#monstersflashlight

Ambrose, my beloved the minotaur for @monstersflashlight and for myself because I love him

Now let’s see if I can figure out tagging.

Ghoul x fem reader / mild violence, light exhibitionism, mention of murder/gun violence.

The gym at the precinct was probably your favorite thing about working there. It could hardly be called a ‘gym,’ really. You had to go for the full name, ‘gymnasium.’ Yes, there was typical workout equipment - treadmills, ellipticals, weights, machines galore to strengthen various muscles. But you weren’t in that section as much as here. Trampolines, a vault and runway, climbing ropes, beams, bars, and your personal favorite - the tumbling floor. It was used for a lot of different things by the unit. Sometimes events were held and officers could bring their kids for games. People sparred on it a lot, often with unique results given the spring loaded floor. But you were one of the few at the precinct who could put it to its true use, having done a lot of gymnastics as a child and into your teenage years. Sometimes you felt like the gymnasium was the only real reason you worked as the only human officer in an all monster precinct.

Those times had been less frequent since Vera and Dorna had taken a liking to you. They were also among the mere handful of female officers that you worked with, and they’d come across you in the gym one day, catching nearly 15 feet of air on a tumbling pass across the diagonal. They came to find you a lot when they were planning to hit the gym.

Vera was a svelte werewolf with a tendency to be either more and then less hairy as the month cycled. She also had a mouth on her that could make a sailor blush from scalp to toes. Dorna was an orc that you suspected once had gang ties in her youth. She had silver filigreed caps on her tusks and a lot of dark tattoos on her arms that were probably coverups of old ink that she regretted getting. They’d scooped you up at about two o’clock when they’d been walking across the office and realized you were about to blow up at a vampire officer who had set yet another pile of folders on your desk to be filed.

So here you all are, in the gym. You’re on your hands, feet in the air, legs together, toes pointed, forcing yourself to remember to breathe. Dorna is also in a handstand, wobbling slightly more. Vera has already given up, sitting cross legged near you both.

“So I heard you got a new partner?” The werewolf starts, conversationally.

“New?” You say, repositioning your hands a little wider, legs rocking a little from side to side.

“Fine, a partner,” she corrects, already sounding slightly irked. And with you only one word into the conversation.

“His name’s Ben Vermis,” Dorna quips, unstrained by her inverted stance. “He’s from a precinct up in Port Haven. Ghoul.”

Vera snorts. “Of course they saddle our human with a ghoul.” You smile a little at ‘our human.’ It’s nice to have at least a few people around your workplace who will claim you. Most of your coworkers resent your presence and make no effort whatsoever to hide it. “Why’d he get shipped over here?” Vera asks.

“Put his entire unit in danger when he decided to go off on his own during a hostage situation at a bank. Apparently found a way in through a bathroom window that the gang didn’t have guarded. Laid out like five guys around the place before they could notice him, then got between a guy pointing a glock at a woman holding a little kid. Ripped the guys throat out.” Dorna says.

You see Vera look up from the spot on the floor she’s been picking at with her sharp nails. “Fuck, that’s actually impressive.”

“He took a bullet to the leg doing it,” you tell her. “And he could have very easily gotten those hostages killed.”

“He didn’t though.”

“Okay,” you continue. “He got really lucky. Media got ahold of it and there was a whole mess about it. Yeah, some people said he was a hero, others said he acted too recklessly. He put lives on the line, and not just his own. So his captain did the smart thing and decided he was a liability. But there would have been more of a mess about it if they’d tried to remove him from the force. So now he’s here.” You can’t keep the grumble out of your voice in the last sentence.

“Heard he’s hot as fuck,” Vera muses, ignoring everything you just said. You roll your eyes, but you’re glad all the blood has already rushed to your head, making your face red, because she’s right. The guy was unfairly pretty. He seemed to know it too. You’d already watched him flirt with half the folks who had been sitting at their desks completing paperwork when he was on his solo tour around the building. You would bet good money that he’d kept up that flirtatiousness while you weren’t there watching him at it too.

But Vera’s comment somehow catches Dorna off guard, and the big green woman falters. She comes down out of the handstand well, but goes to stand immediately and falls to her rear, shaking the floor beneath you. You maintain balance, feeling smug.

