SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

twenty-two ━ electric sheep

"Or you can come help keep me warm instead," she offered, looking at him through the mirror once he appeared to be hesitating in the doorway.

"Yes, ma'am," he accepted his order with a content smile. What was there not to smile about when he could walk right up behind her, wrap his arms around her waist and rest his chin on her right shoulder? He could stay there forever, Connor caught himself considering as his eyes slipped closed just for a single moment of indulgence. He could stay and feel her breathing, accept the tickles of her hair around his nose and know that he can at any point shift his head and press a kiss to her shoulder or even the sensitive skin of her neck, and she will not be repulsed, nor push him away.

This was a much better fate than what he would get acknowledging the chill still pooling on his back and at the back of his head, though he couldn't tell how he was so sure of that.

As soon as his eyes opened, seeking to look in the mirror ahead and witness for himself the perfection of this moment in time that belonged just to them, Connor couldn't help looking right at his temple first instead. Much as he wished to cling to Mia's warmth, his right hand reached up and touched the tender, but otherwise spotless skin there. Something, he thought, eyes narrowing ever so lightly, something's missing.

"Do you think you can take the kids to school on your way to work?" Mia asked, successfully pulling him out of his thoughts of round LED's.

Maybe that's what I've been dreaming about, he reasoned with himself before actually acknowledging the question. He wasn't even half done with understanding what Mia had asked when his lips moved on their own, ahead of his mind and definitely without his permission. "Of course."

She seemed pelased with his response though, because quickly abandoning her morning routine, Mia turned around in his arms, deliberately trapping herself between him and the sink. "Gosh," she sighed out, and he turned weak in the knees to recognize her eyes were shining with love. "I love you so much."

Connor wanted to kiss her. He wanted that more than he has ever wanted anything else in his life. His memory was spotted, but his lips seemed to remember this desire at the very least, because while the cold behind him persisted, his lips felt on fire, more alive than ever.

Only as he was about to lean in closer, he heard her voice again. It sounded distant, muffled and distorted, and before he knew it, his vision blurred into a glitch, narrowing his sight to a singular spot surrounded by darkness. Mia was there, in the center of that image  and she was crying. Some snowflakes trapped in her hair, blue specks of blood — Thirium, Connor reminded himself — staining her face. "Please don't leave me," she had begged him and his heart — Thirium pump, he corrected himself — skipped a beat. "I love you."

"I want to remember you saying that," he spoke what he had recalled saying to her then and a single blink returned his vision to him. Mia stood there, between him and the sink, unharmed, but confused. There was some distance between them now and he imagined he must have stepped back instead of leaning in.

"That I love you?" She tilted her head to the side. "I tell you that almost every day, what do you mean?"

With that space between them yet to be closed again, the chill on Connor's back spread throughout his body, jolting his gaze upwards, to return to the mirror. His hand found its way bwck to its previous spot, over his temple, massaging the place in hopes of finding the ridges of what he was certain should have been there. "What happened to my LED?"