Soldiers [Detective Conan] [Crow series 1/2]

Number three:

4 August, 2010
New York City, N.Y., USA

Yuri can never shake the mixture of detached guilt and damaged pride after a life slips through their fingers.

They know they did everything right: first aid response, safe fast driving, smooth communication. The team was a well-oiled machine as well, each member operating exactly as they had to. Sometimes, perfect is not enough. Sometimes, there is nothing more to be done. Death is part of daily life for an EMT.

But the failures of a sleepless night of work add to Yuri's bad mood this morning.

Tonight is supposed to be Pathfinder Wednesday, but the campaign is on hold for another two weeks. Two players are on summer holidays and one has recently moved abroad. This seamlessly leads into the next source of frustration: Matt, and the fact that he's spontaneously had to move halfway across the world for work.

Yuri is happy for him, they really are. It's great that their best friend's job is so stable that even if one company office is dissolved, employees will be seamlessly relocated to another. Really. So great.

Just one small itty-bitty problem. London is five time zones away.

Yuri drains their glass and follows it up with a handful of complimentary pretzels. They chew, bitterly.

Their after-work ritual traditionally involves one breakfast sandwich, one-to-two nice cocktails, another breakfast sandwich, and then collapsing in bed. Usually they end up in Manhattan, since most bars are 24-hour there. But this morning Yuri didn't want a bougie bar full of alcoholic coke-fuelled Wallstreet suits. This morning, Yuri wanted the comforting walls of their regular post-nightshift haunt: the Mott & Bailey, which by day passes for a bar-like café, and by night passes for a café-like bar, and always plays Italo disco no matter the time.

It just so happens that this is a bar they also discovered with their third source of misery: Olivia Derringer.

It doesn't make any objective sense. Normally they only see each other once or twice month, tops. But now that Olly's actually gone (not just halfway around the world like Matty, but fully on the other side), that silly little crush has turned into something much more dark and devastating. All that time having casual no-strings-attached sex suddenly feels like cowardice, All that time wasted when I should've just told her, I could've just told her...

Before Yuri knows it, they've slid open their phone to text Olivia. Instead of a searing confession, it's a song recommendation:

olly (matt's friend)

11:33

[eisenfunk - pong]

[special shoutout to the music video lol]

Yuri calculates the time difference before they can stop themself (11:33 AM +13 is 00:33 AM tomorrow. She's still up. Fuck.) and immediately sets their phone to mute. They can't deal with a response right now, not after the literal graveyard shift.

A saucer of blood orange slices slides into their field of vision, nudged by toxic green acrylic nails. Yuri looks up to find their owner, the usual 6-15 barkeep: an older Irish-American woman with Eyeshadow Like It's 1978 And Disco Is Never Going To Die.

"You sure you're doin' alright, hero?" she asks as she also places down Yuri's second espresso martini. It's dusted in cinnamon, Yuri's favourite no matter the season.