Fandom: Detroit: Become Human
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"Why do you wear patterned shirts?"
Quin stopped mid-chew of his burger, looking at Lyssa across the standing table. Sure, the Chicken Feed was still kind of a dump, and technically illegal, but the food still tasted amazing, and going here never failed to irritate the shit out of her.
Therefore, he made it a point of coming here at least once a week, just because he was the ranking officer, and an adult in charge of his own goddamn life. He moved the mass of patty from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue, answering, "What, are you my personal fashion council now, too?"
"Fashion councils don't exist to comment on specific fashion itself, Quin, they're designed to maintain their local indus—"
He waved a free hand in the air, closing his eyes to ward off the headache before it got started in earnest. It didn't work. "Stop, I didn't ask for a history lesson. Why do you wanna know, anyway?"
Lyssa shifted where she stood, leaning on her propped forearms and staring off into space while she formulated her response. Quin bet twenty bucks the phrase would start with—
"Well, I've been doing some research—" there it was, "on different styles of clothing, and what it means to wear them."
"That you don't wanna be naked," He muttered, moving to take another bite.
"There have been several studies in both the fashion industry and in greater psychology to determine just how humanity views clothing as not only a measure of success and wealth, but also as an extension of their personalities," Lyssa continued unabated, ignoring his comment.
"Those studies show that humanity is full of judgmental assholes—that's it. People don't give a shit who a person actually is, they only care who they think a person is." He hunkered further onto his elbows, adding a tart, "Fuck 'em," before biting into the patty aggressively.
Quin realized when the roof of his mouth caught fire that he bit directly into a pepper, and valiantly did everything in his power to not let his eyes water, determined to see it through. The burger was still damn good.
Lyssa tilted her head to the side in contemplation, which was Lyssa-code for, 'He was going to say something stupid.' Fuck, he wished that he hadn't just eaten that pepper.
"The research never disputed that; in fact, the articles supported that theory, that people will often make baseless claims on one another purely by trivial things, such as how many buttons a blouse had." Lyssa shifted her footing again, meeting his gaze. "It just...made me wonder if there was a reason for your choice of outfits, that's all."
He forcibly swallowed the bite faster than he would've liked, simply because he wanted this conversation to end even faster. "You wanna know why I wear patterned shirts, Lyssa ? Because they're cheap and comfortable—and if someone wants to come up with a thousand-and-one reasons why I'm a dirtbag because of it, well, they're more than welcome to. They just better not be surprised if I turn around and arrest them later."
Her eyes slid away. "I see."
Suddenly, it occurred to him that maybe Lyssa wasn't interested in his personal fashion choices. He lowered the burger to the table.
"You have any thoughts on the matter?"
Her lips quirked up into a little ghost of a smile, fingers of her left hand rapping against the table idly. After a beat, she said, "Well, let's just say that...humans aren't the only ones who judge a person based solely upon what they wear."
Something instinctive reared its ugly head. He carefully tugged it back down, raising a brow. "Anyone in particular?"
"No," She sighed, an aborted sentence catching in her throat. She shook her head lightly, that same little ghost of a grin touching her lips again. "No. Forget it."
Quin's other brow met the first, the burger forgotten. "You know how bad I am about forgetting things." He paused for a second, then started wrapping up the remains of the burger in its wax-paper wrapper. "Tell you what—once our shift is over, we can head over to the store I usually go to, and you can take a look around, to see if anything catches your fancy. Yeah?"
The smile widened just a fraction, and took on a more genuine lilt, the corners of Lyssa's eyes crinkling a little. "Yeah."
Quin stood back from the table, collecting the remnants of his meal. "Good." He took two steps away from the table before realizing that he'd run out of hands to fish out his keys with, and on gut instinct, tossed the half-eaten burger into a nearby trashcan as he ambled across the empty parkway.
He tossed a glance at Lyssa, muttering, "Never thought I'd be happy to go clothes shopping."
"Well, there's a first time for everything," She replied dully. "This was also the first time you haven't finished one of Gary's burgers."
Quin halted mid-step, arm's length away from the driver side door.
"You even threw it away in the proper receptacle," She continued, rounding the hood of the car.
He glanced down at his hands; one holding his car keys , the other carrying the sweating cup of pineapple passion. That rat bastard. "You did that shit on purpose, didn't you?"
She merely blinked at him. "I don't know what you're talking about, Quin."
He scowled, though his irritation at throwing away the best goddamn burger in Detroit was tempered by the begrudging respect he had for such an underhanded ploy. He tugged open the door with a snort. "You're paying for the next burger."
"Half a burger, Quin."
"Fucking smartass."