“You okay, Dorn?” You ask. She sticks her tongue out and makes a raspberry noise at you. You laugh.

There’s a wolf whistle from the entrance to the gym followed by “Lovin’ those shorts, sunshine. Especially at that angle.”

“Speak of the devil,” you say quietly, rolling forward out of the handstand and sliding easily into a full split, setting your elbows on the floor and your chin in your hands.

“Show off,” Vera mutters.

You look at your partner and he licks his lips, which you try to ignore. “Got any questions?” You ask him.

“I think I know how a precinct works,” he says, and you don’t miss the derision there. He steps onto the floor where the three of you are sitting, bounces on his toes a few times and takes a few running steps, followed by a round off, then a back handspring, and into a double backflip. The floor rumbles and bounces with each hit. ‘Of course,’ you think, rolling your eyes. You hear an “ooooooo” from Vera and an “uh oh” from Dorna, under her breath.

Ben strolls toward you like his little demonstration didn’t just happen. “You have nice facilities here though, I’ll say that much.”

You stand, a little carefully so that all the blood doesn’t immediately rush from your head. You give a little clap, like a teacher trying to call on the attention of a kindergarten class. “So glad to hear you know how a precinct works,” you say with a big, fake smile. “Now we simply need to teach you how not to be a liability to one.”

The ghoul’s open expression immediately shifts into an angry frown. “Pardon?” He says like he’s daring you to repeat yourself.

“I read your file,” you continue in your forced chipper tone. “It seems pretty clear to me that you’re going to end up getting people killed someday.” He’s prowling closer to you, and you feel like you’re watching a storm roll in. One of your own making. But you always get such a rush when it thunders. You spread your hands apart like a prophet speaking forth the Truth. “You are. A liability.”

He’s inches from you now, glowering down at you. You maintain eye contact, head tilted up, aware that the little smile on your lips now is nothing short of mocking.

“More of a liability than some little human girl who thinks she can keep up with monsters?” His voice is low, tone flat.

“I’m not the one playing at being a hero.”

“I eat heroes for breakfast, little girl.” He flicks his tongue out at you, nearly licking your cheek. Reminding you what he is, and implying you might be on the menu.

You back away from him slowly, still holding his glare and your cruel little smile. You stretch your neck and your arms a little. “Do you spar at all?” You ask.

He quirks a pierced eyebrow at you, a little surprised.

Vera, still cross legged on the floor, starts pumping both fists up and down. “Fight, fight, fight, fight.” It’s barely more than a whisper, but it sends Ben’s other eyebrow up to join its sibling as he glances toward the other two ladies. Dorna sighs and starts to drag her partner toward the vault runway. The werewolf is still chanting, quiet, but excited.

Ben seems to think for a moment, then shrugs, dropping into a fighting stance. You try not to grin at how much it straight up reminds you of Street Fighter, feet apart, fists up, a little bounce. You wonder if he’s fucking with you, and you decide to err on the side of caution. That is, he’s definitely fucking with you. But it shortly becomes clear to you that he’s going to let you make the first move.

So you side-step a bit, watching the way his eyes and body follow your movements, remaining prepared should he decide to launch himself at you. And you decide to approach, low, feigning a kick toward his knee, then a punch toward his stomach. He blocks both, but has to drop lower than he was to do so. You catch him with your off hand, smacking him in the ear with your palm. He looses a short, animal snarl and grabs for you, but you’re already dancing backward, heart racing. You smirk, knowing he’s probably going to make you pay for it. Vera laughs off to the side.

He approaches and you lead him in a circle, walking backward. He moves forward fast, directing a one-two punch toward your chest. You swing back and sidestep, aiming a kick toward his ribs but only succeeding in landing a glancing blow. Both times you’ve hit him, he’s barely wavered, and you’re not sure if it’s because of a rock steady center of gravity or your very outmatched weight class. Maybe both. You try to step back again, but he turns quickly and succeeds in catching you by the collar of your t-shirt. You drop your weight and try to hook his leg to unbalance him. You get your leg behind his, but it doesn’t work, you can’t move him. He grabs your shoulder and continues his turn, picking up momentum and then throwing you across the floor. You land on your side in a roll and come to your feet quickly, but he’s already rushing you. He grabs the wrist of the arm you’ve managed to raise and your shoulder again, pulling you almost off your feet and forcing you over backward, where he pins you to the floor.

