It's the Romance of the Thing (Finished)

 Lestrade was a traditional man. He liked marriage, disliked texting and still listened to vinyl records. He wasn't an uptight-rule-nazi-Catholic as he'd been raised to be, especially seeing as he most definitely had indulged in human intimacy for more reasons than just to have children, had nearly shot himself down the throat several times in a row, rarely went to church and quite decidedly enjoyed the presence of genders other than female. Still, he didn't have an ipod, only had a cell phone because his job forced him to have one, and preferred the hum of the radio rather than the television (though not that god-awful pop 'music' that was played constantly on the radio, heaven forbid).

Unfortunately, records were getting increasingly less common to find in any given market place. He had a cassette and disk player in his house, yes, but what he truly enjoyed was the good old, slightly-sped up tunes that were ticked out by a needle (and wasn't that fascinating?). He listened to older tunes, yes, but they were good tunes. Call him cliché or perhaps slightly feminine, but his favourite band had always been The Beatles. His first record had been Let It Be, a fancy new gift from McCourt that he'd listened to so much it didn't play anymore. Still, the fact that it'd had two sides and the music was so amazing made Lestrade happier than anything. He himself didn't have a record player, but he would listen to it all night at McCourt's house. Good old McCourt.

He visited different record-specific stores often. He didn't always buy them - he didn't really collect records just to collect them - but if he liked the song or band, he'd buy it without a second thought. It annoyed Lestrade that record stores these days sold cassettes, CD, and sometimes even DVDs as well! He understood times were hard, but it still ticked him off. Which was why when he saw this store even sold video games, he disapproved tremendously.

However he still wanted to look around, so set to flipping through boxes of paper-slipped disks, mentally noting a few of them. He made his way down the line of boxes until his found himself next to a girl of perhaps her mid-twenties, intent of finding her own records. Glancing over, Lestrade one of the records under her fingers, a Fleetwood Mac record. "That's good," he noted to her friendlily.

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"Fleetwood Mac, hmm?" The girl looked up at him, smiling and holding the record out for him to see. Lestrade could see it was the band's album Bare Trees.

"I haven't held one of these in a few years, I'm not to sure I could make heads or tails of the artists," the girl continued, and handed the record off to Lestrade, who held it slightly awkwardly, not quite sure why he was holding it.

"Frankenstein, Victoria." It took Lestrade a second to realise that the girl was introducing herself. Wow, it had been a while since he'd heard anyone that young introduce them self so formally. The girl had a nice voice, pretty, elegant.

"Lestrade," he replied, placing the record gently on top of one of the boxes and holding out his hand to shake. If the girl was formal, he could certainly appreciate formal. "Gregory Lestrade. Nice to meet you," he smiled. "So what're you looking for here? I can't imagine there's all that much modern music here." Though, he had heard a lot of bands were going back to vinyl, which was… interesting. A bit weird, but interesting.

As soon as the term 'modern music' was out of his mouth, Lestrade inwardly cringed at the way he'd spoken. He sounded too old; he'd not meant it like that. It'd come out too... annoyed. Like he resented modernness. Ah, well, he couldn't take it back now.

"Nostalgia?" Frankenstein replied, a question lingering at the end of her words. "My father had this gramophone in the library, it never properly worked, but he also had a turntable and would play whatever record he had on hand in our library. It was lovely really, and I have to say, 6000 kilometers is quite a ways."

"'Tis," Lestrade agreed, smiling ever so slightly. So the girl was foreign-born, or at least grew up in a different country. All the way across America was not that many kilometers away. Lestrade glanced down at where the girl had re-placed the Fleetwood Mac record in its proper place; another quality he immediately liked about the girl. She appreciated order, and hadn't been taken in my that horrible pop music, as far as he could tell. It was a shame they weren't closer in age.

"So what kind of music are you looking for, here?" He asked curiously. "I'd say, it's not that easy to browse if you don't know much what you want."

