Yay! Accounts are back up! To celebrate I'll post this first chapter of a new story. It's going to be a shortish one, just a few chapters, nothing like Moments (which has a while to go yet, what with finishing the stuff in 2014 and then all the future stuff which is a whole Part 2, and yeah). And I'm working on Chapter 12 right now, literally, I stopped in the middle to upload this. I wrote this last night after work because I had a weird dream the night before that developed into this story through thinking about it all day and researching some stuff. It's also sad and angsty and there will also be one character death here before the end, sorry ya'll. But those of you who are reading the other one don't seem to mind the way I do it, so hopefully this works.
It's Lassiet, taking place very shortly after season 3. Straight-up Lassiet, not just friendship. Because I couldn't help trying it and then it took a sad turn thanks to that dumb dream two nights ago and anyway...the plot bunny would not leave me alone.
Let me know how it's going! Thanks so much for reading and reviewing!
Of The Heart
Chapter 1
It starts again because of Shawn. Because he's with Abigail now, and it's been almost two weeks since the drive-in and that woman's been in here with him half a dozen times since then, and Gus tells her they've been on three more dates already.
So Juliet is grumpy. She knows it. Everyone else stays away, but Carlton doesn't. He doesn't ask her if she's all right—he knows better than that—but he's bought the coffee more than his share of times in the last several days and he hovers more than occasionally and just the way he looks at her she can tell he knows. He knows something.
So it starts again. Juliet grew up pretending she isn't a sensitive person. Having the father she did taught her to do it. To ignore it all. To pretend she's fine as her first method of self-preservation. But she isn't fine, and she is sensitive, and it matters to her that her partner seems to care so much. Carlton's hiding that well himself, but she knows. She knows what he's doing when he hovers, and when he buys the coffee, and when he walks a little closer to her than usual.
He's smiling more often, too, because he knows it relaxes her when he does that, when he gets as close as he can to normal. Not that she has a problem with him as he is; he's her partner, and that shouldn't matter, and it doesn't, but he just looks so nice when he actually smiles...
So that's what sets it off, Juliet thinks. The noticing things. It's the smiling. She notices the smiles first, and after that the rest: the hyper-awareness of how close Carlton is standing, the way he looks at her, the varying brightness of his eyes, or the way his fingers brush hers sometimes when they're passing off files.
It's happened before, these phases of noticing. It comes and goes, and seems to have a lot to do with how much Shawn has or hasn't been distracting her, with his mixed signals. It certainly doesn't help that she gave them right back, and now he's with Abigail, and that's a pretty clear signal. Finally. From one of them. She should be happy.
But it hurts.
The day comes, of course, when Carlton has had enough. Juliet knows it when they're in the middle of what would be a perfectly normal conversation about a case, but she's been tapping her pencil for far too long and her voice is too tight, and too fast, and she's more angry than she should be about a file they can't find.
He sighs, loudly, and pushes up from the littered conference table. He snatches his empty coffee mug and stalks away without a word, and Juliet knows she's pushed it too far. She sinks back in her chair sheepishly, waits for him to come back, and plans to apologize. She can't tell him why she's been behaving so badly—he would laugh her out of the station—but she can tell him she's sorry. She can try to fix it.
Carlton doesn't give her a chance to speak first when he returns.
"We're going for drinks after work, O'Hara," he says. "No argument."
Juliet stares at her partner as he sits back down and sips at his fresh coffee. It takes a moment for her to formulate a response, and when she does she realizes he's staring at her expectantly.
"Fine."
He nods once and goes back to scrounging through the files.
She feels a strange ache when he looks down; his eyes were so bright, and she wouldn't have minded looking at them longer.
Now you're being ridiculous.
These phases don't usually last long. She hopes to hell this one ends soon.
They don't get off until late, and she tells him they can do it another time, but he won't have it.
"I can't work with a distracted partner, O'Hara; you're getting whatever the hell it is out of your system," he says.
Carlton insists on driving. Juliet thinks maybe that means he won't drink, at least not much, but he keeps pace with her.
