Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

MAIN ON PERDITION - Just a block off the main drag on Boogie Street, the narrow apartment blocks of Central Jamrock shudder in the wind. Glimpses of a cold grey sky slip through between the buildings like cracks on the pavement, the distant clouds like sheets of hammered metal. 

SHIVERS - Further north, the sea, waiting on the very edge of the isola. The ebbing tide, rolling back on the silt-laden banks like a veil. 

Elsewhere, high on motorway: the endless march of trucks, motor carriages - and the occasional horse. Like teeth showing between slivers of sidewalk, the grass is starting to grow. 

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Trivial: Success] - It’s a cold, wet spring morning, and you have absolutely nothing to do. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS - On Captain Pryce’s orders, you have been categorically forbidden to come back to the Precinct for the next 24 hours. 

DRAMA - Cruel and unusual punishment *most* undeserving, my liege.

VOLITION - This is for your own benefit. 

HALF LIGHT - You’re being abandoned. Left out in the cold, all for some stupid outdated rule. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Formidable: Success] - While ostensibly intended to be for the benefit of the individual officer, the actual directive is aimed at protecting the rest of society *from* you. The RCM has a longstanding rule, borrowed (or, some may argue, inherited) from the Insulindian Citizens Militia, that once an officer completes ten consecutive days of casework, one mandatory day of leave must be taken. This rule is one of the RCM’s oldest in the Officer’s Code of Conduct, after an incident in ‘42 involving an extremely sleep-deprived patrol officer, a multi-carriage pile up on the motorway, and at least two fatalities. 

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - Pussies, the lot of them. You could do two weeks straight and be fine. Three weeks. 

ENDURANCE [Medium: Success] - You *have* before, haven’t you. 

VOLITION - And look where that’s gotten you now, Harry. Alone, flat broke and missing half your brain. 

SUGGESTION [Trivial: Success] - You could go back anyway. What are they going to do, fire you? 

LOGIC [Easy: Success] - If they were to fire you, they would have a long, long time ago. 

RHETORIC - Really? Are you that pathetic that you have nothing better to do? No friends to visit? No hobbies? 

You - I could visit Lena. She’s always happy to see me. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Trivial: Success] - Ooh, maybe she’ll even bake you some of those delicious peanut oatmeal cookies!

EMPATHY [Medium: Success] - No, don’t trouble her again. You already dropped by yesterday, after leaving the Precinct, where you had been once again let off surprisingly early.

YOU - That’s right. We had just finished a case. I was trying to do the paperwork.

SUGGESTION - *Trying* being the operative term here, I think.

ESPRIT DES CORPS - Hunched over your little cubicle, staring at the pen in your hand. A hundred million miles away from the forms on the table.

PAIN THRESHOLD - The blood. There was just so much blood. The metallic, cloying salt-sweet smell throughout the whole room. The body on the rug. The young man, eyes glittering with malice, his expression as hard as flint. A sight that will stay with you for years, burned into your retinas. Loaded into the rotating display cabinet of your dreams. 

PRECINCT 41 - Back in the moment, while you were floating approximately four metres above your body and wildly disassociating, the lieutenant had seen the blank look on your face and swiftly completed the requisite case filing and incident report for the both of you. It barely even registered for you until a light touch landed on your shoulder. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Medium: Success] - Another, less objectionable rule of practice at the RCM. In order to reduce the administrative burden of policework, case reports do not need to be completed and filed in duplicate, provided that both attending officers sign off. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “All finished,” the lieutenant had said with a faint smile, looking down at you. “Now we may both be released to our homes.”

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Medium: Success] - He looked as tired and drained as you felt. And yet he would not leave you behind; did not stick you with the short shrift of finishing up the tedious paperwork. 

EMPATHY [Formidable: Failure] - You’d think he would have gotten sick of you by now. 

RHETORIC [Easy: Success] - Let’s be real, he probably didn’t trust you to have made an accurate report. That would have reflected badly on you both. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Legendary: Success] - In truth, the lieutenant did not want you to find yourself the last one to leave the Precinct, still fruitlessly trying to record all the terrible details - of the blood on the carpet, the extensive wounds, the serrated knife still hanging, limp in the woman’s hand. The empirical fact that you had, once again, arrived on the scene far, far too late. All of this recorded and filed. 

PAIN THRESHOLD - Just another number, another little cross on the ledger. Nobody fucking cares. 

ENDURANCE - And the quicker *you* stop caring, the easier it will be. 

SHIVERS [Challenging: Success] - A chill down your spine. The wind rises. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Formidable: Success] - In any event, the lieutenant is still quietly concerned about your general state of mental wellbeing. The recent exposure injury from the Pale, combined with your track record of an inability to exercise sound judgement or regulate your emotions - a disaster waiting to happen. 

EMPATHY [Medium: Success] - Regardless, knowing that he would take on this burden for you instead kindles a warmth somewhere deep inside. 

INLAND EMPIRE - However, as a result, you’re now wandering aimlessly on the streets of Jamrock, like a cut string fluttering in the breeze, all alone. 

CONCEPTUALISATION [Medium: Success] - Passing shadows of people moving in and out of view behind glass shopfronts remind you of goldfish, shimmering in a tank. You stand on the outside, always just looking in. 

A lingering sense of sadness creeps in, like slow morning fog.

YOU - Wait, am I all alone in the world? 

CONCEPTUALISATION - Well, Harry. Aren’t we *all* alone, in a way? 

SUGGESTION - Yes, but some of us are more alone than others. 

SHIVERS [Challenging: Success] - The wind rises higher still, whipping between the buildings with a mournful howl. Tin cans rattle like loose change trapped in narrow street gutters. Distant voices of children laughing. The overlapping sound of footsteps at a nearby pedestrian crossing. Somewhere, a young child is crying. A motor carriage door slams. A man shouts in recognition of a friend in the distance. 

SHIVERS - A localised constellation of a hundred thousand different lives, happening all around you. Moving inexorably forward.

CONCEPTUALISATION [Medium: Success] - The world moves on. Despite of you. 

ENDURANCE - Regardless of you and your failure. 

PAIN THRESHOLD [Formidable: Failure] - The woman’s blood, cold and congealing on your fingers as you tried in vain to find a pulse. The blood, the blood, the blood. You were too late. Much, much too late.

YOU - God, stop reminding me. I don’t want to think about this anymore. I don’t want to think about anything right now. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - That’s where *I* come in, sweet Harry-boy. And you’ve come to just the right place. 

YOU - 

1. Look up. 

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Easy: Success] - Your feet have taken you to the glass sliding door of the nearest Frittte!. The characteristic neon sign glows at passing pedestrians belligerently. 

VOLITION [Medium: Success] - Well, the second nearest one. You received a lifetime ban from the one directly downstairs from your apartment. 

DRAMA - A rude discovery that was, sire, to enter into the premises and have beheld thine own visage posted betwixt the words: *BANNED: NO ENTRY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES*. 

RHETORIC - Honestly, uncalled for. 

HALF LIGHT - Whatever you did to those flimsy little aisles and all that breakable glass and plastic wrapped foods, they probably deserved it. 

DRAMA - Simply it is an abhorrent injustice. For is a man truly at fault for crimes he cannot even remember? 

VOLITION [Medium: Success] - Uh, yes. I think that’s a yes. 

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Formidable: Success] - Luckily for you and the rest of the delinquents and unstable alcoholics of Jamrock, each Frittte! is owned by a separate franchisee, and clearly do not appear to share information with each other about who has been banned for life from which kiosque.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Hey, listen. Enough fucking around and wasting time. I’ve got a great idea. 

VOLITION - Don’t, he’s never had a single good idea. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - I didn’t say it was a *good* idea. I said it was a *great* idea. 

YOU - I’m listening…

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Hear me out. You go inside that Frittte! right now, spend all the money you have in your pockets right now on as much booze and smokes you can carry, and have a party. A real party. Real hard. 

YOU - That does sound pretty good. 

LOGIC [Medium: Success] - Hey genius, who do you think you are? Some kind of high-roller who can afford to get obliterated? You’ve spent all your money on the *last* attempt at total annihilation. Burned it all up. You’ve forgotten about that already?

