Chapter Text
It was 11:03 PM.
Althea Kim sat at her small glass desk in her condo, one headphone pressed to her ear while the other dangled uselessly over her shoulder. Her brows were furrowed, fingers twitching over the pause and rewind keys on her laptop as she strained to make out anything coherent from the grainy audio recording.
“…we believe the pilot initiative will—kkkkshhhh—officers in community zones—bbzztt—blah blah oversight…”
She paused, rewound and played it again. Still garbage.
Thanks to Ben - the brilliant assistant who dropped the recorder onto concrete just before their scheduled sit-down with Commissioner Smith. Of course, they didn’t notice the mic was cracked until they’d already wrapped the damn interview and were halfway back to the office.
So now here she was, exhausted, half-blind from screen glare, trying to salvage anything from this audio mess about some new policy for police reform - then, as if summoned by cosmic irony, her fucking upstairs neighbor Caleb decided it was the perfect moment to start lifting weights.
At 11.
Fucking.
PM.
On a fucking Tuesday.
It started with a faint metallic clank, followed by the creak of the floorboards. Then - thud.
Followed by a grunt.
The kind of grunt that said, “I’m doing shirtless deadlifts in front of a mirror and contemplating masculinity.”
Althea blinked up at the ceiling. Waited.
Another thunk, this time loud enough to make her desk tremble slightly.
She rubbed her temples. Counted to five. Then ten. Didn’t help.
“For fuck’s sake, Caleb,” she hissed, storming out of her chair and yanking open her sliding glass door that led to her balcony. “It’s eleven! On a Tuesday! Are you trying to summon the gods of testosterone through the fucking ceiling?!”
No answer - just another grunt, followed by a louder thunk that made her lights flicker.
She stomped back inside, grabbing her broom from the closet like it was a battle standard and thwacked the ceiling with the handle - twice for emphasis.
Almost immediately, a muffled shout came through the floorboards. “Journalism keeping you up again, Althea?”
“Oh, you know what’s keeping me up,” she yelled back. “I swear to god, if you break your floor and land in my living room mid-squat, I’m not calling an ambulance. I’m calling Noise Control and letting them take your kettlebells as evidence!”
A pause.
Then a shout, “It’s leg day!”
“It’s sleep day!” Althea yelled back.
Back at her desk, the audio file was still playing,
“—and that’s why oversight must come from an independent—”
She leaned closer.
Another clang.
Althea face-planted into her notebook.
“Fuck this,” she groaned into the paper. “I’m filing this under ‘inaudible due to upstairs meathead.’”
At some point between her tenth ceiling jab and her twelfth attempt to decipher the phrase “external commission oversight initiative”, Althea lost the battle.
She didn’t even realize she’d dozed off. One minute, she was squinting at the laptop screen, desperately hoping the audio would morph into something vaguely intelligible. The next, her cheek was pressed into the open pages of her notebook, a smear of dried ink on her face, her headphones still dangling from one ear like a limp regret.
The grainy recording kept playing through the night, looping aimlessly - static-laced nonsense, background murmurs, the occasional sharp clank from somewhere far too familiar.
At some point, even Caleb’s late-night weightlifting symphony gave way to silence, replaced only by the soft hum of the building and the low buzz of neon city lights filtering through her balcony window.
Then— Her phone lit up with all the mercy of a guillotine.
6:30 AM.
The alarm blared beside her head with industrial cruelty.
Althea jolted upright, knocking over her cold coffee. It splashed onto a stack of Post-Its labeled “Rewrite???” and “Call Smith’s office again (ugh)”
“Shit, shit, shit,” she croaked, groggily wiping her face and grabbing her phone to shut off the noise. Her neck creaked like an old hinge and her eyes felt like she’d tried to sandpaper her retinas in her sleep.
The recording was still going, now deep into its thousandth loop. She yanked the earbuds out.
“…accountability should begin at the grassroots level—kkkshhhh—not be dictated from centralized…sshhhhhhk…”
Althea rubbed her eyes, already imagining how she’d explain this to her editor. “Hi, sorry, the audio’s trash and my upstairs neighbor was trying to achieve Olympian godhood through push presses at midnight. But here’s a quote I think says “oversight”?”
With a groan, she pushed herself away from the desk, the chair wheels squeaking in protest.
The floor was cold beneath her bare feet as she shuffled toward the bathroom, half-dreading the day ahead.
And upstairs? A soft thud.
She froze, narrowing her eyes at the ceiling.
“…You better not be deadlifting again,” she muttered.
Because if Caleb was up before 7 AM - after last night’s bicep-fueled chaos - Althea might actually commit a crime. Or at least throw a bagel at his front door.
Preferably one she’d already bitten into.
The warm spray of the shower cascaded over Althea’s sore shoulders, washing away the ghost of sleep and the leftover tension from last night’s failed transcription marathon. She closed her eyes and let the water run over her face, trying not to think about the article she still needed to rewrite before noon, the call with her editor at two, and the fact that she still didn’t know what the hell Smith had said about the police reform.
After ten blessed minutes, she toweled off and padded barefoot across the floor, still warm from steam. She dressed quickly - black formal pants, her go-to white blouse with the subtle slit at the collar, applied her makeup, and added a spritz of jasmine-scented perfume just to pretend she had her life together.
You’ve got this, she told herself. You are competent, composed, and—
Bang, bang, bang!
Althea flinched and stared at her door for a few moments, before walking over to open it with the tired rage of someone who hadn’t had coffee yet, only to find him standing there.
Rafayel.