Your back hits with a heavy thump and you let out a noise somewhere between “no don’t hurt me, I’m just a poor little human” and “yes, please, fuck me harder.” You’ve actually perfected this noise over time because it’ll catch anyone off guard at least once. And because you’re a bit of a little shit. It does have the desired effect and Ben jerks back, releasing his hold. You roll your knees toward your chest in that split second and plant both of your feet in the middle of his chest as hard as you can, sending him backward. You were right, he is a lot heavier than you. If you’re going to spar with him much in the future, you’re going to have to up your weight training, you can tell.

Dorna claps from the sidelines, smiling and shaking her head at your antics. Vera is giggling near uncontrollably. You kip up to your feet as Ben is righting himself.

“You fight dirty,” he says, but the tone is almost appreciative.

“You don’t get points taken off in a street fight,” you fire back. And you continue. Back and forth like that, exchanging blows. He gets a couple good hits in, along with a kick to your thigh that will probably bruise for a week. You try to drop him three more times without success and narrowly avoid being pinned again twice. Eventually, you have to practically climb him to get him on the floor. You really weren’t even sure you could pull off that move - grab, swing up, pivot. You had to use all of your strength to get him off balance. But you finally manage it, him face down on the floor with your knee in the small of his back and one of his arms twisted to near pain behind his back.

Dorna gives a whoop of victory from the sideline.

“Ten points!” Vera shouts, throwing her arms up. You grin fiercely at them, breathing hard, sweat dripping down your face and almost into your eyes. Ben’s panting and attempting to struggle under you, but he can’t move much with most of your weight on your knee and you twisting his arm a bit further in warning. You can see half of his face and he looks truly pissed, eye wide and lips curled in fury. You give him a little pat on the shoulder with your free hand and lean down.

“You’re going to learn to behave as my partner, pretty boy,” you tell him, letting your lips brush the shell of his ear. He turns his face into the floor, so angry you can feel him shaking under you.

“Tap,” you hear him growl. You release him and stand. He stays on the floor, catching his breath, maybe, as you walk off toward the women’s locker room. Dorna falls into step on your left, and Vera bounces along excitedly beside you both. You glance back for a moment just outside the door to see dark, furious eyes staring after you.

Maybe you should worry about what kind of impression you were making on your partner. Maybe you should try caring about what he would end up thinking of you. But you’d tried the ‘nice’ thing before, and it hadn’t worked. And the ‘caring about what people thought of you’ was, by far, worse. Why try to get into anyone’s good graces by pandering to them? Either they’d decide you were worth the time, like Vera and Dorna for some reason had, or they’d continue being shitty toward you just like everyone else. Your male coworkers were just like that, you’d figured. Men usually were, in your experience, regardless of species. If they weren’t practicing the art of ignoring everything you said and did, they were looking down on you and judging everything you said and did. And if they weren’t doing that, they were looking at you like a piece of ass. When you told them (or smacked them) to knock that shit off, they went back to one of the first two options. It was exhausting, but you hadn’t figured out a way out of that stupid game yet.

You say goodbye to the two other women as they head toward the parking lot to go on patrol. When you get back to your desk, there are even more folders that have been dumped on you to be filed, not to mention the case files that had been left along with little sticky note questions because a lot of monsters found human behavior baffling but needed to know to work through an investigation. You pinch the bridge of your nose and try to let go of your irritation before it causes a headache. Then you grab an armful of folders and head to the filing room.

There’s no one in there. Because of course there’s no one in there. They make you do all the fucking filing. It’s slow work. Each Manila folder has a nine digit number on the tab, all the walls are lined with filing cabinets, and you’ve been given files from all over the place. It often sends you pacing across to a different cabinet with each new file. The precinct had extensive digital records too, of course, but systems could crash, and had before in the past. So while the digital system made things easier to find, the paper system still stood. In that room alone, all the cases from the past ten years were stored. Cases from before that were sent to the district archive. Very very little was sent to be incinerated these days. Both mankind and monsters had learned from doing that too often in the past.

