Detroit: Become Human - The Outsider (Connor x OC fanfic)

Something Dead Wanders

A / N : Helloooo! I hope you're enjoying so far! I can't tell if the dialogue sounds ridonkulous or not, but hopefully it gets better! Let me know thoughts/opinions if you have any ahhh :)

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The men had looked like they stepped out of 40s movie. The 12 angry men, gathered around a kill and debating whether it was deserved. Pale, callous, unnerving. The body snatchers, empty and unfeeling. They encroached upon this land and settled leather-bound feet onto the concrete, tail-coats and ties sprung up to their necks so their faces ran bulged and red. 

Rina stared at her hands. Beneath her, plush peach-coloured Egyptian cotton sheets all gathered, her t-shirt stained with purpled blood -- the lock and key symbol on the front now splattered like an unfortunate crime scene. 

Monson peered up at her from the foot of the bed with big, universe-black eyes. She'd found that colour black on the canvas' downstairs, lined across the walls, where low voices now rumbled and occasionally choked on laughter -- signals of early-arriver's to Earl's party. You couldn't miss a colour like that. Onyx, reflective, never-ending. It sucked your gaze and demanded your attention. Earl had called it dull. 

I don't know why you'd suck the life out of a painting like that with black, he'd once sneered, arms wrapped around her waist, pulling tight. 

But Rina had felt differently. It's a dichotomy, she'd replied, Earl's creative programming sneaking through, and had wanted to say more but was stopped by the press of his lips, the spike of a freshly-shaved beard. 

The blood was coloured like eggplant, but across the canvas of a concrete road separating Earl's Castle from the rest of Detroit, it had looked black. 

Perhaps she did understand what Earl meant. Why destroy a landscape thick with leaves, vibrant colours that coursed with scents of the Earth and dissolved into a blue sky, with the stain of death? 

Earl entered with a forced smile on his lips, one that dropped as soon as the door had slammed shut behind, and Rina found herself standing to attention, lost in her thoughts. He'd already begun a cigar and the thick smoke followed him like a ghost nestled across his shoulders. Somehow he'd hastily thrown on one of his suits. Distantly, he shook his head, mouthing words meant for him and him alone, until he seemed to remember Rina was there. 

"You're not dressed." He remarked, looking up and down. 

Rina begun to wrap her arms around herself, but stopped when the soak of blood cooled her skin. "You haven't told me what to wear." 

"Fuck," Earl pushed into the en-suite -- a huge thing, black-tiled with a free standing tub that took up the centre of the room. A vanity spread across one wall, dashed with half-used bottles of moisturizers and creams, some of which Earl employed Rina to soak him with when he felt weary. He placed the cigar in a full crystal ash-tray, ran cold water from a gold tap, and spread it through his hair. "Big night, kitty." He said to his reflection, a sick grimace toppling over him. "You're a lucky little thing."

Earl had lots of big nights. Occasional parties, sometimes themed -- vintage, surfers, or a personal and ironic favourite, cops and robbers -- where Detroit's evasive criminals met and smoked the night away. Earl got to show them new inventions, trickles of humans (never droids) passing through the garden to Earl's workshop, staying down there for hours, and coming out shaking hands, twinkling eyes. It was as if the road was a pilgrimage, Rina thought. Earl, a prophet; the workshop, his temple. Secrets inside she'd never know. 

Whatever they saw down there, they bought into. 

Tonight wasn't supposed to be any different, and yet Rina felt the air twinge. Earl's jaw tightened, fat fingers thumbing a taut bowtie, mouth hung open in an exasperated lull. He got like this- hungry, almost, - before gatherings. What he needed, Rina never knew.