"We've got a slow day ahead of us, Carlton."
The detective looked up from his desk to survey his partner, who leaned on the doorframe of his office, her arms crossed over her chest.
"You're smiling?" he replied, carefully removing his left arm from the sleeve of his suit.
"Well, I'll be bored out of my mind, but it's nice to have a break, right?"
"If you say so, O'Hara." Carlton extracted his left arm as well, and took a long moment to hang his suit jacket on the back of his leather desk chair. "Just wait. By the end of the day, you'll be begging for some action... Armed robbery, hostage, murder, the works."
Juliet wrinkled her nose in disgust and gently pushed off the doorframe with her elbow, approaching her superior's desk. "That's not exactly the enjoyable part of this job."
"To each his own," Carlton chuckled to himself, and opened the manila file that sat before him. On slow days at the department, he entertained himself by looking through past cases he had solved singlehandedly. Juliet took a seat in the cushioned chair in front of his desk and shook her head at Carlton. She pulled a pad of police stationary from the corner of the desk and borrowed a blue pencil from her partner's "CSI" mug.
Juliet began to hum silently to herself as she doodled on the sheet of paper in her lap. Carlton glanced up in surprise; it wasn't often he heard a fellow cop humming. Especially not to Styx…
What a song choice.
"Renegade?" Carlton muttered to himself wryly as he flipped to the next sheet of paper. Juliet ignored him as she began to detail the carnation she was sketching.
As the hour drew on, a smile began to grow on Carlton's face as he relived the details of the investigation. The robbery ring hadn't stood a chance with him at front command; he'd shown up the entire department with raw instincts and a key eye for detail. (Those, coincidentally, were the exact words of the police chief to an inquiring member of the press, which was then released in a newspaper article solely about the detective.)
"How many times are you going to reread that news clipping?" Juliet asked, an amused grin on her face. "The ink is smudged, which isn't an easy feat," she added as an afterthought.
Carlton ignored the latter. "Until a nicer one has been published," he replied the former, his smirk deepening.
The phone on Carlton's desk rang once, and the detective's hand flashed to the receiver and yanked it to his ear. "Lassiter," he spoke brusquely. Juliet watched, her eyes alight with curiosity. "Oh, I see…" Carlton looked put-out, and Juliet's grin fell. "Alright. Thank you."
Carlton returned the receiver to its cradle and went back to flipping through the old file, seeming to deflate back into his seat. Juliet watched him keenly, waiting for an explanation but not near cheeky enough to ask for one. Finally, Carlton sighed and looked up.
"Just the chief. Checking to see if we're 'on the ball.'" He added air-quotes to the last part and shook his head.
"I see," she answered. Clearing her throat, she flipped to a new page and, on a whim, began to jot down a poem.
The two were silent for twenty minutes – perhaps the longest third of an hour in Carlton's life. His annoyance with the day, the police department, the city crime rate, and his confined desk space increased immensely in this short period of time. He continued to glance at the clock out of pure habit, thoroughly disappointed at the minute hand's position each time he sought it out.
Meanwhile, Juliet studied her paper, thinking for an appropriate word to rhyme with dream; she was drawing a blank. The junior detective twirled the pencil with her thin fingers.
Dream…
Gleam? Not quite.
Freem? Was that even a word?
Juliet let out a huffed sigh, blowing a few stray hairs off her forehead. She stopped twirling the pencil and let it fall between her thumb and index finger.
Ream…? No, that just didn't fit.
Distractedly, Juliet let the eraser drop against the top of the desk once –
Tap.
– and bounce back through her fingers.
Perhaps it wasn't a tap, per say. Maybe more of a thump. A pat? A beat? Regardless of the description, it was quite possibly the single most lethal noise known to man. Carlton flinched at the noise, like a gunshot piercing the silence, although Juliet took no notice.
Tap. Tap.
