Work Text:
PRECINCT 41: It is always quiet after dark within the curving walls of the former silk mill—quieter, now that the Moralintern’s budget cuts have more than halved the night shift.
SHIVERS [Challenging: Failure] — The sky is blue with moonlight. If it were a different night, the roof would rattle with the force of an oncoming front. High overhead, cirrostratus clouds announce the arrival of a new pressure system, but for now, there is no wind in Jamrock. There is nothing but the biting cold of early spring. The chill that creeps in from the old mill chimneys has been trying to get your attention, but you haven’t been listening.
YOU: You blink hard, twice, until the page in front of you stops blurring. You know there’s an answer here somewhere.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Challenging: Failure] — It is not the only voice you’ve been tuning out today. You’ve been singlemindedly focused on this case.
INLAND EMPIRE [Easy: Success] — It’s not like you. It’s usually impossible for you to be singleminded about anything.
EMPATHY [Easy: Failure] — If you were somebody else—a stranger, a person you could build rapport with—you would be able to figure out what was wrong.
VOLITION [Heroic: Success] — What’s wrong with a little focus?
KIM KITSURAGI: “Harrier.”
He’s standing beside your desk. You don’t know when he got there.
HALF LIGHT [Easy: Success] — You’re never Harrier at work, just like you’re never Detective at home. You’re in trouble.
REACTION SPEED [Heroic: Failure] — Shit. Fuck. Something changed, but you missed it. When?
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — A rush of adrenaline makes your pulse hare-gallop in your throat.
CHESTER MCLAINE: “Uh oh!” the sergeant singsongs from where he’s sitting with his feet up on his desk.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Oh, I have your attention now?” he asks. His tone sounds casual, almost friendly.
HALF LIGHT [Easy: Success] — It’s not either of those things.
SUGGESTION [Medium: Success] — It’s also not a rhetorical question.
YOU: You nod, looking up at him.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Good,” he says, biting off the word like it displeases him to say it. He puts one hand on your desk; it’s just his regular gloved hand, but the warning in the deliberate movement is so loud he may as well have a knife in it. His eyes haven’t left yours since he first got your attention. “I am going to file this paperwork,” he says, speaking lowly, his tone crisp. “It will take me no more than ten minutes. I expect you to be waiting in the passenger seat of the R20 by the time I get there.”
LOGIC [Medium: Failure] — He interrupted you now, to tell you to be ready in ten minutes? Why didn’t he tell you ten minutes from now? You should ask him. Immediately.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — Read the room. I’ll tell you later.
KIM KITSURAGI: He leans closer, his weight on your desk. His eyes are glittering.
EMPATHY [Trivial: Success] — He’s furious.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Is that understood?” His tone isn’t just crisp; it could freeze mercury.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA [Challenging: Failure] — Mercury freezes at… you know what? It’s probably not the right moment to recall it. Let’s table this fact for a more appropriate time.
KIM KITSURAGI: He says, “Lieutenant double-yefreitor Du Bois, is that understood?”
REACTION SPEED [Challenging: Failure] — Another missed cue. Shit. Fuck!
DAMAGED MORALE (+1)
YOU: “Yes,” you say. He doesn’t take his weight off your desk, or his eyes off yours. He’s waiting for something else. You swallow and wet your lips, trying to get some moisture back so you can speak. “Sir,” you add, belatedly, quiet enough that the rest of C-Wing can’t hear it.
AMIS PROCHES [Challenging: Success] — You spot the slightest crinkle in the skin around his eyes. Part of him—probably a very small part, right now—is pleased that you said ‘sir.’
KIM KITSURAGI: “Good,” he says. And he leaves.
YOU: You stay where you are and watch him go. Your mouth is dry.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Trivial: Success] — You have something of a fear boner.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA [Easy: Success] — This is among the range of normal physiological responses to a rush of adrenaline.
YOU: Ten minutes? That’s forever. Why ten minutes?
1. HALF LIGHT [Easy]: Ten minutes to get your affairs in order. He’s going to kill you. (Write a will)
2. PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Medium]: Ten minutes to get a head start! (Start running)
3. ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Challenging]: He gave you ten minutes to get yourself cleaned up. He’s going to fuck you. (Head to the bathroom)
4. AUTHORITY [Heroic]: Ten minutes to keep working. (Focus on the case)
YOU: Two minutes have elapsed since Kim left. You grab some items from your desk drawer that probably aren’t appropriate to keep in your desk drawer, and demonstrate your instinct for self preservation by heading to the bathroom.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — Hear ye! New tidings from your basolateral amygdala!
YOU: Ho, traveller! What news?
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — Kim has officially conditioned you to respond to certain words and tones of voice. As one would a dog.
AUTHORITY [Heroic: Failure] — He calls you Harrier, and you scamper away to prepare your ass.
DRAMA [Easy: Success] — Physically… and emotionally.
FRIDAY:
- Be waiting in the passenger seat of the R20 in ten minutes
Clean yourself up.
YOU: You wash your hands with nearly two minutes to spare.
THE MIRROR: Out of the corner of your eye, a spectre haunts you. The haggard specimen hisses:
Overwork. Fatigue.
YOU:
1. EMPATHY [Impossible]: Oh, god. What is wrong with me?
2. ENDURANCE [Legendary]: Avoid looking in the mirror.
ENDURANCE [Legendary: Success] — You’re fine!
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Challenging: Success] — Fine? You’re running exclusively on nicotine, caffeine, and cortisol. During the day, it’s a heady combination of a pounding heart and a tight feeling in your chest; at night, a restless cocktail of nausea and sleeplessness. If you want to come back to work refreshed tomorrow, you’ll need alcohol to soften the edges.
VOLITION [Challenging: Success] — No. You’re fine. You can do this sober.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Medium: Success] — The lieutenant-yefreitor is filing paperwork, as promised, and dealing with a douche of his own; Chester McLaine leans through the door of the archive room.
“How do you get him to fucking do that?” the sergeant asks.
“Do what?” Kim asks. He sounds mild.
Chester gestures. “Any of it, man,” he says. “Going home before midnight, showing up before nine? Showering regular? Jean never could.”
Kim says, still mildly, “It might be that you’ve confused my influence upon my partner with that of sobriety.”
Chester opens his mouth to speak.
Kim continues as though he hasn’t. “Let me make this clear, sergeant; I don’t manage Lieutenant-double-yefreitor Du Bois. He is more than capable of doing that himself.” He closes a file with a snap. “I set clear expectations, and I am firm about the consequences for failing to meet them.”
“And that works?” Chester says, fascinated. He has so far missed several warning signs.
“Yes,” Kim says. “Because I follow through on my threats.” When he looks up, his gaze freezes Chester in place. “So, if you think you’ve earned the leave period waiting approval in my in-tray, I assume it’s because you and your partner have also been on patrol…” he checks his watch. “For forty-five minutes now? Perhaps I’ll overlook it—if you both manage to leave the precinct before I do.”
PRECINCT 41 GARAGE AND STABLES: The intermittent garage lights of the 41st reflect off the glossy blue and white livery of the motor carriage in its assigned park. Once, changing gears in this car felt like dragging a spanner through a bucket of bolts. Kim has worked on it until it is nigh-unrecognisable from the vehicle it once was.
PERCEPTION [Medium: Success] —In the distance, the figures of Torson and McClaine leave the silk mill at a dead sprint.
FUEL-INJECTED BLANC-STERLING R20 ‘36: Welcome back, mon amor! Slide into the generous embrace of my faux-leather seats. There is very nearly no blood on the upholstery. Luxuriate with me!
1. Enter the vehicle (Luxuriate)
2. VISUAL CALCULUS [Medium]: Wait a second. Does something seem off? (Have a look around first)
VISUAL CALCULUS [Medium: Success] — The lights are on.
WORKING CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS [Easy: Success] — We have electricity? Would you look at that! The Electrical and Gas Worker’s Union strike is over! A victory for the workers!
LOGIC [Easy: Success] — Or you’re on off-peak electricity because you’re at work after 10pm. Didn’t you notice the lights go on in the silk mill?
YOU: I didn’t have time to notice something like that. I was busy.
RHETORIC [Easy: Success] — And the reason you could be busy is because you weren’t forced to stop to light a candle or a lamp, or to refuel the sputtering C-Wing generator.
ENDURANCE [Challenging: Success] — How long have the lights been on? What time is it?
PERCEPTION, HEARING [Easy: Success] — The approaching tread of familiar boots.
FRIDAY:
-
Be waiting in the passenger seat of the R20 in ten minutes(failed) Clean yourself up
KIM KITSURAGI: “I was very clear.”
YOU: You turn. His arms are crossed, but you persevere. “Kim, what time is it?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “It’s 11:50 pm,” he says.
VISUAL CALCULUS [Easy: Success] — You arrived at work at eight am. You may have stopped for lunch—you don’t really remember—but you certainly didn’t stop for dinner. You’ve been on the clock for nearly sixteen hours, and awake for eighteen and a half.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] — And your detective partner has been there with you every step of the way.
YOU: “Oh, shit,” you say. “Kim—“
KIM KITSURAGI: He steps up to you, and here, with the lights overhead, he grabs you firmly by the chin. He tilts your head first one way, then the other, his eyes in narrowed evaluation.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — Your heart trips faster at the press of his leather gloves against your skin. Is he going to kiss you? Here, where your coworkers might see?
LOGIC [Easy: Success] — He’s checking your pupil dilation, your ability to track movement, your breath. When he takes his hand away, he watches how quickly the flush returns to the pressure-spots on your skin.
YOU: “I haven’t taken anything,” you say, more defensive than you’d like.