INTERFACING - Sure you are a high-roller. Check those pockets. I’m sure you have *some* amount of reál. 

YOU - 

1. Just wing it. It’ll be fine.
2. [INTERFACING: Medium] Check anyway.

INTERFACING [Medium: Success] - You fish around in your back pockets, your front pockets, and your jacket pocket. You scrounge up the coins in your hand and…

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Trivial: Success] - You have a grand total of ✤7.50 to your name.

YOU - That’s…

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - No… Don’t tell me…no!!

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] - By the going market price of booze, that’s not enough to buy more than two, *maximum* three alcoholic beverages at your local kiosque. And that’s not factoring in *any* smokes at all.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - My disappointment is immeasurable. 

VOLITION - On the bright side, ✤7.50 is plenty for a meal or two. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Have you considered you could just… try and sneak away with a bottle or three. You know what I mean. 

INTERFACING - Yes. Get a little five-fingered discount on the booze. Give it the ol’ half-pinch action. 

SUGGESTION - Ooh, or you could say it’s for a case. As part of your police investigations. 

VOLITION - Goddamnit. Harry, if you get banned from the *second* nearest Frittte! in Jamrock, the *third* nearest one is all the way in North Couron. 

YOU - 

1. [INTERFACING: Formidable] Consider stealing some booze at the risk of receiving your second lifetime ban. 
2. [DRAMA: Legendary] Pretend you need the booze for a police investigation. 
3. [PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Formidable] Intimidate the store clerk into giving you some smokes.

INTERFACING [Formidable: Success] - Okay, Harry. Look around first. Scope out the area. 

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Challenging: Success] - A flash of orange close by catches your eye. 

PAYPHONE - Next to the Frittte! and tucked against the wall, a metal payphone stands under a faded orange plastic dome. The colour reminds you of something familiar. 

VOLITION [Easy: Success] - I hope I don’t need to remind you how disappointed the lieutenant will be if you get caught stealing. 

INLAND EMPIRE - What *does* the lieutenant do on his day off?

INTERFACING [Trivial: Success] - You could find out. Right now. 

EMPATHY [Challenging: Failure] - For reasons that are lost on you, the lieutenant had given you his phone number some weeks ago. 

Actually, it was the first night back from Martinaise - standing in the half-lit stairwell to your apartment, hastily scrawled on a strip of lined paper that he had folded and then neatly ripped from his blue notebook. 

"Here," the lieutenant had said to you. "You can call me on this number if necessary." 

And then he turned and walked away, back to the Kineema. 

INTERFACING [Medium: Success] - Your fingers have already memorised the dialling pattern. It was hard to resist, dialling in the numbers that night after Kim had gone home, just to see if it would work. Just to see if he would pick up. 

LOGIC [Trivial: Success] - And that’s how you found out that you don’t have a working landline. 

VOLITION - So instead, on nights you couldn't fall asleep, you found yourself dialling Kim’s number again and again, curled up by the dead telephone, just to hear the sound of the empty crackling of the phone line, the white noise washing over you like a steady tide. 

PAIN THRESHOLD [Easy: Success] - Something about the repetitive motion was familiar. Anchoring. The sound of white noise like ocean waves. 

VOLITION - It’s probably a little weird of you to have done that. 

PAYPHONE - The receiver seems to look at you expectantly. Waiting for you to come to a decision. 

YOU - 

1. Put 10 cents in and dial the number: 005-98-34-792.
2. Put 10 cents in and dial the number with your eyes closed.
3. [Leave.]

PAYPHONE - Calling…

PAYPHONE - Still calling…

PAYPHONE - End of tone. Someone picks up.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Hello?”

YOU - 

1. “Hey Kim.” 
2. “Wow, you actually picked up!”
3. “I missed you, Kim. Is that weird?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Everything all right, detective?”

YOU - “I’m…” 

VOLITION - Everything is, manifestly, not all right.  

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - What are you talking about! We’re fine. We’re so totally fine and cool. Everything’s great. 

INLAND EMPIRE - Consider this: your brain is a crumbling piece of hard cheese stuck in a washing machine spin cycle.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - Well, apart from that, we are totally doing great. 

YOU -

1. “Hi Kim. If they call the cops on the second closest Frittte! to my apartment in the next half hour, just know it wasn’t my fault.”
2. “I don’t think I’m in a good place right now. Up here.”
3. (Lie.) “Yeah I’m doing fine. There was no particular reason why I called you from a random payphone on your day off. Goodbye!” 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant is silent. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Medium: Success] - He doesn’t know how to take this. Are you asking for his help? Are you physically located somewhere unsafe and require assistance? Where are you right now? The lieutenant is aware that there is no working landline in your apartment. 

YOU - “Uh, mentally, I mean.” 

KIM KITSURAGI - Another long second passes as the lieutenant parses your attempt at clarification. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Formidable: Success] - It seems, from the sound of things, that you are not in any imminent danger. The lieutenant considers this situation for a moment, then appears to come to a decision. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “…would you want to come over and help me unpack?” 

REACTION SPEED [Medium: Failure] - What?

LOGIC [Challenging: Failure] - Huh? 

RHETORIC [Medium: Success] - If I’m not mistaken, it seems like the lieutenant sounds as surprised as anybody by the time he reached the end of that sentence. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Easy: Success]  - The lieutenant had moved to Jamrock to be closer to Precinct 41 shortly after his transfer request was approved. However, nobody at the MCU had seen the apartment, or even knew where it was - other than some vague descriptions the lieutenant had given about the relative proximity to Boogie Street.

VOLITION [Medium: Success] - Hurry up and *say something*. Don’t leave him hanging. 

REACTION SPEED [Trivial: Success] - Um, oh god, okay. 

YOU - 

1. “You uh…haven’t unpacked yet?”
2. “Sure, that’s probably a better call than contemplating stealing smokes and/or beer from a kiosque.”
3. “Anything would be better than going home to stare at drywall.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “The case started immediately after I moved in, so I haven’t really had the time.” 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Formidable: Success] - Sitting amid a nest of half-opened boxes, the lieutenant looks down at the phone cord he’s started picking at with his fingers. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “I was going to spend today doing it.” 

RHETORIC [Challenging: Success] - His voice, slightly distorted and crackly through the receiver, seems to take on a slightly defensive tone. 

PAYPHONE - A beat of silence, a delicate moment perched like a bird on the telephone wire between you. 

REACTION SPEED [Medium: Success] - Quick! Don’t make him feel like it was wrong of him to offer. 

YOU - 

1. “Thanks for the offer, Kim, but I feel like I’d just get in the way.” (Decline the invitation.)
2. “Alright. Sure! I’ll head out in a bit. What’s your address again?” (Accept the invitation.)

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant gives you the name of the intersection and the street number before hanging up. 

PAYPHONE - As you put the phone down, the receiver settles against the side of the payphone with a click. 

A soft breeze brushes against your hand, pushing gently at the spirals of the payphone cord. Around you, the street is quiet and watchful. 

COMPOSURE - Wait. Before you go on. What exactly *is* this? 

You - This is just two guys hanging out. We’re friends. This is a total non-event. 

LOGIC [Easy: Success] - Is it? You *know* the lieutenant is famously private about his personal life. 

YOU - Well, I’m just helping my partner out when we’re off duty. That seems normal. 

RHETORIC [Medium: Success] - I don’t know how much *help* you will be, given your extremely lacklustre efforts to clean up your own apartment. In fact, didn’t the lieutenant come and help *you* clean up all the trash and take all of your variously stained and smelly clothing to the laundromat? 

YOU - Why would he invite me over then?

INTERFACING [Trivial: Success] - Well, because now this is the perfect time to return the favour! 

DRAMA [Medium: Success] - Or, consider, sire, that this is a *date*. 

YOU - Hmm. A date?

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Formidable: Failure] - A date means a situation where you and another person are intentionally meeting to spend time with each other, in a special friendly way. 

YOU - Well, have I ever been on a date before?