"Better to leave just one car here for the night rather than two if we have to," he says at some point.
By then she's buzzed enough not to care. They're off duty, and it doesn't matter. If a group of guys from the station can get shit-faced together, why can't they?
Because she plans to be trashed before she goes home. She's here, and Carlton is buying, and it's not like it was her idea anyway. He's just trying to help; who is she to deny him the opportunity to be nice?
Maybe both of them should have thought it through a little more. Sooner than she means to be Juliet is drunk enough to tell him exactly why she's been in a mood. He does laugh, but by then she doesn't mind. She laughs with him.
"They've been on like, five dates! Four. Four dates. Only three if you don't count watching a movie after catching a murderer. I don't. I so don't."
Carlton is drunk enough to come back with the fact that his divorce has been final for weeks. He's told no one until now.
"So, you know, if that helps. Okay, maybe this was a bad idea…" he trails.
"What, just because we just told each other the one thing we probably didn't want to? No! This was a great idea!"
"Was it?" His eyes get distant and he gets that face like he's thinking too hard, and it's a lot easier to look at his eyes when he's not paying attention…
"I'm thinking about cutting my hair," he says finally.
"Okay, Carly." Then Juliet is laughing, maybe a little too close to hysterical. "Oh my god! When Shawn called you that! With the cat! Your face!"
Carlton rolls his eyes. "What? I'm serious."
She leans over the tiny round table and squints at him, appraising. The room wobbles when she leans in for the squinting. "Like how?"
"Like cutting it all off. Buzz cut. Fresh start."
"Don't do THAT!"
It comes out far too loud, and now she knows she's drunk.
"What?" he asks again. "Why not?"
"I assume you want the fresh start because you're single now."
"Great work, Detective," he answers, no holds on the sarcasm.
He takes a sip of his drink and she gives him a healthy eyeroll in return for the one he gave her a moment ago.
"Don't do that. You'll run the women off. Trust me: your hair is fine the way it is. It's great the way it is. It used to be all…" Juliet wiggles fingers in between their faces because she can't find the word, and she really just wants to run them through the hair they're talking about. There on his head. It's so thick, and she wonders if it's rough, or soft.
"Meh...flat! Flat. That's it. It used to be way too flat. And boring. Super boring. You've been doing a lot better. Don't go ruin it. It's good."
"It is?" And his voice goes up higher than normal on the 'is' and she knows how drunk he is, and that they should probably go home. Her eyelids are getting heavy anyway.
She lets her forehead drop onto her forearm on the table. "Yep."
"Maybe we should get that cab now…" Carlton trails above her.
"Read my mind."
But they get in and she gives the driver her address, and Carlton forgets to give the guy his and once he's walked Juliet to her door the cab is gone.
"Oh…" Carlton says. He curses and pulls his phone out and Juliet bats it down.
"Carlton. It's two in the morning; just come in. I have a couch, you know."
She should have known how bad an idea that was. Any other time it might have fine. But the stupid noticing. His long fingers as he pushes the phone back in his pocket and holds the door knob to let her in first, and the way he pushes a hand through his hair and some of it sticks up. The gray strands that somehow just make her more crazy.
And she is crazy. It's nothing. It's just the alcohol.
"I'll find a blanket," she says quickly.
She drops her things on the counter and hurries to the hall closet so he won't see how red her face is, and if she can just get him settled and shut herself in her bedroom and make it through the night she'll be sober in the morning and they'll be safe.
But Juliet finds a blanket and a pillow and goes back to the living room and Carlton is just standing there between the couch and the coffee table. She doesn't know why she doesn't just hand him the stuff or go around the coffee table the other way. She tries to get around him, to put the blanket and pillow on the end of the couch her slight OCD tells her should be the head of it, and there's not quite enough room and they're both unsteady. She trips them both.
They're on the couch, a tangle of limbs, and grunting and apologizing and trying to get off of each other and they are way too drunk for this. They untangle and sit up, but suddenly Juliet is too tired to get back to her feet. Carlton's fingers slip from her bare forearm, the end of the untangling, and Juliet feels the tingling all the way up her arm.