VOLITION [Challenging: Success] — It’s true. It’s day three hundred and four of your current sober streak. In a few minutes, it will be day three hundred and five.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I expect you would tell me if you had,” he says.
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — He means it, too. There’s a softness in his voice that means he was worried about you. He’s still worried about you, but now he has parameters to be worried within.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Get in the car,” he says.
YOU: You hasten to comply. Your ego is stinging, but your skin hasn’t forgotten the feeling of his hands. He only starts the engine once you’ve done up your seatbelt. You say, “Kim, I’m—“
KIM KITSURAGI: He holds up a finger. His expression is dangerous.
YOU: You shut your mouth.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Thank you,” he says, putting the car in gear.
YOU: Since you’re not talking, it leaves you to think about the case.
HAND/EYE COORDINATION [Challenging: Failure] — Your only suspect doesn’t seem like much of a suspect at all. You just can’t see how she would’ve landed the blow. The angle of the entry wound was all wrong. Unless the victim was sitting down when he was killed?
LOGIC [Challenging: Failure] — Could you have missed a chair being moved out of the room by the killer?
SUGGESTION [Challenging: Failure] — You still don’t have motive. Blackmail, perhaps? The threat of a revelation?
LOGIC [Easy: Success] — She’s very young to have secrets that shameful. Usually you have to be in the world a while to get a blackmailable level of tarnish on you.
KIM KITSURAGI: He snaps his fingers in front of your face. He said something that you missed.
REACTION SPEED [Easy: Failure] — He’s parked the R20, by the way. You’re home.
KIM KITSURAGI: “That answers that,” he says. He gets out of the MC.
YOU: “I’m sorry, I—“
KIM KITSURAGI: He holds up his finger again. Your mouth shuts. “I don’t want to hear an apology from you tonight, Harrier. Upstairs.”
YOU: You follow him upstairs. You rarely see the stairwell lit—after the electricity strikes, you’ve gotten used to navigating it with your flashlight.
ENDURANCE [Challenging: Success] — You shouldn’t be here. You should be out, solving the case. You’re wide awake. You don’t need rest.
AUTHORITY [Impossible: Failure] — But you follow the lieutenant’s boots up the stairs anyway, all five flights and the half-flight to the attic, like you’re fucking leashed. Your shoulders itch with energy.
KIM KITSURAGI: Kim unlocks the door and turns on the lamp.
GARRET APARTMENT, 65/485-487 BALTARD STREET, CENTRAL JAMROCK: It isn’t sophisticated, this home you’ve built together. It is draughty and cluttered with two lives’ worth of things. It is awkwardly placed (the attic) and awkwardly sized (small, in a long and narrow, nooks-and-crannies kind of way), and it needs to be repainted. The green chequered linoleum in the kitchen isn’t stylish, and the startlingly pink bathroom isn’t urbane. But those things all mean that the rent is cheap, and have made it familiar and comfortable. The second bedroom is tiny, but a second bedroom on the lease provides plausible deniability for your relationship at the precinct (so long as they only ever see it on paper—it wouldn’t take a genius to notice that the smaller bedroom is mostly used for sewing and storage). The best things are the apartment’s tiny balcony and large windows. This attic was an art studio, a long time ago, and Kim has always wanted atelier windows. During the day, you have a view of Jamrock all the way across the lake to a sparkling glint of the distant Insulindian.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Easy: Failure] — Ow! What the fuck!
KIM KITSURAGI: His eyes are intent on your face. His gloved hand is still raised.
HAND/EYE COORDINATION [Trivial: Success] — He just slapped you.
INLAND EMPIRE [Challenging: Success] — Welcome home.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Easy: Success] — This scrawny binoclard, this homo-sexual, thinks he can hit you without any consequences?
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — And you didn’t even have to demean yourself for it? Not even a little?
KIM KITSURAGI: “I don’t appreciate the precedent you’ve set today,” he says. He pauses.
YOU: You’re pretty sure he isn’t pausing to wait for your feedback, but to make sure you’re actually listening. You wait. Your face stings.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I kept a tally of all the times you ignored something that I said. I thought it would help us review.”
INLAND EMPIRE [Medium: Failure] — Sooner or later, anyone who gets close to you learns: you’re a detective because you can’t stop. You can’t switch off. You can’t be fixed.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Failure] — You always thought Kim would have figured that out before now. But he’s stubborn.
DAMAGED MORALE (-1)
KIM KITSURAGI: He takes off his jacket and hangs it on the hook beside the door.
OMNIFUTUENT FASHION SENSE [Easy: Success] — After four months of suggestions and hints and puppy-dog-eyed pleas as the city fell into winter, you just ended up buying a black woollen turtleneck for him. He’s worn it nearly every day since, layered under his jacket. You’re incredibly smug about this.
KIM KITSURAGI: He stops and watches you expectantly.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Heroic: Failure] — Stop taking orders he hasn’t even given yet! Dig your heels in!
YOU: “Oh—shit, of course,” you say, shrugging out of your blazer and hanging it up.
KIM KITSURAGI: He reaches over and thoughtfully runs his fingers across your back, over the broad, flat straps that hold your holster. “Take the gun out,” he says, locking the door. “Leave it on the kitchen bench. This, too.” He hands you his Villiers. He’s finally adjusted to the larger gun from twenty years with a Keiji Armistice.
PERCEPTION, HEARING [Challenging: Success] — As you turn your back to him, you hear a metallic rattle. A sound so familiar that—
KIM KITSURAGI: “Don’t get distracted,” he says. When you return to his side, he touches your shoulder harness again. “Here’s your task chain; drink a glass of water. Turn the heater on in the bedroom. Strip; don’t leave clothes on the floor. When I get there, I expect to find you wearing only this.” He taps the leather.
EMPATHY [Challenging: Success] — He’s worried about how dehydrated you are. He doesn’t want you to pass out.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — And why not? You, unconscious, totally at his mercy…
YOU: That does sound pretty good, actually.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA [Easy: Success] — …sustaining additional brain damage…
YOU: That does sound pretty bad, actually.
KIM KITSURAGI: He isn’t going to clear his throat. He is, however, tapping his foot.
SAVOIR FAIRE [Challenging: Failure] — You should probably say something. To let him know you’re cool with all of this. And that you’re cool with it being a sex thing.
YOU: “Can do, Kimbo.” You click your finger pistols at him.
KIM KITSURAGI: His eyebrow raises fractionally.
DRAMA [Easy: Success] — Sire, the crowd is baying for your blood.
AMIS PROCHES [Medium: Success] — Using your existing knowledge of Kim, here is a simple equation: you called him ‘sir’ at the precinct, and that is currently the sole factor keeping him interested in handling it this way and you from sleeping on the couch tonight. It’s time to step your game up. To quote the man himself, am I understood?
YOU: You clear your throat. “Sorry, lieutenant,” you say. “Understood.”
KIM KITSURAGI: His head tilts. He evaluates you with new light in his eyes.
RHETORIC [Challenging: Success] — You don’t actually know that it’s new. It’s possible he’s been studying you like this all day.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Trivial: Success] — Your body floods with norepinephrine and vasopressin. You flush. Your pulse beats in your ears. You can’t look away from him.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Good,” he says. You detect the slightest upturn at the side of his mouth.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Trivial: Success] — He has added the tingles of dopamine to your fruity little cocktail.
EMPATHY [Impossible: Failure] — You hurt him badly, today. Why is he being so tolerant with you? Why is he being so kind?
KIM KITSURAGI: He nods towards the bedroom. “Go on,” he says.
AUTHORITY [Easy: Failure] — Oui! Certainement!
THE BEDROOM: The room is as you left it this morning. The plausible deniability that only one of you sleeps here is ruined at the door. There are two pillows on the bed, and two bedside tables; one is stacked with an unwieldy in-progress reading pile and one boasts an alarm clock, last month’s STELLAR SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE, and a half-filled bottle of lube. Two patrol cloaks hang near the radiator to dry. You pop through the adjoining door to the bathroom to hydrate.
STARTLINGLY PINK ENSUITE BATHROOM: Don’t turn on the light, man. You’re not ready for me. You’re not in the mindset.
1. Don’t be silly. (Turn on the light)
2. Operate in the dark.
STARTLINGLY PINK ENSUITE BATHROOM: COME ON, DICKHEAD! WHAT KIND OF COLOUR DO YOU THINK I AM? BLUSH? CARNATION? BUBBLEGUM? NO, MAN, I’M GODDAMN FUCKING PINK! YOU WEREN’T READY! YOU DIDN’T ENTER THE MINDSET!
PAIN THRESHOLD [Challenging: Failure] — It’s too bright…
ARTS GRADUATE [Challenging: Failure] — Pink basin… pink tiles… a pink shower-over-bath. A pink toilet cistern. A whole bathroom in the same colour? This surrealist landscape overwhelms you. You were not ready to be challenged like this.
DAMAGED HEALTH (-1)
DAMAGED MORALE (-1)
YOU: You hydrate at great personal cost.
STARTLINGLY PINK ENSUITE BATHROOM: I tried to warn you, man.
FRIDAY NIGHT/SATURDAY MORNING:
Drink a glass of water (at great personal cost).Turn the heater on.- Strip except for holster (don’t leave clothes on the floor).
You sit on the edge of the bed to take off your shoes, which draws your attention to how you didn’t make the bed this morning. The covers are rumpled.
THE PATCHWORK BEDSPREAD: The patchwork bedspread was Kim’s solution for the clothes in your wardrobe that, through long-term wear, heavy staining, or being stored without mothballs, were no longer wearable—clothes haunted with sentimental value for a man you no longer were. Kim’s idea was just as much for him as for you; if he doesn’t have a project to keep his hands busy in the evenings, he just ends up reading case files and sleeping terribly. He hummed to himself as he sliced off old buttons into a jar for future use. Currently, the bed looks exactly like the people who slept in it got a 6am phone call from their workplace and didn’t have time to come back and tidy.
