#sometimes reading people being overly patient with their parents sets me on edge because i hate being overly patient

[surfinthehighway]

Typing up my The Fall of the House of Cabal thoughts before going to bed. First off: it's interesting to me to see that Leonie Barrow is snarky with all Cabals haha. Like, we see her interact a lot with Johannes in The Detective and it's understandable why she is short with him there, but my dude Horst is a more normal Cabal and Leonie is not above insulting him wherever she can.

I'm assuming it is because Horst is a Cabal and not that Leonie is like this with everyone.... but I don't know that for sure. She certainly doesn't act that way around strangers, but what does that say. Am I meant to be reading Leonie as spicy to everyone once they're friends? Things to consider.

[lisatelramor]

NLTSA Extra: Aoko Needs a Break

Aoko collapsed into a chair in Kintaro’s kitchen. She was done. She was one hundred percent, no exaggeration, done with the world right now. “I don’t want to go home,” she announced to Kintaro’s cheap, laminated kitchen table. “I don’t want to go home, I don’t want to go to Tou-san’s, and I really fucking don’t want to go to work in the morning.”

Kintaro, being the patient soul that he was, didn’t say anything. He moved for the fridge for the beer he kept in the back.

Aoko made a grabbing motion and he set a can in her palm. “You’re the best right hand man a woman could ask for.”

“I know you too well,” he said, taking the seat across from her.

“Heck yes you do.” Somewhere between doing their early partner days and getting onto the taskforce, they’d ended up in each other’s lives more than any of the other people Aoko worked with. There was Yumi and Kesuke and Fujitaka and Gotou, but as much as Aoko had spent many a sleepless night with the heads of her team and struggled together with them and trusted them with her life, they weren’t the ones who could read when she needed coffee or if it was better to convince her to head home. They weren’t the ones who remembered Takumi’s birthday or Aoko’s favorite chocolate brand or had seen her drunk off her ass and upset about Kaito and never told a soul. Then again, she hadn’t seen any of them keel over with a high fever, get overly happy over the time a Kid heist lead to finding a bunch of kittens in a mansion crawl space, or met their reason for becoming a police officer like she had with Kintaro. Last she knew, he’d never talked about his late sister to anyone else on the force even if everyone knew he was the best among them dealing with small children.

Kintaro was a friend, a partner even if they weren’t technically partners anymore, someone she knew had her back and, above all, wouldn’t lie to her. One day she’d turned around and he’d been there and he’d stayed, steady in all the ways she wasn’t. That’s why she was here, not home.

Aoko took a drink of her beer, knowing it would take more than this one to get her to the level of drunk she wanted to be right now.

“I take it Takumi is with your father?” Kintaro said as the silence stretched.

“Yep.” Aoko took another drink. “He’s under constant surveillance. Can’t trust him right now. He’s going to get himself killed. And it’s mostly Kaito’s fault but it’s also mine and I don’t know what the hell to do. I don’t want to go home because right now I’m angry at Takumi and I don’t want to make things worse. He’s flinching at loud noises and the last thing he needs is me yelling but dammit, what the hell do you do when your son jumps off a fucking building and plays bait for snipers, Kinta?” Cry? Her brain supplied. “This,” she said waving her right hand vaguely, “is such a mess.”

“We caught someone though,” Kintaro said softly.

The one positive; so far they’d kept the sniper alive. So far they’d stopped two attempts on her life. Aoko was going to go crazy in the next few months as everything came out bit by bit, the whole mess that they were already starting to uncover. “Yeah.”

“It wouldn’t be worth it if we lost Takumi,” Kintaro said, getting to the heart of what was bothering her. “Or Kid.”

“No.” For a horrible moment Aoko thought she really was going to cry. Tears would be justified. Tears would be more than justified considering the mess her life was, but she always felt worse after crying, like it meant she’d failed to measure up to what she tried to be. “If they died...what was the last decade of my life?”

Kintaro set down his drink. “Aoko...”

“Really. The task force works to make sure Kid is arrested, but that means keeping him alive for a court to judge. And Takumi... I know I’ve messed up. I’ve messed up in dozens of ways and I know I’ll keep messing up but I really am trying. I tried to make sure he still had both Kaito and me in his life, that he could follow his interests and succeed...”

“I’m pretty sure every parent reaches the point where their children make choices that are going to scare the shit out of their parents.”

“Probably, yeah.”

“Not of this level in most cases,” Kintaro conceded. “I told you my parents were upset about me joining the police force. My mother still calls every time an accident happens at a heist and tries to convince me to take up a position in my father’s company.”

Aoko scrunched her nose. “That’s a little different than tossing yourself off buildings.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling slightly, “but from my mother’s standpoint I imagine she sees it about the same way. Me throwing myself into danger because what I believe in and care about protecting are more important than my wellbeing.”

“So you’re saying I raised an idiot with strong morals,” Aoko joked, voice wobbling as the edge of tears refused to go away.

“You can’t stop what he’s already done, but you can encourage safer ways to help people.”

Aoko hummed. “I think the worst thing about all of this is that he was right. They weren’t going to take the bait.”

They both mulled that over a moment. “How many officers do you have keeping watch over your home, Aoko?” Kintaro asked after a moment.

“Not enough.” Aoko drained the rest of her beer. Wordlessly, Kintaro took her empty can and slid over his mostly full one.

“If you need to let go, go ahead. I think I’ll stay sober this time.”

“You don’t have to play bodyguard,” Aoko said. “They’re not going to kill me tonight. If they’re going to do it, they’ll make it look like an accident, not killing me in my friend’s home.”

“Still, I’d feel better.”

“Always having my back,” Aoko said fondly. “I don’t know where I’d be without you. You and Keiko.”

“You’d still be where you are,” Kintaro said with more faith in Aoko’s abilities than she had for them. “I can only hope I’ve just made it a little easier than it would have been otherwise.”

“Sap.” Aoko gave him a crooked smile and toasted her beer to him. “When I’m crying my eyes out sometime in the next hour, promise you won’t think less of me.”

“Never.”

She believed him. A tiny cynical part of her said she should know better by now than to trust a man that worked in absolutes; Kaito made so many promises he never kept. But Kintaro wasn’t Kaito, and when he looked at her and saw her for who she was, he’d never hidden who he was in return. When he said he’d be there, he always was. And he’d never hidden how he looked at her either.

Aoko couldn’t love as openly as she had with Kaito again. But this, with history and structure built up between them...maybe it was as close as she could get to that feeling again.

Aoko took a drink. She could let go for a little bit knowing someone would catch her when she fell.