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Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi was crying over kittens.
Wait, that's not exactly right, lets back up a few days, a week to be exact.
It was a missing persons case. The interviews led him and Harry to an abandoned apartment. Wallpaper was peeling, dust covered every shelf, and all the cupboards. It smelled like water damage.
That's not to say it was lifeless. In the far back corner, Harry had spotted two, mangy little kittens, and deftly scooped them up, one in each hand. They yowled in protest.
"Dual wielding.." Kim heard Harry mumble to himself.
Then Harry looked up at Kim, expression knit with light concern, "Look at these poor things. Not even old enough to be without their mom."
"Ah, then the mother must be near by, no?" Kim stared at the kittens, felt something twinge inside of him.
Harry sucked in through his teeth, "Probably not. If she's not coming to help immediately after all this racket. Orphaned kittens aren't uncommon."
"And you're a cat expert now?" Kim put his hand out, and Harry placed a kitten in it. It was still yowling, one of its eyes crusty and shut. Poor thing.
"Well, actually," Harry started, and Kim braced himself- he was about to get hit with a barrage of information, which may or may not end up being case relevant, "I did some research into cats after Martinaise. When I started therapy, remember? Anyway, my therapist said I should take care of something, said that it would make it easier to take care of myself.
"First thing that came to mind was a cat. What's not to love about cats? They're fucking disco. As hell. Little acrobat things. And silly. I asked Jean about it and all he said was that they'd eat my corpse if I died. Like that was supposed to deter me? I'm dead in that scenario, what would I even do about it? Chow down, little dude. Then I asked Lilienne, and she said a cat would have to be kept indoors, bad for the.. economy? No, no.. ecosystem. And I'd need two. They get depressed.
"And then Judit helped me realize it wouldn't be fair to the cats. If I could even afford them. She said I should get something that was more.. forgiving. And not costly if you fuck up. Like a plant. She helped me pick one out after I helped her get reservations for her date with Jean."
Okay. That was a lot. Cat information, apparently cats can get depressed, and Kim felt uniquely sad about that fact. Not important to the case, unless they were to find out the suspect had a thing with cats, so nothing to write do- Wait, Jean and Judit were dating?
Kim was about to say something about that, when Harry was already off in his own little world again, "Sucks I can't take em home. What do we do with them?"
Kim looked at the kitten in his hands and felt a type of urgency he hadn't before. "Give me the other one, I can take them to the vet." So that he could give them to the shelter. Because they probably had fleas, and parasites, and disease. Kim didn't need that in his apartment.
At the same time, though? They were tiny, and helpless and he felt bad for them. He filed that emotion away for later. It wasn't wise to get invested in the well-being of animals that already didn't have a good outlook.
He tucked each mangy kitten into a pocket of his bomber jacket.
Later that day, Kim was at the vet, in the waiting room in an uncomfortable metal chair. They have got to make chairs with better back support some time. Through his glove, he was petting the kittens. It seemed to calm them.
In the cold room, a door opened, and out stepped a man with steel hair, "Kitsuragi?"
Kim gave a nod and stood up to follow the man. They stopped in an office, not unlike a human's doctor's office, with an exam room on the table.
"I'm Dr. Mach, but you can call me Elaris," the man gave him a warm smile, "What brings you here today?"
"I found these," Kim held out the kittens like foreign objects, like one wrong move and they'd break, "They looked abandoned."
"Oh, kittens," Elaris took them from Kim, placing one on a cushion with a heating pad underneath, and beginning an external examination on the other, "Was the mother near by?"
"No."
"Hm.." Elaris was quiet while he worked, latex gloves searching both of them for wounds or injuries, Kim supposed. Probably some other cat things Kim didn't know about either. He felt.. relieved that someone who knew what they were doing was taking over.
Then one looked over at Kim, with one open eye, still kind of grimey and gross, and mewed and.. *oh.*
Like a tug at his very soul, Kim suddenly understood those people that say they never *meant* to get a pet, it just happened. His composure has withstood war, withstood grisly death scenes, and people who otherwise commanded the room, with large presences and displays of power. Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi could not be swayed by simple emotion. At least, that's what he thought. Apparently, that ability did not extend to animals.
He was wrapped around these feline's tiny, pink paws.