SUGGESTION [Medium: Success] - Plenty, duh! 

VOLITION - Oh really. Name a single one. 

YOU - Lillienne! I asked Lillienne out on a date. We went for a walk. It was nice. She gave me a cool sword. 

INLAND EMPIRE - Is Kim going to give you a cool sword? 

LOGIC - I still don’t think this is right. 

VOLITION - Well, best be safe. Put on some of your nice clothes on your way there. 

YOU - Why? 

VOLITION - I don’t know, but it seems people pick outfits especially just to wear on a date. 

YOU - Hey, all my clothes are nice! 

RHETORIC - Be realistic, Harry, some of your clothes are nicer than others. 

YOU - Okay, fine. 

Task gained: Find out what a date is, but lowkey

What’s in a date? People are always *going* on dates. Having dates. Choosing clothes for dates. Eating food, talking, dating. If you like someone, you ask them out on a date. God help you if you know why exactly people do this. This must be an important social ritual that has fallen out of your brain along with the concept of money, books, and communism. Perhaps by gathering context clues and observing what other people do, you can remember what going on a date involves. 

—

KIM’S NEW APARTMENT - The door opens at your knock with the sound of a lock turning, followed by a click.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Hello, detective.” 

Instead of his usual outerwear, the lieutenant is wearing a grey knitted sweater, rolled up to his elbows, a pair of faded brown trousers — and house slippers. It sets something off in you, momentarily. He looks like a completely different person. Softer, somehow. His silhouette is thinner like this, narrow shoulders and long arms, pale hands bare and ungloved. 

VOLITION - You’ve never seen the lieutenant off-duty before. There’s something about it that feels intimate and secret. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Like the smell of your lover’s pillow. 

YOU - What? 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - What?

VOLITION - Shh, focus. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The light in the hallway reflects off the rim of his glasses. His eyes quickly track over your clean shirt and jeans, and then finally the plastic bag with two takeout boxes in your left hand.

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Medium: Failure] - A fleeting expression passes over his face, but you do not catch it.

EMPATHY [Medium: Failure] - He noticed you wore the god-ass pants! 

LOGIC [Easy: Success] - He looked at the jeans. It is more likely that the lieutenant is pleasantly surprised that you have appropriate clothes on. 

SUGGESTION [Trivial: Success] - He has reason to be — you have been known to walk around in broad daylight with only your underwear on. He has been witness to this more than once. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “You shouldn’t have,” the lieutenant said, nodding at the boxes of takeout you are holding before stepping aside to let you in. “You’re already doing me a favour—I could have treated us to lunch.” 

YOU - 

1. “It felt appropriate. For some reason. Maybe dating reasons?”
2. “I couldn’t afford to get obliterated on booze so I bought lunch for us instead.”
3. “It was on the way. I figured we might as well fuel up before we get going. May I?”

KIM’S NEW APARTMENT - The lieutenant had not been exaggerating. There are boxes *everywhere*. The surface area of the livingroom was almost entirely obscured by boxes and moving paraphernalia. Most were open, some half empty - sporadically unpacked, with clear paths negotiated between the structures of furniture and along the walls. Exactly as if a person had at one point methodically planned out how they were going to go about unpacking, but was subsequently derailed for a week or two and was forced to only open and take out the bare essentials to get by. 

EMPATHY [Medium: Success] - For someone as fastidious as the lieutenant, living like this for any amount of time must have been quite uncomfortable. 

INTERFACING [Easy: Success] - This? This is going to be *great*. 

KIM KITSURAGI - While you had placed the steamed rice and stir fry you picked up from the nearby Samaran takeaway joint on the small dining table, the lieutenant brought over an additional chair for the both of you to sit down. 

PERCEPTION (Smell) [Easy: Success] - Sesame oil, garlic, and soy sauce. Fragrant and savoury. 

KIM’S NEW APARTMENT - Sunlight filters in through a nearby window. Shafts of watery springtime sun, dust motes gently swirling. The smell of cardboard and packing tape. The feeling of a home, slowly unfolding, slowly becoming. 

INLAND EMPIRE - A home, yes, but not yours. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant eats neatly and with precision. Long clever fingers hold the disposable chopsticks easily. 

HAND/EYE COORDINATION [Trivial: Failure] - Best stick to the trusty plastic spork, Harry-boy. You’re going to get that all down your shirt if you try any more advanced manoeuvres. 

VOLITION [Medium: Success] - It seems like now may be a good time to “make conversation”.  

YOU - 

1. Tell Kim about your nightmares.
2. Tell Kim about a cryptid. 
3. Ask Kim about his stuff. 

YOU - “Hey Kim, do you want to hear about a new cryptid I’ve learned about from Lena?”

KIM KITSURAGI - A slight arch of his eyebrow. The lieutenant sets down his chopsticks and wipes his mouth on a paper napkin. “I suspect I might not have a choice in the matter,” he says, and leans back. 

DRAMA [Easy: Success] - He jests, sire. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Medium: Success] - He likes hearing about the cryptids. 

YOU - “So, in the alpine forests of Katla, there have been sightings of a winged rabbit - with horns, like a stag.”

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] - Lena had let you borrow a couple of past issues of newsletters from a quarterly subscription service she and Morell receive. An intersolary cryptozoology hobbyist type of magazine. Not that she would have agreed with the categorisation of ‘hobbyist’. 

YOU - “…some sightings have also reported the creature to also have fangs. The Katlans call it the Skvada — they believe that it’s a shy mischievous creature that lives among the tundra —”

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant watches you speak with a glimmer of something in his eyes. The corners of his mouth tip ever so slightly upwards. 

EMPATHY [Challenging: Failure] - He likes hearing you talk. It assures him that you’re not immediately about to have a mental breakdown. 

YOU - “…and, according to one Edvin Holström, who claims to have encountered multiple sightings of the Skvada, they reveal themselves to human visitors if they enter a specific stretch of the Ardan forest in the company of an attractive, single woman during the full moon.” 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant’s eyebrows have been steadily rising towards his hairline while he listens to you talk. He looks to be on the precipice of an absolutely monumental eye-roll. 

ENCYCLOPEDIA - And we haven’t even gotten to the best bit yet. Tell him!

YOU - “…allegedly, if the lady is accompanied by the “right man”, the Skvada will show itself.”

KIM KITSURAGI - And suddenly, the lieutenant is unable to contain his incredulity. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “Oh, come on, Harry. That’s got to be the flimsiest excuse for a pick-up line I’ve *ever* heard.”

VOLITION [Trivial: Success] - He is giving you a look that makes you feel a little like a melon at a supermarché.  

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Medium: Failure] - It’s believable enough, if you ask me. Women are creatures of mystery in and of themselves.

1. “But Kim, women are also strange mysterious beings - I can totally believe they have arcane connections with woodland cryptids.”
2. “Well, it’s clearly working for him, especially if people believe it.”
3. “Maybe he was good looking enough that the women all pretended to believe him.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Uh huh.” 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Easy: Success] - Translation: utterly ridiculous that you would subscribe to this kind of drivel. But somehow, kind of totally expected.

REACTION SPEED [Medium: Success] - Lightning fast, as you were talking, you notice the lieutenant’s eyes flick to your mouth, then back to your eyes.

COMPOSURE - Was he just…looking at your mouth? 

VOLITION [Medium: Failure] - Oh my god, *is* this a date? Do people do this on dates? Is this a super-special kind of date?

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Formidable: Failure] - Please don’t look at me. I can’t help you here.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Medium: Success] - Two guys can sit across from each other and look at each other’s mouths without it being a super *homo* date. It’s obvious. 

LOGIC [Easy: Success] - You probably just have sauce on your face. It’s fine.

—

CONCEPTUALISATION [Challenging: Success] - There’s something meditative in the work of unpacking. The methodical process of taking out, of placing, of deciding where to place the important items of one’s life. The anchoring points to where one calls home. 

INTERFACING - And, plus, you have inadvertently landed the rare opportunity to go through the lieutenant’s things.