A good-looking, well-known painter who has done solo exhibitions in two continents, been written up in three culture magazines and accidentally started a new trend in fashion with a single offhand Instagram story. But also, her downstairs neighbor. Her nemesis. A walking, talking Renaissance painting with the soul of a petty, nitpicking goblin.
He was already glaring.
Wearing a sheer lavender robe and silk pajama pants like he’d just stepped off a runway in Paris and immediately found something to complain about. His voice was velvet-wrapped acid. “What in the everloving fuck was going on up here last night?”
“Oh, good morning to you too, Rafayel,” Althea said flatly, leaning against the door with crossed arms. “Always a pleasure.”
“I’m serious,” he snapped, eyes narrowing. “The stomping? The ceiling-shaking clanks? I thought a herd of rhinos were rehearsing for Swan Lake.”
“That wasn’t me, genius. That was Caleb upstairs deadlifting his way into another dimension. Try knocking on his door.” she rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest.
“I did,” Rafayel said, exasperated. “He didn’t answer. Probably bench-pressed his face into the drywall. So now I’m here. Again. Because the noise always starts with you.”
Althea blinked. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, counting off on perfectly manicured fingers, “...last week you dropped a stack of books at midnight, the week before you slammed your balcony door so hard it rattled my canvases, and let’s not forget that time I heard you walk. Loudly.”
“I walked too loud?” she asked, scoffing in disbelief.
“Yes,” he answered, offended. “You stomp like you’re an elephant trying to scare off a potential threat.”
She stared at him, stunned. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Unfortunately. That’s the problem.” he tutted. “With all that fucking stomping, my glorious thoughts are always drowned out.”
Althea took a long, slow breath. “Okay. First of all, I was trying to transcribe an interview last night that was already borderline unusable, and I’m not the one who thinks 11pm is a great time for a fucking deadlifting session.”
“Oh, sweetie, you always have an excuse. Maybe next time, try soundproofing your drama.” Rafayel spat, arms now crossed over his chest.
“And maybe you could try not treating every minor inconvenience like it’s a personal attack on your fragile artistic process!” Althea countered.
Rafayel’s brows furrowed, his hands flying up in annoyance. “It is fragile! Creative genius is a delicate bloom, Althea!”
She threw her hands in the air, mimicking him. “You painted a still life of a chicken nugget last week!”
“It was a commentary on consumerism!” he yelled, his face reddening from anger.
They stood there, fuming.
Her hair was dripping onto the threshold. His robe fluttered dramatically in the hallway breeze like he was in a shampoo commercial.
Finally, Rafayel huffed and turned on his heel. “Whatever. Just keep it down tonight. Some of us don’t get inspiration from weight racks and war cries.”
“Some of us don’t get inspiration at all,” Althea muttered under her breath.
He spun back with a hand on his chest, gasping theatrically. “You absolute gremlin.”
“You silk-draped diva.” she looked at him smugly, chin held high in defiance.
He smirked. “You’re lucky you’re cute when you’re sleep-deprived.”
She slammed the door in his face.
“…Rude,” she heard him say through the door, followed by his footsteps retreating down the hall.
Althea exhaled, already reaching for her coffee mug.
She’d need two today.
At least.
After inhaling two cups of coffee like they were the only thing anchoring her to this mortal plane, Althea poured a third - generous - dose into her battered steel thermos. She snapped the lid on with a weary sigh and slung her messenger bag over her shoulder.
Keys. Wallet. Phone. Sanity?
Questionable.
She stepped out of her apartment, locking the door behind her and already mentally drafting the opener to her article. Something about broken systems. And broken recorders. And broken neighbors.
Then—
Thud.
She walked straight into someone.
“Oh, sorry!” she blurted, looking up.
Xavier.
Her neighbor from across the hall.
Unlike Caleb (upstairs iron-worshipping menace) or Rafayel (devil incarnate wrapped in silk and sarcasm), Xavier was - well, normal.
Althea's brain supplied the word automatically. Normal.
Soft-spoken, clean-shaven, calm-as-a-lake Xavier, who never once woke her up by slamming weights or accusing her of aggressive walking.
He blinked in mild surprise, then offered her a gentle smile. “Hey. You okay?”
Althea stepped back, adjusting her bag. “Yeah, sorry. Running on fumes.” He glanced down at her thermos. “Coffee number…?”
“Don’t ask,” she said with a weak laugh. “Let’s just say if I stop drinking it, I’ll collapse like a puppet with cut strings.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners, amused. “Rough night?”
“Caleb’s dumbbells met Rafayel’s tantrum, and I was caught in the crossfire.” She rolled her eyes. “Again.”
Xavier gave a sympathetic chuckle. “That sounds about right. You’re always in the middle of their noise wars.”
“I should start charging rent for the drama. Or write a tell-all.” she muttered dryly.
He didn’t say much, just gave her that calm, slightly amused look he always did - like he knew she was running on five hours of sleep and half a soul, but was too polite to mention it.
He was dressed in his usual work attire - navy slacks, crisp button-up, badge clipped to his belt, and a sleek black coat over one arm. Classic detective chic. Nothing flashy, nothing dramatic.
Just solid, dependable Xavier.
They stepped into the elevator together. He held the door for her without comment, as always.
She glanced over. “Big case today?” He nodded slightly. “A few leads to follow up. Might be a long one.”
“Same,” she said, raising her thermos in a toast. “Let’s survive the day.” He chuckled. “One coffee at a time.”
The elevator doors closed with a soft ding.
For once, just for that small sliver of morning, the air was quiet.
No screaming artists. No midnight powerlifting. No stomping accusations.
Just Althea, Xavier and a shared moment of peace.