Though his partner was clearly immune to the distraction, the constant rhythmic beats were enough to drive one with a short temper insane, and 'short-tempered' was Carlton's middle name. Brooding and irritable, he was not one to clash with – especially on a day that seemed to drag by with no end, a day where each second on the clock passed even more slowly than the one before it, which then supplemented an eardrum-shattering tick to the mix.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Carlton squeezed his eyes shut so tightly that white colored his vision and his temples ached with pain. Juliet's eyes were shut as well, but in concentration rather than frustration, as though hammering the eraser into its metal containment on the end of the pencil was therapeutic and somehow would assist her thoughts.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
He leaned farther over his desk, resting his elbows on the mahogany edge, and crammed an index finger as far into each ear as they would fit. Unfortunately, this gave the noises an echo effect, as though he was submerged in water; in a way, it seemed to magnify the annoyance he was experiencing.
No, more than just experiencing; Carlton was slowly going mad. He snatched a pencil from his mug and began fiddling with it, trying to tame his restless fingers; absentmindedly, he began chipping off the paint with what was left of his neatly clipped fingernails.
This practice was halted in a very short amount of time; a shaving of the finished, quite likely attached to a sliver of wood, became lodged under his fingernail, and he gave an exasperated yell before chucking the pencil over his fellow detective's head; it hit the glass wall of his office with a chink, and fell to the floor, rolling a few feet and disappearing from view.
Juliet looked up in alarm, dropping her own pencil onto the desk. Putting his punctured finger into his mouth and biting down on it to add pressure, Carlton used his free hand to snatch the pencil away from his partner, lest she continue the racket she'd been submitting him to. She regarded him questioningly.
"Why'd you take that?"
"It's noisy."
Juliet retaliated, producing a pen from the mug before Carlton could reach forward and remove all writing utensils from the general area. The detective exhaled through his nose before removing his injured finger from his mouth and studying it. Nothing appeared to be wrong, but it was hurting him something fierce.
"Do we happen to have any antiseptic cream around –" Carlton began, but Juliet cut him off.
"Cream!" she exclaimed. "Perfect! Okay…" She jotted the word down and began the next line, completely ignoring Carlton's request. It was his turn, now, to await explanation; however, Juliet became unfocused.
Her next line… orange. She cursed mentally; a new dilemma presented itself. Another word for orange. Ginger? Carrot? Apricot? Juliet shook her head and began to click the retractable end of the stationery pen, popping the end tip in and out of the utensil.
Click.
Click.
CLICK.
"That's enough writing for the day, don't you think?" Carlton asked, a dangerous edge to his voice that made his junior detective look up in surprise.
Several events happened simultaneously. The wall clock gave a small chime, signaling the hour was up and a new had begun. Juliet carelessly let that blasted pen click, which echoed throughout the room. And lastly, what sent Carlton over the edge: a fly appeared out of nowhere, its buzzing as loud as a plane engine, making one revolution around his head before landing on the tip of the agitated detective's nose.
Carlton reared back, at wit's end. His hands plunged to his sides, ripping a Glock from each side of his gun holster. He cocked them simultaneously and took aim at the pesky insect making rounds around the room.
"Carlton," Juliet gasped warningly, reaching a hand toward her partner's arm and attempting to remove the guns from his possession. Carlton was ignorant of his partner, his fingers heavy on the trigger. He was aimed and ready when the door to his office burst open.
Chief Vick blanched at the sight that beheld her as she entered the office, and she froze. "Lassiter! O'Hara!" she barked, and both heads snapped up in alarm. She watched them for a moment, not entirely sure what she was witnessing. "Firearms away," she snapped. "There's a car fire down on main, and the driver is stable. You might want a word with her, so we can get the scene wrapped up quickly."
Carlton blinked once, coming back down to earth and becoming aware that he very nearly shot out his office windows because of a disgusting little fly. Sheepishly, he returned the pistols to his holster before snatching his jacket off his desk chair. He made a move to follow Juliet out of the room, but paused when Chief Vick crossed the room. She stopped below his clock, studying it closely. She checked her wristwatch, glanced back up, and laughed. "Those good-for-nothing janitors… Carlton, did you realize your clock is an hour ahead?"
The detective sunk back into his chair, lowering his face to his desk with a mournful sigh.