Author's notes: This fic picks up some of the pieces from "Don't Ignore Me" and "Haruhi's Boyfriend", and indeed takes place almost immediately after "Don't Ignore Me". I've included enough context that it should be easy enough to understand without having read either of those fics, though those who have read them first will have a bit more insight into a few scenes. I'll be posting behind-the-scenes info on "The Debate of Haruhi Suzumiya" forum so as not to have author's notes in every chapter.

Not sure how long this fic will be yet, but ten chapters at the bare minimum. If you're familiar with the other universe of this story, you'll get the gist of what's going on by the end of the first chapter, but I expect that most of you aren't, and indeed I think it's better if you can share in Kyon's confusion. Enjoy the insanity.

Thanks to Cesar Hernandez for again providing the cover art.

The characters and milieu of this fan fiction work are property of Nagaru Tanigawa, Kyoto Animation, and Funimation. They find themselves in the roles of characters which are property of Glenn Gordon Caron and the American Broadcasting Company. Elements have been borrowed from scripts by Roger Director, Jeff Reno, Ron Osborn, Charles H. Eglee, and Karen Hall.


Moonlighting with the SOS Brigade

- Chapter 1: Same Cast, Different Show -

"Haruhi Addison!"

I stormed across the reception area, ignoring Ms. Asahina's "Good morning, Mr. Hayes," my eyes burning with indignation at my destination. With one sweep of my arms, I flung open the doors to Haruhi's office.

Where there was something of a gathering taking place. All the female employees of the SOS Detective Agency (except for Ms. Asahina) were clustered around a telescope. Said telescope was aimed at the office building across the street. And there, looking through it, was Haruhi.

"He's dropped a pencil..." she was whispering dramatically. "He's bending down... Waistline of the pants is inching lower... Boxers!" She shouted this last word in two distinct syllables, in the manner of a boxing announcer proclaiming knockout. "Told you it was a sucker bet, Edwards. Guess -"

I cleared my throat.

They turned around and saw me. While the others shuffled about with eyes to the ground and hands in their pockets, Haruhi greeted me in a voice several notes higher than usual: "Hiiiii, Kyon!"

I folded my arms.

Clapping her hands together, she said in a business-like tone that we all knew wasn't fooling anyone, "Well, ladies, that concludes today's seminar on applied surveillance techniques."

Taking the hint, they cleared out, still shame-faced as they walked past me. Haruhi and I were left alone.

"So," she said. "You had something you wanted to talk to me about?"

"I think you've just increased it to two things." I approached the telescope. "May I?"

"Ab-sta-ta-lutely." She stepped aside.

I looked into the eyepiece. In the building across the street, a man sat at a desk, the top two buttons of his collared shirt undone, exposing hints of a muscular chest, layered with a sheen of sweat. I guess the airconditioning over there wasn't working.

I got a weird feeling looking at him... as though I was a looking at a gender flip that didn't quite make sense. You know, like if someone drew a male Faye Valentine in yellow hot pants and boob shirt. Intuitively, I felt that I'd caught Haruhi in an act of blatant voyeurism. But logically, if a guy is in office attire, there isn't much to see, even if he undoes a couple buttons or rolls up his sleeves. Female attire allows for more possibilities.

But weird feelings and logic couldn't hold a candle to the outrage and disgust I felt for Haruhi in that moment.

"Haruhi Addison, you are a vile, unenlightened reprobate."

She couldn't even face me. "Yes, I am."

"You don't have the morals and ethics a hyena was born with."

"No, I don't."

"You give detectives a bad name."

"Yes, I do."

She was silent for a moment. Then she turned to me, opened her mouth to say something, and involuntarily cracked a grin and turned her head away. As if this was all one big joke to her. It probably was. It seemed like everything was one big joke to Haruhi. She acted like a comedian who kept on getting fed new material.

"Look," she said, managing an approximation of a straight face. "I'm just as embarrassed about this as you are."

Since I have nothing to be embarrassed about, I guess that means you're not embarrassed at all. Which, sadly, doesn't surprise me.

"I know that it was childish, and immature... and I really don't have a good excuse for my behavior."

She looked at me again, expectantly, maybe hopefully. I just looked back at her. If she thought I was going to let her slide out of this one...

Then she dropped the bombshell: "I'm sorry." The words came with a sincerity you don't often hear from Haruhi. She walked over to the telescope, picked it up, and handed it to me, tripod and all. "I know we'll both feel better if you keep this in your office."

I blinked. I didn't know what to say. I took the telescope and walked away. As I opened the door to Haruhi's office, I turned and looked back at her.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. I guess I'm just surprised." I felt like there was something I could add to that, but I held my tongue.