KIM KITSURAGI - During this process, the lieutenant graciously allows you to pepper him with endless questions about his belongings. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS - Sometimes he even answers them. 

INTERFACING - And he lets you put the things wherever you want! 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Medium: Success] - Within reason. Only a lunatic would store spices in the drawer when there’s a cupboard clearly designated for spices *right* there. 

KIM’S NEW APARTMENT - Much to your interest and to the lieutenant’s chagrin, it has also been brought to light (very reluctantly on the lieutenant’s part) that he owns a small collection of comic books among the science fiction and military history novels that line the lieutenant’s small bookshelf. Stories of aeronauts and fighter jet pilots, zipping through the wide open skies. 

ENCYCLOPEDIA - You should ask to borrow those. They look fun. 

EMPATHY [Medium: Success] - He wanted to be a pilot, once upon a time. 

INLAND EMPIRE [Formidable: Success] - In another life, in another world, he would have been soaring. Into the wild blue yonder. 

INTERFACING [Easy: Success] - Other things of interest include: a modest collection of decidedly non-racist mugs, several faded racing jackets, and a small, mildly battered model aerostatic. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Formidable: Success] - It was a gesture of immense trust for the lieutenant - who has retained throughout the years only a small number of well loved, well kept things - to not only let you see all of this, but to indulge your questions, your observations, and to allow you to help unpack *and* place his things throughout the apartment.

VOLITION [Medium: Success] - Tread carefully, Harry. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Trivial: Success] - Or else.

EMPATHY [Medium: Success] - In truth, it was not hard to be careful with the lieutenant’s things. Every item had been precisely packed - and when unearthed, so many of his belongings showed clear signs of wear, but each was lovingly maintained and clean. Most pieces of clothing have been mended at least once. It seems that the lieutenant had also learned to do some light tailoring, often hemming his own trousers and adjusting waistbands to better suit his frame. It was hard *not* to see these things as an extension of the man himself. 

CONCEPTUALISATION [Formidable: Success] - What are we made of but the things that we own? The pieces of our lives, all brought forth together and carefully arranged on a shelf, in cupboards and along walls, or placed upon a dining table?

ENDURANCE - And what are the things that you are made of, Harry?

INLAND EMPIRE [Easy: Success] - You are made of things that turn to dust in the wind. 

INTERFACING [Medium: Success] - Ooh, look, we’ve found the lieutenant’s alarm clock. 

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Easy: Success] - It’s a faded orange, much like his standard bomber jacket. You have now found out he owns several very similar ones - including one in a sleek black, which you have never seen him wear.

CONCEPTUALISATION [Formidable: Success] - The lieutenant is working with a very limited colour palette. He should introduce some variety. Spice things up. He would look good in red. 

YOU - “Kim, I gotta say. We need to work on expanding your wardrobe. You’d look great in red, you know?”

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant had been leaning against a wall, quietly supervising as you rifle through his wardrobe. For some reason, at your words the tips of the lieutenant’s ears turn pink and he quickly excuses himself to the kitchen. 

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Easy: Success] - For a glass of water that he barely sips! 

RHETORIC [Formidable: Failure] - Strange. 

—

KIM’S NEW APARTMENT - By the time you help Kim pack down the last of the moving boxes, the evening light was beginning to line the room with shades of orange and gold. 

It strikes you then, all of a sudden, that the lieutenant has managed to productively and gainfully distract you for the better part of an entire day. 

AUTHORITY [Medium: Success] - He’s ruthlessly effective, you have to give him that. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “Well, detective. I have to thank you for giving me a hand with the unpacking. It would have taken much longer if it was just me.” 

KIM KITSURAGI - He pauses and surveys the room, hands on his hips. Expression perfectly neutral.

EMPATHY [Medium: Failure] - Oh god, he doesn’t like it. 

VOLITION [Easy: Success] - Relax. He’s just getting used to it!

INTERFACING [Trivial: Success] - He’s going to rearrange everything once you’ve left. 

EMPATHY [Trivial: Success] - He would at least wait until you have left, to spare your feelings. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Legendary: Success] - After you have gone, the lieutenant will find himself wandering through the newly unpacked apartment, uncomfortably adrift in the same silence he assumed he would have been craving by the end of all this. Instead, he will sit on the couch and look at your arrangement of his mugs on the kitchen counter, the uneven stacks of plates you placed in the cupboard. The row of books on his shelf, not alphabetically arranged like he would have done himself.

In the end, he won’t change a single thing. 

Chapter Text

PRECINCT 41, INFIRMARY — The dull white sheet crinkles beneath you as you sit on the only serviceable bed in the wing. 

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Easy: Success] - Somewhere on your left, Nix Gottlieb is clicking closed the orange clasps on a beaten up plastic box of medical supplies. He coughs and shuffles around a stack of paper. The scribble of a pen is loud in the silence. The doctor clears his throat. 

CONCEPTUALISATION [Medium: Success] - The sputtering of a phlegmy lawn mower. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Trivial: Success] - The winter chill does no good to a smoker’s lungs. 

NIX GOTTLIEB - “Well, good news is you’re not dying any faster than you were before you lost a fight with a bookshelf.” 

NIX GOTTLEIB - Over the thick black rims of his glasses, he is looking at you with an unimpressed expression. 

VOLITION - Join the queue, buddy.

SAVOIR FAIRE - Hey, that’s not fair - you didn’t lose a fight with a bookshelf! You just…made a miscalculation. 

ENDURANCE - And then fell down a flight of stairs, into some bushes. 

PAIN THRESHOLD - …and then got your foot stuck in a milk crate. 

INTERFACING - There could have been a clue behind that bookshelf! A hidden door! It was extremely suspicious! 

RHETORIC - Admittedly it was not the most dignified entrance. There are still leaves and twigs in your hair.

VOLITION - It could have been worse. The milk crate could still be stuck on your foot. 

EMPATHY [Medium: Success] - The lieutenant *was* sorely tempted not to help you remove said milk crate from said foot. 

INTERFACING [Medium: Success] - It’s true, he only relented on the account that it would have scratched the interior of the Kineema. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Challenging: Success] - It was actually more because you looked like you were about to cry. 

VOLITION - Because you *were* totally about to cry, weren’t you?

SUGGESTION - Kind of cringe, if we’re being honest. 

DRAMA - Never! You could never be cringe, my liege. Real men cry to express their normal *emotions*. 

VOLITION - No, you really need to get your shit together. Try to become more normal. 

YOU - What do normal people even do again? 

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Failure] - I think normal people might have hobbies. They have dinner with friends. Go out on dates. 

PRECINCT 41, INFIRMARY - Under the single fluorescent light, a slender, tall pot plant stands in the corner, against the wall. Long thin leaves, striped and pointing straight upwards. Dark green leaves with light grey-green cross banding, like the markings on a snake. 

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Formidable: Success] - A plant of the sansevieria genus, an evergreen perennial suited to arid climates. 

VOLITION - Hey, having a plant is an easy hobby, probably. Normal people probably have plants. 

YOU - “Do you think a plant will help me?” 

NIX GOTTLIEB - The doctor blinks, but is otherwise unfazed by the non-sequitur. 

NIX GOTTLIEB - “Help you with - what, exactly?”

RHETORIC - You can’t ask people if a plant will help you be more normal, Harry. 

SUGGESTION - Counterpoint. You *should* ask him. He’s the closest thing you’ve got to a therapist. 

NIX GOTTLIEB - A beat passes before Gottlieb decides he does not care nor have the time to wait for your answer. 

NIX GOTTLIEB - “I don’t know. Maybe. At this point you could try anything. Now would you please get out of my office?”

—

KIM KITSURAGI - Having escorted you back to the Precinct and cleaned up all the associated debris from your previous misadventure with the bookshelf, stairwell, bushes and milk crate, you find the lieutenant waiting just outside the infirmary. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Legendary: Success] - Leaning against the wall, nose buried in his notebook, the lieutenant is hard at work pretending he hasn’t been listening.

EMPATHY [Easy: Success] - He must be worried you might have hit your head again. 

YOU - “Kim?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Hmm?” 