The door clicks quietly open. Someone looking for a file they need to reference, you figure. You stay at your drawer, flicking through files with one hand and holding the one you’re trying to home with the other. Then a big, warm body presses against your back, making you jump and drop the file. Gray arms encircle your waist as the cabinet drawer slides shut under its own weight. Your partner’s cologne envelopes you. You’d been noticing it all day. Hints when you were introduced this morning in Armstrong’s office and as he wandered his new workplace. And certainly when you were sparring earlier. Your brain wanted to be irked by it, telling you it was too strong. But your libido, damn thing that it was, liked it. A lot. It was something that smacked you in the face with citrus and left you with a woody undertone. Your heart picked up pace. ‘I’m not afraid of him’ said your mind. ‘No, you’re not’ your sex drive replied, jeering at the notion.

The ghoul nuzzled your neck, taking a deep breath. Can he smell anything other than all the cologne he wears? You think, not realizing you’re tilting your head to the side and giving him room.

“So you think I’m pretty, huh?” He says, deep voice warm against your neck. His lips move, brushing over your sensitive skin, the pressure of the two rings through his bottom lip making the hairs on your arms stand on end. He starts kissing his way slowly down toward your shoulder, and your knees go weak. You have to swallow a moan as your breath hitches. “Hm?” He breathes.

“Day one and you’re already starting this shit?” You say, aiming for hardass but hitting hoarse.

“I don’t hear you telling me to stop.” You feel every sharp point of his teeth as he bites you gently. You shiver, nipples stiffening beneath three layers of clothing. He laughs behind you, low and sultry. “Don’t smell you telling me to stop either.”

It’s enough to drag you back to your senses. You hated that shit. Yes, you’re a monster, whoop-de-doo, yes, you have better senses than I do, yes you can tell things about me that I’d rather not have you know. That doesn’t mean you need to remind me of that all the time. It doesn’t mean that you need to give voice to my privacy. I don’t care what you can and can’t sense.

Your voice comes out normal this time. “Because you’d stop if I told you to.” It’s very clear from your tone that you don’t think this is the case.

I’m so sorry, I promise I’ve been thinking about this ask every day since I got it. 😭 but I’ve got the next part that I was thinking about and a friend said I should post it.

So I gotta figure out tags again because I’m kinda unpracticed on that part. And again @monstersflashlight I really hope she doesn’t mind that I’m still playing around with her characters.

And also I did sorta give the ‘you’ character a name. That’s probably unconventional, but… oops? Anyway, enough babbling.

Ghoul x Fem!reader: tw gun violence

Captain Armstrong was on the phone with the DA when the door to his office slammed open, ricocheting off the bookcase behind it and coming to juttering stop against someone’s boot. The Minotaur winced at the interruption, trying to cover the phone’s receiver. Vermis was in the doorway, radiating so much anger that he practically stood under his own personal thunderhead. Armstrong glared at him. The ghoul glared back.

“Right,” Armstrong said, intent on the phone call. “I understand, thank you. Yes. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He gingerly replaced the phone in its cradle before raising both eyebrows at Vermis.

The ghoul pointed a finger toward the general direction of the cluster of desks that occupied the office. “I’m not,” he said, voice already dripping venom, “being partners with that.”

“What’s the matter, Ben, I thought you said you wanted a challenge.” The Minotaur said, now with companionable warmth, gesturing for Vermis to close the door and sit in the chair opposite the desk.

Ben kicked the door shut and stalked to the chair. Anyone else seeing the ghoul in such a mood probably would have taken one look at him and fled in the opposite direction. Armstrong only gave him a small smile.

“A challenge is one thing. That is an insult with legs,” Armstrong’s smile only grew a little as Vermis continued. “Perambulating about and offending anyone it happens upon for no reason.”

The Minotaur didn’t speak, waiting to see if his new officer had more. He did. “Do you know what she just accused me of?!”

“Finally a pronoun with some personhood to it,” Armstrong muttered, then in a louder voice, “No, Ben, I can only imagine. Do tell.”

Vermis’ face changed, his mouth shut, then opened. “She-, I…“ His expression wavered between anger and embarrassment. He tried a few more times, but eventually folded his arms and slumped in the chair to sulk.

Armstrong’s smile didn’t change once. “That’s what I thought.”

The two were silent for a moment. Ben thought for a while. “Why her? Why me? She said she doesn’t want a partner. I don’t want her as a partner. So why are you forcing this?”

