimaced. It was not a memory he recalled with pride - there had been a gun in his hand and grief and bitterness in his heart, and Connor had looked him dead in the eyes with such an expression of earnest truth and listed out his worth in blunt, selfless words - that Hank, in that moment of instability, had put the gun away, shame flickering in his consciousness.

Connor had been shivering then, as he was now.

"…Yes," Connor said, after a moment. "It's not…nice." There was that somewhat-lost look in his eyes again - the one that always came when he realised something he did not before.

Then the look was very abruptly interrupted when Hank grabbed a throw off the arm of his chair and chucked it at his partner's face.

Connor caught it with superhuman reflexes, stared almost cross-eyed at the bundle in front of his face, and then lowered it to look questioningly at Hank.

"Wrap up before you turn into an electric icicle," Hank grunted, already back to glaring at his case files.

Connor did. Sumo wandered over and curled up into his side, and soon, his thermal sensors registered a comfortable rise in temperature.

And if Hank squinted over to his left to check up on them every now and then - Connor was too preoccupied with scratching Sumo's ears to notice.

Hank stormed empty-handed out of his fourth shop of the day, muttering under his breath as the door slammed shut behind him.

What was it that made shopping for gifts so intensely irritating? It wasn't as if he was asking for anything from the Mars Colony, for goodness' sake. All he wanted was a long wool muffler of some kind, treated to not raise static with android polymer, and not adorned with bobbles and puffs and sparkling things.

Hank had nearly exploded when the last shop attendant handed him a six-foot-long monstrosity of a scarf with glow-in-the-dark reindeer embroidered with sequinned antlers along its edges. He might be famous in his department for poor fashion choices, but that was ridiculous even beyond his imagining.

Grumbling, Hank stomped down the block and wrenched open the door to the next promising-looking shop, gritting his teeth at the merry tinkle of the entry bell.

"Season's greetings, sir!" The cheery-faced attendant behind the counter says. "What might you be looking f-"

"Just browsing," Hank muttered, deflating slightly at the attendant's bright smile.

He strides between the shelves for a while, picking up a scarf every now and then, only to put it down again after a few moments. Too thin, too wide, too short, too long, too scratchy, too hard to wash, too dark, too-

Too not Connor.

Hank stopped, one hand still in the act of putting a muffler back onto its shelf.

He sighed.

Then he turned to go, and froze.

There was a man in the next aisle, just visible between the rows of scarves, wearing a beanie pulled down low and a high-collared jacket. As the man shifted in place, so did his collar, revealing a lizard head tattooed on his left collarbone.

Hank glimpsed the man's face, too - an instantaneous thing more of sense than of actual vision - but he knew who it was at once.

The suspect in his case files.

"Oh, for cryin' out loud," Hank muttered, looking away quickly.

Duty first.

He tapped a code into his phone. Ten he crossed over to the first customer he saw - a female android at the end of his row - slid his badge out of his pocket, and whispered a few quick words. She stared at him, eyes wide and the circle on her temple flaring yellow, and made her way out of the shop as quietly and unobtrusively as possible.

Hank took quick stock of the shop with a flicker of his eyes, hiding the motion in a cough.

One down. Four more to go.

It would be much easier if Connor were here.

It took a while, but eventually Hank crossed to the counter - the attendant last in his circular route - and leant over to speak to her.

Her eyes widened in fear as she looked over his shoulder.

Hank spun and lashed out blindly, batting away the gun as it discharged point-blank. The deafening thunderclap of the gun firing almost drowned out the attendant's scream as she dived under the table.

Well. Good for her.

Hank threw himself inelegantly at the suspect, and felt something in his right ankle give way as they both slammed into the floorboards. The gun made a screeching noise as it skittered away, though, and Hank felt a momentary burst of victory before he saw the rage in his opponent's eyes and felt a forehead smash into his.

He reeled back into the shelves, seeing stars, and a hand that seemed to be steel wrapped in cotton smashed into his cheekbone, sending a second burst of silver spraying across his vision.

Damn his age. Ten years ago he would have had his gun out and the suspect under control in two heartbeats; now, the cracking of his knees and the ache of his back as he threw out a foot into the man's stomach only showed how much slower he was.

His mind was fine. His reflexes certainly weren't.

Hank growled and kept at it.

Then a fist collided with his face again, and again, and Hank blinked up through blurred eyes to see a vicious smile on the suspect's face as he grabbed a coat rack, poised to bring it down on Hank's head-

And a lithe, dark-clothed shape crashed into the man with speed just a little too high for a normal human, taking over a whole three rows of shelves.