KIM KITSURAGI - Upon your approach, the lieutenant stands, snaps his notebook shut and makes for the direction of the office cubicles. While walking, he inclines his head to indicate he has heard you. 

YOU - “My therapist said it’d be good for me. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about plants, would you?”

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant looks up at you at the mention of ‘therapist’. One eyebrow rises fractionally.  

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Formidable: Success] - Translation: Officer, I don’t think Gottlieb appreciates — 

JEAN VICQUEMARE - “FOR THE LAST TIME, HE’S NOT YOUR FUCKING THERAPIST.”

REACTION SPEED [Easy: Failure] - Why the fuck is everybody eavesdropping on you?

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant turns sharply towards the cubicles a few feet away. 

“Thank you for your input, Officer Vicquemare. Please excuse us.” 

JEAN VICQUEMARE - The sound of distant grumbling follows you around the corner. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant turns back to you, and the eyebrow rises higher still. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Medium: Success] - Translation: he’s not wrong. 

SUGGESTION - It should be studied by scientists, how much information the lieutenant can convey with one eyebrow. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant seems to think better of saying anything and resolves to simply shake his head. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Trivial: Success] - Being peripherally involved in that conversation was enough for him. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “Not particularly. But I do like the idea of you getting one.”

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Easy: Success] - Perhaps this may be helpful in finding something productive to occupy you with. 

RHETORIC - He’s into it! He’s into it, you’re into it. 

YOU - “I’m into it.” 

1. Ask Kim to help you buy a plant. 
2. [DRAMA: Formidable] Ask Kim to help you buy a plant, but in a cool way. 

DRAMA [Formidable: Success] - That’s it, my liege. Impress him with thine cocked hip and disco fingerguns. 

YOU - “Want to come plant shopping with me? You’re going to have to look at it every day too, since it’s going on my desk at the Precinct. I have to make sure it’s—” (Execute a chef’s kiss and hold out your arm in a flourish.)

YOU - “Kim-approved!” 

KIM KITSURAGI - “How very thoughtful.” 

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Easy: Success] - The corner of his mouth barely twitches into a smile. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Formidable: Success] - For reasons even he himself cannot fathom, he thought that was funny. 

+1 Morale 

—

BOOGIE STREET - On the Sunday you had agreed on with Kim, the midday sun traces over the buildings in pale winter light. 

SHIVERS - It follows the gratings of the windows, the bannisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the ripped and tattered flags. Every segment marked in turn with its soft touch, lining the edges of Revachol’s patchwork. 

INLAND EMPIRE - Like you, barely held together at the seams. 

YOU - Run your fingers through your hair. 

CONCEPTUALISATION - Like you, Revachol continues. Despite it all. 

SHIVERS - The city does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand. Your ungloved fingers ache in the cold air. 

YOU - What’s in the north? 

SHIVERS - A quiet intersection gives way to a small cobblestone square, a wall where old men sit and watch the young go by. Ghosts of desire become memories. 

PERCEPTION (Smell) [Challenging: Success] - And from further north, the smell of meat being cooked over fires of cherry wood and sprinkled with sweet marjoram drifts through the air. 

YOU - And in the east? 

SHIVERS - Cold winter sun glints off the copper clock, high on the barber's striped awning. Then the fountain with the nine broken jets, the statue of the hermit and the lion, the melon vendor's empty kiosk, the Mesque baths, the cafe at the corner, the dinghy alley that leads to the canals and the wharf. 

YOU - What is down by the wharf? 

SHIVERS - A steamboat with its boiler vibrating in the iron keel, the breeze already swelling the sails, not yet unfurled. A salt-tinged wind wraps itself around all the empty ports, awaiting the cargo shipments that the cranes unload on the docks. The dark green containers of Wild Pines, stacked in neat waiting rows. The taverns where crews of different flags break bottles over one another's heads at night, and the lighted, ground-floor windows of the overlooking appartements, where a woman braids her hair.

YOU - What is in the south?

SHIVERS - The horizon, where the pinnacles of skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red wind-socks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke. Grand Couron. And beyond that, the Eminent Domain looms. 

SHIVERS - The wind is cold on your face. 

THE DEAD-END SHOP - The tinkling of a small storefront bell brings you back to the end of the small road that curves sharply off from the main street. 

A quiet little shop with a narrow glass door and large display windows occupies the main real estate of this block. The display windows are lined with shimmering lumps of raw agate, onyx, chrysoprase, and other varieties of chalcedony; trinkets with exotic names from other isolas — Graadian snuff boxes with mother of pearl inlay; perfumes with etchings on the bottle of women bathing in the pool of a Oranjese garden. 

ENCYCLOPEDIA - Oranjese women who sometimes - it is said - will invite strangers to disrobe with them and chase them in the water.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Oh baby, *now* we’re speaking my language. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “Khm. Shall we head inside?”

ESPRIT DES CORPS - You’ve been standing in front of the door with a faraway look on your face for some time, officer. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant has one hand on the door, just under a faded “GARDEN SUPPLIES SOLD HERE” sticker. He gives you a look.

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Easy: Success] - Are you just going to stand there? 

AUTHORITY - Goddamnit. 

YOU -

1. Follow him inside.
2. [AUTHORITY: Formidable] Ignore him and ogle at the window for a little longer.

PERCEPTION - Inside, the immediate smell of sandalwood incense. Further into the shop, as advertised, earthenware pots hang from hand woven rope baskets. Planters of different shapes and sizes; bags of soil and fertiliser. A rack of little seed packets. And the plants themselves, leaves rustling quietly with the motion of the solitary ceiling fan. 

GOLDEN BARREL CACTUS - A stout green plant ringed with dense yellow clusters of unfriendly needle-sharp spines sits in a terracotta pot. 

INTERFACING - Pointy. Bad for the touching. 

PAIN THRESHOLD - Imagine the slender yellow needle, embedded in the delicate webbing between your fingers. 

CONCEPTUALISATION - What is the point of anything if we cannot reach out and touch? What is human connection but one hand in another? 

RHETORIC - Is a cactus seriously making you sad right now?

YOU - 

1. “Why would anyone get a cactus? Why would I want a plant to have the ability to hurt me?”
2. “Life is pain. This feels like a good metaphor.”
3. “Kim, this cactus is making me sad. It must be so lonely.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Impromptu weapon in case someone breaks in?” The lieutenant suggests. He is peering over your shoulder to inspect the handwritten label. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS - Pragmatic as always. The lieutenant does not believe in single-purpose items. 

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - Rubbish! You *are* the weapon. You don’t need a *guard cactus*.

HALF LIGHT - On the other hand… that doesn’t sound too bad. 

YOU- “A guard cactus! It would be easier to take care of than a dog…”

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant elects to make no comment. He is carefully inspecting the little shelf of individual seed packets. 

YOU - “Should I put googly eyes on it so it’s not too threatening?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Hmm.”

VOLITION - He’s not even listening! 

LOGIC - There’s nobody at home who could be threatened by a cactus anyway. And besides, wasn’t this supposed to be for the Precinct?

SUGGESTION - Okay, but hear me out. What if we *did* get a dog anyway?

YOU - “Wait Kim, what if I get a do—”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Let’s continue looking for a more suitable plant, shall we?” 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant turns and starts walking away. Pointedly.

SUGGESTION - I’ll take that as a “no”.

AUTHORITY - Oof, that’s stone cold. He didn’t even look at you! 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Whatever. Kim is such a square sometimes.  

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Easy: Failure] - In your distraction, you turn and almost walk face first into a wide, pointed green leaf the size of your face. 

ELEPHANT EAR PLANT - Four or five giant shield-shaped leaves fan out from long, thick stems that meet at the bottom in a large pot. They bob and sway gently from your touch, like ripples across still water. 

YOU - Run your hand along the textured surface gently. 

INTERFACING - Ooh. That’s nice. 

YOU - “Now this is a plant you can pet.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “That,” the lieutenant warns, having now rejoined your side and is eyeing the tall foliage with some apprehension, “is not going to fit in my Kineema, detective.” 