“She needs a partner, Ben. She runs herself ragged trying to do all of her duties as an

officer and bear up under everything the other officers here do to her.”

“Well? Why haven’t you done anything about it?”

“I’ve tried.” The Minotaur sighed. “She asked me not to. I can’t keep an eye on things all the time and she says it just makes it worse. They assume she complains.”

“She doesn’t?”

The captain shook his head, horns swinging ponderously. “She fights. Or she did. Used to, she wouldn’t hesitate to verbally hand an officer’s ass to him, with a side order of ‘meet me in the sparring ring if you have a problem.’ She mostly just deals now. Says it’s not worth the constant fight. And…” He hesitated.

Ben caught the tone. “And what?”

Armstrong blew out a long breath, one hand creeping up to his temple to stave off a headache. “He’s not here anymore because I wouldn’t have him in my unit after that shit. But there was a vampire officer,”

Ben’s lip automatically curled. Ghouls tended to have a natural dislike for vampires. It was just historically and genetically built in at this point.

“No one in that training exercise should have even had live ammunition. But he shot Solier in the chest. Dead center.” The Minotaur tapped his sternum almost absent-mindedly.

Vermis’ mouth dropped open.

“Of course, everyone was wearing their gear, and the vest kept her safe. Well, safe enough. A few fractured ribs, but she refused to do anything less than at least desk work. I wanted her to take paid leave for a few days. Hells, my higher ups wanted her to. The whole thing is officially on record as a ‘training accident.’ But I shipped that officer as far off as I could. I think he’s in New Havana now. Kind of like how you got sent here.” The Minotaur’s voice turned thoughtful.

“You should have told me some of this before, Horns.”

“I thought you’d actually read up on her, Benjamin.” The Minotaur shot back.

“I was getting to it!” Vermis replied defensively, voice shooting up an octave.

“Right, after you’d scoped out every potential lay in the building. There are cameras in that filing room, by the way. Along with most other places.”

The accusation hit a little too close to home for the ghoul and made him respond brashly.

“So what, you want me to babysit-“ he didn’t get any further before Armstrong’s hands slammed down on his desk and he half rose from his chair.

“No, damnit,” he shouted, before lowering his voice again. “I want you to help her. Work with her. Be a damned asset to this unit like I’m fucking hoping you’ll be! That woman does more work than most of my officers and gets no damn thanks for it. A lot of them don’t like her and they make no pretense about it. And they may think it’s because she’s human, but if they were a little more honest with themselves, they’d admit that it’s because she can run rings around most of them. And I’d fucking appreciate it if you got your head out of your ass before she has to start running rings around you, too.”

Vermis gaped at the captain before realizing he was doing so, then snapped his mouth shut. The chair creaked as Armstrong lowered himself back into it slowly.

“You’re actually quite fond of her, aren’t you?” Ben realized.

The Minotaur rubbed at his forehead again. “I could use at least three more officers just like her, frankly. But…” Silence hung for a moment.

It was hard to get humans into the force these days. Everyone assumed monsters made better officers, but this wasn’t exactly true. Monsters often made better investigators, usually having a partial forensics lab built into their senses. But any species could be a competent officer and an asset to the force. More importantly, it was essential to have representatives from as many species as possible. It helped every aspect of policing, from public relations to crime investigation. It provided a broad base of knowledge and experiences that could be drawn on when needed. And one never knew what might prove to be useful. Or who.

Armstrong sighed again. “I didn’t put you with her just because you said you wanted a challenge. Or because you’re an asshole and you could use some tempering. You’re both good at what you do. And maybe if you can both get your heads screwed on straight, you’d actually make a decent team. Now get out of my office and pretend you know how to behave professionally for a few hours, hm?”

The ghoul walked back slowly, thoughtfully. A few other people passed him in the hallway, offering friendly greetings. A Naga receptionist gave him a particularly enthusiastic hello, earning smirks from the coworkers she was heading toward the break room with. Ben nodded and smiled, using the names he remembered, asking names of people he hadn’t met yet.

He was good at people. Usually. His mother used to refer to him as “a little charmer” since before he was old enough to know what it meant. And his older sister started telling friends she brought over not to talk to “that con artist” from the time he’d entered junior high. People liked him. And the charm act wasn’t even exactly an act. He had trouble turning the damn thing off most of the time. The charisma was just there, backing him up at all times. His memory certainly didn’t hurt either. He remembered names, sure, but also family connections, birthdays, ailments, troubles. He listened when people talked, and boy did they tend to talk to him. It was getting them to stop talking that was usually the hard part.

