[Things have taken a strange turn; L, who prides himself on his deductive reasoning and his ability to predict what people are going to say next, has actually been caught off-guard by both of the teenagers. It's something of a new record... but then again he is pretty drunk. Maybe he shouldn't be too hard on himself, or consider it too much of a lapse in his abilities. Those abilities, after all, are what he has in this world, the last, any world.
And these developments, while not hostile, have him very much on-edge. He was already tense, but now he very much looks as though his fight-or-flight reflex is wound tighter than a spring's coil.]
You want to walk me... home.
[He repeats it slowly, as though uncertain he heard correctly, because it doesn't track. It's broken mathematics, unless Rich wants to finish a certain job.]
I'm not ready to go home.
[At least here, there are eyewitnesses. And he has to go back to the SQUIP, wants to, even... just not yet. He'd rather be in a coma again, than go back yet.
He catches Jeremy's eye, for just a moment, before the boy turns away, and for just one unguarded, brief fraction of a second, there's something unnerving and haunted on the detective's pale face. Maybe it sounds out of context; it's both exactly the sort of thing L would wish to hear, and he wishes even more that it was true.
Yes. They are that awful. I have a thousand cases' worth of proof. Jeremy means well, though. Jeremy might actually not be awful; he's uncomplicated, isn't he? Not like L or his ilk from his world; not like the SQUIP. He couldn't possibly get it, and yet... he sounds like he approaches it.]
no subject
And these developments, while not hostile, have him very much on-edge. He was already tense, but now he very much looks as though his fight-or-flight reflex is wound tighter than a spring's coil.]
You want to walk me... home.
[He repeats it slowly, as though uncertain he heard correctly, because it doesn't track. It's broken mathematics, unless Rich wants to finish a certain job.]
I'm not ready to go home.
[At least here, there are eyewitnesses. And he has to go back to the SQUIP, wants to, even... just not yet. He'd rather be in a coma again, than go back yet.
He catches Jeremy's eye, for just a moment, before the boy turns away, and for just one unguarded, brief fraction of a second, there's something unnerving and haunted on the detective's pale face. Maybe it sounds out of context; it's both exactly the sort of thing L would wish to hear, and he wishes even more that it was true.
Yes. They are that awful. I have a thousand cases' worth of proof. Jeremy means well, though. Jeremy might actually not be awful; he's uncomplicated, isn't he? Not like L or his ilk from his world; not like the SQUIP. He couldn't possibly get it, and yet... he sounds like he approaches it.]