THE FLORIST - “Are you two looking for something in particular?”

An older woman appears from the end of the aisle, holding a worn tin watering can. She is wearing a pink and white floral vest buttoned over a burgundy long-sleeve shirt, and is peering at you over the rims of her glasses. Her grey hair, white at the temples, is tied back in a loose bun.

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant greets her with a polite smile. 

CONCEPTUALISATION - What *is* it that we are looking for? What are any of us looking for?

VOLITION - Please don’t bother this poor woman with more existential questions. Just ask about the plants.

YOU - 

1. “What could anybody be looking for in this life?”
2. “Something suitable for a first-time plant owner…I think?” 

THE FLORIST - She nods. “How much light do you get?” 

LOGIC [Medium: Failure] - Like, in general? Probably not enough. You should get more of that vitamin D.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Not a lot,” the lieutenant says, after a sideways glance at you. “We’ll need something that can survive in low light, fairly far from the windows.”

VOLITION - Thank goodness you asked him to come along!

EMPATHY - You’re right, it’s always better with the lieutenant around. 

THE FLORIST - The shopkeeper points down the cramped aisle and gestures toward the left. “Toward the end there. Pothos or ZZ plants would be good options. Or snake plants. They’re all very forgiving.”

THE FLORIST - She then holds a pointer finger up to your face, somewhat accusatively. 

CONCEPTUALISATION - Like she already knows you’re going to kill everything you touch. 

THE FLORIST - “Just don’t overwater—rookie mistake. It’s the number one plant killer.” 

YOU - 

1. “Lady, how did you know that I kill everything I touch?”
2. “That’s me, plant killer, at your service.”
3. “I’ll try my best, m’am.”
4. (Nod your thanks and let her go about her business.)

THE FLORIST - She smiles at you, before disappearing from view. You can hear the water sloshing in her watering can as she walks away. 

YOU - You follow her directions and slowly make your way to the end of the aisle, avoiding any further plant collisions. Dozens of different little seedlings stacked together in neat rows give way to small to medium sized planters, housing a variety of glossy-leafed plants. Each has a little handwritten tab taped onto the side.

YOU - “ZZ, snake plant…”

ENCYCLOPEDIA - Zamioculcas is a genus of flowering plants in the family Araceae, containing the single specifies Zamioculcas zamiifolia - otherwise known as the ZZ plant, Zuzu plant, aroid plan, eternity plant and emerald palm. It is grown as an ornamental plant, mainly for its attractive glossy foliage and easy care.

CONCEPTUALISATION - I don’t like this one. It doesn’t look very unique. Kinda just like any old shrub.

LOGIC - What are you expecting it to look like? It’s a plant! 

YOU - “What was the other one again?”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Pothos,” the lieutenant answers absentmindedly, glancing at the shelves. His gaze lingers upon the pointed, waxy green heart shaped leaves that unfurl from a small nursery pot.

LOGIC - Huh. Interesting. The lieutenant has not shown an interest in, or knowledge of houseplants until this point.

YOU - “Thought you didn’t know anything about plants, Kim.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “I…khm. I actually knew someone who owned one.”

KIM KITSURAGI - He doesn’t look at you, and doesn’t elaborate any further.

SHIVERS - A tickle of something cold across the back of your neck.  The hairs on your arm rise. 

YOU - 

1. Breathe in. Let the sensation wash over you.
2. Shake the shivers off. [Discard thought.]

YOU - You take a deep breath, and close your eyes.

SHIVERS - In a room you’ve never been in, a tall man with light brown hair is watering a pothos plant. The dark glossy leaves cascade down the length of the tall bookshelf it sits on top of. His eyes are warm as he smiles down at another man seated on an armchair, and the small cat he is holding in his lap. His eyes are a green-grey, with a touch of gold. You cannot see the other man’s face.

YOU - Who is he? Was that Kim?

SHIVERS - A chill runs down your spine.

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Legendary: Success] - In a little graveyard at the back of a church in the Greater Revachol Industrial Harbour, a clutch of buttercups stand with their heads bowed, placed next to a freshly swept headstone.  Little patches of moss are starting to grow between the cracks in the stone.

YOU - When you open your eyes again, the lieutenant is still examining the plant, gently picking up a leaf between a thumb and forefinger.

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Formidable: Success] - A memory has caught him off guard. Something he hasn’t thought about in months, maybe years. 

YOU - 

1. [VOLITION: Godly] “Who was it that died, Kim?”
2. “How do you feel about pothos, then?”

VOLITION [Godly: Failure] - Idiot! Don’t ask him that!

EMPATHY - He’ll tell you when he’s ready. 

YOU - “How do you feel about pothos, then?”

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant turns and gives you a considering look. He doesn't look sad. Pensive, almost.

KIM KITSURAGI - “If you’re asking whether or not I object to the appearance of a pothos plant, then the answer is no. I think it’d be a fine choice, detective.”

—

COUPRIS KINEEMA - The proud owner of a nursery-sized pothos plant, you place your new acquisition on the floor of the Kineema. The tender baby leaves rustle and bob, moving as the wind picks up around you. You gently close the door shut.

BOOGIE STREET - In the early Jamrock evenings, when the days are short and the multicoloured lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls, the sound of chatter and laughter can be heard from the terraces above. Like reflections across the water, the city is ever-changing. Night will soon fall. Your stomach rumbles.

YOU - "I'm starving. How about dinner?"

KIM KITSURAGI - He hesitates.

REACTION SPEED [Medium: Success] - He's about to decline!

ESPRIT DES CORPS [Easy: Success] - The lieutenant is frugal at the best of times, and is baulking at the prospect of eating out on his day off. 

YOU -

1. “My treat!”
2. "Aw Kim, don't be so stingy. Have some fun once in a while!"
3. "That's totally fair and I would hate to make you do anything you don't want to, Kim. Because I respect you as a person."

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant blinks, taken aback.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Are you sure, detective? That plant wasn’t exactly cheap…though your haggling skills were rather impressive.”

The corners of his eyes crinkles in an invisible smile. 

VOLITION - Yes. He has a good point. *Are* you sure?

EMPATHY - Of course you are! That's what you do on a date, right? 

YOU - Wait, wait, not this again. Is this really another date? Aren't we just colleagues hanging out on the weekend?

VOLITION - I mean, it very well could be a date. You intentionally asked him to spend time together with you, doing an activity just for the two of you. Plus, eating food together is a thing that people often do on dates.

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Easy: Success] - And if this is a date, then whoever asks for the date should pay the bill. This is one of the well known tenets of dating etiquette. 

YOU - Okay, fine, if you guys all think so. I guess I did save some money from the expert haggling I did back then.

VOLITION - I am positive this is the right thing to do and nothing could possibly go wrong.

YOU -

1. “This is completely fine and expected behaviour on a date, no?”
2. “I’m the one who asked you to come out this time so it’s only right.” 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant seems surprised, but does not decline your suggestion.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - WOOHOO, BABY! A ONE DAY TICKET TO DATE-TOWN!

ENCYCLOPEDIA - Shut up, idiot. You don’t even know what that means.

ELECTROCHEMSTRY - Not any more than *you* know, Bookhead. 

LOGIC [Medium: Failure] - Well, a reciprocated dinner invitation is *undeniably* part of dating.

VOLITION - It seems that the ongoing dating side-investigation remains a work in progress.

Task updated: Find out what a date is, but lowkey

Figuring out this whole ‘dating’ thing might be a little more complicated than you had first imagined. Be patient - this particular side quest may take a while.

-

PRECINCT 41, MAJOR CRIMES UNIT - A couple of days later, your newly acquired friend takes pride of place on your desk. You've named him Larry. You water him once a week.

CONCEPTUALISATION [Medium: Failure] - Not our finest moment. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The first time the lieutenant walks over and spots the two googly eyes glued onto the lip of Larry's pot, he almost, *almost* laughs loud enough to be heard.

Chapter Text

PRECINCT 41 - The sound of sleeting rain slams loudly against the corrugated iron on the domed roof. 