"I'm really sorry."

"I believe you are," I said in wonder.

I left, closing the door behind me.

Out in the reception area of the SOS Detective Agency, where all the clerical employees had their cubicles, Ms. Asahina was answering the phone. She did it in the quirky manner that I had gradually come to accept as normal in the insanity that my life had become since the day I first walked into these offices:

"SOS Detective Agency.

"Aliens got you down?

Neighborhood esper wielding a gun?

We'll settle the dispute

and help you all have fun!

Has your time traveling friend

got lost in a different time?

We'll nail down what era

and yes, we also solve crimes!"

After delivering her rhyme, she nervously played with the phone cord. "Um, our r-rates? Um, let me - Hold on." She clasped a hand over the receiver and said, "Is there something I can help you with, Herbert?"

She was talking to Herbert Koizumi, who was pacing in front of her desk with his hands in his pockets. Mr. Koizumi had started here as a temp, but I'd recently promoted him to full time. Frankly, I was worried that he wasn't going to work out here that morning when we walked in to find that Ms. Asahina, in a shockingly uncharacteristic move, had Mr. Koizumi pinned down on her desk and was forcefully making out with him. But after he later rebuffed one of her advances, things between them had become cool, and then strictly professional. I was certain Ms. Asahina still had feelings for him, but she was apparently afraid to let them out. I wasn't going to meddle, though.

"Me?" Mr. Koizumi projected an air of perfect innocence. "No. ...Thank you."

Miss Asahina returned to the caller. "Our rates are... W-w-well, that depends on what sort of services are involved. Also, there's a discount if the case involves -"

Koizumi heaved a sigh.

"Hold, please." Ms. Asahina returned her attention to Mr. Koizumi. "What do you want me to type for you, Herbert?"

"Type?"

"I know what you're doing." She was starting to sound almost hysterical. "Every time you want me to type something, you do this."

"What do you mean?" he said, still maintaining his pure aura of perfect innocence.

As Miss Asahina proceeded to chew him out, I looked down at the telescope in my arms. What was I doing? Haruhi had just demonstrated to me humility, contrition, an ability to admit she was wrong, and real growth as a human being, and here I was, taking away her surveillance tools like a mother confiscating her son's gaming console. After all we'd been through together, didn't I trust her?

I turned around and walked back into Haruhi's office. "I don't really need to keep this..."

There was a sharp clatter. I looked up to see Haruhi looking like a cat who'd been caught with the canary in her mouth. I looked further down to see the reason why. On Haruhi's desk, where she'd apparently thrown them when I walked in, were a pair of binoculars.

"You..." I grit my teeth and threw the telescope to the floor.

"Careful," Haruhi said, turning back towards the window and putting the binoculars back up to her eyes, the pretense obviously dispensed with. "That's a precision instrument."

No kidding. I bent down and folded it back together. I don't know what made me do that in the first place. How does potentially breaking an expensive piece of professional equipment solve anything? I really should have better control over my temper. I thought I did have better control over my temper.

It's Haruhi. Somehow, she always pushes my buttons. "I thought I understood you, Haruhi Addison," I said, righteous indignation boiling inside me. "I thought I knew the limits of your behavior. But your depravity knows no limits, does it? Spiking Miss Asahina's drink to get her to act sexy for your stupid movie, physically tormenting her just because she told me the truth about your little gift for me..."

Haruhi lowered the binoculars and arched an eyebrow at me. "When did all that happen?"

"Uh..." I struggled with the tangled threads of my memory, only to have them slip between my fingers. Images that had appeared in my head unbidden now crumpled, revealed as insubstantial illusion. "I... umm... I guess it didn't?"

"That's right, it didn't. So what are you mad at me for?" She resumed observing through the binoculars.

Damn it, she's got me all flustered. "...Ogling some secretary like he was a piece of meat at a butcher's window! That's what I'm mad at you for!" I grabbed the binoculars from her. "And one other thing! The thing I came into your office to talk to you about in the first place." I fished into the pocket of my jacket, pulled out the piece of paper I had stuffed in there, and slapped it down on Haruhi's desk. "What are these?!"

"Your fingers. And they look good enough to eat."

"I've been seeing these posters plastered all over town! Is this what you've been giving Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Simmons overtime pay for?"

"Hey, you're the one who's always saying we need to drum up more business."

"What kind of business do you expect this to drum up?" I demanded, laying a finger on the most offensive part of the poster. "A 20% discount if the case involves an alien, time traveler, esper, or slider? Now no one's going to take us seriously!"

