Mode watched the swirls left by the dissolving ice in his drink and ignored the comment, but it didn't stop the intruder from dropping a nearly full glass onto the table and having a completely uninvited seat. The liquid defied physics and remained in the glass, and Mode sighed to himself and spared the man an exasperated look. "I don't remember asking, Lieutenant."

"That's because you're an ass." Lieutenant Christopher didn't have a lot of restraint in him when he was off duty, and he looked up despite himself.

Owen Christopher had light brown hair, dark brown eyes and a face that made him look even younger than he really was. He'd arrived on the station a year and a half ago and decided to take up picking on Mode as a hobby. Mode had attempted to hate him and failed, but he did manage to keep from liking him more than was healthy within the IA department by limiting their contact. Out of the office, Christopher was obnoxiously likeable. In it, he was one of the best new interrogators they had, intimidating when he had to be, understanding when it was required. At the moment, he appeared to be his typical off-duty self, and Mode didn't feel like accommodating him.

He looked back into his drink, and Owen sighed over-dramatically. "I have to guess?"

"You could leave," he pointed out ungraciously.

Owen appeared to consider the request. "Yes, I could leave. But then I wouldn't find out why Vaisou's quiet golden boy is carrying a knife and trying to drink something alcoholic for the first time since I've known him. I wouldn't sleep."

Vaisou's golden boy? I guess I am. "You don't know me, Lieutenant."

The younger man swung his feet up and brought them down next to his glass. The contents lurched dangerously, but missed the top by micrometers and fell back, defeated. "I know enough to know that you're acting out of character, Captain," he said with a hint of seriousness in his tone. "So what happened? Bad news from home? Wife leave you? Are you being reassigned to Sunjawa?" Each query was spoken with enough space in between for Owen to observe a reaction, but Mode was giving nothing away. The sigh that followed was more weary and less joking, and Owen crossed his arms and looked at him more soberly. "Alright, it's not work. And it's not Earth. Something at home. Something with your wife." Mode blinked, and Owen pounced. "You have a kid, don't you?" he asked triumphantly. "Something happened with the wife and the kid, and now you've got a knife and you look like shit and you're trying to figure out how to get drunk."

He stared at his companion and drifted between hostility and surprise. Owen was good, but he wasn't that good. He must have betrayed himself somehow, some gesture or facial expression he'd allowed to slip out. Mode didn't like being scrutinized, and his first impulse was to get up and walk away, but he didn't.

It had been a very long time since he'd confided in anyone. At Charybdis, isolation was a survival trait; if you said the wrong thing to the wrong person you could end up in the labs. It didn't hurt in the IA, either. But Mode knew the IA now. He'd been studying it for almost five years, and he watched all the new recruits that came in and read all of Vaisou's evaluations, and he was almost positive that Christopher was clean. It wasn't possible to know for certain - nothing was, when Vaisou was concerned - but it somehow seemed...out of character for the lieutenant.

Another vision of his son struggling industriously with the dagger derailed his train of thought, and he deflated a little.

Why didn't you lock it up, Kat?

"Something like that," he admitted at last, and Owen sat back and looked satisfied.

"Then you need a real drink."

In the end, they didn't do much drinking. He told Owen the barest of basic circumstances. His wife had left the knife where his son could get at it and then she'd asked him to get rid of it. Owen expressed horror and pronounced the entire matter "seriously fucked up", but he also pointed out that she had recognized the danger and taken the best step toward removing it, and that she'd probably suffered enough.

This conversation took an hour and a half to play out, but when it was finished, Mode felt considerably more at peace.

"What you should do," Owen was saying matter-of-factly, "is get rid of the knife, go home and make some more kids to prove you trust her again."

"Thanks for that," he replied wryly. "You don't have any kids, do you?"

"Not even a wife. I had a close call once, but I was saved at the last minute."

"She came to her senses?"

"That's not nice."

He grinned at the younger man and stood up. "I have to go. Next time ask before you sit down."