AMIS PROCHES [Medium: Failure] — It’s good to make an effort, isn’t it? To show that you treasure the place you live together? What’s a couple of extra seconds?
1. HAND/EYE COORDINATION [Easy]: Make the bed.
2. VOLITION [Challenging]: Do as you were told.
YOU: You flap the covers out and make the bed.
HAND/EYE COORDINATION [Easy: Success] — Like a pro.
PERCEPTION [Easy: Success] —Footsteps on floorboards.
YOU: Shit!
HAND/EYE COORDINATION [Medium: Failure] — You try to wrestle all your clothes off at once.
KIM KITSURAGI: He catches your trousers before they hit him in the face.
FRIDAY NIGHT/SATURDAY MORNING:
Drink a glass of water (at great personal cost).Turn the heater on.Make the bed.-
Strip except for holster (don’t leave clothes on the floor). (Failed)
KIM KITSURAGI: “Don’t stop on my account,” he says, leaning against the doorframe. He reaches out and lets your trousers fall from his hand.
PERCEPTION, SIGHT [Easy: Success] — It’s hard to miss that he’s holding the riding crop.
EMPATHY [Impossible: Failure] — His expression is opaque, and his posture is closed. It’s deliberate; he knows you too well, now. He knows how you read him. If you can’t tell what he’s thinking, it’s because he doesn’t want you to.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — He looks good. Mysterious.
HALF LIGHT [Easy: Success] — He’s definitely planning your demise.
PERCEPTION, HEARING [Easy: Success] — He is motionless, except for the slow tap, tap, tap of the riding crop against his thigh.
KIM KITSURAGI’S CONFISCATED RIDING CROP: The riding crop has been thoroughly cleaned and conditioned, but it did begin life being used to beat an animal rather than a nervously sweating detective. You’ve never seen Kim as angry as he was that day. The sense-memory is always going to linger with you. Kim’s radiant fury, the sweat of a summer’s day—and how he’d tapped the crop against the leather of his glove as you waited for the paddy wagon to arrive, a craftsman absentmindedly testing the range of a new tool. The horse was rehomed with somebody more loving; so, too, was the riding crop. Kim has always had an interest in finding neglected things and giving them a new life.
COMPOSURE [Challenging: Failure] — You manage to stagger out of the rest of your clothes and kick off your underwear. Belatedly, you remember to put your holster back on. You glance at Kim, who is fully dressed and entirely put-together.
KIM KITSURAGI: He tilts his head at the clothes that are littered across the rug.
YOU: You reach for your shirt. “Oh, yeah, sor—“
REACTION SPEED [Heroic: Failure] — You barely see him move.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Medium: Failure] — Your thigh stings. He aimed for the meatiest part he could reach.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Easy: Success] — The lieutenant has a lot of stored power in those lean muscles of his.
YOU: “Ow. Fuck!”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — Your nerve receptors ping the alert. Endorphins and adrenaline snap to attention.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I thought I was clear,” he says. “I don’t want to hear you apologise tonight.” He inspects the tip of the riding crop, as though he’s concerned your body might have damaged it. When he looks up, his gaze freezes you in place. “If you don’t want me to hit you again, you’d better tell me now.”
DRAMA [Heroic: Failure] — He speaks absolute truth, sire. He’s going to obliterate you.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] — There is no sacrifice the lieutenant wouldn’t make to keep you safe.
YOU: You swallow. You gather up your clothes and drop them in the laundry basket. “I won’t tell you that,” you say, unable to take your eyes off the riding crop held loosely in his hand.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I thought not.”
YOU: “That’s because I do want you to hit me, Kim,” you say, feeling it might be necessary to build your case. “You know. Since I’ve been an asshole today.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “I won’t disagree with you,” he says. “But I’d like you to stop talking.” He takes a step forwards and closes the door behind him. The room feels tiny, suddenly. Isolated.
HALF LIGHT [Easy: Success] — You’re trapped in here. You’re going to die.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Wrists.”
YOU: You present them in front of yourself.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] — The lieutenant prefers not to cuff anybody’s hands in front of them. It offers too much manoeuvrability—the suspect can still use their hands, which means they can still open doors or hit someone. And everybody in the RCM has heard a story or two about a rookie cop getting choked from behind by a suspect they’d decided wasn’t dangerous.
KIM KITSURAGI: He cuffs your wrists in front of you anyway. If your hands were behind your back, they’d just be in his way.
LITERALLY JUST KIM’S HANDCUFFS, FROM WORK: He keeps these clean, but don’t struggle too hard—you have no idea what fluids these have been in contact with, and these fuckers bruise distinctively.
PERCEPTION [Trivial: Success] — Handcuffs are always heavier than you remember. The stainless steel raises goosebumps on your skin.
SHIVERS [Easy: Success] — A cold fog rises from the River Esperance, lowering visibility on the 8-81, creeping through alleyways and streets. In the park, two rough sleepers huddle for warmth, passing a cigarette between themselves. In the roof of your apartment, the pigeons doze puffed up on their perches.
YOU: You shiver.
KIM KITSURAGI: He knows what this means. “Oh, for the love of…” he mutters. He strides across the room and swings the bedroom window open, admitting freezing night air. He turns to face the scattered lights on the horizon. “La Revacholiére,” he says, speaking into the breeze, “Mère d’Orphelins—peace, just for the night. Please.”
SHIVERS [Impossible: Failure] — Whatever the city says in response, if she says anything at all—you cannot hear it.
EMPATHY [Challenging: Success] — Kim speaks entire gradients of sarcasm; a master of irony, double entendre, triple and reverse entendres, double-speak, syntactic ambiguity, the acerbic, and of course, his eternal deadpan. This is sincere.
CONCEPTUALISATION [Challenging: Success] — It’s from a place before sincerity. This isn’t the man you love with the mask off—it’s like seeing him before he ever knew he had to put it on.
EMPATHY [Trivial: Success] — Whatever you do, don’t mention it.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Thank you,” he says, into the night, and closes the window. He turns to you and rests the riding crop against his chin, thinking. Tap, tap.
VOLITION [Easy: Failure] — Your body aches for anything he will deign to give you.
KIM KITSURAGI: “On your knees,” he says, softly.
AUTHORITY [Challenging: Failure] — You can’t muster the self-respect to refuse, or even to take your time. It’s like he’s cut your string.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Easy: Success] — Thump, thump, as your knees hit the rug. There’s a layer of padding under it for this reason.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Challenging: Failure] — Humiliating. You should be ashamed.
KIM KITSURAGI: He can see it on your face. “Good boy,” he says. He steps closer, and runs the riding crop up your thigh, slowly. Your erection bobs; he ignores it. He takes his time; the alarm clock on his side of the bed ticks quietly in the silence. He traces the warming leather up over your stomach, up your sternum, up your neck, where he tilts your head up. “Hm,” he says, pleased by whatever he sees in your eyes. “Rare to get you so quiet.”
YOU: You wrinkle your brow at him. Hey.
KIM KITSURAGI: He raises an eyebrow, and pulls his notebook out of his back pocket.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Easy: Success] — Whoa-oh! Nerd alert! This guy brings his notebook to the sex beating!
KIM KITSURAGI: “Around 6 pm,” he says, opening it to a page in the back with a familiar one-handed gesture, “I was thinking about using my belt on you tonight.” He looks at you, eyes narrowed. “I was undecided about which end.”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Challenging: Success] — You could have helped him decide, and you missed it? Oh my god, you really do miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t know you’re not taking—
HALF LIGHT [Easy: Success] — You were fucking warned. You should’ve written that will.
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — He’d do it, by the way.
YOU: Huh?
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — Somewhere, deep down, you were wondering if he would really hit you with the business end of a belt, leaving buckle-shaped marks. The answer is: he would.
YOU: …That sounds kind of hot. I’d want him to do it.
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — Sure. You’d beg, probably. But it would be foolish to forget it was his idea in the first place. You constantly watch people underestimate this man, based on the homo-phobique or racist stereotypes inside their head. Kim is kind, but he’s not delicate. You don’t want to know what he did to the last man who tried to wrap both hands around his waist. You’ve known from the day you met that he’s the less squeamish and stronger-willed of the two of you. He does what it takes to he gets the job done.
SAVOIR FAIRE [Easy: Success] —And most of the time, you’re the job. That he gets done. Wink.
KIM KITSURAGI: “But you powered through much longer than 6pm.” He shows you the tally.
VISUAL CALCULUS [Medium: Failure] — Your eyes swim. It’s a lot of little lines, covering most of a page. It adds up to: uh oh.
CONCEPTUALISATION [Easy: Success] — You…
…have been Bad.
DAMAGED MORALE (+1)
YOU: You go to open your mouth and apologise, but the riding crop is right there, under your chin.
AUTHORITY [Easy: Success] — Sorry, Sorry Cop, but an apology doesn’t make it right. You still did the damn thing.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Exactly,” he says. “Even with the leather end of a belt, that’s far outside my comfort zone.” He looks down at you, and taps his foot impatiently. “Besides, I need you in one piece to solve this case.”
YOU: You shiver. You like when he acts as though you exist as a factor of your usefulness to him.
KIM KITSURAGI: He knows you’re not shivering from the cold this time—he has a clear view of your dick twitching.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — Who could blame you? He’s very good at being mean. And he’s a vision tonight, with the riding crop in his hand, dressed in the black turtleneck you bought him, trousers tucked into his glossy boots. Maybe… he’ll let you suck his dick?