Sometimes she wonders if he's ever felt any of these things, too. If it's just her imagination. He's looking at her now and she doesn't want it to be. He's so close, both of them slouched in the cushions. She can feel his breath, his body heat.
She doesn't know when close-because-they-just-fell-over becomes lips-pressed-together, but then it's happened. They're kissing. It goes on long enough they're properly making out, really, and neither of them has freaked out yet. That's a plus.
Juliet's fingers are in his hair, where she's wanted them all night, and Carlton's fingers slip around her side and under the hem of her shirt, brushing her back. It tickles. Juliet giggles against his lips and he makes a strange sound in his throat, and what the hell are they doing?
Everything hits her bladder in just about that moment. It gives her the will to break away, and she's on her feet so quickly she sways.
"I have to pee!"
She stumbles away and she doesn't look back.
When she comes back Carlton is sound asleep, sprawled awkwardly on the couch. Juliet lets out a breath, because she knows they've dodged a bullet. She straightens him out a bit, enough she can get the blanket over him, and she drops into the armchair by the couch. She doesn't feel like she can drag her feet all the way back to the bedroom anymore.
She really hopes they'll be able to laugh about this soon.
No one is laughing the next day. Carlton wakes up in a panic, they take turns rushing through showers, they have to call a cab again to get to the station, and they have to stop at his place for him to change. As partners they're nothing if not practical—they agree to share the cab—so Juliet sits awkwardly outside in the car on the curb while he goes in, avoiding the rearview mirror and the stare of the cabbie.
Neither she nor Carlton says a word about what happened on the couch.
"Thanks for...you know, trying to help," she says on the way up the front steps.
He just shrugs.
Everything is awkward. They spend the day avoiding each other's eyes and speaking in aborted sentences, and the strain is just as awful as she'd always feared it might be, if anything like this ever happened.
"I have a solution," she tells him, late into the afternoon. It's already past normal work hours, really, but that's usual for them. She takes the chair by his desk as she says it, and Carlton visibly tenses.
"To what?" he asks. He doesn't look up from the file on his desk.
"You know what." He looks up and narrows his eyes at her, prompting her to go on, and she takes a breath. "We go on a date."
"We go on a what?"
"A date."
"O'Hara! Have you lost your mind?" He's looking around to be sure no one heard her, but there's hardly anyone here.
She huffs and leans over her knees for emphasis. "I don't mean a real one, Carlton! I mean a fake one. Just to prove to ourselves we don't want to. We know there's nothing to worry about, but if we do this we'll really know. We'll be sober, absolutely nothing will happen, and that'll be the end of it. We won't have to worry about any awkwardness anymore. We can get back to business."
His mouth opens and closes a few times. "That's…"
"I know, it's ridiculous, but it's all I've got. It's that fastest way I can think of to put this behind us."
"I was going to say it's brilliant, actually…"
"Oh." Juliet sits back and smiles, pleased with herself. "Thanks."
Carlton sits back in his own chair and does that thoughtful face. He crosses his legs and props one elbow on his desk so his jacket falls open and she gets a glimpse of his shoulder holster. She has to take a deep breath and clear her throat. The way his fingers are draped over his chin doesn't help.
Damnit. Not now. Where's Shawn when I need him?
She's just upset. Juliet knows this. She's probably more angry at herself than anything, for waiting too long to really say something to Shawn, and that's all it is. Emotions running high. Carlton cares about her as a friend no matter how gruff he acts at times—she knows he does—and she's projecting. Or something.
Carlton goes all Head Detective voice when he straightens and starts talking again, and that doesn't help, either.
"All right, if we're doing this, we're doing it right. Friday night, nice restaurant, I'll make the reservations, I'll pick you up...obviously a venue at which it's less likely we'll be spotted by anyone we know, but if we are and anyone and asks later: we were under cover."
"Sounds good to me."
"And I'm paying."
"You paid for the drinks last n—"
"You can get lunch a couple of times next week."
Juliet smirks. "How romantic."
