Trooper Station, Wednesday

[firstofitskind]

Liam was in the station today. No, it wasn't his usual day, but for a myriad of reasons, here he was.

One of those reasons was the fact that literally everything in the evidence room had apparently turned in to jars of cranberry sauce overnight. Not that there was all that much in there to begin with, but still. It was the principle of the thing.

The Trooper Station was open.

Comments

[built_fjord_tough]

Fjord looked like hell warmed over. Large, green, somewhat cranky hell warmed over. He'd been on the way home after work with a bag containing some hair-of-the-dog, and had been damn near to the hotel when suddenly, the bag he'd been carrying was empty and he turned around in time to see a striped tail disappearing around a corner with his damn beer.

And then, a few minutes later, a different raccoon had the nerve to try to sell him a bottle of moonshine.

"This where I go to report a theft?"

He wasn't usually the type, but he was too damn hungover to battle raccoons today, damn it.

[firstofitskind]

"Ostensibly, yes," Liam acknowledged. The 'ostensibly' was mostly because the island didn't tend to see all that much crime. "What happened?"

[built_fjord_tough]

Fjord held up the raccoon-chewed shopping bag.

"Grand theft liquor," he deadpanned. "By these little hairy fellas with striped tails."

... Grand theft would make that a very expensive booze haul, Fjord.

Which, in fairness, maybe it had been.

[firstofitskind]

Liam facepalmed. "The raccoons. Of course it was the raccoons."

[built_fjord_tough]

"Not ten minutes later, one came up to me trying to sell me some of his own ferments, right there on the side of the road," Fjord noted. "Now, I can appreciate that I wasn't paying enough attention to not get robbed, but I resent the implication that I'm that oblivious."

[firstofitskind]

"I'm going to have to have a talk with them about acceptable business practices, I see," Liam grumbled. "Because that is not how you drum up sales."

[built_fjord_tough]

"Doesn't exactly fill me with faith in their product, no," Fjord agreed, shaking his head.

And then grimacing and regretting shaking his head.

He was a half-orc of many regrets.

[firstofitskind]

And Liam noticed that grimace, absolutely. "You okay?" he checked.

[built_fjord_tough]

"Bit under the weather, is all," Fjord muttered, wincing a bit. "Monday was a day with little in the way of productivity and a great deal by way of bad life choices."

[firstofitskind]

Bad life choices that involved copious amounts of alcohol?

"Yeah," he said, with a sympathetic look in his eyes. "The weekend was. Well. It was." Very descriptive, Liam.

[built_fjord_tough]

Alcohol and home dentistry! A winning combination!

"That it most certainly was," Fjord agreed, sighing and putting a hand to the side of his head. "Glad enough it's over, but I really would have preferred to not re-tread that ground in the first place."

[firstofitskind]

"You and plenty of others," Liam agreed. For him, it hadn't been so much a re-tread as treading it at all in the first place. "I've got painkillers, if those would be of any help?"

... Yes, he had painkillers handy even though he couldn't make much use of them. Shhh.

[built_fjord_tough]

There was a brief pause as Fjord gave Liam a strange look.

"'Painkiller' is a very ominous sounding word, you know."

They didn't exactly have aspirin on Exandria.

[spectre_alenko]

Wednesday was not Kaidan's usual day to check in on Liam, but he'd bumped into Ralph... He thought it was Ralph, but he honestly couldn't tell the difference yet.. while he was jogging and heard Liam was at the station.

So he stopped by and plopped his ass right into a chair near Liam's desk. "Told you so," he said, because he had, and then he asked, "How's your week been?"

[firstofitskind]

Monday had been a relief, Tuesday had been amazing... and today was fairly routine, so far. "Pretty good, actually." Now that he was back to his normal self, anyway.

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan was finally at a relatively level headspace. "Glad to hear it. One less person to worry about."

He had a list.

"How's Verity?"

[firstofitskind]

"She's good, great actually," Liam grinned. "She had no complaints about the weekend, except-" he broke off abruptly.

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan arched an eyebrow but he didn't press. "How'd your recon game turn out?"

[firstofitskind]

"Recon ga-? Oh. Fine," Liam said.

[spectre_alenko]

And now you're getting a good case of hairy eyeball, Liam.

[firstofitskind]

"It was a busy weekend," Liam hedged. And that was... not the part of it that had really stuck with him, afterwards. No, Liam mostly remembered how upset he'd been to still be a child.

[spectre_alenko]

"Yeah, I know. I was there," Kaidan asked. Not following the narrative but more because he'd been curious about it, "The other kids didn't seem to remember. That they weren't supposed to be kids anymore, I mean."

[firstofitskind]

"That's not..." he sighed. "Not exactly what happened." He stood up, abruptly. "Walk with me?"

The squirrels weren't allowed in to the area of the station that housed the holding cells, which made it very convenient when one wanted to have a conversation and not be overheard.

[spectre_alenko]

His eyebrow was going to just stay halfway up his forehead. "Sure," Kaidan said, pushing himself up off the chair to follow.

[NFB plz!]

[firstofitskind]

Liam led the way over to the cells, shutting the door that separated them from the rest of the station.

"Sorry," he said, with an apologetic shrug. "Just- needed to make sure the squirrels won't overhear anything they shouldn't." Fandom's general acceptance of just about everything aside, there were still some things he wasn't comfortable sharing with the island at large.