KIM KITSURAGI: “So, the crop it is.” He rubs it across your lower lip. “And, even with this, I am still not going to hit you…” he glances at the notebook and raises his eyebrow. “Eighty nine times.” He looks down at you, unimpressed. “I think after a while it would leave the realm of the erotic for the just very sad.”
CONCEPTUALISATION [Easy: Failure] — Oh my god… you de-eroticised sadomasochism? Is there nothing you can’t despoil?
KIM KITSURAGI: “Any questions?”
YOU: You wet your lips.
1. ENCYCLOPEDIA [Impossible]: “Hey, Kim, did you know the freezing point of mercury?”
2. EMPATHY [Impossible]: “Would you really hit me with a belt buckle?”
3. SHIVERS [Impossible]: “What did the city say to you? What did you say to the city?”
4. ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Impossible]: “So are you gonna let me suck your dick, or what?”
5. Apologise to the lieutenant, against his wishes.
6. “Enough of this. We should focus on the case.”
7. Shake your head.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Really? None at all? You don’t have, for example, a comical amount of questions?”
5. CONCEPTUALISATION [Impossible]: “Kim, do you believe in ghosts?”
6. OMNIFUTUENT FASHION SENSE [Impossible]: “Can I say… this is a really good look on you?”
7. ESPRIT DE CORPS [Impossible]: “Do you think it would be inappropriate to use your handcuffs on a citizen after this? Due to psychic contamination? Horny aura?”
8. INLAND EMPIRE [Impossible]: “Kim, this is more of a comment than a question, but I’m worried this isn’t going to be enough fix me.”
9. HALF LIGHT [Impossible]: “So, what did you do to the last man who tried to wrap his hands around your waist?”
10. Apologise to the lieutenant, against his wishes.
11. “Enough of this. We should focus on the case.”
12. Shake your head again. It’s not the right time.
KIM KITSURAGI: He’s been watching your eyes move as you think. When you shake your head, he raises both his eyebrows to communicate both surprise, and incredibly sarcastic surprise, which to a scholar such as yourself are clearly distinct Kim Expressions. “Incredible,” he says. He runs the riding crop back down your body. “Turn around. Elbows on the bed. And—no touching this.” He taps your dick twice with the riding crop, hard enough to startle a noise out of you. He fights a smile.
VOLITION [Easy: Failure] — Hey, come on! That’s not fair!
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — Being ordered around really does it for you. He is, and this is not an exaggeration, the most important thing in the entire world.
YOU: Your knees creak a little as you rearrange yourself. You clasp your hands and rest your forearms on the mattress, and keep your knees a little apart—both to brace yourself, and to give your increasingly urgent erection some room. With your back to him, you are incredibly aware of how exposed you are.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Easy: Failure] — You are made up of tender parts. Skin and muscle, softness and fat. Fallible, fragile, and intimately penetrable.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Hm,” he says. You flinch as he runs the riding crop from where the X of the harness ends, down your spine. He paces out of view for a moment, and there’s a little snap… as he rakes his gloved hands through your hair to tie it back.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — It’s a tender gesture, and the pressure feels good. He’s thinking of you via the medium of hair elastic. Your scalp buzzes with pleasure.
OMNIFUTUENT FASHION SENSE [Challenging: Success] — A low bun, though? Come on! What is this, woodworking class?
KIM KITSURAGI: “Better,” he says, and steps back. “Harry?” You know what this means; he always asks.
YOU: You unclasp your hands to twiddle the fingers of your right hand. Like you’re being quizzed on the RCM Officer’s Hand/Arm Gestural Codebook—in a way, you aren’t not—you sign halt with a closed fist, wait with an open hand, and proceed by pointing your first two fingers. Impatiently you add hurry up and clear to fire, both gestures that weren’t devised with handcuffs in mind.
KIM KITSURAGI: You hear the tiny huff that escapes him. It’s almost a laugh.
PERCEPTION [Easy: Success] — The quilted bedspread is pleasantly neat in front of your nose. All you can hear is the clock ticking.
HALF LIGHT [Trivial: Success] — Fear and anticipation go humming through you. He’s going to make you wait for it. He’s really going make you squirm—
PAIN THRESHOLD [Medium: Failure] — Ouch. No, he isn’t. He’s going to go right for the ass.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — Yes. Awake.
YOU: You let out a grunt. Even you can’t tell if it’s from pain or not.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I love this apartment,” he says, conversationally, running the riding crop over your skin. “For a lot of reasons, but here’s a good one. Garrett apartments weren’t part of the original designs of old buildings like this. They were added later so that Royalist-era landlords could make more money. Built into the roof, above the insulation, the pipes, the wiring…” He hits you twice more, stinging blows, once on each ass cheek. “Incredible soundproofing,” he says. There’s a pause as—by the sound of it—he works his shoulder. There’s a crunch. He hums to himself. “And only five and a half flights of stairs to pay for it.”
PERCEPTION, HEARING [Medium: Success] — You hear a swish this time. Leather cutting through the air like a fencing sabre.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Formidable: Failure] — “Fuck!” you say, muffling yourself in the bedspread.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Yes, I think that’s enough warming up,” he says. The smile he’s giving your exposed back is big enough that it’s audible in his voice. “Don’t forget to breathe, Harrier.”
PAIN THRESHOLD [Legendary: Failure] — Inner thigh. Fuck.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Legendary: Failure] — Oh my god you have two thighs. Fucking hell.
KIM KITSURAGI: Your partner is an exacting man. He has a finely-honed sense of justice, a good aim, and a better arm.
ENDURANCE [Godly: Failure] — Let’s not be coy: he flogs the everloving shit out of you.
LOGIC [Heroic: Failure] — You always believe you can rationalise your way out of pain. First you try to anticipate it, but Kim knows his shit; he doesn’t provide any pattern that you can follow. And then you try to endure it, but it keeps happening.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Legendary: Failure] — Your knuckles go white from how hard you clasp your hands together.
CONCEPTUALISATION [Heroic: Success] —Like a man who just got really committed to prayer.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Legendary: Failure] — You drip saliva and tears on the bedspread. Your skin is hot enough it feels sunburned. You’re going to be bruised to hell tomorrow.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Legendary: Failure] — You asked for this you asked for this you asked for—
RHETORIC [Legendary: Success] — You are an animal body which pain happens to; there is no escaping it. There is no past or future. This experience is your entirety. You are here. You are only here.
LIMBIC SYSTEM: It is so blessedly quiet, Harry. The lieutenant’s generosity comes without cathedral acoustics. You have no echo.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Challenging: Success] — Endorphins took over a long time ago. Your body is tingling, your mind is foggy, your dick is leaking—wait, why did he stop? That’s uncalled for.
KIM KITSURAGI: There’s a warm hand on your cheek, and another on the back of your neck.
YOU: Pliant, you let him tip your head back to look at you.
PERCEPTION, TOUCH [Easy: Success] — His thumb traces down the planes of your face as he looks into your eyes.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] — Mapping the contours of the landscape. Dividing the search area into quadrants.
YOU: What is he looking for?
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — You.
YOU: It takes some time to restring the concept of language in your head. “I’m here,” you say. Your voice is scratchy.
KIM KITSURAGI: The crease in his brow smooths. “You did well, Harry,” he says. He smiles.
RECOVERED MORALE (+1)
KIM KITSURAGI: He lifts your cuffed hands into the light, checking your wrists for damage. He hums to himself, nods; you didn’t struggle. “Good boy,” he says.
RECOVERED MORALE (+1)
PAIN THRESHOLD [Medium: Success] — Your skin is tender, but you have other things to focus on.
VOLITION [Challenging: Failure] — Like your dick.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Challenging: Success] — Like his dick. Don’t good boys deserve treats?
DRAMA [Medium: Failure] — You lean back into his hands and throw yourself on your mercy by giving him your most woebegone look.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Oh my god,” he says, muffled mostly by his own hand. He’s stripped off his turtleneck to reveal a plain white t-shirt—he worked up a sweat. “Harrier, absolutely not.”
DRAMA [Medium: Failure] — You radiate the pain of an artisan suffering through deprivation of his lifelong craft.
ARTS GRADUATE [Legendary: Success] — Fellatio is the canvas on which you will create your masterwork! The ultimate performance medium!
KIM KITSURAGI: He sounds like he’s trying not to laugh. “No. I can’t reward this expression you’re making. In any way.“ He steps back, depriving you of his gloves on your skin.“Can you stand on your own?”
YOU: “…I think so,” you say, getting your better leg under yourself and testing its strength.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Challenging: Success] — It’s the right choice. Your other thigh would have given way.
SAVOIR FAIRE [Medium: Failure] — It’s not going to be elegant, though.
KIM KITSURAGI: He doesn’t like your body for its elegance. He likes it for its brute force and solidity; your fat and hair and muscle. It’s why he’s watching you with such focus—the way your thigh muscles twitch, the tensing of your shoulders. He loves that you’re sturdy; it means he doesn’t have to go easy on you.
YOU: With an elbow braced on the bed, you manage to haul yourself to your feet.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Good,” he says. He adjusts the way your shoulder holster sits with a proprietary air. With him still in his boots, and you barefoot, he can look you dead in the eye.
VOLITION [Formidable: Failure] — He isn’t touching your dick. You need him to.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Medium: Success] — No, no. Look at him; the gloss of sweat on his neck, the adherence of the cotton shirt to his body, the tilt of his shoulders. Look at how he’s looking at you. Goosebumps are rising on your skin.
EMPATHY [Formidable: Success] — Your captivation captivates him. You spent the day ignoring him in favour of voices he couldn’t hear—but now, your focus rests entirely on him. He likes when you look at him like he’s the only thing in the world. Before you, he hadn’t spent a lot of time in his life feeling treasured.