"Kyon, baby, you're looking at this all wrong." She laid a little-too-friendly hand on my back. Needless to say, her calling me that really got on my nerves, too. "Think about it: There are 578 detective agencies in this state, but only one which takes cases involving aliens, time travelers, espers, and sliders."

Pretty sure she just made those numbers up. "Since none of those things exist, that does us as much good as adding farthings to forms of payment we accept."

"Don't exist? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what you said about leprechauns before we met Ms. Kilpatrick?"

"Ms. Kilpatrick was not a real leprechaun!"

"But she had you going for a minute or two, didn't she?" She grinned.

Sometimes I think it's worse when she makes something that roughly approximates a legitimate point. Either make a normal, solid, logical argument, or just say something completely insane. Don't do this middle-of-the-road stuff.

"And this promotion isn't going to just help us tap into the niche paranormal market," she continued. "Ordinary, boring humans with ordinary, boring cases are going to see that and think, Wow! Now there's an agency that's different from the rest! An agency who will take on any case, no matter how strange! An agency whose reach goes beyond your wildest imagination!"

"An agency whose marketing department is on LSD," I inserted drily.

"If they'll take on cases with aliens, espers, sliders, and time travelers, then surely they can take on my case! Do you see what I'm getting at, Kyon?"

"Haruhi..." I removed her hand from my back. "I'll admit there are times when I can sort of admire you for being such a reckless dreamer. But I'm trying to run a business here, and you're wasting our money distributing these sensationalist posters, and wasting your time with playing peeping Tom like some introverted nerd who can't get a date."

"Okay, first of all, I'm simply indulging in some visual stimuli to satiate the hunger which my current sex life is not taking care of. So I'll thank you not to imply that I have some sort of mental illness." At those words, it was like someone struck a tuning fork inside my head. "Second, how do you expect us to get more cases if we don't stand out from the competition?"

We stand out, all right. We have a zero percent success rate. "What did you just say?"

She sat down on top of her desk. "I said, if we don't do anything to make us stand out from the competition -"

"No, before that." It was weird, but at the same time that prickles were running all over my skin, my outrage was replaced by a simple calm. "Did you just say that love is a sort of mental illness?"

Her eyebrows went up. "What? Love? Of course not. Love is great. Love is, by far, the leading cause of that wonderful condition referred to by philosophers and theologians as 'getting it regular'." She smiled with wistful bliss at that thought. It was a sickening sight. "When I said mental illness, I was talking about your accusation that I'm an introvert. If anyone in this room -"

"I'm sure I've heard you say love is a mental illness before."

"- has difficulty going out and having fun with a member of the opposite sex -"

"And not like you were kidding around, or making an excuse not to get involved..."

"- it's you. All you talk about all day is business, business, and your idea -"

"...like you really meant it. Like you had no capacity to feel that way for someone."

"- of a great night out is wearing an uncomfortable tux and clinking glasses with some lady with her nose in the air while a violinist plays the most boring songs of all time. Nope, I've never said that in my life."

"Huh." I would have challenged her assessment of the way I choose to enjoy myself, but I was still stuck on the "love is a mental illness" thing. Memory can be a deceptive thing, but it wasn't just that I distinctly remembered Haruhi saying this. It was that I couldn't stop hearing her say it. The words, the way she said them, even the look in her eyes as she said them seemed to jar most unpleasantly with reality.

Come on then, back to reality.

"Alright, you want to know how we're supposed to stand out from the competition?" I crumpled up the poster and threw it in the trash. "By being professional and responsible, and solving our clients' cases. All things which you seem to struggle with, so as a little practice exercise, I want you to personally tear down each and every one of those posters."

"What?!" That got her attention. "Are you crazy? Herbert worked his butt off putting those up!"

"Well, maybe next time you'll discuss it with me first before you launch a major advertising campaign."

"Okay, I went over your head on this one, but stop and think for a moment. Even if it's not your style, this is good publicity. You can't just throw it away."

"I know. You will."

"I won't."

"You will!"

"You know what? I have a better idea." She hopped off her desk and brushed past me towards the door. "We'll have Herbert do it. You can tell him that all the hard hours he put into promoting our agency are good for nothing but the trash bin!"

"Get back here, Haruhi!"

I strode after her into the reception area, where Mr. Koizumi was handing Ms. Asahina a massive stack of files. "I know it's a lot," he said to her, with that phony smile of his. "But there's no hurry. First thing tomorrow is fine."

Wait... "phony"? There's nothing phony about Mr. Koizumi. He's one of the most honest people working in this office. Why did I think that?

"H-H-Herbert..." Miss Asahina quivered, staring with eyes as big as bowling balls at the mountain of paperwork. It looked almost too heavy for her short, dainty body. "What is all this?"

