SAVEGUARD ⟼ leon s. kennedy

i. sleep deprivation

𝟚𝟘𝟘𝟝

Day 365 of being a police officer.

Day 1 of being on the job alone.

Day 1 of being... Alone.

As I make my way to the city centre, the sunlight is way too bright, attacking my eyes with its warmth. I shield my eyes with my hand, while balancing a to-go cup filled to the brim with hot chocolate. Someone once told me that milk and sugar were great cures for hangovers, so early this morning, when I stumbled into the bodega on my street still tipsy and half-asleep, I had asked the guy behind the counter for full-fat milk and extra sugar.

Because, why not? After what happened last night, I deserve it.

I deserve it, I kept telling myself as I walked, my keys jangling against my hip. I deserve to let it bring me some sort of happiness and warmth. Even if it's more sugar than I've had in the past two weeks combined.

Walking into the police department, my head is still spinning. The clang the empty bottle of vodka made as I dropped it into the sink earlier this morning rings in my ears. I take a sip of my hot chocolate, and it scalds my tongue.

"Fuck!"

Cursing: one of the many impulses that I still have never managed to control. As I look around the foyer to assess how much trouble I was in— a year into the job and I was still seen as a rookie cop, and a rookie cop is treated like a child in here— I realise that it was quiet. How did I not notice how empty it is when I walked in? 

It is too quiet for the start of the day, when everyone usually rushes in equipped with boisterous tales from the weekend, sharing coffee and cinnamon sprinkled donuts, laughing at the sad chumps who had spent the night in jail. Where it usually is cheerful and noisy, the air riddled with too many voices, the walls blending with the blur of blue police uniforms jostling around the foyer, today it is...

It is... Unsettling.

Too quiet. Eerie. The kind of loud silence that clings to your body like silk.

"Weird..." I hear myself say. 

But I have seen weirder things, and this thump in my head is not really letting me care too much.

I make a beeline to my superior's office, Steve Tripp, taking another sip from the hot chocolate, half expecting it to have somewhat cooled down in the last two seconds— spoiler alert, it hasn't. His office is not lit, which means he's not in yet, and this makes me slightly relieved. Hopefully, my headache will have subsided before I have to hear his voice give me my orders for the day, my first day without my usual partner. I take my usual seat in his worn down leather chair facing his mahogany desk, set my things down, and open the lid of the hot chocolate.

The sweet smell makes the disgustingly early morning worth it.

I eye the tabletop longingly, considering laying my head down on it, just to close my eyes for a few seconds. To help the headache lessen. The quiet humming of the ventilation is trying to slowly lull me to sleep, and a huge yawn escapes me, the two hours of sleep I had gotten last night almost already depleted.

"Long night?"

The voice makes me jump: coming from the far end of the office; a corner cloaked in shadows and half-hidden behind Tripp's multiple filing cabinets. I almost reach for my holster, but stop myself.

I need to be less jumpy. Isn't that what Tripp said to me last time he provided me with "monthly feedback"? I know he just wants to see me improve. But some things are a part of me. How can I change what's integral to my being?