And then there was you. Human. He didn’t work with humans much, when he could avoid it. There was the somewhat prevalent assumption that ghouls ate humans. Not untrue, but hell, put humans in a dire enough situation and they’ll do the same. When you’re starving to death, you will surprise yourself with what you’re willing to eat. But these days, ghouls rarely had to resort to eating people. There were rumors that some ghouls preferred humans to other… foods, but it was frowned upon by most of society in general, and heavily policed by the ghoul community itself, when you could find them. Such rumors meant that ghouls were among the most recent species to make themselves known after the Shift, when many monsters of all kinds finally made themselves known to the human world. Many ghouls were still reclusive, or even still Glamoured, though that was now regarded as taboo. But people still thinking you ate other creatures considered to be your intellectual equals tended to do a hell of a job on a first impression.

So it wasn’t odd for most ghouls to avoid humans. Getting called a zombie or a cannibal was annoying enough, but there were also people that would interrogate you as to your diet. Or people still caught in archaic beliefs that would just say you were evil, regardless of anything else about your whole personhood. And then there were the fetishists and nutcases. Ben had heard stories from family members about being asked by some gleeful human what various bits of human anatomy tasted like, or solicited online for truly gruesome things that most people would rather not think about. ‘Hi, I just had to have a leg amputated and-‘ delete message because it’s better to not even know.

For Ben though, usually humans were just kind of difficult to be around. They smelled… distracting. They couldn’t help it. It was always a jumble of perfumes, soaps, detergents, previous meals, sweat, emotions being broadcast, you name it. Not that monsters didn’t have their own plethora of scents. But he’d been raised around monsters of all kinds. Humans, not so much. He’d thought he was up to the challenge. As a ghoul, he could shut things off easily enough when they got overwhelming. He could go without breathing for hours if necessary. He could even turn off his heartbeat, if it came to it. It came in handy when, for example, you’d gotten yourself shot in the leg doing exactly what your chief of police had told you not to do. But that didn’t mean not breathing was comfortable. And having your blood run to a standstill in your veins was worse. Doable. Survivable. Even useful. But worse.

Ben didn’t want to have to do something as stupid as not breathe around you. He might be able to do many things most other people couldn’t without breath, but talking wasn’t among them. He’d have to talk to you. Even if it was apparently only ever going to be to have the next argument.

Throwing himself headlong into things had been a mistake, however. The sparring had been fun, sure, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t practically drooling by less than half a minute into it. And he didn’t think he’d ever be able to get the sound you’d made the first time he’d pinned you out of his head. Knowing you’d done it on purpose just made you more enticing. You managing to get him on the floor though? Fuck’s sake, he’d never gotten bricked up so fast in his life. Mortifying. It was only a mercy you’d pinned him on his stomach.

And then, yes, brilliant Ben, find her alone and completely go off your head, he chided himself. He had no doubts about what would be haunting his dreams tonight. The tilt of your head, offering your neck, the hitch in your breath and the way your heartbeat sped. The taste of your skin. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip without thinking, then mentally cursed himself again.

He couldn’t face you now. Not with the whirlwind that had been today. Not with his mind circling you like a shark around blood in the water. He sighed internally and set off to find IT. Time to make friends with the computer people. Maybe he could access your file and get more opinions on you at the same time.

Ben wouldn’t admit it to anyone other than himself, but he’d wasted time with the IT crew. On purpose. Chatting, listening to stories, getting almost a general feel for what working for the precinct was like from their perspective. He’d gotten a few more stories about you. A lanky half-orc that looked like he was barely out of high school had offered an “oh, did you draw the short straw, then? Cap’s been trying to get someone to partner with the dragon-lady since before I started.”

“Hey,” A bugbear with short, blunt tusks, coke bottle thick lenses in his glasses, and gray streaked throughout his fur started. “Don’t talk shit about people who don’t break their computers.”

“What, she doesn’t look at you like she’s trying to set you on fire with her mind?” The young half-orc asked, waving his hands on either side of his head like he was trying to commit some kind of psycho-kinetic crime, eyes scrunching in effort.