The coat rack clattered to the ground by Hank's shoulder, and Hank groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face.

He winced, raised his head, and stared.

Connor.

Connor was picking the man apart with brutal efficiency; he stood like a statue of unforgiving steel, and every time the man threw an attack, a slim, leather-jacketed arm would shoot out and smack it away like an inconsequential fly.

The expression on Connor's face was one that chilled Hank to the core.

Emotionless. Composed. Utterly unyielding.

Hank sometimes wondered what Connor would have become if he decided to follow orders and remain property of CyberLife.

Here he had his answer.

The suspect snarled in rage and bodily threw himself at Connor; Connor simply sidestepped, boots sliding on the wooden floor, clasped the man's elbow, hooked his ankle, and threw him face-first into the floor.

The man made to push himself up, cursing, when a soft, controlled click made him fall silent.

Connor levelled his regulation weapon at the man's head, one boot still pressed into his back. The LED circle on his temple flared a steady red.

"Stay down," he ordered, quietly.

There was no emotion in his voice at all. He could have added a please, and it would have sounded like a request.

It was anything but.

Hank levered himself to his feet, groaning, and hobbled over, pulling his handcuffs from his belt.

"Hey, Connor," he said, by way of greeting.

Connor did not respond. There was an infinitesimal shake in the hands holding the gun.

Hank paused. Then he made quick work of securing the suspect, zip-tying his feet as well. When he stood, Connor was still frozen, gun oustretched.

"Kid," Hank said. He placed a hand on his partner's shoulder.

Those dark brown eyes flickered, eyelids moving once.

Blink.

Then Connor's gaze slid over to Hank and down to the hand on his shoulder, and thawed into the quiet, innocently-earnest gaze Hank knew so well. The circle on his temple faded to yellow, flickered to blue.

"Hank," Connor said. His gun lowered, and he stared at it for a moment before sliding it back under his jacket.

"…You good?" Hank ventured.

Connor's brows furrowed as his gaze flickered over Hank's features, scanning, analysing. "Shouldn't I be the one asking that question?" he returned, the edge of his mouth curving.

Hank snorted. "If you can snark back, you're doing just fine, then. Step outside and call this in?"

Connor nodded, and made for the door.

The suspect began muttering again, and Hank nudged him with a foot to shut him up as he moved over to the fallen shelves - he had spotted something in the mess.

He picked up the muffler. It was wide enough that it would work well folded or unfolded, and shaking it loose revealed that it the right length, too. Wool, soft to the touch and coloured an even, bright scarlet all over.

Red was hardly the colour one associated with androids; it had always been blue.

But red, the colour of Santa hats and tinsel - Connor would love it.

Hank gathered it up, edged over to the counter, hissing as he favoured his ankle, and placed it before the still-shaken attendant.

"Sorry 'bout this," Hank muttered, with a wry grin. "Would you mind?"

Connor was standing quite still, arms wrapped around himself, when Hank stepped outside, calling a goodbye to the officers inside the shop. The air was cool and crisp, and in the waning light of the late afternoon, snow had begun to fall. The cop cars lined up outside the shop cast the darkening air in red and blue.

"Hank," Connor said. He paused. Looked away.

Something warm and woollen cascaded over his head.

Connor reached up, startled, and found his vision obscured by red wool. He pulled down on the layers encircling his head with difficulty. "A scarf?" he said, utterly befuddled. The scarf circled his head in giant loops, muffled his voice and piled up to his ears.

A red scarf. Connor found himself smiling.

Hank coughed into his fist and began walking, not quite looking at Connor. "I believe the common answer would be thank you," he said, off-handedly.

"Oh!" Connor jogged to catch up. "Thank you, Hank," he said, earnestly.

There was a hitch in Hank's step as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "I would have waited until Christmas, but you look like frozen crap. Wear the things we bought last winter, for goodness' sake."

"Okay," Connor said, drawing level with Hank. There was warmth inside him - more than his thermal sensors were reading, more than could be explained by programming and electrons and binary code.

They walked home in companionable silence.

Thanks for reading, everyone. To my regular readers - I might be able to come up with the rest of Huei's current section in Silent Measures next weekend, after I finish an exam Thursday. If you're a new reader, thank you for being here! Feel free to check out my tumblr if you haven't already (link on profile). I have many, many more fics over there.