"Well, it's not mange, they're just filthy," Elaris started, "And there's no ringworm or heartworm... the grey one is missing an eye. I can give them a bath, and some vaccines, and then I can get you some cat formula and how to wean them, they're almost there, and some recommendation for foods and toys, so you can take them home. Wait, no, you're taking them home, right?"
"Yes." Kim's voice did not betray the fact he had other plans mere minutes ago.
Four days later, Kim's hands were covered in tiny scratch marks, and he'd used a good portion of this months budget on cat beds, and toys, and litterboxes. Much of the past few days having been spent nursing the little beasts, formula pulled up in droppers.
Yet and still, something felt.. wrong. He felt an outpouring of affection for the kittens, but they never seemed to reciprocate, let alone even look at him. It stung.
Logically, it shouldn't hurt. They were animals, with no real concept of gratefulness, and pack bonding took longer than a few days. Humanizing animals is never a good idea (granted, that applied more to wild animals than it did to a house cat, but still.) It didn't matter if they could reciprocate, they were loved more than they could ever fathom, and taken care of, and safe. Hopefully, they were happy.
"Everything alright, Lieutenant?" Judit had broken Kim's train of (ultimately irrelevant) thought.
"Yes, I'm fine. Thank you, officer." Kim cleared his throat and tried to focus on the paperwork.
"Shitkid's rubbing off on him," Jean said, from somewhere, probably his office, "Give it a month and everyone in this damn precinct will be spacing out." A pause. "No, sorry, that was mean. Fucking lightbulb is giving me trouble."
As if to demonstrate this, Jean waved a burnt out lightbulb from his desk around.
Jean was getting better at that, trying to stop himself from misdirecting his anger, Kim noticed. At least, when Harry wasn't around. Harry seemed to get under his skin. And who could blame him? A lot changed in the past year.
Kim did not know the Harry from before, but he could imagine. Taking the intensity, and perseveration, and chaos of the man he knew, and putting it into a man that had completely given up on himself and the world around him. It couldn't have been easy to be around him.
On the same token, it couldn't have been easy to be around Jean. A man overflowing with frustration that he didn't know how to manage, intense critique that turned into insults.
It really was no wonder why everyone was so tense around them, or why they were tense around each other.
Judit was nice enough. She was kind, respectful, if a little shy. Trant was.. odd, and Chester was a misogynist, but could be distracted. Oldboy didn't socialize with the unit, he was like an old cat. Generally beloved, but only on his own terms.
He managed to stay focused the entire day, finishing archiving, doing interviews, assessing scenes. The last two involved Harry.
On the way back to the station, Kim stopped him.
"Detective."
"Hunh?" He seemed to have been lost in thought.
"When you were thinking about getting a cat, did you read any?"
"Oh, loads," Harry nodded, gesturing with his hands. He tended to talk with his hands, big grand gestures, "It was a whole thought project. One of the longest ones. Why?"
"Do you still have the books?" Kim tried not to reveal too much. Harry was going to try to can open him about this, it wad his instinct.
"Hmm, I think so, yeah," Harry scratched his head, "Somewhere on my bookshelf, I think. I need to organize that at some point. Why? You thinking about getting a cat?"
Kim paused. "Something like that."
Harry mulled over this, and then his eyes lit up. Oh no. "Do you already have a cat?"
"Yes, it's Schroedinger's." Good save.
"That's a non-answer."
"It's a good philosophical question for you to ponder."
"I'll bring the books tomorrow."
Harry did bring the books. Paperbacks, in surprisingly good condition.
Kim took them home, and he bounced a piece of string around for the kittens, respectively named Axle and Gears, to play with. He read the books cover to cover. He couldn't seem to stop himself.
Originally, the cats were going to sleep in their bed. But then they begged, and begged, and begged, and he caved in, they were just little things, and they slept curled up on his chest, or next to his head.
And, one evening, the cats sat at the edge of his bed, curled up at his feet, facing away from him. He busied himself with reading.
And there it was, in simple scientific terms. "Felines do not show affection in ways that dogs do. Often, a cat will blink slowly at someone, or lay facing away from them, to express trust. This is how cats express familiarity- they trust this person to protect them."
And he just broke. These tiny beings at the foot of his bed, that can't even begin to imagine the kind of life he has lived, trusted *him*. He could cry. He did cry.
In the privacy of his own home, Kim Kitsuragi cried over his cats.