There’s always that odd intimacy in the way men in uniform unhook one another’s illusions. It’s not exhibitionism, and it’s not purely play. Strip RPS in a police locker room is a communal shedding: of rank, of posture, of the constant armor of alertness. You can laugh about it, roll your eyes, call it initiation, but there’s also a soft, human economy in that bench of badges and clips — a sudden, visible tally of the shared risk they take every night.

The rules were as simple and as ridiculous as the rest of police life: rock, paper, scissors, but with a sartorial penalty. One round lost, a cuff undone; second round, a badge off the belt; third, a step toward vulnerability that had nothing to do with body armor. They called it “strip” for the laugh of it, but it was all gestures — a shared vulnerability ritual that let them trade the day’s weight for a moment of disarming silliness.

They filed into the locker room like gladiators into a coliseum: boots scuffed, radios chiming faintly, tempers smoothed into the flat focus of work-worn people. Tonight’s overtime crowd was small — three on the squad — but fierce with that peculiar mixture of boredom and adrenaline that makes anything feel like high stakes.

“We got two-word codes,” Martinez said. “‘All clear’ means stop. ‘Radio check’ means we’re done.” Everyone smirked. The joke softened the rules into something humane.