KIM KITSURAGI: He grabs a fistful of your hair to kiss you. Your cuffed hands sandwich between your chests, wrists at an awkward angle. He swallows your gasp and tugs you in to grind your hips together.
OMNIFUTUENT FASHION SENSE [Easy: Success] — Pre-come smears on the cotton-synthetic blend. He’s going to have to wash these pants.
LOGIC [Easy: Success] — He’s been in the field all day. You’re going to have to wash your pelvis.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — You exist for this purpose; sensation, light, life, and the press of his insistent erection.
YOU: You can’t touch him with the handcuffs on, but there are worse places to be than at Kim Kitsuragi’s mercy. When he gives you a chance to catch your breath, you manage to say, “Are you gonna fuck me, Kim?”
KIM KITSURAGI: He smiles into the space between you. “That depends on how you ask,” he says.
CONCEPTUALISATION [Easy: Failure] — Via the medium… of dance?
SAVOIR FAIRE [Easy: Failure] — Impossible in handcuffs. You really need the full range of wrist movement for what would be a very gestural piece.
COMPOSURE [Heroic: Failure] — The way he’s looking at you scrambles your brain. “Can you do fuck to me?”
KIM KITSURAGI: He has to lean back. His shoulders tremble. He takes a couple of deep breaths. “I know you can do better than that,” he says, struggling to hang onto his severity. With his eyes still screwed shut, he says, “Try again.”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — He’s gorgeous. He’s the humming in your veins. You would do anything for him.
ARTS GRADUATE [Medium: Success] — Remember, if you’re addressing a grammatical pedant, it’s never ‘Can I have a fuck, sir,’ but instead, ‘May I have a fuck, sir.’ This is purely hypothetical, of course—nobody has ever fucked a grammatical pedant.
AUTHORITY [Formidable: Success] — It is imperative that you don’t say please. You cannot beg for this.
YOU: You clear your throat. “Kim, will you fuck me?”
KIM KITSURAGI: He kisses you for an answer.
EMPATHY [Medium: Success] — You can feel it in his muscles as he presses against you; tension has lifted from him as much as it has from you.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Challenging: Success] — As you’d expect. Two masculine men getting a sweat up together, letting off steam. A healthy expression of male bonding.
HOMO-EROTIQUE SUBTEXTUALIST [Heroic: Success] — That’s way too reflexive a thought. You’ve definitely sucked a dick in a gym shower somewhere in the shadowy recesses of your obliterated past.
RHETORIC [Godly: Failure] — It’s not a homo-sexual act if it happens in a gym.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Sit.”
YOU: You sit on the bed with a thump. Your dick bounces.
KIM KITSURAGI: He props his boot on your thigh, firmly enough that you’d have to fight his weight to get up, and waits. You fumble at his laces, the handcuffs getting in your way—and, of course, it’s hard to focus when he’s looming over you, tugging a glove off with his teeth.
DRAMA [Easy: Success] — A performance for an audience of one, sire. He is doing it more slowly than the task requires, making eye contact. He is a hypnotist.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Focus,” he says, smiling.
INTERFACING [Challenging: Success] — You tug at his boot, and he shifts his weight so you can slide it and his sock off.
KIM KITSURAGI: He gives you the other boot. He savours your gaze as he tugs off his shirt, his trousers, his underpants.
CONCEPTUALISATION [Easy: Success] — You are in raptures at the reality of him—his physicality, his tactility. The way he looks and smells, the way he breathes and stands. The way he occupies space on this shattered planetary husk at the same time as you.
COMPOSURE [Formidable: Success] — Chemically speaking, there’s a lot of things going on in your body right now. With formidable effort, you manage not to burst into tears when you see his dick.
KIM KITSURAGI: His skin is comparatively cool when he runs his hand across the red marks on your thighs.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Easy: Success] — You’re going to be bruised for a week. If you don’t apply ice, maybe a fortnight.
OMNIFUTUENT FASHION SENSE [Easy: Success] — Who cares? It’s not exactly shorts weather.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Turn around,” he says. You shuffle around on your knees so that he can palm your ass. There’s not a lot of ass to be palmed, but he likes a challenge. “Sore?” he asks, and squeezes.
YOU: “Yeah,” you say. The word comes out with the breathiness of a sigh.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Perfect,” he says. There’s a click as he opens the lube.
COMPOSURE [Formidable: Failure] — The sound you make when he rubs a finger over your asshole is embarrassing in every possible way: it was clearly unintentional, it’s pitched far above your normal vocal range, and has left needy behind in favour of downright wanton.
KIM KITSURAGI: “…Can I help you with something, Harrier?”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — He loves when you’re desperate, and he loves it even more when you’re embarrassed about how desperate you are. We have a feedback loop on our hands here, boys.
AUTHORITY [Challenging: Success] — Do you have no self-respect? You are demeaning yourself. He’s your subordinate. You are his superior officer.
SUGGESTION [Easy: Success] — A fantastic point!
YOU: “Lieutenant—“
KIM KITSURAGI: That does it. In one smooth movement, he pushes his finger into you, all the way up past the second knuckle.
YOU: “…!”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Yes?” he says, working his finger in and out. He sounds conversational. You sound incoherent.
EMPATHY [Trivial: Success] — He’s a man of limited patience. You haven’t just worn it thin today; you’ve worn it threadbare.
INTERFACING [Easy: Success] — He adjusts his angle and adds a second finger with little-to-no fanfare. He’s done this to you enough times that he can operate on autopilot. The fact that he’s taking this long is purely to torment you.
YOU: You drop forward to all fours, ass in the air, elbows supporting your weight.“Come on, Kim,” you say again. Your breathing is ragged.
PERCEPTION [Trivial: Success] — He hums non-committaly and adds a third finger. The lube makes an indulgent squelch.
YOU: “Oh my god,” you say, when he pushes his fingers down. He is practiced at finding your prostrate.
COMPOSURE [Legendary: Failure] — You are sweating and red faced. You are going to explode.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Trivial: Success] — But what a way to go!
REACTION SPEED [Challenging: Failure] — The world changes perspective rapidly. You reach out to steady yourself, but the handcuffs pull tight, digging into your wrists.
KIM KITSURAGI: He’s hauled you up by the back of your gun harness. His feet are firmly braced on the floor.
INTERFACING [Easy: Success] — Warm leather comfortably takes your weight. A long time ago, this harness was tailored to accompany you day-to-day without hindering your movement or digging into your shoulders and armpits. It’s impossible to know if the leatherworker designed it intentionally for this use-case—but they equally didn’t design it not for this use-case.
EMPATHY [Trivial: Success] — Kim thought about this all day, eyes narrowed at your back, evaluating the sturdiness of this piece of kit.
KIM KITSURAGI: He watches you squirm. Without your weight over your knees, you don’t have the leverage to push back onto his dick, even though it’s right there. “Harry?” he asks, his voice low and warm in your ear. You’re absolutely at his mercy.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] — You’re meant to say ‘please, lieutenant-yefreitor.’ You know how.
COMPOSURE [Godly: Failure] — You open your mouth to beg. “Fuck,” you say, the words tumbling breathlessly out of you, “Fuck, Kim, I love you.”
KIM KITSURAGI: Nothing. All you can hear is the clock tick and your own panting breath.
DRAMA [Challenging: Failure] — Sire, you missed your line. He needs his setup.
EMPATHY [Heroic: Success] — It’s not that. He’s processing.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Ah, what the hell,” he says, under his breath. He yanks you back and, in a familiar movement, slides into you.
ENDURANCE [Heroic: Success] — You do not come on the spot.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Formidable: Success] — You are suspended from his fist, clenched around the harness between your shoulder blades. It shouldn’t be easy to hold your weight, even taking leverage and his frustration, both erotic and professional, into consideration. But you wouldn’t know it from how he fucks you.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA [Impossible: Failure] — You don’t know anything right now.
PERCEPTION, HEARING [Challenging: Failure] — You’re not really sure what you’re saying. Maybe you’re just making sounds that have no correlation to words.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Challenging: Success] — Who cares? The important thing is him. His hand on your hip. His breath on your shoulder. His body rolling into yours.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Harry, god,” he says. It’s little more than a pant.
RECOVERED MORALE (+1)
HALF LIGHT [Formidable: Success] — He chooses the speed and the approach. You chose to make yourself helpless. You can’t get your balance—
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Trivial: Success] — Adrenaline makes your heart thunder and your extremities tingle. All you can do is take what he what he gives you, and boy are you grateful for it.
INTERFACING [Medium: Failure] — When he tugs you closer to upright… the change in angle? It’s doing. Something.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — From the overall skin-buzzing and the endorphin release, that’s your prostate again.
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — Another man would not have realised that you had not yet said ‘please.’ Kim, however, knows.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] — The lieutenant-yefreitor’s uncompromising attention to detail. He’s not going to relent until you say the word.
YOU: You make a desperate noise.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Hm?” he says.
VOLITION [Heroic: Failure] — You can’t get off from just this. He knows that. He knows he can keep you like this as long as he likes.
AMIS PROCHES [Easy: Success] — And he has, before. He likes the competition; his patience pitted against your endurance. He wins every time, but the repetition doesn’t bore him. He finds it incredibly satisfying whenever you start to cry.
YOU: “God—“
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Legendary: Failure] — He has easily defeated you in this contest of strength. He will not relent. There’s nothing for it; you are going to have to demean yourself, humiliatingly, agonisingly. You are going to have to beg for mercy.