SHIVERS - The city sighs, whispers, breathes in. Like moonlight, a bright flow of water in the gutters, the streets winding about themselves like a skein. 

CONCEPTUALISATION - A thousand little drummers, marching in the dark. 

SUGGESTION - Cold, very cold, very wet. The kind that seeps into your bones, the creases of your skin. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The sound of the lieutenant’s heavy leather boots clunking behind you was reassuring, just one step behind as you made your steady descent into the unlit depths of the basement. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “Thanks again for helping out,” the lieutenant’s voice echoes from somewhere further above. 

AUTHORITY - Of course you’re helping the lieutenant. You’d do anything he asked, wouldn’t you? 

HALF-LIGHT - Anything. Just tell me where to aim, and I’ll shoot. 

VOLITION - Hey, can you guys be normal for just one second? Nobody is getting shot. Nothing is happening. 

HAND-EYE COORDINATION [Easy: Success] - After perfunctorily slapping your hand against the wall at the landing, muscle memory kicks in and your finger finds the light switch. 

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Trivial: Success] - The halogen lights activate with a gentle buzzing and popping sound. The basement is illuminated to reveal a series of dusty shelving units, each stuffed to the brim with identical plastic crates and in varying stages of dilapidation and disrepair. Handwritten labels are stuck haphazardly across the face of each box with yellowed masking tape that were all beginning to peel forlornly from their original positions. 

THE CITIZENS MILITA ARCHIVES - The crates are filled with evidence, paperwork, and general unused RCM supplies. Each Precinct is expected to maintain an archival filing system of some sort, although without proper guidelines or, indeed, any kind of enforcement, organisational standards vary wildly. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant is looking at a three-shelf-sized gap in one of the rows of shelving. 

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Medium: Success] - Several decades of nobody bothering to sweep has left a very obvious rectangular accumulated dust impression of where shelves used to be. There are still shards of plywood on the ratty, worn grey rug that covers part of the exposed concrete flooring.

VISUAL CALCULUS [Challenging: Success] - The remains of a shelf. Age and moisture as well as aggressive overstacking of evidence crates on the other shelves indicate that the missing shelves were likely a victim of the same. 

CONCEPTUALISATION [Easy: Success] - Poor little shelf, collapsing under the weight of all our expectations. One can only hold on for so long, after all. 

INLAND EMPIRE - Everybody’s got a breaking point. 

PERCEPTION (Smell) [Trivial: Failure] - The musty smell of the basement is familiar to you. Oddly comforting. 

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Filing is for squares. This was primo real estate, for times where you need to sleep off hangovers without the Captain or Jean finding where you’ve disappeared to. 

VOLITION - It’s a nice change to be here whilst still cogent. It’s nice to be down here with Kim, just the two of you. 

EMPATHY [Challenging: Failure] - It’s like a date. It’s been a while since Kim invited you over to his apartment. Perhaps him inviting you to build a shelf with him in the dusty RCM basement is the same kind of thing. 

Task updated: Find out what a date is, but lowkey

Hiding a smile from you amidst towering piles of cardboard boxes. Crossed legs over a table of shared takeaway. A single pot plant that he remembers to water more often than you do, leaves gently unfurling in the morning sun.

Something the two of you are doing, alone, together. 

YOU - “No need to thank me! It’s been a while, so I’m glad we’re doing this.”

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant blinks at you owlishly, uncomprehending. 

YOU - *Are* you meant to thank people for going on a date with them? 

EMPATHY - You’re right to thank him. He could have asked anybody at the Precinct. The junior patrol officers would be falling over themselves to impress the lieutenant. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS - Now, officer. Are you just talking about yourself again? 

YOU - Maybe. Okay. Fine. 

PERCEPTION (Sight) [Medium: Success] - In contrast to the splotchy yellow and grey shelving units, stacked in a neat pile against the far wall are a set of three much newer looking cardboard boxes, long, thin and rectangular.  Waiting to be opened, like a present. 

INTERFACING - Enough standing around, then. Let’s go crack ‘er open.

KIM KITSURAGI - Whilst you are rummaging around in the dimly lit room in search of tools, the lieutenant heads for the boxes, pushing and lifting each of them methodically and placing them flat on the ground. 

SPARE TOOLBOX - Tucked away in the back corner of the room, on a tiny and equally dusty office desk, sits a small utility toolbox. The selection within is pitiful, but you fish out two promising candidates. 

YOU - “Ah ha!” 

Item gained: Old box knife

Item gained: Very dull and tiny scissors

YOU - Emerging victorious, you bring your finds to the lieutenant, each on an open palm, like you’re about to perform a coin trick. 

HAND-EYE COORDINATION - Pick a card, any card— 

KIM KITSURAGI - The corner of his mouth lifts a fraction; almost an indulgent smile. 

ESPRIT DES CORPS - Your brain-damaged quirks are oddly endearing. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant selects the box cutter, balanced across the flat of your right hand. 

Item lost: Old box knife

LOGIC - That pair of scissors looks like something a child might own. Baby’s First Scissors. 

YOU - While you hack uselessly at the boxes with your blunt toy scissors, the lieutenant is neatly slicing through the other strips of tape used to seal each box. The scissors snap in your hand after a few minutes of blunt-forcing your way through the cardboard lid.

Item lost: Very dull and tiny scissors

THE CITIZENS MILITA ARCHIVES - The room is filled with the satisfying sound of tearing cardboard. The click of the box cutter sliding into place. The metallic sound of the blade. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “Khm. Detective - may I?”

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant graciously allows you the honour of pulling the shelving components out of their packaging whilst he finishes the job with the only working blade between the two of you. 

EALIAG INSTRUCTIONAL ASSEMBLAGE BOOKLET - Lying on the ground, having slipped out of the layers of flat packed furniture, was a plain white booklet with a simple line diagram of a wire shelving unit on the cover. 

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Failure] - What’s with these weird instructions? They’re all numbered diagrams, but there isn’t a single line of text. Do they think you can’t read?

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - I have it on good authority that we’ve read at least three books. That’s enough reading for anybody. 

YOU - “Huh. There aren’t any words.”

CONCEPTUALISATION - There’s a strange little man with vacant eyes and a big smile, too. He’s showing you that you need to lift from the knees. Use a flat surface to hammer. 

EMPATHY - He seems nice. Very helpful. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant doesn’t even bother looking over. “It’s so they can use the same set of instructions no matter where their products are shipped, regardless of the language spoken there.” 

CONCEPTUALISATION - Ingenious! 

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Failure] - The lieutenant really has answers to all the mysteries of the universe. 

KIM KITSURAGI - Ignorant of your constant, irrepressible percolating, the lieutenant leans over and plucks the booklet out of your hand. He briskly reviews the outlined process with a practiced eye. 

KIM KITSURAGI - “The instructions for this shelf are pretty straightforward though. We start with these.” He nods to the pile of steel rods and moves to pick one up. The lieutenant fishes a rounded plastic piece out of a smaller bag and fiddles with it for a moment before attaching it to the end of a steel rod. 

INTERFACING - Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Give that here. We’ll be finished in no time. 

1.  [INTERFACING: Medium] Start assembling furniture.

INTERFACING [Medium: Success] - Copying the friendly little man in the diagram, you grab the closest metal rod with your left hand and slide it through your fist to position it at a better angle, concentrating on where it joins to a shorter flat piece on the other side. 

HAND-EYE COORDINATION - There. Perfect. 

PERCEPTION (Sound) [Trivial: Success] - There is a loud clang as the lieutenant drops the steel rod he was holding. 

INTERFACING - It sounded like he threw that thing down on the ground! Was it broken somehow?

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant is not looking at you. He is busily clearing the pile of discarded packaging and plastic wrapping, folding them down and stuffing them into a trashbag. The tips of his ears are a little pink. 

EMPATHY [Legendary: Failure] - Hmm. That's weird. 