"I suppose I've been looking for home," Frankenstein said thoughtfully, and Lestrade didn't realize that the woman was joking until she laughed at her own joke. Lestrade chuckled along a little awkwardly. The girl certainly was formal. "What about you? You don't sound like you're from around here," Frankenstein said, and Lestrade ducked his head humbly, his small giggle returning.

"Well, I suppose not," he said to his feet, dramatizing his accent for amusement and smiling. He realized, Frankenstein probably wanted the same respects she was giving him returned, and so he looked back up at her, making eye contact as was polite; it felt a bit different, considering he was really only followed social rules this closely when he was at work. "Ireland. Dublin."

He looked around at the shop, breaking eye contact. Yeah, he couldn't really do that very well outside of work. He looked back at Victoria after a moment, shrugging a little, even though the movement was predominantly pointless. "And you?" He asked. "You're not from here either."

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OOC: Damn, it was really, really amazing, I'm sorry you weren't able to go!

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The girl seemed to soften here gait a little, and Lestrade managed not to show his small amount of relief. It wasn't as if the formalities weren't a welcome rarity, but it was a bit awkward, considering they were simply having a polite conversation and not in a meeting or the like. Lestrade also hoped that he hadn't made her feel awkward before; perhaps the reason she had been so stiff was because he was annoying her or making her nervous? Oh dear, he hadn't thought of that before. He hoped this was a sign that she wasn't too annoyed with him anymore.

"No, I'm on an education visa right now. I was born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland," she said.

Geneva? Oh, Elliot had been there before on vacation, he's shown Lestrade the pictures. It was lovely, so much blue, blue ocean and elegant architecture and that large geyser thing Elliot had talked about. What was it? The jet due or something. Whatever it was, it looked wonderful. Lestrade remembered thinking it looked a bit like Greece.

"My brother's been there, it looks amazing," Lestrade said, smiling. "I'd love to go someday." He paused, then asked, "So what are you studying over here?"

"I'm working towards a PhD in Biochemical Engineering. I'm about three years work into my thesis," Frankenstein said casually, and Lestrade found it a little amusing because if there were studies that were definitely not casual, he was pretty sure biochemical engineering was one of them. And a PhD? At her age? That was impressive.

"It is really interesting work, terribly complicated, but endlessly fascinating," Frankenstein added, and she seemed genuine in her interest. Well... good for her. She was a young woman who knew what she wanted to do in her life, even if what she was choosing to do was beyond most peoples' metal capabilities. He'd gotten a taste of the math-science spectrum of the world during his three years at Trinity, when he'd poured his brains over document after document, number after number. It was interesting, but he couldn't do it. It was too... dull. Numbers were endlessly interesting on an academic spectrum, but he wanted more stimulus, he wanted to do things. Mathematics and quantum physics didn't let a man run, so he ran away.

"It is. Fascinating, I mean," he smiled. "I studied maths and science in uni as well," he acknowledged, so his opinion didn't seem like a sugarcoated automatic response. "But, er, not anymore. Just wasn't my thing. I'm with the police now. So, uh, where do you go to college?"

"I'm attending NYU," Victoria said. "Though I tend to visit the Columbia campus more often than not... It really is a lovely university, and while New York is nothing like Zurich, New York really is a lovely town. I'm glad I came here." She finished with a smile, and Lestrade got the feeling that she really enjoyed school.

"Yeah," Lestrade agreed, nodding his head a bit. "It is a great place to live." She smiled briefly, before re-positioning himself to cross his arms comfortably. "So uh, how long have you been over here, then? I've lived here about a year meself."

Wow, almost a year. He'd moved here early autumn, and now it was summer, and how had the days gotten away from him so quickly? Nine months since he'd left SanFran, gotten on a plane and left his baby without him. He'd seen her six months ago. Six more to go until he could see her again. She was a patient girl, wasn't she? Readjusting so easily for her selfish father.