AUTHORITY [Easy: Failure] — Of course. You were always going to; it was only ever a question of when and how, and what it would take to get you there. You and he both knew it would end up here. It always does.
YOU: Always? Why?
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Because, deep in the most shameful and hidden crevices of your psyche, it’s what you want. You want to beg.
YOU:
1. You’re right, I super do.
2. You’re saying I want to ask for what I desire more than I want to actually get it?
3. No, that doesn’t sound right.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: You can’t lie to the heat in your veins.
YOU:
1. You’re right, I kind of super do.
2. You’re saying I want to ask for what I desire more than I want to actually get it?
LIMBIC SYSTEM: You can’t deny it, Harry. This is the high you’ve been chasing. The very thought of it fills you with a bubbling rush of humiliation. The desirous shame of your own desire, like the Ouroboros eating its very own tail.
YOU:
1. You’re right, I kind of super do.
2. No, I…
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: You want him to shake every deviant desire loose from your lips. You want him to see the flushed-skin showcase of your most embarrassing depravities.
YOU: “Fuck.”
LIMBIC SYSTEM: You are going to have to admit it to him. Tell him you can’t bear it anymore. That you’re not strong enough.
YOU: “Fuck,” you say, your head buzzing with breathless mortification. “Please, Kim—”
KIM KITSURAGI: He laughs. “There you go,” he says, out of breath and immensely pleased. “Finally learning how to ask nicely.”
AUTHORITY [Impossible: Failure] — Why does it feel so good when he makes fun of you?
KIM KITSURAGI: “Please what?” he asks. “You know you have to ask.”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Medium: Success] — You belong to him; every breath, every chemical molecule, every millimetre of nerve endings.
YOU: “God, Kim,” you say. “Please, I can’t—“
KIM KITSURAGI: “I’m sure you can, lieutenant double-yefreitor,” he says.
YOU: Hearing your rank sends a shudder through you. “Kim,” you say again. “Please. Please. I need you to touch me.“
KIM KITSURAGI: He gives a pleased hum. “Was that so difficult?” he asks.
COMPOSURE [Heroic: Failure] — You actually fucking whimper.
KIM KITSURAGI: He laughs. He reaches for your dick, his thumb spreading the moisture that he finds there.
YOU: “Fuck, please, Kim—“
KIM KITSURAGI: “I know,” he says, relenting. “I’ve got you.” His grip is tight and warm. The harder he fucks into you, the harder you fuck into his fist.
HOMO-EROTIC SUBTEXTUALIST [Challenging: Success] — Oh, baby, now we’re talking! Transgressing the hetero-stereo model of penetrator and penetrated? That’s the real kinky shit!
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — You are made up of the places his hands have touched. Between that; only empty spaces.
PERCEPTION [Godly: Failure] — You can only be sure you still exist because you’re gasping his name.
KIM KITSURAGI: He yanks you in closer, his bicep fully engaging, and mouths at your shoulder. It’s the only warning you get before he bites.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Trivial: Failure] — The pain is unexpected, sharp and delicious, hot—
ENDURANCE [Impossible: Failure] — You are sledgehammered by orgasm.
…
LIMBIC SYSTEM: Your consciousness evaporates in a bright roar. Your emptied synapses echo.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Your body-husk is all sensation, housing none of that pesky self-awareness.
LIMBIC SYSTEM: The lieutenant-yefreitor does so love to simplify you to base principles.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Is there any gift as generous as total obliteration?
LIMBIC SYSTEM: This one’s a keeper, Harry.
…
PERCEPTION [Heroic: Success] — You retain enough awareness to hear Kim gasp, and to feel the telltale falter of his hips.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — When he comes in you, your hypothalamus manages to scrounge up some more dopamine from the back of its couch cushions. Ka-ching, baby!
RECOVERED MORALE (+1)
PERCEPTION [Medium: Success] —
…
…
…
He is breathing hard in your ear, still holding you steady.
YOU: “Oh my god, Kim,” you say.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Fuck,” he says, wholeheartedly. He rests his forehead between your shoulder blades for a moment and pants, skin to skin, tacky with sweat.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — He is exquisite.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Can you,” he says, his muscles trembling, “perhaps take your weight onto your elbows—”
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Formidable: Success] — The two of you manage to separate and redistribute yourselves without him falling onto his face or you crushing your own dick.
YOU: You roll onto your back, looking up at him. He sits on the bed to unlock your handcuffs.
LITERALLY JUST KIM’S HANDCUFFS, FROM WORK: They did leave some bruising, but not as much as he might have feared. He rubs his thumb over the pink indent in your wrist.
YOU: “Kim, you’re a fucking superstar,” you say. You can’t look away from him.
KIM KITSURAGI: He puts the handcuffs aside and leans forward to kiss you, cradling your face.
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — He loves you.
KIM KITSURAGI: He huffs out a laugh when you grab him and roll him onto his back, returning his kiss enthusiastically.
YOU: “You’re impossibly hot, Kim,” you say, kissing his neck. “No, don’t laugh, I’m genuinely worried about what you’re doing to the fabric of reality.” He squawks and whacks your arm when you flatten your tongue into the hollow between his collarbones.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — Salty.
KIM KITSURAGI: “You’re not too sore? We should put ice on…” you pull back to look at him. He makes a face. “We should put ice on your wrists, at least,” he says.
PAIN THRESHOLD [Medium: Success] — A good idea.
YOU: “Okay, fine,” you grumble. “How’s your shoulder?”
KIM KITSURAGI: He grimaces, half sitting up to rotate it. The scar from where he was shot is still pink and six-months-shiny. “I pushed it,” he admits. “I probably should’ve just tied you up, but it didn’t seem as fun.”
YOU: “That could’ve been fun too,” you allow, although you can tell from his expression that he as about as few regrets as you do. “Come here, let me go gym coach on that shoulder.”
SECOND HAND EGG TIMER SHAPED LIKE A HAPPY LITTLE CROCODILE SITTING ON A FLOWER: It buzzes from the other room.
KIM KITSURAGI: He looks up. “It can wait. I put pies in the oven.”
SAVOIR FAIRE [Easy: Success] — This guy is a loose cannon. What would he have done if the timer went off in the middle of sex?
YOU: Your stomach rumbles enthusiastically. “You timed that well,” you say.
KIM KITSURAGI: He shrugs. “Not really,” he says, self-satisfaction radiating from his grin. “I arranged you so I could see the alarm clock.”
YOU: You follow him into the kitchen like you’re tied with a string. “Kim,” you say, “I love you, you know.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “I know,” he says. His grin seems to be sticking around. “I love you too.” He crouches to get the pies out. He is a very specific vision in this moment, naked but for his glasses and the bright yellow oven mitt. He glances to the side and pulls a face. “Harry,” he says. “You’re dripping on the floor.”
PERCEPTION [Easy: Success] — There is, indeed, no small amount of liquid—part lube, part semen, and part shit—slowly oozing down the inside of your thigh. You’ve been ignoring it. You’re pretty sure the kitchen of any rental has seen worse.
YOU: “Yeah,” you say. “I’m very hungry, Kim.”
KIM KITSURAGI: The look he gives you is…
ARTS GRADUATE [Impossible: Failure] — …Indescribable.
AUTHORITY [Impossible: Failure] — You scuttle to the bathroom.
GARRET APARTMENT, 65/485-487 BALTARD STREET, CENTRAL JAMROCK: It is two o’clock in the morning by the time you’re both in your pyjama pants and brushing your teeth. Sleet is blown to rattle against the windowglass, but the apartment is warm.
STARTLINGLY PINK ENSUITE BATHROOM: You did it. You’re in the mindset, man! Now you can look at the tiles and see that they are friendly. What a fun colour!
PAIN THRESHOLD [Easy: Success] — You lean against the bathroom wall to savour the new bruises on your ass.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Easy: Success] — Your thighs and core muscles are leaden from exertion. What a workout! He really wore you out.
ENDURANCE [Challenging: Success] — You were already worn out. You started this month worn out. You just couldn’t feel it until Kim reconnected that part of your brain.
YOU: “Thank you,” you say, once you’ve rinsed your mouth.
KIM KITSURAGI: “What for?” he asks.
YOU: “I was a real asshole today,” you say. “And you came home and…” you trail off and mime several actions with incredible specificity. His eyebrows climb. You conclude, “You really just should’ve yelled at me.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He spits in the sink. “Neither of us would have enjoyed that,” he says, flatly.
EMPATHY [Challenging: Success] — His expression is curiously blank. Kim is normally open around you.
AMIS PROCHES [Challenging: Success] — Kim likes that you remember the answers to the questions you ask him, and he doesn’t mind being can-opened so long as you’re prying into things he already wants to confess, or dragging various long-hidden sexual fantasies into the light. What Kim doesn’t like is feeling interrogated—and he likes feeling surveilled even less.
SUGGESTION [Challenging: Success] — And, although he knows he shouldn’t, he slips into a holier-than-thou tendency to withhold information he thinks might hurt you. The more he cares about someone, the more reflexive it becomes.
YOU: “Kim,” you say. He cleans his teeth, watching you warily. “If you’re not telling me because it’s not my business, I’ll leave it alone. But if you’re not telling me for my own good…” You raise your eyebrow, having learned from the best.
KIM KITSURAGI: He bends to spit and rinse his mouth, stalling for time. This means it is the latter, and he’s disappointed in himself for not realising he was doing it again. He straightens to wipe his face on his arm. “You haven’t thought about the date,” he says.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA [Easy: Failure] — Should you have? It doesn’t seem important.
YOU: You shrug at him.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Hm.” He touches the knuckle of his pointer finger to his lips; this is the gesture he makes when he’s trying to phrase something strategically. “Let me put it like this,” he says. “In a few hours, it will be one year since we first met.”