“No,” the bugbear deadpanned. “She doesn’t.”

“How come she does it to me then?!” The kid wailed.

“Prob’ly has something to do with you being a twerp.”

Ben snorted from his spot leaning in the door frame. “You don’t think she’s that bad then, Russ?”

The bugbear eyed him through his thick glasses. “Nah kid, she’s just another person. And she makes a hell of a lot less work for me than some of the other idiots ‘round here. And she’s been a damn sight more polite to me when she has a problem than a lotta other people are. She gets mad when people fuck with her or don’t take her seriously is all. And folks here gen’rally do one or the other. So she expects it. Kinda like how I expect people to be stupid.”

Kindred spirits, Ben thought to himself. “You’re an insightful one, Russ.”

The bugbear just grunted and went back to squinting at his computer screen. Ben glanced at the clock, which he’d been doing every two minutes for the past hour. It was almost five minutes after his shift was supposed to end, and he was so ready to light out of this place. But if he could get out without coming across you again… he made idle, boring small talk with Fenek, whom he’d forever onward think of as “the twerp,” thanks to Russ. The kid was into fucking Warhammer of all things, and was practically frothing at the mouth to get home and see if any of the new miniatures he’d ordered had arrived. Ben asked the occasional question when Fenek looked like he was about to slow down his barrage of dystopian fantasy chatter, and the tide of sci-fi jargon would rise again.

“Fen, would you get back to work, for fuck’s sake.” Russ’s voice caught Ben mid yawn. “You,” the bugbear turned. “Your shift’s over, ain’t it. Go find some other reason to avoid your new partner.”

Ben blinked. That obvious, huh? He cleared his throat and tapped the door frame. “Right. See you around.” He caught Fenek’s eye as he turned to leave. “Make sure you open a window when you’re painting your toys, right kid?” And he strode away to the sound of “huh?” and Russ’s bark of laughter.

Honestly, he hadn’t expected you to be the type to leave right at the end of your shift. He didn’t really know why he thought that. Just something about you made him think you were more the kind to get sidetracked with a task and leave an hour late even though all officers were salaried without overtime. It was left up to officers to manage their time accordingly, and it was something the union was always fighting with the local and state governments about.

But your desk was clear of all the files that had been on it earlier and your smell was… just the slightly stale smell that an item used by the same person a lot tended to hold on to in that person’s absence. You’d left your computer on though. Not logged in, of course, but on. He could hear the fans running. Ben stalked over and tapped the space bar. Sure enough, the monitor lit up, your last name followed by your badge number, next to the system default icon. Russ would be so disappointed. He leaned over and slid the mouse to the power symbol in the corner of the screen.

“What are you doing?” He spun around and had to force himself not to shove his hands behind his back like a kid caught getting into something they shouldn’t be. There you were, a few files in your arms, small duffel bag slung over one shoulder, hair slightly damp. You’d… showered? He forced himself to veer away from that mental image immediately, feeling stupid.

“I… uh, thought you were gone. Our shifts are the same right?” Partners’ typically were. “And your computer was still on. I was just going to shut it down. Um… for you.” He finished lamely, an unfamiliar feeling of awkwardness filling every limb. What the fuck was up with him?

“I’m not gone,” you say, tone flat. “I still have a few things to do.” You glance down at the files. There’s a slight tension around your lips. Frustration? Ben dragged his eyes away with a feigned cough. He had to pull himself together already.

“Right,” he turned toward the doors. “Well, I’m off.” He threw a wave over his shoulder without looking back. “Try not to work too hard, sunshine.”

The street lights were up in the parking lot, moths flitting silently through the yellow pools of light while crickets chirped in the bushes planted against the walls of the building. Ben threw a leg over his motorcycle, a vintage Harley Davidson that his father had bequeathed to him when he graduated from university, much to his mother’s dismay. He’d parked the admittedly bulky bike in the same spot as a Suzuki Katana that someone had tucked into the top of the space as a courtesy. He’d thought oh, perhaps a friend to make, even if the other bike was, in his opinion, inferior.

A sudden wave of suspicion hit him and he tilted his head toward the bike, taking a big, slow breath. The same stale sort of smell of a person who used an object frequently, but hadn’t touched it for a few hours at least. The same smell as your desk. The bike was yours.