"The Gunderson case."

"The Gunderson c-c-case?"

"Indeed. Mr. Hayes and Ms. Addison wanted -"

"Hey Herbert!" Haruhi reached them a split second before I did. "We've got another assignment for you!"

Mr. Koizumi turned and saluted her. "I'm your man, Ms. Addison."

It's probably worth explaining, in case it isn't obvious, that Mr. Koizumi thoroughly idolizes Haruhi. Somehow he got it into his head that she's a great detective, though it honestly seems to go beyond even that. The way he jumps at her every order, you'd think she was the center of the universe. Yeah, it makes no sense to me, either.

"All those posters you put up? Mr. Hayes wants them torn down."

"Actually," I interjected, looking at both Haruhi and Mr. Koizumi, hand on my hip, "...that's a job I meant for Ms. Addison."

"Hmm? Oh no, Mr. Hayes!" Mr. Koizumi protested. "I'd be happy to take on this assignment. No job is too big or too small for Herbert Koizumi!"

"Uhh, yes." I adopted a sympathetic tone. "But I thought it would be awkward for you, since you're the one who put them up in the first place."

"Oh, but that was under Ms. Addison's orders. If you both want them taken down, I'm ready to take them down!"

"Yeah..." Haruhi said in a quiet, serious voice. "If we both want them taken down."

She was realizing that her plan had backfired. I didn't hesitate to press the advantage. "We do, Mr. Koizumi. It's not urgent, but if you can have it done by the end of the day Friday, that would be great."

"You've got it, Mr. Hayes." He made to rush out of the room, but stopped and turned to Ms. Asahina. "Thanks for typing those for me, Agnes. I really owe you one."

Miss Asahina stared after him as he left, then turned to stare into the empty distance instead. "Well," she said. "I guess since Herbert is busy doing casework and important marketing tasks for you, I'd better get busy typing and answering phones." She went back to her desk, eyes to the floor the whole way.

The poor kid. From the looks of it, with Haruhi, Koizumi, and me increasingly tackling tough and exciting cases, she's starting to feel a little useless being just a maid, serving tea all day. ...I mean... a receptionist, answering phones all day.

"Well," Haruhi said, cutting in on my thoughts. "I guess Koizumi was willing to take all those posters down for me."

I turned and glared at her. "Yeah... I guess he was."

We'd both lost the argument.

Haruhi sulked her way back to her office, like the big baby she was, and I stalked back to mine.


Haruhi and I didn't talk to each other for the rest of the day. Which was fine. We had these arguments all the time, and this one wasn't any worse than the others. We'd talk again tomorrow morning. Probably argue again, or at least bicker and trade witticisms again, and maybe go out on a case together.

As usual, I was the last to leave. The rest of the agency just didn't have my work ethic, except for Mr. Koizumi of course. I finished my work for the day, turned off the lights, locked up, and drove home.

Big, empty home. I felt saddened as I stepped inside, and spent the next 15 minutes going through the rooms of the house - my house - trying to find someone. I didn't really live alone, did I? I was struck with the certainty that there was someone else here besides me... a cat, at least.

As I searched, an echo of the same feeling I had when I thought Haruhi said love is a mental illness, Mr. Koizumi had a phony smile, and Ms. Asahina was a maid sounded through my soul. And like a good echo, it reverberated deeper and longer than the shout which had initiated it. None of the rooms in my house looked familiar. The tables, the chairs, the cabinets, the refrigerator, the little cupboards, the beds... None of them were mine. It was like I'd wandered into someone else's house by mistake.

And no one was here but me. I sat down and pressed my palms against the tears starting to form in my eyes. I felt like I'd lost someone very important to me. Maybe more than one someone.

Okay. Settle down, Kyon.

Remember.

This is your house. The key fit the lock, didn't it? You live alone now. You used to have a full house staff - that must be who you feel like you're missing - but they all left when you couldn't pay them anymore because your accountant took all your money and investments, leaving you with nothing but a few failing companies maintained as tax write-offs, like the SOS Detective Agency. I'd still love to teach that creep a lesson.

I haven't gone into most of the rooms in the house in months; now that I have to earn a living, I spend most of my time at the agency. Sometimes I even have breakfast with Haruhi there. No wonder so many of the rooms in this place seem unfamiliar now. No wonder I feel like I'd rather be back at the agency than here.

I went upstairs, got changed into my pajamas, and sat in bed. I stared at the bedside phone. I could call Haruhi, or my parents. But there was nothing much to talk about at the moment, and even just having the options made me feel a little less lonely.

I turned off the light and lay down to sleep. Tomorrow was another big day.