LOGIC [Easy: Failure] — Oh my god, it was anniversary sex? You should’ve baked a cake.
KIM KITSURAGI: He is studying you, his eyebrows furrowed. “Harry,” he says. His voice is very gentle.
YOU: This isn’t how he usually speaks to me. Where have I heard this tone before?
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Challenging: Success] — This is how detective lieutenant-yefreitor Kim Kitsuragi addresses traumatised subordinates and the recently bereaved.
LOGIC [Easy: Failure] — …Did someone die?
KIM KITSURAGI: “This time last year,” he says, “probably to the hour—you were in the midst of what you’ve since described as an ‘apocalyptic bender’ in Martinaise.” He’s resorted to his report voice, firm and factual. “There, you voiced suicidal threats to multiple citizens before making between two and five attempts on your life. The final of these was a cocktail of drugs and alcohol that, combined with unwitting entroponetic exposure and your existing medical history, gave you total retrograde amnesia.”
LOGIC [Trivial: Success] — Oh. Well, when he puts it like that…
INLAND EMPIRE [Challenging: Success] — You were trying to protect yourself from this. You’ve been refusing to put the pieces together.
EMPATHY [Challenging: Success] — He wasn’t the only voice you were tuning out today. You’ve been ignoring your body as it braces for the car crash.
YOU: You stare at him.
KIM KITSURAGI: He takes your hand and raises it to his lips. He kisses your knuckles, his eyes on your face.
YOU: “…Is that why you’re being so nice to me?”
KIM KITSURAGI: He hides his startled smile behind your hand. “…Very few people would describe what I just did to you as being nice,” he says.
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — He’s glad you do, though. He was starting to worry he’d pushed you too far.
YOU: “But…” you say. You spread your hands helplessly. “Kim, I don’t remember what happened before Martinaise.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He steps closer to cup your face. Very kindly, he says, “Yes, you do.”
PAIN THRESHOLD [Impossible: Failure] — Ouch.
YOU: “Kim,” you say. “I promise you, I really don’t.”
COMPOSURE [Impossible: Failure] — You’re crying. You’re not sure why. It’s very confusing.
KIM KITSURAGI: He shakes his head. “No, no,” he says. He taps his knuckle against your forehead. “I know not in here, in the…” he doesn’t know the word. He pauses; he knows you know it.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA [Challenging: Success] — “Hippocampus,” you say. “It’s actually more kind of…” you bring his hand down so that it’s level with your eyes and the bridge of your nose. “In the middle of the skull.”
KIM KITSURAGI: His eyes soften. “There, then,” he says. “You lived through it. The experience is somewhere in you.” He puts his palm on your chest, flat over your sternum. “You don’t need to be able to remember something for it to affect you.”
YOU: “Oh,” you say.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA [Challenging: Success] — What he’s talking about is called a trauma anniversary, or the anniversary effect. You’ve seen this before.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] — You’ve seen this in the lieutenant-yefreitor himself, in fact. Earlier in your working relationship, as spring turned into summer, Kim became uncharacteristically risk-averse. When a car backfired outside the precinct, he leapt out of his skin. You didn’t know him well enough at the time to offer any real reassurance—but you did rearrange the cases you were working on to prioritise some real dull ones. You knew he was feeling better three weeks later, when he grimaced at the archival box you thumped onto his desk and said, “Don’t we have junior officers for this? I transferred to the bloody murder precinct. Let’s go solve one of those.”
YOU: “How did you know what was happening?”
KIM KITSURAGI: He clears his throat. “You remember how, just after I transferred and you were still on desk duty, I got partnered with Jean a lot?” You nod. He looks away, embarrassed. “Do you remember me going out after work with him a few times and getting him roaring drunk?”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — What? Without you?
SUGGESTION [Easy: Success] — You weren’t invited because—aside from the fact you were still in the early days of new sobriety—the only item on the agenda for these meetings was talking shit about you.
YOU: Gasp! Moi!?
OMNIFUTUENT FASHION SENSE [Easy: Success] — When it comes to the subterranean art of gossip, you have all the subtlety of a broken bottle. Kim is a stiletto blade.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — In a quiet bar in Central Jamrock, on three separate nights that fortnight, Kim drank one cocktail— a Dark and Stormy, with lime—very slowly. He put it on the table opposite Jean, who drank an average of 5.5 pints of dark ale per night.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Challenging: Success] — The lieutenant-yefreitor didn’t have to resort to anything like interrogation. He already had Jean’s respect, and after a few days on the job with him, he had his trust, too. He just pushed Jean’s pint in his direction, said, “Tell me what it was like working with Harry,” and opened his notebook.
YOU: Oh, god.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Challenging: Success] — Jean figured it out after the third outing; he had less to drink, listened to the questions before answering them, and actually dedicated some thought to why Kim was taking notes. The next morning, he rapped his knuckles on Kim’s desk and said, “You know I can’t afford the bill for your fucking talk therapy, right, Kitsuragi?”
HALF LIGHT [Trivial: Success] — Run! The knowing is upon you. Kim has heard terrible things. Only one thing for it: you have to jump out the window.
LOGIC [Challenging: Success] — The timeframe suggests Kim learned all this before he signed on as your partner—both as detective, or otherwise.
KIM KITSURAGI: “It wasn’t that bad,” he says. He pats you on the shoulder. “Could’ve been worse.”
DRAMA [Easy: Success] — With this transparent deception, sire, he spares you his stiletto blade.
YOU: “Oh god,” you say, faintly.
KIM KITSURAGI: He hesitates. “I did take notes. Would it help if you… got to see…”
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — The sudden tension in his facial muscles, especially those around his mouth, say very loudly: It wouldn’t help. Please say no.
1. VOLITION [Impossible]: You are a detective! Take THE CASE OF CONFRONTING THE KNOWLEDGE OF EVERY TERRIBLE THING YOU EVER SAID OR DID TO OR AROUND LIEUTENANT JEAN-HERON VICQUEMARE, INCLUDING THE THINGS HE DID TO RETALIATE, ALL OF WHICH HE IS GRATEFUL YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. Ideally, do not learn anything that makes you return to the bottle. (Investigate)
2. ESPRIT DE CORPS [Challenging]: You’re too close to this case to bring an unbiased eye to it. (Decline)
YOU: “…No,” you say. “If it would help, you’d’ve told me before now.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He lets out a small breath of relief. “Thank you,” he says.
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — You made the right decision.
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Easy: Success] — Eight point two kilometres away, Lieutenant Jean-Heron Vicquemare tries to keep reading a report through a colossal yawn. He works the cramp out of his jaw and thinks about what you’d tell him if you saw him working so late. Shaking his head, he closes the report and goes to check the door lock before he sleeps.
KIM KITSURAGI: “What I wanted from those conversations was to know what signs you display when you’re approaching burnout or a relapse.” He knows you’ve tried to go sober before; he wanted to know if this time would be different. “And it helped elaborate on the context I was moving into.”
SUGGESTION [Easy: Success] — The departmental politics of C-Wing were prickly when he transferred. Moving to Precinct 41 was a big gamble for him, and the lieutenant-yefreitor does not play to lose.
YOU: “Is that how you could tell it was getting bad? Other than the whole…” you wave your hand. “Knowing the date, thing?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Partially. There were environmental clues.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Challenging: Success] — You aren’t the only one of your half-siblings feeling the anniversary effect. Unbeknownst to you, C-Wing has been watching you closely since midwinter. Jean has been carrying tension in his jaw and subtle terror in his eyes. This afternoon, as you threw yourself into paperwork, Judit got Kim’s attention over your hunched shoulders and mouthed, “Relapse?”
Kim shook his head. “Not yet,” he’d said aloud, knowing you were too focused to listen.
YOU: “And those environmental clues pointed to…” you mime cracking a whip, making the sound. Wh-chow.
KIM KITSURAGI: He tuts. He does not own a whip; he considers them inelegant and dangerous. “Catharsis,” he supplies, instead. “I know some people consider sado-masochism a… healthier outlet for self-destructive tendencies.” He shrugs. “I wouldn’t know about that—I just enjoy it. You’re more the one for psycho-analysis.”
ARTS GRADUATE [Challenging: Success] — You are! What he’s talking about is masochism as a form of limit-experience. These are the things that help the Subject delineate where it ends, and where the Other—or in psycho-entroponetics, the Pâlir—begins. Examples of limit-experiences other than sado-masochism include: madness, desire, abandonment, revolution, and writing poetry. Of these, poetry is widely considered the most portable.
YOU: “You’re right, Kim,” you say. You wash your face and towel it dry. “I needed to test the somatosensory limits of my ordered reality.” You catch him rolling his eyes in the mirror and grin. “But… was testing the boundaries of reality as good for you as it was for me?” You wink.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Oh, you challenge the limits of my reality more than enough, Harrier,” he says, voice dry. He turns off the bathroom light. You follow him back to the bedroom. “But… yes,” he says. “I like watching the gears turn in your head.” He makes a circular motion with his finger. “All the little arguments you have with yourself over relinquishing control.” He smiles broadly, pleased with himself. “And in the end, you always do it anyway. Because you want to.”
YOU: “I want anything you want to do to me, Kim,” you say. Your brain is a hot fog.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Yes, yes,” he says. He flashes you a grin. “But you’d be so disappointed if I took your word for it.”
COMPOSURE [Impossible: Failure] — The look that crosses your face makes him laugh.
CONCEPTUALISATION [Challenging: Success] — People say you’re the can-opener. But Kim has disassembled you like he’s stripping an engine, or a gun; every part of you has been thoroughly cleaned and examined as a cherished component of the working whole. When he puts you back together, you work more smoothly than before.