—

THE CITIZEN’S MILITA ARCHIVES — There’s a metaphor in this, somewhere. Just the two of you, secreted away from the bustle and noise of Boogie Street, far from the rush of motorcars on the highway out in Jamrock; out of sight and mind from your fellow officers at the precinct — in this little underground room, hidden from the rest of the world. In a forgotten dusty corner, trying to build something new. Putting together pieces of something that will become a larger whole. When Martinaise was quarantined from the rest of Revachol during that awful, bloodied first week. When you fell apart (again) and the lieutenant was the only one there to scrape you off the floor of the Whirling in Rags and hold your wretched disgusting pieces together with a determination you still do not deserve.

INLAND EMPIRE - Not the first time. Not the last. 

YOU - You look down at the shelf before you.

YOU - Ah, fuck. 

VOLITION - Harry, are you able to go a single day without having a nervous breakdown? 

YOU - “Kim, I think I’ve messed something up.” 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant leans towards you to inspect your work. He looks at the wire grid that makes up the shelf’s surface, and follows the right angle it makes at the edge. He then looks to a similar spot on the shelf before him, where the same edges went down instead of up. 

VISUAL CALCULUS [Trivial: Failure] - The shelf, it’s— 

KIM KITSURAGI - “The shelf is upside down.” 

VISUAL CALCULUS - Yep. I was going to say that. 

VOLITION - Stupid failure. Useless. Can’t do anything right, can you?

-1 Morale 

YOU - “I feel like you would’ve been better off without my help.”

VOLITION - In the time that you had fucked up this shelf, Kim could have finished building the same shelf. Why does he even bother keeping you around?

INLAND EMPIRE - Dust gathers in fistful sized piles in the corners of the room. Your mind, an abandoned storeroom. A sinking feeling in your chest. Why does anybody bother keeping you around? 

KIM KITSURAGI - Sensing your growing spiral of despondency and self-hatred, the lieutenant nods thoughtfully toward the incriminating, hateful, despondent shelf in front of you.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Not at all, detective. I doubt I would have even started on the second shelf by this point, let alone be practically finished with all three.”

ESPRIT DES CORPS - Above all, inexplicably, he is glad for your company.

KIM KITSURAGI - “It’s an easy fix. No harm done.”

DRAMA - He speaks the truth, sire. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant deftly unscrews two of the joining points and efficiently pops the grid on the correct way. 

CONCEPTUALISATION - He's always putting things back together again. He's good at doing that. These days the chief subject of repair in the care of Lieutenant Kitsuragi has been you, and the disasters that you leave in your wake, furniture-related or otherwise. 

YOU - Tears prick at the edges of your eyes. Your face burns.

1. [VOLITION: Formidable] Blink them back. You have a job to do.
2. "Why are you always so nice to me, Kim?"

VOLITION [Formidable: Success] - You take a deep breath, and shake your head to clear it.  At the lieutenant's direction, you help him carry all three assembled units over to their designated space.

EALIAG THREE SET SHELVING UNIT - Newly assembled, the shelves sit, quietly, shiny metal gleaming in the unflattering fluorescent halogen light of the basement. Waiting to be put to use. 

1. Kick the shelf. Fuck it.
2. Give the shelf a pat. Welcome home, little shelf.  You live here now.

EALIAG THREE SET SHELVING UNIT - The shelves feel sturdy under your fingertips. You give all three shelving units a companionable pat each, like patting each of your children on the head. There is a dull metallic echo as you do so. Tap, tap, tap. You move to fetch the first crate of many that have been stacked neatly on the floor to the side. 

EMPATHY - Remember what the little smiling man told you! Bend with your knees, lift with your back! 

INTERFACING - It feels good to be doing some brainless physical labour. Bend, lift, push. No thinking required. Bend, lift, push. Repeat. And repeat. Over, and over. `

ENDURANCE - The muscles in your thighs burn pleasantly as you squat down and heft each surprisingly heavy crate up between your arms. You push each of them neatly onto the shelves, starting from the bottom level. You try and keep them aligned.

HAND-EYE COORDINATION - Hey, *this* is something you can't fuck up. 

+1 Morale 

KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant stands apace and watches with his hands behind his back, giving you a wide berth.

VISUAL CALCULUS - The clearance between the shelves and the wall is narrow. It makes sense that one person should be doing the loading. 

EMPATHY [Medium: Success] - Well, he *could* be handing you the crates so you don't have to be doing all the walking and bending as well as all of the lifting and stacking. 

KIM KITSURAGI - Seeming to realise the same, the lieutenant seems to snap to attention and starts tidying up some files and papers that had fallen on the floor, presumably out of a crate from one of the nearby shelves. 

YOU - All this physical exertion is making you sweat. The arms of your long-sleeves are getting in the way. 

1. [Roll up your sleeves and wipe your forehead.]

YOU - You wipe your forehead with the fabric at your wrist before unbuttoning the cuff of your standard issue button up long-sleeve uniform.  You give it a fold or two before losing patience, crumpling up the remaining fabric and pushing it up your bicep as far as it will go.  

VOLITION - Real childish. That's not how a grown man rolls up their sleeves.

PERCEPTION - The room has grown surprisingly silent.

YOU - What's Kim doing?

When you look up, one hand still trying to haphazardly shove up the sleeve of your other arm, the lieutenant is looking right at you. His eyes are dark and unreadable. His lips are slightly parted, as if in mild shock.

KIM KITSURAGI - After a few beats, the detective startles as if jolted. He quickly turns and steps towards the next crate, making to go pick it up.

PERCEPTION - You watch as, almost as if in slow motion, moving through honey, the lieutenant's booted foot catches on the slippery pages of the instructional assemblage booklet that you had accidentally left lying on the ground. 

VOLITION - Oh no. 

INTERFACING - You sense it before it happens. You see the gravity of his body shift, the line of his back tense as the lieutenant instinctively reaches for a shelf to stabilise himself, but misses.

REACTION SPEED - No! 

1. [VOLITION: Easy] Catch him.
2. [PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Medium] Catch him!
3. [REACTION SPEED: Formidable] Catch him!!

REACTION SPEED [Formidable: Success] - You lunge forward almost before the thought finishes and manage to get an arm around the lieutenant before he hits his head on the cold cement floor. The fabric of his jacket crinkles under your arm. He's surprisingly heavy for how slight he appears to be.

In this position, you are almost hovering directly over the lieutenant, with an arm braced at the small of his waist. You can see the minute stubble at his lip, the sheen of sweat on his forehead. The strands of his dark hair that he slicks back with gel. The glimmer of his glasses. The suggestion of collarbones under the white cotton v-neck shirt. 

INLAND EMPIRE - Like you've just dipped your dance partner in the middle of a routine. You should be holding a rose between your teeth. 

PERCEPTION (Smell) - The lieutenant smells clean, like oranges and fresh linen. You want to bury your nose in it.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Woohoo! Well this is delicious, isn't it. Let's get a little bit more comfortable, shall we? 

KIM KITSURAGI - In your arms, the lieutenant was as if he were made of stone. You didn't even realise it was possible to be so stiff when almost horizontal, lying in somebody else's arms.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - The lieutenant must have *very* powerful core muscles.

EMPATHY [Medium: Failure] - Oh god, shut the fuck up, he hates you. 

KIM KITSURAGI - The moment lasts at most three, four seconds. Without saying a single word, the lieutenant coughs and pushes almost violently at your arms until he is out of your grasp and standing some distance away.

EMPATHY [Legendary: Failure] - Like he's disgusted by you. His shoulders are rigid as he tugs at his jacket to straighten the rumpled edges.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Khm…thank you, detective. I believe we are all finished here."

ESPRIT DES CORPS - We are never speaking of this again.

KIM KITSURAGI - He pointedly does not look at you.

DRAMA - This isn't a very good date at all, my liege. I would go as far as to venture that it would be rated *zero* stars.

VOLITION - Lieutenant Kitsuragi is clearly uncomfortable. *You* have made him uncomfortable with your dramatic diving and catching of him. This is all your fault. 

THE CITIZEN’S MILITA ARCHIVES - You miserably and wordlessly follow Kim back out of the storage room, and dutifully flick the light switch off on your way out. The room is plunged back into darkness. 

INLAND EMPIRE - Like you were never even there at all.