The Tiger and the Kitten
Part Two
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I'd rather be out at a crime scene than stuck inside any day. But we'd had some tough cases lately, and that plus the overdue reports was enough to get us a paperwork day. It was an almost-welcome break.
Almost.
"If you had your own pens, you wouldn't have that problem," I said. Honestly. Alex really should have known better than to loan her stuff to the lab and its interns.
"Give the green one back." I tossed the black-ink pen I had been using to my partner at her desk. The green went into my writing utensil holder.
I removed another pen as Alex went back to her own work. Made a mark on a scrap – it was red, not blue or black.
After testing two more (purple and another green), I glanced up at Alex. She was trying to look like she had no clue about the problem I was having, but a small grin was creeping over her face.
People say that I'm weird. If I'm weird, Alex is downright bewildering. I've never met anyone as confusing as she is. One moment, she'll give me that little "I-know-you're-about-to-crack-the-case-and-I'm-with-you-all-the-way" smile. The next, she's steaming, taunting, and toying with a suspect into confession.
Mood swings.
She makes me think of a kitten – all cute and fuzzy on the outside, and will sit and purr and blink at you with large, innocent eyes. A kitten can be an angelic fuzzball – and in a second, become a demonic, raging buzz-saw-like thing made up of slashing claws and teeth. It can dig its talons into your arm and hiss and spit as it draws your blood.
Perplexing little animals, kittens are.
Alex is a perplexing little person.
A kitten is stubbornly free-spirited. It will go if it wants; it will turn up its nose at expensive canned food just because it's in that sort of mood.
It is also a fragile thing. Step at the wrong time, and you could crush it under your big, clunking, human feet.
But it will never just stand there and take it. It will never do nothing – run, hide, fight, flight. It will do something about a situation.
And a kitten is impossible not to love.
Finally, the eleventh pen I tested worked and was blue.
"Why do you even keep all those pens?"
I looked up. There was a pause before Alex did the same.
"I really don't know," I said thoughtfully.
She smiled. "Me neither."
~ fine ~
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A/N: Ta-da! See what happens when you have an overactive imagination and a really boring history class? ^_~