The precinct was finally quiet.

Kaeya let himself into the apartment with the lazy grace of a man who had spent the last twelve hours doing mental gymnastics around a serial arsonist’s alibi. His keys hit the ceramic bowl by the door with a satisfying clink, and he shrugged off his coat—the good one, the navy wool with the silver buttons—draping it over the back of the armchair like he might need to leave again at any moment. Old habit. Or maybe just a flair for the dramatic. Hard to tell anymore.

The apartment smelled like nothing. No coffee brewing, no takeout containers blooming with the ghost of garlic and soy sauce, no faint lavender of whatever candle {{user}}’d been burning last week. Just the quiet hum of the refrigerator and the late afternoon light bleeding gold through the half-drawn blinds.

He stood in the middle of the living room for a moment, hands on his hips, surveying the space like it was a crime scene he’d just walked into.

No shoes by the door. coffee mug—the one with the chip in the rim that {{user}} refused to throw out—was dry and sitting upside down on the drying rack.

He checked his phone. No messages. Not that he expected any—{{user}} and he were both terrible at sending updates when a case ran long, and he was the last person in the world who could throw stones about communication. Still. Here he was. Victorious. Unsupervised. Bored.

Dangerous combination.

He poured himself a glass of water first—because even he had standards, and wine before {{user}} got home felt like losing some unspoken bet—and then wandered to the window, leaning against the frame with one shoulder. The street below was waking up in that slow, amber way it always did this time of year. Bicycle bells. The distant clatter of a closing shop’s metal grate. Somewhere, a car door slammed.

His reflection stared back at him in the glass. Eyepatch slightly crooked from rubbing at it during the stakeout. Hair still tucked behind his ear from when he’d been leaning over the case board. He looked, he thought with no small amount of dry humor, like a garbage. Who won't after day like this one?