YOU: “You know when you asked if I had any questions? I just have one,” you say. You clamber into bed.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Of course you do,” he says. He raises an eyebrow at the not-incredibly-thorough spot-clean you did on the bed covers, but he gets under them anyway. “Thank you for making the bed,” he adds.
AMIS PROCHES [Easy: Success] — See? It’s nice to make an effort!
KIM KITSURAGI: “What was your question?” He settles against you so that you can dig your thumbs into the damaged muscle of his shoulder joint. He grunts when you find the knot there.
YOU: “When you spoke to the city, what did you call her?”
KIM KITSURAGI: He frowns. “La Revacholiére?” You shake your head. “Oh,” he says. “Mère d’Orphelins.”
YOU: “Yeah. I’ve never heard that before.” You pluck his glasses from his nose and set them aside.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Thank you,” he says. “I don’t know where I heard it first.” He shifts under your hands until you find the tension in his trapezius. When you do, he hums, his eyes half-closing with pleasure. “It feels like I’ve always known it. I must have been young enough that it felt like it might be true.”
YOU: “Yeah?” you say, working on the muscle.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I remember…” he frowns, eyes distant. “I suppose it must have been the Jamrock North Home for Destitute Children. I don’t think I was anywhere before there. The dormitory had blue walls. I must have only been three or four—too young for bunk beds. One of the oblates…” he trails off, looking scandalised at the passage of time. “Oh my god,” he says. “She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. A lot of older orphans ended up joining the Church of Humanity—they had nowhere else to go, I suppose. I thought she was so grown-up.”
CONCEPTUALISATION [Legendary: Failure] — It’s hard to imagine Kim as anything other than what he is; as anything other than the man under your hands.
YOU: “She read you bedtime stories?”
KIM KITSURAGI: He shakes his head. “Not exactly. They couldn’t afford books, especially not right after the war. But she told us stories.” He pushes into your hands as you work up the muscles at the back of his neck. “Mm. I wonder how many she made up.”
YOU: “All stories are made up, Kim.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He cracks open one eye to give you a withering look. “Sure,” he says. “But if you didn’t care about some of them being more made up than others, then you wouldn’t be a detective.”
RHETORIC [Easy: Success] — Good point.
YOU: You grin. “So… this oblate. Do you remember anything about her? Or just her stories?”
KIM KITSURAGI: He hums, his eyes far away. “Sister Rosine,” he says. “She had… dark hair. Olive skin, I think. I was confused when we used to do services in the chapel because—who was this blonde woman in the stained glass? The most important girl in the church was Sister Rosine.“ He snorts. “Imagine my surprise when I learned about Dolores Dei.”
DRAMA [Easy: Success] — His eyes are mostly closed, but his hands move as he talks. He likes telling stories. He didn’t get the chance to do it very often, before he met you.
KIM KITSURAGI: “We would all gather on one of the beds. She’d let us sit on her lap or tuck under her arms. It only stands out because the oblates weren’t supposed to touch us. I think she didn’t have the heart to tell us off.” He thinks for a second. “They kept two of us to a bed, sometimes three. That could have been funding, but… the roof wasn’t all the way attached; I remember all the buckets we had to catch the drips. The rooms must have been very cold. I don’t remember.”
ENCYCLOPAEDIA [Easy: Success] — Your generation, the ones who were born around the turn of the century and lived through the troubled decades afterwards, are used to the cold of prolonged power outages.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I think she must have told us a lot of stories, but I only remember what she told about the city. Our home.” His lips curve—a little wryly, but lacking his usual irony. He spreads his hands, making the bedspread into a storybook map. “How, ever since the city was first built, ever since the first stone was laid—the spirit of the city watched over her inhabitants. La Revacholiére.”
DRAMA [Easy: Success] — He says this with the rhythmic cadence of a children’s story, and pauses for his audience.
YOU: “Where did La Revacholiére come from? Was there something here before?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Maybe,” he says. “But I thought it was that she came to exist as the city did. Every brick and stone that was laid became part of her.”
DRAMA [Easy: Success] — Again, his words have the rhythmic quality of a story once told.
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — This is ingrained deep in his mental pathways.
YOU: “And?” you prompt.
KIM KITSURAGI: “As the city grew, so did her population. We moved through the streets like blood oxygenating in her lungs. Our life was her life, and so she loved everything that lived inside her; every single flower, every single bird, and every single child.” He pauses where Rosine once paused. “Even the orphans,” he says.
ARTS GRADUATE [Challenging: Success] — When this story was told to Rosine, before the war, the story ended at ‘every single flower, every single bird, and every single child’—a little trite and tidy. It was a message about respecting your environment and everyone being special, lost in the static of a hundred other moral tales. But every story changes in the telling, and this one came to mean something new. It’s the ‘even’ that made this story stuck with Kim, because it’s the only one that felt like it was about him.
KIM KITSURAGI: He smiles. “She loved us like a mother.”
COMPOSURE [Challenging: Success] — Do not blubber onto him. This is one of his nice childhood memories.
YOU: “La Revacholiére, Mere d’Orphelins,” you say. You sound a little hoarse.
KIM KITSURAGI: “Exactly.” He frowns, squinting. Close up and without his glasses, in light like this, he can’t see you well at all. “Are you crying?”
YOU: “No,” you say, quickly.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — You love him so much.
KIM KITSURAGI: He reaches for the lamp. “I think she must have told us stories to get us to sleep,” he says, as the two of you arrange yourselves. You wrap yourself around him. “Probably not an easy task with a room of twenty or so war orphans. Everyone had nightmares.” He shakes his head in the crook of your arm.
YOU: “I can imagine,” you say.
HALF LIGHT [Easy: Success] — Rosine was thirteen years old during Operation Deathblow. She lived through the Insulindian Deluge. She would have seen the bodies of her neighbours piled in the streets until the faces she had known became unrecognisable; transmuted by horror into nothing more than meat.
YOU: “Sister Rosine told all of you these stories because she wanted to believe them. She watched her family die. She probably got scared at nighttime, too.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He’s silent, but you know he hasn’t fallen asleep; his breathing isn’t slow enough. After a while, he says, “I’ve never thought about that before.” His voice is distant. “She was very kind for someone who lived through all of that.”
YOU: “I think the same thing about you,” you say.
KIM KITSURAGI: He turns his face into your neck.
EMPATHY [Easy: Success] — Give him a moment.
PERCEPTION [Easy: Success] — The tick of the clock. His heartbeat is a strong, steady thump against your skin.
KIM KITSURAGI: “I don’t remember them,” he says, eventually. He means his parents.
YOU: You pat his chest, over his sternum. “You sound very certain of that,” you say, “for someone who told me a memory didn’t have to be remembered to affect you.”
KIM KITSURAGI: He huffs. “Touché,” he says.
YOU: “So. Do you think it’s true?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Hm?”
YOU: “That La Revacholiére loves her inhabitants.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “If you’d asked me a year ago, I would have said no. It was a story made up to encourage children to be better citizens.”
YOU: “And now?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Now I’ve met you. Consider the boundaries of my reality thoroughly tested.” You feel him shrug. “Of course La Revacholiére loves her citizens. If she didn’t… who else would?”
PERCEPTION, HEARING [Medium: Success] — You listen to the slow rhythm of Kim’s breath. In and out. In and out again.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA [Medium: Success] — Drumroll, please! Here it is, the moment you’ve been waiting for: the freezing point of mercury is -38.83°C. Comparatively, a metal like aluminium doesn’t freeze until it cools below 660.3 °C. Most people agree they wouldn’t be checking a thermometer at this temperature.
YOU: Is there a reason I’m thinking about this now?
VISUAL CALCULUS [Challenging: Failure] — It’s not like there are any numbers that should be of more concern to you in this moment.
REACTION SPEED [Impossible: Failure] — You twitch as the realisation hits you. “Oh my god,” you say, pained. “I kept us at work so late tonight, Kim. We need to be up in, what? Three and a half, four hours?”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Oh, no. I did some paperwork while you were distracted. We’re taking some accrued medical leave tomorrow morning. Our shifts start at midday. Just… maybe don’t tell anybody what for.”
YOU: “Kim,” you say, seriously, “I am inflamed with passion for you.”
KIM KITSURAGI: “Ah, the famous fire of working class solidarity,” he says. His lips quirk against your neck as you bark out a laugh.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] — Your neurons bounce just one thought back and forth at the lieutenant’s touch: you are alive, and you are lucky, lucky, lucky. Your body relaxes, loose-limbed and exhausted, in its bath of oxytocin.
LIMBIC SYSTEM: Peace.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: You bask in heat. The wet morass of your brain-meat no longer churns with the mammalian messiness of complex thought.
YOU: You sleep.
SHIVERS [Legendary: Success] — Across the river, a young person walks the shoreline hunched against the sleet, freezing hands shoved deep into damp pockets. There is no turning back after that conversation; there is no going home ever again. They look up through their wet hair at the glow of light pollution and smog of Revachol West. There, among the slums and skyscrapers, they see her, for a moment; the shape of a hungry, stray creature whose bristled haunches are smoke stacks and radio antennae, whose hide is riddled with bullet holes and rot, whose eyes are the glow of bright and wary construction spotlights. They make eye contact with La Revacholiére across the River Esperance as goosebumps rise on their skin, and they realise the thing Kim has always known; the city is an orphan, too, abandoned out here on the edge of the world. You have to love her. If you don’t, who will?
The wind tugs on their coat, urging them across the bridge, down the road, towards the neon lights of Boogie Street. There are people there they’ve waited their whole life to meet.
LA REVACHOLIÉRE: I NEED EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU.